Cleo caught my eye, her mouth twitching. “Brutal,” she whispered behind her tablet, pretending to take notes.
I hid a grin. “Brilliant,” I mouthed back.
Cleo stifled a laugh, pretending to cough. I nudged her again.
Finally, Lady Beaumont closed the folder and handed it to me. “I understand that the rehearsal dinner is this evening. You seem to understand taste,” she said, her tone both compliment and command. “Keep us on the right side of it.”
“Of course, Lady Beaumont,” I said smoothly.
Margaret beamed, Caroline exhaled, and Cleo whispered “Well, that went well-ish.”
As we gathered our things, I mentally tallied three new design changes, five new questions, and one undeniable fact:
Lady Victoria Beaumont had just taken control of the wedding. And she hadn’t even raised her voice.
Chapter Nineteen
There was a different sort of energy in the air now, a new tightness beneath the usual gloss. Lady Beaumont had only been on the estate for a few hours, yet it already felt as though gravity itself had moved around her.
Conversations hushed when she passed by. Staff straightened their posture, and Margaret’s voice had developed that fragile cheer people use when they’re one polite comment away from crying.
All of the guests sensed it, that invisible change that comes when someone important arrives. The laughter was brighter, the posture straighter, and the smiles just a touch too rehearsed.
The party carried on as though nothing was amiss, but the air had that taut, brittle quality of a string pulled too tight. Even the birds seemed to have turned down their chorus, as if waiting for the next word to drop.
Across the terrace, I spotted Sophie weaving through the family towards her grandmother, who stood near the edge of the garden with an expression that could have frozen a lesser mortal.
Gone were the paint-splattered overalls and bright vintage pieces she usually wore like a personal rebellion against beige wealth. Tonight, she’d traded them for a pale champagne dress that was remarkably restrained by Sophie Beaumont standards.
But when Lady Beaumont saw her, her entire expression lit up.
“My darling girl,” I heard her say, drawing Sophie in with a fond smile. “You look lovely.”
Sophie smiled, a little sheepish. “Trying to blend in for once.”
Her grandmother gave a small, amused hum, looping her hand through Sophie’s arm. “Don’t you dare. You’re the only bit of colour this family’s got.”
The words were light, but there was something in her tone, a kind of pride, maybe even protectiveness, that made me wonder just how much the old woman really saw.
Lucas, notably, was nowhere to be found. He’d been suspiciously absent since morning, likely hiding in his room or down near the vines.
I suspected everyone knew. Or at the very least had heard whispers, about his little escapade borrowing the Lady’s car and driver for a “quick coffee run.”
Cleo and I had spent the last few hours in the office making the necessary last-minute changes to the wedding plans to appease the new requests. The phrase “small adjustments” had lost all meaning somewhere around revision seven.
The office smelled faintly of coffee and panic. Swatches of fabric, floral mock-ups, and half-eaten macarons covered the desk like evidence from an unsolved crime.
And the real kicker? The rehearsal dinner was tonight. Not next week. Not even tomorrow.Tonight.
Every new instruction came with the same calm, lethal phrase,“if it’s not too much trouble.”Which, translated from Beaumont to English, meantdrop everything and make it happen before lunch.
Cleo was hunched over her laptop, typing furiously with a determined air.
I was grateful that the main elements, including the caterers, the lighting plan, and the seating chart Margaret had changed twice, had survived Lady Beaumont’s intervention relatively unscathed.
Still, every minor change tended to ripple outward like a small earthquake. Change the flowers and suddenly the table settingsfelt wrong. Move the appetizers by ten minutes and the light for photographs changed. It was the kind of domino effect that made wedding planners twitch in their sleep and wake up apologising to florists.
And through it all, I kept waiting for someone, anyone, to mention the missing brooch. Every time Margaret walked into the room, I half expected her to launch into a full-scale investigation, complete with accusations and clutching her pearls for dramatic effect.
