Bad Brides (34 page)

Dominic’s gaze went to her like a heat-seeking missile and he whistled slowly. Luckily, the angle of the camera made it seem as if his tribute was for the four younger women.

‘I swear to God,’ he drawled to Lance as the camera turned away from him, ‘I’m bagging that cougar tonight. I bet she fucks like a runaway train.’

‘She bloody terrifies me,’ Lance admitted frankly.

‘I tell you, Lance,’ Dominic said, ‘you’d go in there a boy and come out a man. Fucking that woman’ll be like going to war. Death or glory. I simply can’t
wait.’

He caught Tamra’s eye as she glanced out onto the terrace to see if she and Jodie could come out, and flashed a deep suggestive wink at her; he was rewarded with a full flirtatious smile
that rocked him back on his heels.

‘I’m in like Flynn,’ he said complacently. ‘I’d better bloody eat my greens today – I’ll need all my strength for tonight, I can tell you.’

Jodie and her two stylists were bustling out now, shepherding the group down the steps in the direction of the bridge. Dominic lingered, hoping for a word with Tamra, but Minty linked her arm
through his and dragged him off firmly, whispering in his ear. Milly had decided that the perfect tactical moment to drop the juicy nugget of gossip about Brianna Jade being carried home drunk by
the pig farmer was just before the shoot, in order to destabilize her as much as possible, and there was no one better than Dominic for spreading gossip. This information was juicy enough to
temporarily drive all lubricious fantasies about Tamra from Dominic’s mind: his dark eyes widened, his jaw dropped and he beckoned Lance over to share the dirt.

This was exactly how the upper classes worked; they all had the love of gossip as part of their DNA. They moved in small, near-incestuous social circles, where fidelity was by no means a
prerequisite for marriage, very much still in the tradition of the Edwardian country-house parties where a good hostess would always place the husband in a room as far from the wife as possible, so
that it would be easy for them to conduct their affairs. The wives were ideally expected to ensure that at least the first two children were her husband’s, but after that a blind eye was
turned, and the parentage of many aristocratic offspring was an open secret, shared as much as possible.

‘I say, the
pig farmer
?’ Lance blurted out. ‘You
must
be joking, Minters!’

‘No, Milly actually
saw
them,’ Minty insisted. ‘She was drunk and giggling and he had to carry her back!’

‘I
say
,’ Lance breathed almost in respect for this incredibly rich piece of information.

‘She didn’t
look
drunk at dinner,’ Dominic said dubiously.

‘Oh look, if you don’t believe me, I’ll prove it.’

Minty flitted lightly up to Brianna Jade, who was a couple of steps ahead of them, chattering happily to Sophie.

‘Brianna Jade, isn’t this the way to the pig farm?’ she asked in the classic high, carrying posh voice. ‘I hear you absolutely love visiting it – Edmund was telling
me you adore it there.’

Brianna Jade froze for a moment in mid-stride as Minty shot a triumphant glance back at Lance and Dominic.

‘Uh, yeah,’ Brianna Jade said carefully, continuing to walk along. ‘It’s been really nice to visit them. I go for a run most days and stop there to say hi to the pigs and
do my stretches.’

‘You
are
virtuous!’ Sophie sighed.

‘Most
days
?’ Milly chimed in with perfect timing. ‘Gosh, I thought I saw you coming back from there yesterday evening! Didn’t you pop to see them later on? I
could have
sworn
you did . . .’

Only Brianna Jade’s long experience with pageant bitchery enabled her to keep her legs underneath her and moving, to hold her head up and plaster some sort of smile onto her face.

‘I do – I did,’ she managed, but was temporarily saved by Edmund, who, having no idea what was going on, dropped back to take his fiancée’s hand.

‘She absolutely adores those pigs,’ he said happily. ‘I’m so pleased – she’s taken to the farming life like a duck to water. She’s always telling me how
the Empress of Stanclere’s doing.’

‘The
pigs
?’ Milly muttered with perfect, actress-skilled pitch, tailored to reach Brianna Jade’s ears but not Edmund’s. ‘Oh, it’s the
pigs
she adores?’

‘Who looks after them?’ Minty asked, emboldened by the fact that Brianna Jade had gone as white as a sheet. ‘Is there some sort of rustic pig man or something? A horny-handed
son of toil?’

‘Ssst!’ Milly hissed, a signal that Minty was over-egging the cake.

