Forget Me Knot (3 page)

“Mum! For Chrissake, can’t you just stop nagging Dad for five minutes?”

“Stop yelling at me! I’ve got a brisket in the oven!”

“Anyway,” Soph said, “the reason I was ringing was to wish you luck for tonight. How you feeling?”

“Bit nervous,” Abby replied by way of understatement.

“Abs, listen to me. It’s going to be fine. You’re a beautiful, intelligent, successful woman. You have absolutely nothing to worry about. Come on—who just came in at number twelve in the Sunday
Time’s
‘Style’ section’s ‘Hundred Hottest Shops’?”

“I did,” Abby mumbled.

“Er, didn’t quite catch that. Louder, please.”

Abby could practically see Soph standing with her hands on her hips. She gave a soft snort. “I did.”

“And what did the blurb say about you?”

Abby’s face was turning crimson. “C’mon, you know what it said.”

“Yes, but maybe you need reminding. It said:
Abby Crompton, the inspiration behind Fabulous Flowers, isn’t so much a
florist as a supremely gifted floral artist who is capable of turning a simple bunch of flowers into a design statement
. Have I got that right?”

“Near enough.”

“OK. And was the
Sunday Times
accolade followed by the
London Evening Standard
naming you London Boutique Retailer of the Year?”

“Yes, and that’s all fabulous and wonderful, but as far as tonight is concerned, it’s irrelevant. Tonight isn’t about my creative and business skills. It’s all about me as a person and whether I’ll measure up.”

“Please. How could you possibly not measure up?”

“By coming from Croydon, for a start.” By now Abby was heading down the steps into the tube station. “Look, I’ve got to go. I’m about to lose my phone signal. Thanks for ringing, though. I really appreciate it. I’ll let you know how it goes.”

“Make sure you do. Now stop worrying. I promise you, tonight is going to go brilliantly.”

THE DOWAGER
Lady Penelope Kenwood was Abby’s prospective mother-in-law. It had been a month since her son, the Honorable Toby Kenwood, had proposed to Abby and she had said yes. Tonight Toby was introducing Abby to Lady Penelope for the first time. The three of them were having dinner at the Ivy, the exclusive showbiz and media eatery in Covent Garden.

Abby needed to take two escalators at Angel Tube. Difficult as it was in heels, she managed to run down them both. Breathless, she stepped onto the platform just as a train was pulling out of the station. She looked at her watch. By now it was ten past seven. According to the indicator
board, there wouldn’t be another train for eight minutes. “Sod it,” she muttered, plonking herself down on an empty bench.

As she waited for the train, she found her mind going back to the night a week or so after she had accepted Toby’s marriage proposal. The two of them had been in her kitchen drinking wine and waiting for the Bolognese sauce to cook.

“You do realize,” Toby had said, “that on my mother’s death I shall become Lord Kenwood and that, for official purposes at least, you would assume the title of Lady.”

Abby, who loved Toby for reasons that had nothing to do with his wealth and status, had laughed off the idea of becoming a
lady
—even if it was only for “official” purposes.

“Can you imagine me, Lady Abby from Croydon? I don’t think so. Plus I hate the whole hereditary-peerages thing. People should earn titles, not inherit them. It just props up the class system.”

Toby said he adored it when she got on her political high horse. It was one of the reasons he had fallen in love with her. “I agree with you,” he said, “but you might change your mind when the time comes. Like it or not, a title gives you influence and, even now, can open a great many doors.”

Toby tended not to talk about his mother. In the nine months she had known him, Abby had gleaned little beyond a handful of bullet points. Lady Penelope had been the first woman in her family to go to university rather than to finishing school. She had studied law and later become a highly successful criminal barrister. Her career ended when she married Toby’s father. It was she, not he, who’d insisted that her loyalties were now to her husband and that it was
only right and proper she give up work in order to breed and help run the Kenwood estate.

Toby described her as: “Horsey, a terrible snob, judgmental, overbearing. Think Margaret Thatcher but a lot less reserved. You can imagine Mother collaring Hitler after a rally and bawling him out for slouching.”

“Blimey. So, do I greet her with a kiss or a salute?”

Toby gave a nervous half smile. “You know, I’m still not sure you meeting my mother is such a good idea. She’s so bloody scary. She intimidates everybody she comes into contact with. Maybe we should wait a bit longer.”

