Читать книгу Original Sin - Tasmina Perry, Tasmina Perry - Страница 8

2

‘Brooke? David’s here.’

The pretty Chinese girl squeezed into Brooke Asgill’s tiny, cluttered office and swiftly removed a cup of cold coffee from her superior’s desk. Brooke looked up and nodded. Strictly speaking, Kim Yi-Noon wasn’t Brooke’s assistant. As a lowly commissioning editor in the children’s division at the Yellow Door publishing house, Brooke wasn’t entitled to such privileges, but then lots of things had begun to change since her engagement to David Billington. Working conditions had mysteriously improved; she now had an office of her own – tiny though it was – for instance, and a star-struck intern willing to moonlight as her assistant. Then there was the unasked-for pay rise and the parking space she didn’t need. It was as if the management could smell power on the breeze.

‘Great, thanks Kim,’ said Brooke, smiling. ‘Send him up.’

‘I suggested that,’ said Kim apologetically. ‘But apparently the paparazzi are hanging around the office again. He thinks it’s better if he stays in the car.’

Brooke winced and glanced down at the manuscript in front of her. Every Friday afternoon she set aside an hour to read submissions from the ‘slush pile’. Most publishers didn’t bother, leaving unsolicited manuscripts to the most junior members of the publishing team, and Brooke had to admit that, most weeks, it was an hour wasted. Vanity projects, poor copies of whatever was hot last year; most of it was mediocre at best. But the book she had picked out today, well, this was something else: it had that indefinable something that made her want to keep reading.

Kim coughed politely. ‘Sorry, Brooke, but should you even be here?’ she asked. ‘It’s in my diary that you’ve booked half a day’s holiday today.’

‘No, you’re right,’ said Brooke, putting down her Montblanc pen. ‘We’ve got another wedding venue to see and we should have left two hours ago. Although I think the novelty of venue-hunting has worn off for David already. He goes pale every time I mention another one. Just wait till it’s your turn.’ Brooke stopped, realizing that might sound patronizing, especially since Kim could only be three or four years younger than she was. It was funny how dating David and mixing with his highbrow politico friends had made her feel much older, think much older. She wasn’t even married herself yet.

‘Brooke? Can I ask you a favour?’ said Kim slowly, a look of embarrassment on her face.

‘Shoot.’

‘Don’t take it the wrong way, but could you please not talk to me about this stuff?’

‘Oh,’ said Brooke, surprised. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to …’ Brooke could feel her face flushing. She had always felt awkward even asking Kim to get her coffee; she certainly didn’t want to be one of those editors who treated her assistants like crap – she’d seen plenty of that. Even here in the children’s publishing division, generally considered a genteel working environment, they still had their fair share of bitches.

‘Oh, it’s not that I don’t like hearing about it,’ said Kim quickly. ‘It sounds lovely, all the wedding preparations and dates with David and such, but it’s just that some journalist called me up yesterday and offered me two thousand bucks if I would tell her where the wedding is. It’s sort of tempting when you’re on fifteen thousand dollars a year and most of that gets gobbled up by your rent.’

Brooke stared at the girl, open-mouthed. Of course, it made perfect sense, given the media furore over the wedding; she could almost admire the journalist’s initiative. She could also understand how tempting it would be for someone like Kim Yi-Noon. For her twenty-first birthday, Brooke had been given a fully furnished ‘classic six’ apartment on Sixty-Fifth Street. As a member of the Asgill family, she really had no idea what it was like to struggle to make rent. She had no idea what it was like to struggle for anything.

‘What did you say to him?’ asked Brooke finally.

‘I said I can’t tell them anything if I don’t know anything,’ shrugged Kim. ‘And if we can keep it that way, we won’t have a problem. Is that okay?’

‘Of course, of course. And I’m grateful, Kim. Thank you,’ said Brooke, making a mental note to try and get Kim a pay rise. Keen to change the subject, Brooke tapped the paper in front of her.

‘By the way, this is the covering letter from a slush-pile manuscript I’ve been reading. There’s only a few chapters of it, so can you phone the author for me and get her to send the rest if there is any more? If there is a completed manuscript, maybe we should suggest she gets an agent while she’s at it.’

Kim nodded in a brisk, efficient manner. ‘I’ll do it now.’

Glancing at her watch – David would definitely be getting cross now – Brooke stuffed the manuscript into her orange Goyard tote and pulled a compact out of her top drawer. Not bad, she thought, flipping open the mirror. The day had faded her make-up, but with her grape-green almond eyes and high cheekbones, Brooke Asgill was still one of the most beautiful girls in Manhattan. She swept some gloss over her lips, then suddenly felt guilty, recalling a snarky little news story in Star magazine about how ‘Brooke Asgill puts on a full face of make-up before she meets the paparazzi.’ It had annoyed Brooke more than it should, mainly because she knew the words one showbiz writer had tossed off in ten minutes would now pop into her head every time she looked in a mirror. The truth was that Brooke Asgill was not vain, if she put a spot of blush on her cheeks, or some gloss on her lips when she stepped outside, it was because she just figured that if people were determined to plaster her face all over every newspaper and magazine in America, she might as well try and look half decent.

