Two Weddings and a Baby (26 page)

Tamsyn blinked. ‘That’s not why you are here, is it? To tell me off for running up wedding dresses for my brother’s wedding?’

‘Well, darling, strictly speaking it does contravene the contract of exclusivity that you signed with me when you came to work at Du Mont Père, but no, of course that’s not why I am here. I am here because you were gone, and then I saw your face on the internet and it hit me in the chest; I missed you. I wanted to be with you, and I suddenly had this impulse, this strange impulse to make it happen. So I came.’ He shrugged, and Tamsyn couldn’t help but smile. It was so unlike Bernard, so unlike him to admit to any kind of dependency on another human being, that it touched her.

‘So, we go now, to your hotel where your suite is still waiting for you to arrive, and we will have the most wonderful reunion. And then dinner.’

Tamsyn laughed as Bernard kissed her neck, his hands running over her buttocks.

‘I can’t,’ she said, finding herself peeling his hands off her. ‘I have to finish these dresses. I’m already really behind schedule and soon, my pensioners’ sweatshop out there is going to expect me to oversee them assembling the bridesmaids’ dresses. Actually Bernard, as you are here, it would be so wonderful if you could help me. Imagine what a gift that would be, to present my sister-in-law-to-be with a Bernard du Mont Père wedding dress?’

‘Come with me to the hotel,’ Bernard said, kissing her ear in a way that usually made Tamsyn squirm. ‘I need to be alone with you, right now.’

Perhaps it was the exhaustion, the excitement or Jed, but either way Tamsyn looked at Bernard and realised she had never felt less enthusiastic about a sexual encounter in her entire life, and that included the time she got Julian ‘Dribble’ Bentley in a game of spin the bottle. She’d just have to find a way to tell her boss that the romantic part of their arrangement was over, she realised now. Even if she had managed to ruin Jed’s opinion of her in one fell swoop by having a secret boyfriend, at least what had happened between them had made her realise that everything outside of her professional life with Bernard wasn’t working for her at all.

‘Perhaps half an hour,’ she said, ‘just for a break. We need to talk.’

Outside of the castle’s portcullis a local minicab was waiting, his meter still running, even though the hotel was a short walk away. Bernard had been so certain she would come with him he had kept a taxi waiting.

‘Another beautiful building,’ Bernard said as he swept her into the foyer of The Poldore Hall Hotel. ‘You have to check in, for us to get a key.’

‘Right.’ Tamsyn apologised to the girl behind the desk for not showing up for the first two nights of her prepaid stay and accepted a key in return, which Bernard at once took out of her hand, leading her up the grand staircase to where the suite was situated. Unlocking the door, he picked her up, which was no mean feat considering his stature and her protests, and carried her inside, finding the bedroom and flinging her on the bed.

‘We’re not getting married,’ Tamsyn said, irritably.

‘Not yet,’ Bernard said, kneeling on the bed and looking at her. ‘Oh my God, what are you wearing? It is a testament to my desire for you that I can still want you even though you wear this jumper that hurts my eyes!’

‘It’s not that bad!’ Tamsyn said as Bernard dragged if off over her head and threw it on the floor, revealing the tight black vest top she wore underneath in place of a bra.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes, it is, but the view is improving. Now … these Lycra and elastic in the waist! I should sack you for these.’

‘Bernard,’ she said, stopping him as he tried to drag her leggings off her, ‘stop. No, I don’t want to.’

‘You don’t?’ Bernard looked surprised. ‘You are tired. You feel better later on.’

‘Why are you here, really?’ Tamsyn said, reaching for her jumper again. ‘I mean, if you saw me on the internet and realised that you had to be with me, why not a phone call or a text, anything at all to say that you were coming?’

Bernard sighed and flopped down onto the bed next to her.

‘Really?’ he said. ‘You want to talk about this now?’

‘Well, I don’t know.’ Tamsyn sat on the edge of the bed. ‘It’s just, I am sort of right in the middle of something here, in my own time, on holiday, and you’ve just turned up and dragged me out of my life. A bit like you think you own me.’

