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‘Please don’t go out with Tricky Dicky, Nathalie.’ He shoots an appealing look at me, and I melt like butter. When he looks at me like that, he could ask me to do anything, and I doubt I’d be able to resist.
I’m curious and feel emboldened by the scene he made with Richard. ‘Why shouldn’t I? You don’t want me, so why do you care if someone else does?’
‘It’s not that. Just not with him,’ he says, and for a second I see a flash of a sullen little boy who is used to calling the shots.
His answer guts me. So, he doesn’t care if I go out with someone else. The thing with Richard is just about his ego, and not about us at all. The two of them were doing a dick swinging competition and staking claim to me like I’m their property.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about you and Lizzy instead of avoiding me?’
‘You are all questions tonight.’
‘Please,’ I urge, ‘I need to know.’
He sighs again. Clearly, he doesn’t like explaining his behaviour to me, but I don’t back down. After that showdown at my workplace, I figure I hold a card or two and he owes me.
‘I thought it might be better to leave things there. I will lose my seat on the board if I don’t marry someone my grandfather approves of, and soon.’
‘What will you do?’ I ask softly.
‘I won’t marry Lizzy, but I don’t know what the answer is. I’ll have to find someone suitable to marry or I’ll lose everything I’ve worked so hard for. It’s a fucked-up situation, and I’d do anything not to be in it, but this is my life.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘It must be awful to feel like you don’t have free will to make decisions about your own future.’
He looks winded by my words, as if he’s not thought of it like that before.
‘I do have free will,’ he snaps.
‘No,mon chéri, you don’t. If you had free will, you wouldn’t have to marry someone your grandfather chooses for you. You would marry or not marry whoever is right for you.’
He looks ahead and a heavy silence falls between us. All I can hear is the sound of the wind as the car whizzes along the road.
‘Did you tell Tricky Dicky you work for me?’ he asks suddenly.
‘No, not that I recall. We haven’t really talked about anything personal before, but he mentioned he’d seen you when he offered me a job this evening.’
‘You don’t need a job,’ he quips, not missing a beat. ‘You have a perfectly good one.’
‘He offered me one and we were going to discuss the details over dinner.’
‘I see,’ he says, driving through a pair of tall iron gates. ‘In that case, I’m even more relieved I showed up when I did.’
I recognise the gates to Richmond Park. ‘Don’t we have to get back for Daisy?’
He shakes his head. ‘Not for a while. Mrs J is working late doing something or other in the kitchen, and she said she’d watch her.’
The car snakes along the deserted road through the park, and the dusky sky twinkles. ‘I’ve never been here in the evening,’ I say.
‘I used to come here a lot to think. It’s peaceful.’ He pauses and then says abruptly, ‘Why did that twat offer you a job?’
‘He said he’s impressed with my work and asked if I’m open to a change of career. I got the impression he was going to offer me an administrative role at his head office.’
‘You can’t work for my arch enemy!’ he says, wincing.
‘Arch enemy? What is that?’
He laughs. ‘Your English is so good that sometimes I forget it’s not your first language. An arch enemy just means someone you despise.’
‘Okay. And why is he your arch enemy?’
