Bad Brides (52 page)

What Tamra didn’t know was that, the day after Tamra had first thrown out Barb Norkus and then pitched the idea of the Stanclere estates becoming a self-sufficient farming brand, with
particular emphasis on pork products, Brianna Jade had made an appointment with a GP two villages over and secured herself a regular prescription of Valium. It had been a lot easier than
she’d thought; she had literally just started with ‘I’m feeling really stressed at the moment because . . .’ and the busy, harassed-looking doctor had needed to hear no more
before typing a prescription into his computer and printing it out for her. Brianna Jade had discovered that a Valium first thing in the morning, another with a glass of wine at lunch and a couple
more glasses during dinner, kept her on an even keel, allowing her to keep smiling and happy and floating above the path that she was on, the one that led inexorably to marriage to Edmund and
residence for the rest of her life at Stanclere Hall, with the knowledge of Abel’s presence in his cottage just down the lane . . .

In order to avoid having to get involved in the plans to market Stanclere Sausages, as Tamra and Edmund had decided to call them, Brianna Jade had thrown herself into wedding organization with
an attention to detail that had not only thoroughly impressed her mother, but reassured Tamra that her daughter was truly committed to her upcoming wedding. Brianna Jade couldn’t demonstrate
excitement – the Valium was preventing that – but she could certainly spend a great deal of time painstakingly working through every little issue that came up with the wedding planner,
pretty much taking the entire responsibility off Tamra’s shoulders for the last few months.

Because, desperate to avoid being forced into contact with Abel, Brianna Jade had maintained that she had no business skills, but could take over the wedding and honeymoon planning and free up
her mother to help Edmund start up Stanclere Sausages. Tamra seemed oddly reluctant to visit the Hall, let alone stay overnight, but she was very happy to immerse herself in research about what
would be needed for all the various aspects of establishing and promoting an online food retailer. She had land maps of the estate, and had identified a barn that could be converted to a
catering-sized kitchen, another two that could be knocked together to make the farm shop, and four disused cottages to be renovated and converted into holiday lets. Edmund was even more in awe of
her drive and energy now he saw it directed, not just to rescuing Stanclere Hall, but to making its estates economically productive.

‘Hey, Mom,’ Brianna Jade called back.

She was in the bathroom, massaging Amorepacific Moisture Bound Vitalizing Masque into her face and neck, her body already slathered in Sisleÿa Anti-Aging Concentrate Firming Body Care. It
was a long way from the cheap Jergens body lotion which Tamra had trained her daughter to work into her skin every night when she started doing pageants and the Dove cold cream she’d used on
their faces, but Brianna Jade honestly wondered if there was much of a difference, apart from the fact that the pricey stuff smelt much nicer.

‘I won’t stay,’ Tamra said, walking into the bathroom and nodding with approval as she saw her daughter dutifully taking good care of her skin. ‘I just wanted to kiss you
goodnight for the last time as a single woman.’

She hugged her daughter tightly as Brianna Jade turned from the mirror to embrace her mother.

‘Tomorrow you’ll be Edmund’s, and not mine any more,’ Tamra said into her daughter’s hair, stroking the shiny blonde waves as Brianna Jade ducked her head into her
mother’s neck. ‘I know that sounds crazy, but it’s how I feel. I’m so happy for you, but I’m losing you in a way . . .’

She swallowed.

‘But you’re going to be a Countess! I still can’t believe it! My little girl a Countess! Oh, baby, we’ve come so far together, we really have.’

Brianna Jade nodded vehemently into her mother’s bosom.

‘I’ll be crying my heart out with happiness when I see you walk back down the aisle with Edmund as the Countess of Respers. I’ll be so proud of you!’ Tamra said.
‘Oh shit, I’m about to lose it just thinking about it. Thank God the chapel’s in the house so’s I can run back to my room to touch up my make-up. I’m going to be such
a mess!’

Brianna Jade lifted her head, smiling at her mother’s ingenuous admission that she was concerned about her own looks at her daughter’s wedding.

‘What?’ Tamra said, faking indignation. ‘I find you a great husband who just so happens to be an Earl, I do up your stately home so you guys have the most gorgeous place to
live, I spend months researching the pros and cons of commercial kitchen sausage stuffers – seriously, there are tons of them! – and all I get is being laughed at because I don’t
want to look like a sobbing clown at your wedding?’