‘I haven’t dragged you out of your life,’ Bernard said. ‘This place, this baby you have found, these funny costumes you are making, they are the distractions. It’s me, the business, your work that is your real life. This, this is all a nonsense.’ He waved his arms around him, and Tamsyn had to suppose that he meant Poldore and everyone and everything in it. ‘There is no time for you to be here, playing at being a mother, and pretending you are in some bad musical. I need you, Tamsyn. I need you at my side. I want you to come back to Paris with me tonight. We have much to do. I came because you are not answering your phone, and it is very irritating.’

‘What?’ Tamsyn said. ‘So that stuff about being my wedding date? Being by my side? What was that?’

‘I meant them. I will be your date if you want, but how much better would it be for me to be by your side in Paris? Working on the job we love?’

‘But Ruan and Alex’s wedding is tomorrow. I haven’t finished the dresses, and there’s Mo – can’t you see that I’ve a few things going on at the moment?’ Tamsyn looked at him, a suspicion forming. ‘Bernard. What is this about?’

‘You remember you brought me those drawings, a few months ago, before I started the new collection? The coats?’

‘Yes,’ Tamsyn said. ‘You said they were too much of me and not enough of you. You said they didn’t fit in with your vision, or your look, and that I had a lot more to learn about your philosophy before I could design a whole garment for Bernard du Mont Père!’

Tamsyn remembered the conversation so clearly because she had repeated it in her head, over and over again, for weeks after it had occurred. Bernard hadn’t said those things; he’d shouted them, before tossing her drawings back in her face. It had been right at the start of her career, before their relationship had developed, and she’d been so excited by her new job, in a new city, with a chance to really make her mark. At the time it had felt as if, having seen her enthusiasm, Bernard had felt compelled to stamp it all out, to crush her ego before it had any chance of matching his own. And then she’d got to know him better, especially after their affair had begun, and she’d decided that she had misjudged him, that really he was only showing her the way it must be done. You work your way up, you pay your dues. You don’t expect any express routes. It was so unlike Bernard to bring up anything from the past, let alone acknowledge that a good deal of it had actually happened, that she got a deeply uneasy feeling in her gut.

‘Your designs, darling. I had to go to a meeting with the retail chain, remember? Well, it seems that somehow your drawings made their way into that presentation.’

‘And?’ Tamsyn’s eyes widened. ‘Did they ruin the whole thing?’

‘They loved them, darling,’ Bernard said, and Tamsyn squealed. ‘And, best of all, they really want them. They want a whole collection based around them.’

‘Oh Bernard, that’s amazing,’ Tamsyn leapt into his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him on the cheek. ‘Well, of course, of
course
I’ll design more for them. I’ll have to make sure Mo is sorted, but I can start drawing, after the wedding dresses are done, and if you help me with them it will happen at twice the pace and … I can’t believe this is happening! Oh, Bernard, thank you. Thank you so much for believing in me this way. In showing your faith in my work. You don’t know what it means to me.’

‘Darling,’ Bernard patted her knee. ‘Darling, I took your drawings to the meetings … and, well, really what matters is that they loved them and they are bringing their business to du Mont Père, and you achieved that.’

‘But they will have my name on?’ Tamsyn said, a little uncertainly. ‘They are my designs, so they will say “Tamsyn Thorne at du Mont Père”?’

‘Darling, darling Tamsyn,’ Bernard picked up her hand and kissed each one of her fingers individually. ‘My darling girl, I took your designs to the meeting. But I said that they were mine.’

‘What?’ Tamsyn asked him, too shocked to move, even to remove her arms from his.

‘It was never my intention that this should happen. I took them merely as padding, to show I had alternatives. I was sure that they would find something right in my own creations, and they should have. They were works of genius, but my vision is too brilliant for normal women, apparently. Your drawings were safe, commercial,’ he waved his hand dismissively, as if the very words he was coming out with disgusted him. ‘Didn’t challenge their little minds too much.’

‘And yet you are still happy enough to put your name to them, and take the money and the glory,’ Tamsyn said, standing up. ‘And that’s why you’re here, being kind and sweet, to make sure that I play along with you?’

‘Of course.’ Bernard seemed genuinely confused by her ire. ‘Of course I did that, it’s what is best for both of us, don’t you see? The money will feed the business and keep my staff employed, it will allow me to concentrate on creating the works of art that I am truly born to bring into this world, and you can take over the retail side, build it up from scratch. It will be your baby, and one that you can be proud of owning, not some stray that no one else wanted.’

