Forget Me Knot (37 page)

“It’s early,” Abby said, “but, yes, I think I am serious about him.”

“And it’s obvious to anybody who sees you two together that he feels the same way. I saw the pair of you the other
day, giggling like a pair of kids as he dragged you into the back room for a quick snog.”

Abby could feel her cheeks turning pink. “All I’d say is that we’ve got a long way to go. I’ve only just come out of a relationship—so it’s a bit complicated.”

“It’s funny,” Cinders said, “I’d always thought that with his background Dan would have fallen for somebody a bit more…”

She was clearly groping for words.

“A bit more what?” Abby prompted, closing the fridge door.

“Gosh, how can I put this?”

“Cinders, what on earth are you trying to say?”

“It’s just that with his background, I rather thought that once he’d finished playing the field, he would end up with somebody—you know—of a similar pedigree, as it were….”

“Dan has a pedigree? You make him sound like a Labrador. I don’t understand.”

Now it was Cinders’s turn to look perplexed. “You mean you don’t know? Dan hasn’t told you who his mother and stepfather are?”

“All I know is that his mother was a widow before she remarried and his stepfather is in the rag trade.” As she heard those last two words come out of her mouth, everything started to make sense.

Cinders smiled. “The rag trade? Well, I guess that’s one way of putting it.” She paused. “Look, I’ve said too much. This is none of my business. You need to talk to Dan. I really should get going.” With that she stood up, swung her Mulberry tote over her shoulder and headed toward the door.

Abby made no attempt to stop her. She was too caught up in her own thoughts.

So Dan had a “pedigree” and his stepfather was in the “rag trade.” Abby didn’t need to talk to Dan. She was pretty certain she knew who he was. How on earth could she have been so stupid?

Abby’s laptop was sitting on the coffee table in front of her. She lifted the lid and clicked on Google. Then she typed in
S&M, Dan Chipault
.

ABBY WAS ABOUT TO
hit search when she heard footsteps on the stairs. “That you, Scozz?” She assumed that Martin was about to go to lunch and was coming upstairs to ask if she would take over in the shop. Instead, when she looked up, she saw Dan coming through the door. His face was pale and taut with anxiety.

“Abby, could you stop whatever it is you’re doing?” His voice sounded positively grave. “There’s something I need to tell you. I’ve been trying to do it for weeks, but I couldn’t get up the courage until now. So will you just sit down and let me get it out?”

“Dan, I am sitting down.”

“Ah. Right. So you are.”

“And looking at you, it occurs to me that maybe you should be sitting down, too.”

“Good idea.” He lowered himself into an armchair. “OK… here goes.” He cleared his throat. “Right… well… you see, the thing is, I haven’t been entirely honest with you about my background. You need to know that my family is
far from ordinary. The truth is that we have aristocratic connections and are rather wealthy.”

“Rather?”

“OK, very wealthy. No, that’s not true. We are, in fact, positively rolling in dough. The other thing you don’t know is that my stepfather is Sir Malcolm Grant, the chairman of S&M. He is paid a salary by the company, but he also inherited his own vast private fortune, as did my mother. You should also know that I have been telling him about your ideas of ways to improve S&M.”

He sat waiting for her to react, but she didn’t.

“You don’t seem surprised.”

“I’m not.”

“You’ve already seen it, haven’t you?”

“The S&M leaflet? With all my ideas in it? Yes.”

“Shit. I was hoping to talk to you before that happened.”

“Well, you’re too late. I picked one up about an hour ago. It didn’t take me long to put two and two together— especially after Lucinda started talking about your
pedigree
. You were clearly relaying my suggestions to somebody very senior in the company. I’m assuming it was your stepfather. When you said he was in the rag trade, I didn’t realize you were using the term quite so broadly.”

He winced. Her sarcasm wasn’t lost on him.

“I don’t know what to say, other than I am so sorry for being dishonest about my background and that I should have been up front with you from the beginning.”