‘Oh Mom, you’ll be the most beautiful woman there,’ Brianna Jade said, hugging Tamra even tighter. ‘I love you so much!’

‘I love you too, baby,’ Tamra said. ‘Always and forever. It’s all been for you, you know that? Everything I’ve done and worked for, it’s been to make you
happy. And you are, aren’t you? He’s a really good man.’ Her voice softened. ‘Really,
such
a great guy. I couldn’t wish for a better husband for
you.’

‘He
is
a great guy,’ Brianna Jade agreed so strongly that Tamra didn’t realize that her daughter hadn’t answered the question she’d asked: Brianna Jade
hadn’t confirmed that she was happy.

‘I brought you an Ambien,’ Tamra said, finally, reluctantly, detaching herself from her daughter. ‘Here.’

She filled the cut-glass tumbler by the side of the marble sink and handed it to Brianna Jade, pulling a vial of pills from the pocket of her dressing gown and tipping one out.

‘You need your beauty sleep,’ she said fondly. ‘I want you all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed tomorrow, and I bet you’ve got a million and one things running through your
mind right now.’

Brianna Jade swallowed the Ambien, hugely grateful for her mother’s thoughtfulness. Her brain
was
racing madly, though not with the kind of natural, pre-wedding nerves that her
mother was assuming. Tamra kissed her on the forehead and slipped from the room; Brianna Jade, more sure than ever that marrying Edmund was the only way to give her mother the happiness she wanted,
finished her bathroom ritual and poured herself a small glass of brandy from the carafe on the console table.

This was the worst time of all, just before going to sleep, whether she was with Edmund or not, because lying there in the dark she couldn’t help thinking about Abel. The brandy helped tip
her over the edge into unconsciousness before her thoughts could take hold; she climbed into bed and resolutely, as if it were medicine, drank down the whole glassful. She didn’t actually
like brandy, but it was better than sherry, and those seemed to be the two socially allowable options that a Countess was permitted to have in her bedroom.

She was just about to turn out the bedside light, her head swimming from the fortified spirit, when she heard a tap on her door.

‘Brianna? Can I come in for a moment?’

It was Edmund’s voice, and he sounded nervous.
He wants to call it off!
Brianna Jade thought, her heart pounding, jumping to a far-fetched conclusion she wouldn’t have
reached if she hadn’t been woozy with the Ambien and brandy on top of the wine at dinner.
He wants to call it off, and it won’t be my fault, so it won’t be me breaking
Mom’s heart . . .

‘Yes? Come in!’ she called, a sudden hope rising in her, irrational though it might be. And Edmund’s hangdog appearance raised her hopes still more; he looked deeply
awkward.

Lady Margaret had declared it a ridiculously bourgeois idea for either bride or groom to have to go to a hotel, or a friend’s house, when they had their own separate suites at Stanclere
Hall and were going to be married beneath their own roof; the wedding planner would coordinate bride and groom’s movements the next morning to avoid them seeing each other before they met in
the chapel. So Edmund was in his dressing gown and slippers, about to turn in for the night.

‘I won’t be long – I know we both need to get a good night’s sleep. I just wanted to get something rather important off my chest,’ he said, closing the door behind
him. ‘Something that’s been on my mind. Can I?’

He crossed to the four-poster bed, and Brianna Jade nodded sleepily, indicating he could sit down.

‘This is a bit – well, embarrassing, but I’m going to plough right in,’ Edmund said, reaching out to take her hand. ‘I haven’t been able to stop thinking
about that amazing night we had last year. It was so . . .’ He cleared his throat. ‘Well, out of the ordinary for us. And it switched something on in me. I simply can’t stop
thinking about it, how incredible it was. I’ve sort of tried since then to . . . well, to recreate some of the things we did . . .’

He couldn’t meet her eyes.

‘But you haven’t seemed, um,
receptive
, is probably how I’d put it. And I backed off, because I didn’t want to push. But honestly, having had that amazing time
with you once, I genuinely don’t feel that I could be satisfied spending the rest of my life without it. I’ve been mulling it over, and I, um, did think that it might have been the
different surroundings – you know, not being in my room or yours – and the fact that it was a party, and we’d both had quite a bit to drink. I know I’d certainly had more
than the usual, all the punch and so on, and you were definitely a bit tipsy, in the best way possible. I could taste it when we kissed – the punch, I mean. I assumed you’d popped down
and had some – very nice, wasn’t it?’