She rode down in the lift and rushed through the Yellow Door lobby, bracing herself as she pushed through the doors onto East Forty-Second Street and heard the familiar click-whirr, click-whirr of the camera shutters. Since her engagement, that had been the soundtrack to her life. You should be used to this by now, she thought, unconsciously pulling her bag closer for protection. Brooke had always been a private person and she found the attention difficult to get used to; she’d actually had a panic attack the first time she had been followed.

‘Brooke! Brooke! Over here!’ called the voices, but she did her best to ignore them as her long legs carried her across the sidewalk to David’s waiting silver Lexus. Sitting on the back seat, tapping at his BlackBerry, was David Billington, the man formerly known as America’s Most Eligible Bachelor; until two weeks ago, when their engagement had been announced and thousands of hearts were broken. He looked so handsome, thought Brooke – some might say unfairly handsome for someone whose family was worth fifteen billion dollars. Even in just a pair of grey trousers, open-necked blue shirt and a Paul Smith pea coat, he still looked fantastic. His dark hair was slightly wavy, his eyes such a dark blue that they made his face look serious – until he unzipped his smile. He was confident, not aggressive, charming, not smarmy. People magazine regularly called him Mr Perfect. Sometimes Brooke thought they were right.

‘So, what have you been doing up there?’ asked David, finally pulling back from their embrace. ‘I thought we wanted to try and beat the traffic.’

‘I’ve just been reading a manuscript.’

‘Must have been good.’

‘You didn’t give me the chance to find out,’ she smiled, wanting to keep the excitement of her discovery under wraps at least until she had read more. ‘How was your day, anyway?’

‘Fifth consecutive day I’ve been studio-bound,’ sighed David. ‘I’m sure it must be some kind of record.’

David was a co-anchor for CTV’s World Today, a lunchtime news programme that broadcast from eleven a.m. to one p.m. each day, often broadcasting live from the scene of breaking news. In any given month he could be in Afghanistan or Somalia, Paris or Moscow.

‘Good news for the world, I suppose,’ she smiled. ‘No hurricanes, no coups d’états. And definitely good news for me.’ She squeezed his knee. Sometimes she enjoyed David’s busy schedule, but it was nice to have him home once in a while, especially now when there was so much to be done.

‘Not such good news for CTV, though,’ said David. ‘The ratings have been down and one of our big interviews fell through, went to Anderson Cooper.’

‘Ah honey, that’s a bummer,’ she said, genuinely disappointed for him.

‘But …’ He paused and looked at her. ‘… It looks like I’ve got twenty minutes with the Palestinian PM on Sunday.’

‘You’re going to Palestine?’

‘It’s gone crazy over there again.’

Brooke began to protest, then bit her tongue. She knew it was futile reminding David that they had three possible wedding venues to go look at in Connecticut and, anyway, she had to agree that the pressing details of their seating plan seemed slightly petty compared to discussing the finer points of the Middle East crisis with a world leader. Still, it was a blow. She had been looking forward to them spending a little time together for once, getting wrapped up in the romance and excitement of the wedding.

‘I guess I’ll go and look at those venues on my own then.’

‘Come on, honey,’ said David, stroking her cheek, ‘I thought girls loved this stuff. Don’t tell me your DNA skipped the bride gene?’

She laughed, despite herself.

‘Well, maybe you should take your mother?’ suggested David.

‘I’m not a masochist,’ she smiled. Ever since the engagement, they had quickly found that both sides of the family had very strong ideas about where and how they should be married. David’s mother, a grande dame of New York society, had very decided and conservative views about venues that were considered ‘proper’ by ‘the right people’. It needed to be large enough to host all her influential friends, and grand enough for her family. Only a church ceremony would be considered, preferably with a bishop – at the very least – presiding. Meredith, meanwhile, had vetoed every possible reception venue they had been able to find in New York. The Ritz Carlton was ‘too dingy’, the New York Library ‘too public’, and even the many gorgeous venues that Alessandro Franchetti, Manhattan’s premier wedding planner, had tracked down were similarly rejected. Brooke was beginning to think nothing would ever please her mother. It was a feeling she was familiar with.

‘Well, you never know,’ said David. ‘Alessandro might have come up trumps with the place we’re going to see today.’

Brooke gave a wry smile. ‘Don’t hold your breath; he did call it a “wild card”.’

‘We’re going all the way to Duchess County for a wild card?’ asked David, annoyance in his voice. ‘It’s a long way to travel to say no. Anyway, I thought we were picking him up?’

‘We are.’ She leaned forward and tapped Miguel, David’s driver, on the shoulder. ‘We have to detour to Sutton Place.’

David pulled a face. ‘Couldn’t we have met him there?’