“Damn right you should have.”

“It was also unforgivable that I passed your ideas to my stepfather without telling you. The thing is, I couldn’t not tell him.”

“So, did you pass the ideas off as your own?”

“What? No! Of course I didn’t… Look, what you don’t know is that things have been going from bad to worse at S&M. In the last few weeks my stepdad has been under massive pressure from the shareholders to resign. I have huge respect for Malcolm, but he would be the first to admit that, as far as S&M goes, he has made some poor judgment calls. I think he realizes now that, like the rest of the board, he’s one of those middle-aged, Middle England dinosaurs you keep going on about. He was so scared of losing the company’s conservative customer base that he became paralyzed. He just couldn’t find it in himself to fire the accountants he was surrounded with and take the creative leap he needed. They’ve done so much damage, insisting he keep cutting prices rather than modernize. Then I told him about you and Fabulous Flowers. I found the piece about you in the
Sunday Times
‘Style’ section—where you were placed number twelve in the ‘Hundred Hottest Shops’ list. I told him you’d been voted Boutique Retailer of the Year. I went on and on about how you’d built up your business from nothing and how you had all these big hotshot clients. I told him how clever and creative you are—not just with flowers—and that you were passionate about S&M and what it needed to do to improve. He must have been impressed, because finally the stubborn old bugger started listening. But at the same time, I didn’t dare let you know about him. I realize now that in every respect I behaved like a complete and total ass. My only excuse is that I was scared.”

“Scared? Of what?”

“Of you walking out on our relationship. I know how Toby and his mother treated you—the extent to which they
made you feel socially inferior. I know what you went through with his dreadful friends. And you kept telling me how you just wanted to be with somebody from an ordinary background.”

She was managing to stay calm, but inside she was raging. She was furious with him for believing that she couldn’t have coped with the truth. “Do you really think I am that weak and narrow-minded? Didn’t it occur to you that we could have worked through this problem together?”

His eyes were fixed on hers now. “I think that if you had discovered who I was, you would have made all kinds of assumptions about my friends and family and run a mile.”

She was starting to lose her temper. “How dare you presume to know what I would have thought or done?”

“But you’d already admitted to me that you were an inverted snob.”

“That was just me sounding off because I was upset. I didn’t mean it.”

“Well, thanks for telling me.”

They fell into silence. Dan was looking down at the floor. “I’m sorry,” he eventually said again. “I panicked.”

She nodded. “I understand that, but it means that from now on I am going to find it hard to trust that you will be honest with me. How do I know you won’t make a habit of censoring information because you think me knowing the whole truth wouldn’t be good for me? Dishonesty aside, that kind of behavior is patronizing in the extreme.”

“I know. I know. I will never ever lie to you again. Please believe me. It’s going to be hard, but I want you to start trusting me again.”

“In the end I couldn’t trust Toby.”

“But I’m not going to have a clandestine affair with another man!”

She managed a smile. “I know. But I’m talking about secrets in general. It’s secrets that damage a relationship.”

He began rubbing his forehead. “Can you forgive me?”

“Forgiving is the easy part,” she said gently. “Like I said, the big question is whether I can trust you again. I’m going to need some time to think things through.”

He nodded. “If it helps, I’m not actually loaded. Well, not yet, anyway. There’s money in trust for me, but I don’t get a penny until I’m forty. And I didn’t lie to you about how I financed the film. Mum and Dad would have helped if I’d asked, but I was determined to raise the money on my own.”

That impressed her and she told him so.

“Anyway, Malcolm’s so grateful to you, he can’t wait to meet you. He keeps asking me to set up a lunch and can’t figure out why I’ve been holding out on him. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s starting to think you don’t exist.”

“I think after everything that’s happened, now wouldn’t be a good time to meet him. There are things we need to sort out first.”

“I agree.”

Another silence followed. Once again it was Dan who broke it. “There’s something else you need to know about my parentage.” He took another deep breath. “My mother is a French countess whose family are direct descendants of Marie Antoinette.”

