Up Close and Personal (7 page)

Before Nicole could reply, Nathan arrived to announce that dinner was about to be served.

The dining room looked beautiful. The walls were painted a soft sage green and decorated at regular intervals with brass sconces in the shape of shells. On the sixteen-foot walnut dining table, silver cruets and bulbous carafes of iced water jostled for position with Waterford candelabra and stiff white napkins folded in the shape of swans. In the midst of it all, flanked by sparkling clusters of glassware, was a towering centrepiece of frosted fruit, skilfully arranged on a glittering salver.

‘I thought it might be fun to mix all the couples up,’ said Juliet, resting her hands on the back of a Regency carver. ‘I’ve laid out place cards, so if you’d all like to find your seats …’ She turned to Nathan, who was standing by the door, fingers neatly laced together. ‘We’re ready for the starter now, thank you.’

Nathan nodded and slipped out of the room discreetly.

As Nicole took her seat, she glanced at Dante, who was sitting opposite her. He still looked rather anxious. Nicole felt a rush of sympathy for him. She tried to catch his eye so she could give him a reassuring smile, but he was too busy gazing in confusion at the battalion of cutlery laid out in front of him.

A few moments later, Charlie appeared, struggling under the weight of a heavily laden tray.

‘Charlie’s our porter,’ Juliet explained as the youth moved round the table distributing bowls of onion consommé
under Nathan’s hawk-like gaze. ‘He very kindly agreed to act as waiter tonight.’

At this, Gus’s mother, Eleanor, an elegant woman, whose good looks were spoiled somewhat by the vulpine curve of her mouth, gave her hostess a spiky look. ‘Don’t you have any proper waiters?’

‘There are so few guests it’s not worth hiring any,’ Juliet replied. ‘I usually serve the breakfasts myself.’

Eleanor frowned. ‘Isn’t that a bit beneath you, dear?’

‘Not at all,’ Juliet replied, picking up her soup spoon. ‘Actually, I rather enjoy it.’

‘Business is still slow, then,’ said Piers.

‘Yes, unfortunately. We’ve only got five guests at the moment. I’m hoping things will pick up in the summer.’

‘’Fraid we’re down to three now,’ Charlie said as he set down a basket of bread rolls. ‘Mr and Mrs Johnson checked out of the T. S. Eliot this afternoon. They found mouse droppings in their wardrobe.’

‘How embarrassing,’ Juliet murmured. ‘Ask Reg to put down some traps when he comes in tomorrow, would you?’

Eleanor gave a little shudder. ‘Do they have free run of the place?’

Juliet nodded. ‘I’m afraid mice are inevitable in an old place like Ashwicke, although we do try to keep them under control.’

Eleanor sighed. ‘I was talking about the guests.’

‘Oh,’ said Juliet, giggling at her mistake. ‘No, the guest accommodation is confined to the east wing. Dante and I have the west wing to ourselves – although guests do occasionally get lost and wander in by mistake.’

‘I wouldn’t care to share
my
home with strangers,’ Eleanor remarked.

‘Oh, it’s not so bad. Most of the guests keep themselves to themselves.’

Piers wiped his bushy moustache with his napkin. ‘Can’t think why you wanted to turn the place into a hotel in the first place.’

‘I’m with Piers on this one,’ Connor said. ‘I really think you’re being overambitious, Juliet. The hotel business is a tough old game, especially for someone like you with no experience.’

Across the table, Nicole glared at him.

‘I had to do something,’ Juliet said. ‘It’s the only way I can afford to keep the place going.’

Eleanor had the look of a hawk about to strike. ‘Gus must be turning in his grave.’

At this, Dante looked up from his soup. ‘The house is Juliet’s now,’ he said quietly, but firmly. ‘It’s up to her what she does with it.’

A heavy silence descended on the table. Yasmin looked at Eleanor and saw she was wearing an annoyed, tooth-achey expression. Fearing that an atmosphere might be brewing, she turned to her hostess. ‘This is delicious soup. You’ll have to give me the recipe.’

‘I’m afraid I can’t claim credit for it,’ said Juliet, flashing her friend a grateful look. ‘Chef made it before he left this morning.’

Another silence, and then Piers cleared his throat noisily. ‘So, Dante,’ he began in a hearty tone. ‘How are you finding life at Ashwicke?’

‘The house is awesome,’ Dante replied. ‘I had no idea Juliet lived in such a cool place.’

Eleanor bared her teeth in a parody of a smile. ‘It must be quite a culture shock for a barman, eh?’ she said.

‘Senior cocktail waiter,’ Dante corrected her.