“No way,” Abby laughed. “We’re engaged. I have to meet her. It’s time. Look, after everything you’ve told me, I’m not going to pretend I won’t be nervous, but I’m sure I’ll cope.”

He smiled. “I know you will. I just want you to be prepared, that’s all.”

“Oh, I’m nothing if not prepared.” She laughed again.

“The way to get into my mother’s good book is to get her talking about foxhunting. She’s master of the local hunt and loves to show off.”

Abby said she didn’t mean to be difficult, but she wasn’t sure how she felt about feigning an interest in blood sports, which she thought were despicable and should be banned.

Toby groaned. “Come on, Abs, can’t you just get off your soapbox for five minutes? Hunting is my mother’s life, and wittering on about it keeps her amused. Couldn’t you humor her? Just for me? If you lock horns with my mother, all hell will break loose. I promise.”

He came over to the stove, where she was stirring the spaghetti sauce, and put his arms round her waist. “Say you
won’t goad her… please.” He started kissing the back of her neck.

“I don’t know.”

More kisses.

“Oh, all right. If it’s going to make her happy. The last thing I want to do is create waves. God, I sound like my mother.”

“Good girl.” He began opening a bottle of wine. “You know, I haven’t hunted for years—not since I moved to London. In some ways I miss it. You really feel at one with the countryside.”

“I’m sure the fox feels the same,” Abby said, sprinkling a pinch of dried herbs into the meat sauce. “As the hounds tear it apart, you can imagine it thinking, ‘This hurts like hell, but, hey, at least I feel at one with the countryside.’”

He ignored the comment. “Plus,” he said, grinning, “I look absolutely fabulous—don’t you know—in the red coat and cravat.”

He was laughing, sending himself up, but Abby was in no doubt that he meant it. Toby looked good in anything, and he knew it. With his tall, lean frame and broad shoulders—not to mention the thick blonde hair, cobalt eyes and patrician jaw—Toby had been put on this earth to wear clothes.

But it wasn’t simply his coloring and build that made him look so good in everything he wore. When it came to matters sartorial, Toby had an unfailing instinct about what worked and what didn’t.

The first time she’d met him—at a posh charity dinner organized by a friend of Soph’s—he was standing at the bar, looking knee-tremblingly magnificent in his evening
suit and black tie. Roger Moore in his James Bond prime, she thought. He was drinking what looked like Campari and flirting with three or four braying, hair-flicking Fulham women—all clearly smitten. Abby couldn’t help but be smitten, too, but upper-class, Roger Moore look-alikes were way out of her league.

Then, while she was waiting to be served at the bar, an elderly woman bumped into her and managed to spill not one but two glasses of champagne over her brand-new dress. In an instant, Toby was at her side, proffering towels and soda water gleaned from the bartender. He must have spent fifteen minutes helping her get the stains out of her dress. During that time, something clicked between them. So much so that, when dinner was announced, Toby persuaded one of the waiters to squeeze in an extra place at Abby’s table. They didn’t stop talking all evening. He had her in hysterics, impersonating some of his more outrageous titled relatives—including a duke who kept a urinal behind a screen in his dining room.

They’d still been talking and laughing when he dropped her home at two in the morning.

“But how do you know he’s an aristocrat and not one of those posh con men you read about?” Soph had said to Abby the next morning. Soph was petrified that Toby was about to suggest whisking her friend off to some romantic Far East destination and that Abby would wake up one morning minus a kidney.

Abby was determined not to give in to Soph’s paranoia by Googling Toby. In the end she didn’t have to. The next day, as she was flicking through an old copy of
Tatler
at the nail salon round the corner, she came across a picture of Toby and a couple of male friends attending a birthday
bash of some aristocrat she’d never heard of. The picture caption referred to Toby by name.

Over the next few weeks he wooed her with dinners at exclusive eateries. While the rest of the world had to book months in advance, Toby never had a problem getting a table at Le Caprice or Pétrus. During the day he would forward her jokes and cartoons from the Internet.
Thought this would make you laugh. Hope you’re having a good day. Missing you. Can’t wait until tonight. XXX Toby
. The jokes always did make her laugh.

It wasn’t long before small intimacies developed between them. For reasons connected to one particular
Monty Python
sketch they both happened to adore, fruit buns became known as
fruit bats
. The TV remote became the
dibber
. Once, when Abby glanced at a restaurant bill that Toby was about to pay, she gasped, “My God, that’s not a bill, it’s a full-on
William.”
Toby had burst out laughing and, from then on, they referred to all bills as
Williams
.