‘Well, of course,’ Edmund said, quite oblivious to any undercurrents, let alone the fact that his bride-to-be’s clasp on his hand had loosened and that she was staring ahead of
her as blankly as a newly made zombie. ‘Abel Wellbeloved. The family’s looked after our pigs for generations. He’s a really good chap, solid as a rock.’

‘
Wellbeloved?
’ Milly purred, unable to resist this perfect opportunity. ‘How
very
apt!’

‘I’m not quite sure what . . .’ Edmund began, his brow furrowing in confusion, but they were at the base of the bridge now, and the stylists were already calling them up,
arranging them in a carefully chosen formation as Jodie and the photographic team set up on the lake’s edge, calling out directions. Brianna Jade and Edmund were placed in the middle, of
course, Edmund beaming at her and Brianna Jade sketching a ghastly bright smile that had Jodie and the photographer, even before a single shot was taken, exchanging worried glances. On
Edmund’s other side was, of course, Sophie, out of respect for her status, Minty beside her, her smile as complacent as Brianna Jade’s was panicked.

Looking from Edmund to Brianna Jade, Dominic wondered for a moment whether Edmund should be informed of what Milly had apparently seen. But he dismissed the thought almost immediately. Edmund
and Brianna Jade’s marriage was a mutually beneficial arrangement, and Lord knew what details they had worked out between themselves to keep the wheels running smoothly. Edmund certainly
wouldn’t thank Dominic, or anyone else, for putting a spoke in one of those wheels. Besides, Dominic didn’t want anything getting in the way of his seducing Tamra that evening. What if
Edmund got angry enough with his friend for spreading gossip that he insisted Dominic leave the Hall? Dominic was certainly not going to risk his chance of sizzling cougar sex. Turning to Minty, he
smiled with her for the cameras. Discretion was definitely the better part of valour, he thought.

Meanwhile, now that she had pulled the rug out from under her rival, Milly was making sure that she and Tarquin presented the image of the perfect couple, his arm around her waist, her hand on
his shoulder – the stylists had dressed all the men in Jermyn Street tweeds, and it was bliss for Milly to embrace her fiancé in a suit that didn’t smell of ancient dog. She
smiled up at him so sweetly that, enchanted, he bent to kiss her, their blonde curls mingling, an image so lovely that Jodie instantly clicked her fingers at the photographer, jerking her head,
signalling him to take some shots. The videographer was already zooming in.

Eva, who had tailed the group down from the house, had to avert her eyes from the sight of Milly and Tarquin embracing so fondly. She had been asked to be in the shoot; her
Jane-Birkin-meets-Françoise-Sagan look was very current, and Eva was slim enough to meet
Style
’s criteria. Although Jodie, with her own weight issues, was trying to literally
broaden out the idea that a model needed to be reed-thin to work, it was a struggle getting designers to make samples larger than a size four. But Eva didn’t like the limelight, and she had
been firm in her refusal to participate. This way, also, she could walk away if Milly and Tarquin canoodling for the cameras became too much for her.

Tarquin lifted his head, his angelic blue eyes starry with love, and the photographer muttered: ‘Jesus, that guy is
unreal.
’

‘I know. He reminds me of a Raphael painting of a saint,’ Jodie said. She might be a Luton girl with no university education, but she had educated herself very thoroughly since,
especially in art history: it was crucial for a stylist to have a wide range of images on which to draw. ‘Oh, that’s given me a great idea: what about a shoot with the two of them as
Pre
-Raphaelites? We could recreate some of the most famous paintings. They’ve got just the right looks for that, and it feels really current. There’s a big Pre-Raphaelite
exhibition coming up at the V&A next summer.’

‘I
love
it,’ the photographer breathed. ‘
Definitely
.’

Eva turned and walked away, unable to stay to watch this. As arranged with
Style
before the shoot, Milly was wearing Milly and Me jewellery, and the leaf earrings in forest-green
quartzite chimed perfectly with her outfit. There was nothing else Eva needed to do here professionally, and personally it was becoming harder and harder for her to see Milly with Tarquin. Milly
had let slip some of the details of her rather unorthodox audition at the Charlotte Street Hotel, and Eva knew that Tarquin was absolutely unaware of the lengths to which Milly would go to further
her acting career. Sometimes she was horribly tempted to spill the beans, but her loyalty was to Milly, and it wasn’t her business to say anything.