He cleared his throat again.

‘So I just wanted to reassure you, in case you were embarrassed, not to be. At
all
. It was phenomenal. Really, as if you were quite a different person. Um, I was thinking that I
could possibly have Mrs Hurley make the punch again? What do you think – was that, um, the trigger?’

Brianna Jade was barely taking in what he was saying: waves of drugged sleep were hitting her hard, and her head jerked forward, pulled by gravity. She caught herself and raised it again, but
Edmund took the gesture as a ‘yes’, and was instantly emboldened.

‘Great! That’s wonderful!’ he said excitedly. ‘Or on honeymoon – they must have drinks like that in Mauritius – rum-based drinks. God, this is absolutely
fantastic! I’ve been so frustrated not knowing what was, um, the key, and this is really – God, I can’t
wait
till tomorrow night!’

Brianna Jade nodded again, another sleeping-pill-fuelled bob of the head. Edmund picked up her hand and kissed it.

‘This is so wonderful,’ he said, standing up. ‘You’re going to make me the happiest man in the world tomorrow. I just can’t wait!’

Beaming from ear to ear, he left the room as if he were walking on air, a complete contrast to his demeanour on entering. Brianna Jade was already sliding down the pillows, her eyes closing, so
knocked out that she passed out then and there, the bedside light still turned on, and only the haziest sense of what her fiancé had just said, and what she’d agreed to, running
through her mind.

Tuscany, the next day

Although the ceremony was not taking place in the church of the Madonna della Neve d’Agosto, Tarquin and Milly’s guests, walking up the little rise and seeing for
the first time the way the grounds had been decorated, gasped and murmured admiration to each other as softly and respectfully as if their feet had been on hallowed ground. Or, perhaps, as if they
had been in a museum: Ludo, Gabriella and Leonardo had done such an exquisite job that the oohs and aahs that followed every new discovery were as respectful as if the invitees were at a design
exhibition.

Ludo had particularly excelled at integrating Milly’s list of demands into his own aesthetic. The Sicilian lemons that filled the birdcages were what stood out, not the over-curlicued
cages themselves, and the abundance of lilies of the valley and bluebells that filled the antique teapots disguised the cutesiness of the receptacles. To further undercut any potential for
over-prettiness, Ludo had decided not to use tablecloths after all, and the bare rustic oak tables that ran round three sides of the portico were shining with lavender-scented polish, the chairs
upholstered in pale blue linen that matched the napkins and the Chinoiserie pattern on the china plates. An array of Riedel glasses glittered at each place setting, light sparkling off them from
the rock crystals trembling delicately from the chandeliers above, scattered artfully among the pearls and turquoises for maximum effect.

Red carpet had been laid up to the portico and along the lawn, just as Milly had wanted, a wide strip leading from the apartment entrance, tucked behind the church, past the dance floor to the
gazebo. Hung with muslin curtains trimmed with pale blue ribbon, its wrought-iron struts had been freshly painted white, gleaming in the spring sunshine, and little iron chairs with blue cushions
were lined up on either side on wide red carpets for the guests to sit on while watching the ceremony. On its far side, tables were laid out in the shape of an L, ready for the antipasto buffet to
be brought out after the vows had been said; currently they were stacked with prosecco bottles gleaming in huge ice buckets and a mass of gleaming glass Riedel prosecco flutes.

The
Style Bride
team which Jodie had assigned to this wedding had been here for hours already, capturing all the details: journalistic coverage of weddings, more than anything else,
required an almost OCD level of attention to even the tiniest minutiae of the decor. Brides-to-be all over the world would be avidly consuming every single piece of information that they could
about this celebrity wedding, deciding which frill or furbelow they could afford to copy directly, which they could scale down or which they could find as a knock-off cheaper version. The
arrangements of the flowers, looking so simply done but actually hugely studied, the way a few lemons spilled so seemingly carelessly from the open doors of the birdcages onto the glossy wood of
the tables, the stunning, handmade chandeliers – images of all of these would be torn out of the magazine, printed off the internet, taken to a wedding planner or propped up in front of a
bride as she grimly wrestled wild flowers into an old teapot bought from a boot sale, determined to recreate some of the more evocative design elements of Milly and Tarquin’s wedding.