The smile faded. ‘Pardon?’

‘That was my job title: Senior Cocktail Waiter.’

‘Oh, you were a
waiter
,’ Eleanor said. ‘In that case, shouldn’t you be the one dishing up the soup?’ She started tittering. ‘Only teasing,’ she added insincerely. ‘Did you live above the bar?’

Nicole could see a vein in Dante’s temple throbbing.

‘No,’ he replied. ‘I shared an apartment a couple of miles away.’

‘You
shared
,’ Eleanor said, as if it were quite the most appalling concept she’d ever heard of. ‘In that case living here must be quite a step up for you. I bet you couldn’t believe your luck when you saw the house for the first time.’

‘Of course he couldn’t,’ Nicole said, painfully aware of the blush unfurling across Dante’s face. ‘Any one of us would be grateful to live in a beautiful place like Ashwicke.’

‘Absolutely,’ said Yasmin. ‘And I’m sure Dante’s going to be a huge help with the business.’

‘Invaluable,’ Juliet agreed. ‘He’s worked in the service industry ever since he left school. I daresay he’ll be able to teach me a thing or two.’ She smiled in her husband’s direction. ‘Actually, I was thinking about making him Customer Liaison Manager. Nathan’s so busy these days; it would be nice to offload some of his responsibilities on
to Dante – and I’m sure he’s more than capable of doing it. Aren’t you, darling?’

Dante, who seemed to be growing more uncomfortable by the minute, nodded mutely.

Juliet’s father, Richard, a tall, gingery man who’d barely said a thing all evening, smiled at Dante. ‘Have you had a chance to explore the local area?’

Dante seemed grateful for the change of subject. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘I’d like to, though. Juliet tells me there’s beautiful countryside around here.’

‘I’ve been so busy with the hotel I haven’t had much time to show Dante the sights,’ Juliet explained.

‘I’m happy to take Dante on a recce,’ Piers piped up.

Juliet looked vaguely alarmed at the prospect. ‘That’s very sweet of you to offer, but really there’s no need.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Piers, tossing down his napkin. ‘How else are we going to get to know each other?’ He turned to Dante. ‘Tell you what, I’m going deer hunting with a few other chaps next week. Why don’t you tag along?’

Dante’s soup spoon stopped halfway to his mouth. ‘Thanks for the offer, but I think I’ll give it a miss. Hunting’s not really my thing.’

Catherine clucked disapprovingly. ‘Oh go on, Dante. It’ll be heaps of fun.’

‘The thing is …’ Dante squirmed in his seat. ‘I don’t agree with killing animals for sport.’

‘Oh for goodness’ sakes, man, don’t be such a namby-pamby,’ Piers said with a startling degree of vitriol. ‘Hunting’s part of everyday life in the country.’

‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Dante replied. ‘But that doesn’t mean I have to participate in it.’

‘
But those deer are a bloody pest. They cause millions of pounds’ worth of damage to forestry and agriculture. Killing them is the only way to keep the blighters under control.’

Dante shrugged. ‘If you say so.’

His nonchalant demeanour seemed to rile the older man. ‘Now look here, old chap,’ Piers said, his face flushed with emotion, ‘if you’re going to live in the country, you can’t afford to be so bloody sensitive, or else –’

‘No offence, Piers, but yours is actually quite an outdated view,’ Yasmin suddenly broke in.

He glowered at her. ‘What the devil are you talking about?’

‘I work for one of the highest circulation regional newspapers in the country,’ she said smoothly. ‘We ran a poll a couple of months ago. More than seventy per cent of our readers were against hunting of any kind.’

Piers made a harrumphing noise. ‘Were they now?’ He looked at Dante. ‘I didn’t mean to get on my high horse,’ he said gruffly. ‘It’s just that hunting is something I’m very passionate about.’

‘It’s okay,’ Dante replied as he helped himself to a wholemeal roll. ‘I know you guys do lots of things differently over here.’ He pulled the butter dish towards him and picked up a knife.

Eleanor, who was sitting next to him, rapped his wrist. ‘Not that knife, Dante,’ she said in a loud voice. ‘That’s for the fish.’ She tapped her own butter knife. ‘In
this
country, we start from the outside and work our way in.’

‘Don’t you have knives and forks in America?’ Piers quipped.

Dante’s jaw tightened. ‘All us Yanks eat with our fingers, didn’t you know?’ he said. ‘After all, who needs cutlery when our diet consists almost entirely of hamburgers and fried chicken?’

At this Piers threw back his head and laughed uproariously. ‘I like a chap with a sense of humour.’