And besides, it wouldn’t get her what she wanted. Telling Tarquin Milly would cheat on him with a barn animal if it got her a part in a Hollywood film wouldn’t make him fall into
Eva’s arms, wouldn’t do anything but make him never want to look at Eva again. Miserably, she wandered off, wishing that she had never come to Stanclere Hall this weekend and wondering
if she could somehow plead a family emergency and escape from what was just one source of pain after another.

No one noticed her go; they wouldn’t have in any case, but they were all much too distracted by the pressing problem of the bride-to-be’s frozen stare to pay attention to anything
else.

‘What’s up with the bloody fiancée all of a sudden?’ the photographer asked, wincing. ‘Death warmed up doesn’t
begin
to cover it!’

Jodie took in the scene on the bridge. From a distance, it was visually stunning. The pale grey stone was an architectural curve over the soft ripples of the darker grey water, and behind the
lake, the rich autumn colours of the foliage rose up the slope beyond; it was already a beautiful image even without the eight young and handsome people clustered at the apex of the bridge, the
girls’ hair lifted by the autumn breeze, the young men dashing in their tweed suits, velvet waistcoats and contrasting slub silk ties. Sophie, Minty and Milly were all entrancing, the cream
of young British aristocracy, blonde, slender, fine-featured, beautiful; Tarquin, with his wide blue eyes and tossing blond curls, could only be described as beautiful too, and Dominic, dark and
dashing, his waistcoat deep red to set off his colouring, was a perfect foil. Edmund, in comparison, was merely good-looking, but his features were regular and his figure lean and muscled, and
Lance’s reddish beard, much as Jodie hated it, gave the whole picture a modern twist.

‘What’s
up
with her?’ Jodie said, finally coming to the centrepiece, the point of this whole photo story: the blushing bride-to-be, ex-pageant queen, Miss America come
to England to conquer an Earl. It was impossible for Brianna Jade to look anything less than stunning, but right now she looked like her own death mask. She might have been carved from stone, her
eyes as blank as if they were painted on.

‘Tamra?’ Jodie looked round for Brianna Jade’s mother. ‘What’s up with Brianna Jade?’

‘Jesus, I don’t know!’ Tamra grimaced. ‘She was fine a little while ago. Did anyone say anything to her?’

‘Milly was talking about pigs, I think,’ one of the stylists volunteered. ‘Something about Brianna Jade liking to go and see them?’

Tamra’s full lips tightened together in a way that boded very ill for Milly.

‘That little
bitch
,’ she muttered to herself. ‘I should have
known
she was planning something.’

‘Why don’t we try a few shots and then we can mix ’em up a bit,’ the photographer suggested. ‘And if she doesn’t unfreeze, someone could go and have a word
with her?’

Tamra nodded grimly, seeing the glory that was this photo-and videoshoot slipping from her grasp. The whole point had been to put her daughter front and centre, to showcase Brianna Jade’s
dazzling beauty and make the point to Jodie Raeburn that surely Brianna Jade could be the only possible
Style
Bride of the Year. Look at her incredible social connections! Princess Sophie,
third in line to the British throne, was visiting for the weekend and taking part in the shoot! Tamra had been sure that would clinch the deal. Look at Sophie right now, leaning on the parapet of
the bridge, chatting to Brianna Jade, just as if they’d been friends for years!

It was Tamra’s moment of triumph. She was at the peak of her achievement, symbolized by her daughter’s placement at the crest of the bridge, higher even than the royal princess. But,
staring in horror at the ghastly fake smile on her daughter’s face, she could feel this whole triumph flipping inexorably into disaster . . .

However, Tamra was always brutally honest with herself. After she had pulled her daughter aside during the next set-up and barely managed to elicit a word from the seemingly mentally paralysed
Brianna Jade, Tamra had to acknowledge to herself that this crisis was unsaveable. She had tried everything she could think of: compliments, encouragement, exhortations to ignore Milly’s
nasty jealous words, to pull herself together and suck it up.

But nothing got through to Brianna Jade, nothing at all. It was way worse than any pageant disaster, any sabotage some rival contestant had tried to pull. Whatever Milly had said – and
Brianna Jade wouldn’t or couldn’t tell her mother why the words had had the effect they did – had hit its mark with absolute accuracy, the dart landing right in the bull’s
eye. In the end, Jodie and the photographer had conferred frantically and posed poor Brianna Jade in profile, where the strained fake grimace was much less obvious: thank goodness, at least,
Brianna Jade didn’t have a bad angle to her face, and both her profiles were equally good.