“Marie Antoinette?” Despite being furious with Dan, it was as much as she could do to stop herself from laughing. “Oh, come on. You
are
kidding.”

“No. I can show you the family tree.”

“Blimey.”

“Mum’s full title is La Comtesse Marie Joseph d’Anjou Jonelle Bergerac Chipault.”

Now Abby laughed. “So, does that make you…”

“Le Compte d’Anjou Jonelle Bergerac Chipault? Embarrassingly enough, it does. Except I don’t assume the title until her death. And of course I haven’t the remotest intention of ever using it.” He paused. “Like Toby, I went to posh schools with other rich kids. I met Cinders when we were both at Millfield, but none of my friends are obnoxious, champagne-swilling toffs. And neither are my parents. Mum isn’t a pompous old windbag like Lady Penelope. She’s down-to-earth, kind, irreverent and has a filthy sense of humor. I just know you’d love her. You’d like my dad, too. They’re both really good fun.”

Abby let out a sigh. “In that case, you really should have had the courage to tell me the truth.”

“You’re right. I should have.” He stood up. “I’ll go now. Take some time to think. Take as long as you need, but you should know that I have never felt sorrier for anything in my life and that, more than anything, I want to carry on seeing you.”

She managed a weak smile.

As she watched him go, she thought about the champagne, the two lamb racks, the ingredients for the tiramisu she was going to make… the celebration that wasn’t going to happen now.

Her appetite gone, Abby went into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of wine from a bottle of merlot that she’d started a couple of days ago. She took a sizable gulp, ignored the sour taste and topped up her glass.

Back in the living room, she sat on the sofa, her legs curled underneath her. She reached for the remote and tried
to watch the TV news, but she couldn’t even begin to concentrate. She channel-surfed for a few minutes before switching off the TV.

Finally deciding that the merlot was undrinkable, she went back into the kitchen and opened a fresh bottle. It wasn’t until she was two glasses in that she admitted what was on her mind. Angry as she was with Dan for lying to her, he did have a point. Had he told her about his background earlier, she might well have walked away without even attempting to get to know him.

The affair with Christian aside, Abby had come away from her relationship with Toby more bruised and angry than she cared to admit. Despite the success she had made of her business, despite her high-profile clients, not to mention the press plaudits Fabulous Flowers had received in recent months, Toby, his mother and his friends had succeeded in making her feel socially inferior. Dan had picked up on this and panicked.

Of course he should have been honest with her. He had behaved badly. On the other hand, it was a measure of his feelings for her, and it was important not to lose sight of that. Did this one mistake—albeit a pretty serious one— have to be a deal breaker? He was contrite and racked with guilt. Surely she could forgive him and find the courage to trust him again.

On the other hand, were there other things he had been dishonest about? Despite her having a boyfriend back in L.A., perhaps Dan did have feelings for Cinders after all. But that made no sense. If he wanted Cinders, why would he be begging Abby not to end their relationship? Then again, life had taught her that where matters of the heart were concerned, things often made no logical sense.

Confused and uneasy, she decided to sleep on it. There was no point to making a rash, impetuous decision that she might come to regret.

She slept on it for two nights. For once she kept her own counsel and didn’t go running to Martin or Soph for help and advice. She knew what they’d say, that she had to put Dan’s mistake behind her and believe him when he said he would never lie to her again. She had to start trusting again. That was the hard bit. She wasn’t sure that she could.

On the third evening, she decided to go late-night clothes shopping in Hampstead. She thought a new top or a pair of jeans might cheer her up. On the drive over, she found herself thinking about Dan. It was getting near dinnertime, and she imagined him home alone, about to shove a frozen meal in the microwave. She felt her eyes starting to fill up. In an instant she made the decision to go there, tell him she was taking him out to dinner and that they were going to have a long talk about trust issues. But basically her message would be that all was forgiven.