Tamsyn discovered that she was very good at slapping Bernard hard in the face, although she wasn’t aware of what she had done until just after the moment had passed. Horrified, she clamped her hand over her mouth, watching as a five-fingered flower blossomed bright red on his cheek. It hadn’t been the way he’d misappropriated her work in such a cavalier way that had moved her to violence, or even his idea that she’d be happy to work twice as hard in his name, without getting any credit, although that told Tamsyn a lot more about what Bernard thought of their relationship than anything else he had ever said or done, that made her want to hit him. No: it was his casual dismissal of Mo that had brought out the tigress in her. It was a simultaneously shocking and thrilling revelation to know that she could get so angry. And yet above and beyond the fury, there was something else. The blood was drumming in her ears, her chest felt full of passion and she felt alive.

‘I’m sorry I slapped you,’ she said.

‘It’s fine. A little passion in a woman is a good thing. You are an artist, a creative,’ Bernard said as he rubbed his cheek.

‘You can have my designs,’ Tamsyn told him. ‘Those coats, you can say they are yours. But you can also have my resignation.’

‘What?’ Bernard stood up. ‘Tamsyn, you don’t mean that, darling. You are angry and you are punishing me, and perhaps I deserve it, but you don’t want to throw everything away – your career, your name – over something so trivial.’

‘I’m resigning,’ Tamsyn said, ‘effective immediately. Even if this wasn’t love, I thought you were, my friend, I thought you cared about me. Despite all of your vanity and immaturity and selfishness, I thought that there was something between us that was real. But I see now that I wrong.’ She paused to look at him. ‘I’m not even sure that you like me. Although I am sure that I don’t like you.’

‘But I do like you,’ Bernard said, following her as she left the room, collecting her things on the way. ‘Tamsyn, I like you very much, you are one of my most favourite people. The top five at least, top three, perhaps!’

‘Oh, go away,’ Tamsyn said as she walked down the stairs. ‘I’m done with you.’

‘You will never work in fashion again,’ Bernard chased her out into the corridor, shaking his fist at her. ‘No one will work with you again after this … this unpro-fessionalism. I will make sure your name is blacklisted!’

Tamsyn stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked up at him, and it was suddenly as if she were seeing him in a whole new light, this small, insecure man whose charisma and talent were simply a construct made of smoke and mirrors.

‘I don’t think you will do that, will you, Bernard?’ she said, perfectly calmly. ‘You see, I have copies of every drawing I have made, dated and signed, on my laptop. I don’t think you’d want those drawings to find their way into the public eye, would you? No, I think that what you are going to do is issue a press release, with wording approved by me, stating how sad you are to lose one of the most talented designers you have worked with in years, and wishing me luck in my future venture, launching my own label in Cornwall.’

‘What?’ Bernard shouted after her as she strode out of the hotel. ‘Are you crazy?’

And as she headed back to town, Tamsyn had to admit that the answer to that question was probably yes.

The enormity, not to mention the mind-numbing insanity, of what she had just done, had yet to sink in as Tamsyn marched purposefully back to Castle House feeling positively empowered. Yes, she had thrown in her dream job, not to mention her entire life, including the means to pay for her Parisian apartment, and come up with a hare-brained notion to start her own business at the literal arse end of the world, where no one came except to paddle and eat fish and chips. She’d offended one of the most powerful men in her profession, with whom, until today, she had been on French-kissing terms, and alienated Jed, the first man she had met, perhaps ever, who seemed to truly move her, and yet – she did feel awfully good about it. Like she had done something positive with her life at last. It had to be sleep deprivation, or perhaps she was coming down with Catriona’s bug, or maybe she had lost her grip on reality and was just going cheerfully mad. In any case, her own personal Armageddon felt surprisingly upbeat.

As soon as Sue’s dogs spotted her they clamoured around her shins, joined by Skipper, who greeted her with twists and jumps, expressing his pleasure at seeing her by nipping at the tips of her fingers. Buoy ambled out after them, his tongue lolling in the heat of the afternoon, which made him look as if he was smiling indulgently at the noisier, younger dogs. Although, knowing Buoy, he was probably planning ways to herd the tiresome rabble into the moat that was still brimming with rainwater.