and a scene of organised pandemonium.
‘Andrew, darling! At last—I thought you were going to make some weak excuse about work like you usually do!’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he teased. He bent his head and kissed his mother’s cheek, hugging her gently, and then turned and drew Libby forward.
‘Mum, this is Libby Tate. Libby, my mother, Jane.’
Lady Ashenden was elegant, beautifully groomed and she looked a little flustered. Her dark hair was threaded with silver, swept up into a smooth pleat—unlike Libby’s own which was twisted up and skewered more or less in place with faux-ivory pins—and she realised that Andrew and Will both had her eyes.
Piercing eyes, searching, which turned on her and seemed, to Libby’s relief, to like what they saw, because she embraced her warmly and kissed her cheeks. ‘Libby, welcome to Ashenden. This is Sally, my daughter-in-law. ’
Sally was small, obviously pregnant and had the same friendly openness as Will. She buzzed Libby’s cheek and grinned. ‘Hi, there. Welcome to the madhouse. I’ll look forward to catching up with you later, but in the meantime, Jane, isn’t it time we went up?’
‘I’m sure it is. They don’t need us in here fussing and you’ve done enough, darling. Let’s leave them to it, I’m sure they can cope without us.’
And Jane turned away from her, missing the eyerolling and laughter that passed between her and Will, and the intimate smile which followed as Will drew the pregnant woman up against his side and hugged her tenderly. They were obviously very much in love, Libby thought, and felt a wash of restless longing. If only there was someone in her life who felt like that about her, but even if there was, there would be no guarantee they’d have Will and Sally’s happy ending.
The question-mark hanging over her future loomed again, but there wasn’t time to dwell on it, and as they left the kitchen and walked along a magnificent curved hallway with tall, elegant windows overlooking the floodlit front of the house, she was brought firmly back to the here and now as the scale of the house began to register.
Amy hadn’t been exaggerating, Libby thought. It really was a stately home—a vast, magnificent, Palladian country house, the centre part built in a crescent around a carriage-sweep at the front of the house, and as they reached the entrance hall, bracketed by broad, sweeping stairs that led up towards an ornate domed ceiling soaring far above them, Jane led them across a rug that would no doubt have been priceless if it hadn’t been worn thin by the passage of generations, and through an open doorway.
As soon as they entered the drawing room—jaw-dropping in its proportions and dripping with antiques and old masters—they were swept into a round of introductions and fleeting, meaningless conversations. They lost Sally and Will somewhere along the way, and then Andrew grabbed two glasses of champagne from a passing waiter, steered her into a quiet corner and gave her a rueful smile.
‘Sorry, it’s a bit full on if you’re not used to it.’
Full on? She was utterly out of her depth! ‘I thought it was just dinner?’ she murmured, and he laughed.
‘It is dinner, but there’s nothing just about it. Dinner will be about forty people, and tomorrow will be a couple of hundred, I expect. Possibly more. And she’ll know every last one of them and the names of all their children and dogs and horses—she’s a legend.’
‘And she wants to see you married.’
‘Mmm. All ready to take over this crumbling old heap of dry rot.’
‘Are you whingeing about the ancestral home again, bro’?’ Will murmured from behind them, and he gave a soft snort and turned to him.
‘Would I? Thankfully they’re both looking well, so I don’t have to worry about it for donkey’s years. Have you got a drink?’
‘No, but I’ll have champagne, if you’re offering, and I expect Sally’ll have some elderflower cordial. Don’t worry about Libby, I’ll entertain her while you’re gone.’
Libby met Will’s twinkling eyes as Andrew walked away to get the drinks. ‘So, tell me about this crumbling old heap of dry rot. Does he really hate it?’ she said to him, and he chuckled.
‘Oh, he loves it to bits, really, but he thinks it should be mine, since I run it. The law of primogeniture offends his sense of right and wrong.’
‘And yours?’
He shrugged casually. ‘It’s just one of those things, isn’t it? If you split the estate with every generation, you end up with nothing left—and if you ask him about it, he’ll tell you we’re just caretakers, which is right. Glorified janitors. But he’s welcome to the title—and frankly he’s welcome to the house. The east wing is much nicer—I still get to enjoy the grounds, but it’s cosier than the house, and the heating bills aren’t quite as stratospheric, and I can walk to work. And whatever he’s told you, I only run the estate because I’m too lazy to do anything else!’
They were laughing as Andrew returned, a ripple of interest following him as the single girls monitored his progress. Or was it Will they were interested in? She couldn’t blame them. Both men were strikingly good-looking and she felt completely overshadowed in the glittering crowd of slender, elegant women with their bright, witty banter and designer dresses.
Until Sally came over a moment later, short and round and utterly charming, and smiled at her and gave her a hug.
‘Finally I get to meet you properly! This is such fun, I didn’t know my brother-in-law had a deep, dark secret.’
Andrew rolled his eyes. ‘Just because I don’t gossip.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Sally said, and took her by the arm mischievously. ‘So—tell all. I gather you’re colleagues. That must be tricky. What’s he like to work with, because his brother’s a nightmare—’
‘I am not!’
‘You are. You’re hopelessly disorganised.’
Will grinned. ‘That’s why I employed you.’
‘No, it’s why you married me. You were terrified I’d leg it and you wouldn’t find anyone else who could cope with your filing system.’
‘It’s a good system!’
‘It’s a collection of piles on the floor, William!’ she corrected with a grin, and Libby laughed.
‘Sounds rather like my desk,’ she said with a smile at Will, then turned back to Sally. ‘So what do you actually do? Andrew said something about being events manager.’
‘Oh, that’s just a fancy title for doing anything and everything. I’m just a dogsbody,’ she grumbled cheerfully, but Will shook his head.
‘She’s actually my PA as well, and she helps me run the charity side of things, too,’ Will said. ‘We’d be lost without her—will be lost when she has the baby, but it’s not why I married her. I married her because I struggle to boil water and she’s a darned good cook.’
And rather more than that, Libby wouldn’t mind guessing, hearing the pride in his voice and seeing the warmth in his eyes as he smiled at Sally, and yet again, she felt a twinge of envy.
If only Andrew would look at her like that—would ever, in the future, look at her like that—but he wouldn’t. Why would he? Their worlds were light-years apart. He’d only invited her here this weekend as an afterthought. He’d never noticed her before, never singled her out, never been anything but the perfect colleague. She was only here because he needed a shield, and he’d made that perfectly clear.
Not that she needed to worry. She wasn’t in the market for a relationship either at the moment, with him or with anybody else, and she’d do well to remember that fact.
CHAPTER THREE