As the weeks turned into months, Abby found herself falling in love. It wasn’t just Toby’s looks, intelligence, sharp wit, attentiveness and generosity that captivated her. There was something else, something that went much deeper and that Abby found irresistible. At thirty-four, Toby was a real grown-up. Abby had dated too many men who, even as they hit their mid-thirties, were still trying to work out what they wanted from life and where they were going. They were frustrated, tormented types who—often for good reason— yearned to give up jobs that gave them no satisfaction and take off round the world on a Harley. They weren’t sure if they could commit to a long-term relationship. Marriage, a mortgage and children felt like a trap. One of her old boy friends went even further and said it felt like “death.”

Abby wasn’t unsympathetic. She understood their frustrations, but having spent years struggling to build a successful business, she wanted to be with somebody who was as focused and determined as she was. Toby fitted the bill perfectly. He’d had his fill of backpacking and jobs in seedy beach bars in Thailand. Now he wanted to build up his career and settle down.

Toby said it was her humor and feistiness that had stolen his heart.

In the beginning at least, class difference wasn’t an issue. Toby made light of his aristocratic roots and so did she. After all, it wasn’t as if Toby were some chinless squire who strode around the shires in plus fours, expecting the lower classes to doff their caps. He worked for a living, just like she did. It did occur to her that when she met his family— his mother in particular—they might look down on her because she knew none of the “right” people and hadn’t been to posh schools, but she was too much in love to give it much thought. Not only could she stand up for herself, but Toby would never let anybody hurt her.

Jean and Hugh were so intimidated by Toby’s status and wealth that it took them a while to relax and get to know him. The first time Abby brought Toby home for dinner, Hugh felt the need to splurge on a thirty-pound bottle of wine. Jean prepared for his visit by having all the carpets, curtains and upholstery cleaned and insisting Hugh drag all Grandma Ginny’s long-discarded silver-plated cutlery and tableware down from the attic.

Jean also fretted about whether fish knives and forks were bourgeois and suburban and instructed Hugh not to refer to the living room as the “lounge.”

Toby, on the other hand, didn’t appear to be remotely ill
at ease. He arrived bearing Maison du Chocolat truffles for Jean and was in top form all evening. Over predinner drinks, when Jean prattled on nervously about her garden, he showed genuine interest and asked questions. Ditto when Hugh started banging on about the special features on his new Citroen C4.

“The sat nav comes as standard, of course, but you pay extra for the speed limiter. What with all the police cameras around these days, I thought it had to be worth every penny… Now, then, Toby, why don’t you try some of Jean’s mushy pea dip? It’s rather good.”

Jean blushed and tried to cover her embarrassment with nervous laughter. “Hugh, it’s guacamole. I’m always making it. You love it.”

“I do?” Hugh said, his brow knitted in confusion.

“Course you do. I made it the last time your sister Kath came over, and you practically ate the lot.”

“But that must have been ages ago. Kath’s been in the mental hospital for three years.”

Jean flushed scarlet. “Another ham and cheese spiral, Toby, dear?” she trilled.

As Toby’s visits became more frequent, Jean and Hugh started to relax. Jean felt able to make him a cup of tea in an Ikea mug, and Hugh began serving £6.99 Aussie red with dinner.

Like Abby, they, too, picked up on Toby’s maturity. “Such a sensible, dependable young man,” Abby heard Jean telling Aunty Gwen on the phone. “Hugh and I think the world of him. Abby is so lucky. He’s perfect for her. Just perfect.”

Jean and Hugh certainly weren’t surprised when, after eight months, Abby and Toby announced their engagement.

Overjoyed, Jean’s thoughts turned at once to the wedding reception. “I thought we could put up a tent in the garden,” she’d said to Abby on the phone the other day. “We can have sparkling wine and nibbly bits when everybody arrives, followed by a hot and cold buffet. The fishmonger has said he can do me a dozen salmon en croute so long as I give him plenty of notice. And then there’s your aunty Gwen’s tiramisu. Everybody was raving about it at Uncle Phil’s retirement do.” She paused. “Look, darling, I know it won’t be the kind of grand affair that Toby’s mother is used to, but he’s such a lovely boy—not at all the snob your dad and I were expecting—and I’m sure his mother’s the same and that she’ll understand it’s the best we can do.”