He failed to notice that Dante wasn’t laughing.

During the main course of herb-crusted monkfish with roasted vegetables, talk turned, as it often does at dinner parties, to the price of property.

‘I see that timbered cottage opposite the church is up for sale again,’ remarked Catherine. ‘I can’t believe it’s on for 1.3 million. Who in their right mind is going to pay that sort of money for a house with no off-street parking?’

‘You’d be surprised,’ said Piers, tweaking the cuffs of his tweed jacket ostentatiously. ‘Property in Loxwood’s always in demand. When houses come onto the market, they’re snapped up almost before the details have been printed.’

His wife pursed her lips. ‘But if that new development gets the go ahead, house prices in the area will plummet,’ she declared. ‘Isn’t that right, Piers?’

‘Damn right they will,’ he said. ‘Buyers like Loxwood because the properties are so individual. A modern estate is certainly going to lower the tone.’

Yasmin turned to Dante. ‘A developer has put in a planning application for twenty executive homes on the site of the old fruit farm. It’s about half a mile from here.’

‘It’ll be a bloody eyesore,’ Eleanor said. ‘Let’s just hope those planning officers at the council see sense.’ She gave a
long, heavy sigh that made her shoulders droop. ‘Gus would’ve been up in arms about it – and he’d have got the whole town behind him.’ She banged the table with the palm of her hand, making the cutlery jump. ‘Wouldn’t he, Juliet?’

‘I expect so,’ Juliet murmured as she drove her fork through a roasted tomato. ‘Gus was certainly never backwards about coming forward.’

Piers released a sudden chuckle. ‘Do you remember when he heard the council was threatening to revoke the licence at the cricket-club bar after those allegations of underage drinking?’

‘How could we forget?’ Catherine cried, clapping her hands together. ‘I thought I was going to die laughing when I saw him.’

Yasmin nodded. ‘He even made it into the paper. It was quite a talking point on our letters page.’

‘What happened?’ asked Dante.

Yasmin smiled. ‘Gus was so incensed at the prospect of an alcohol-free cricket club that he chained himself to the railings outside the pavilion in protest.’

Connor grinned. ‘She’s left out the best bit … Gus was completely starkers.’

‘On a Saturday lunchtime,’ Richard added.

‘People couldn’t believe their eyes,’ said Eleanor. ‘Drivers were stopping their cars to gawp at him – it caused a tailback through the town a mile long.’

‘He spent most of the afternoon chained to those railings,’ said Piers. ‘He would’ve stayed even longer, but some old dear called the police. They were going to charge him with indecent exposure but, Gus being Gus, he managed
to charm his way out of it.’ He looked at his daughter-in-law. ‘He certainly had the gift of the gab, eh, Juliet?’

‘He certainly did,’ Juliet agreed. As she spoke, Nicole thought she heard a catch in her voice.

‘Poor Gus,’ said Eleanor, hanging her head. ‘He had so much to live for.’

For a few moments, the only sound in the room was the scrape of cutlery on fine china as each of the guests was lost in their own private thoughts. Yasmin’s gaze fell on Dante, who had stopped eating and was staring fixedly at his plate. She supposed it must be rather awkward for him … sitting there, listening to the others talking about his predecessor’s exploits with a mix of affection and awe, especially when the whole point of the dinner party had been to celebrate his own arrival in Loxwood. Suddenly, Dante pushed his chair away from the table.

‘Excuse me,’ he said, tossing down his napkin. ‘I need to use the john.’

As he got up from the table, Yasmin caught Eleanor’s barely concealed look of disgust. Whether it had been provoked by Dante’s use of slang, or his breach of etiquette by leaving the table mid-course, was anyone’s guess.

It was with a certain degree of relief that Nicole and Connor set off on the short drive home, just after midnight.

‘I’m glad that’s over,’ Connor said as their car passed through the entrance gates. ‘You could have cut the atmosphere in that dining room with a knife.’

‘Gus’s parents are vile,’ Nicole said. ‘I know it must be hard for them, seeing Juliet with another man – especially in the house where Gus grew up – but they didn’t have to
give Dante such a hard time.’ She turned to her husband. ‘Will you give him a call in the next few days and offer to take him out? We don’t want him thinking everyone in Loxwood’s obsessed with blood sports and the finer points of table etiquette.’

Connor groaned. ‘Look, Nic, I’ve got an awful lot on my plate at the surgery just now.’

‘You’re
always
busy,’ Nicole snapped. ‘I’m beginning to wonder just what goes on at that surgery of yours.’

‘I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it,’ Connor said quickly. ‘I just need to check my diary first.’