Brooke laughed. ‘He’s not that bad.’

‘Oh he is,’ grinned David.

Outside a smart brownstone on Sutton Place South, a short, overly groomed man was standing on the roadside looking at his watch. Alessandro Franchetti was a former bit-part TV actor turned society wedding planner, who had recently made it onto New York magazine’s Hot 100 List. Although there were thirty couples in the city delighted to have Alessandro planning their nuptials at vast expense, the truth was that most of their weddings were arranged by Alessandro’s team. He took on only two weddings a year himself, and this was by far his biggest, possibly the biggest of his career. No wonder he was looking anxious. Brooke and David wanted an early fall wedding and they still didn’t have a venue. Screw this up and he’d never work in New York again.

‘Nice building,’ said David, peering through the car’s tinted windows.

‘The average New York bride spends one hundred thousand dollars on her wedding,’ smiled Brooke. ‘He has money.’

‘At last! My two favourite people in New York,’ gushed Alessandro as he clambered into the passenger seat next to the driver. ‘And I’m so glad to finally have you both together. There is such a lot to talk about.’

Snapping open his briefcase, Alessandro pulled out a spreadsheet and put on a pair of black horn-rim reading glasses. ‘I can only look at this for a second because reading and travelling makes me feel sick,’ he said in an aside.

David’s lips twitched with amusement.

‘I had an early start at the studio,’ he whispered to Brooke, settling back in his seat. ‘I might just grab a little shut-eye.’

Brooke jabbed him in the ribs. ‘No, you don’t!’

Alessandro looked up, oblivious to their whispering.

‘Now, I know everyone is keen to set a date as quickly as possible, but you’ve said no to The Pierre. No to the Four Seasons Pool Room. No to the Plaza, St Regis, the Yale Club and the Frick.’ He turned round and eyed Brooke and David carefully. ‘Do you know how many strings I had to pull to even put the Frick as an option?’

‘The problem is we all want somewhere new,’ said David, turning on the charm. ‘Somewhere we haven’t been before.’

Alessandro peered over the top of his glasses. ‘Between the two of you, you must have been to every wedding, funeral, benefit, and bar mitzvah in the Tri-State area. New is presenting something of a challenge.’ He sighed, pushing out his tanned cheeks.

‘Are you sure you don’t want it at Belcourt or Cliffpoint?’

Belcourt was the Billingtons’ magnificent family estate in Westchester County, and Cliffpoint was their forty-five-roomed summer house in Newport. There were, of course, other properties the family owned: a villa in Palm Beach, a ranch in the Santa Ynez Valley, and a palazzo in Venice, but the reason for not hosting the wedding at one of the Billington-owned properties was the same.

‘Ahem, how shall I put this?’ said Brooke. ‘It’s important to my mother to have the hosting responsibilities.’

‘And you’ve definitely ruled out Parklands?’

Parklands was the Asgill family home. Three years ago it had been the venue for a large and rather overblown wedding for her sister Liz, who was divorced from her husband twelve months later.

‘Mother doesn’t like the omens.’

Alessandro took off his glasses and sighed. ‘Lord save me from the mother of the bride. Well, never fear, Toots, I’ve got a good feeling about this one.’

The car slipped out of Manhattan, crossing the George Washington Bridge and heading up into New York State, the metropolis quickly thinning out into towns and then fields. Brooke was glad to escape the city. She had always loved New York, she was born and bred there, but lately the Big Apple had started to shrink. It wasn’t that she disliked the attention, but the constant intrusions – people she didn’t know calling out her name in the deli, teenage girls pointing and giggling; she’d even had a death threat – it was all starting to wear her down. It had been nine months to the day since she had met David Billington; despite also being a native of Manhattan, Brooke had had to go all the way to Europe to meet him. She had been in the Alsace region on a nostalgic trip to France to visit a family with whom she had done a summer exchange in her junior year at Spence. Three days into the trip, her host Mrs Dubois had discovered her husband was having an affair. Brooke supposed this might not be a problem for the chic Frenchwoman, but Mrs Dubois kicked him out. Politely withdrawing, Brooke hadn’t wanted to go home, so on a whim she’d headed down to Biarritz. A Park Avenue girl, she had always been athletic and outdoorsy, and she wanted to go surfing on the legendary beaches down there. When she first saw David, she was standing on the shore in her wet-suit.

He had come over to the shore to check she was okay; she remembered thinking he looked vaguely familiar, but she had not been expecting to meet New York’s most eligible bachelor in a wetsuit on a cloudy, blowy day on the Atlantic coast. The attraction between them was instant, although Brooke suspected that David’s interest in her went up a notch when he discovered she was also from a very wealthy New York family. If she was honest, some of that was true for her too. Like most little girls, growing up, Brooke had always dreamt of marrying a handsome prince, but in her case it had almost come true.

Not that it had been exactly a fairy tale; back in New York, the first three months of their relationship had been conducted in secret. Dates were either dinner at unfashionable restaurants in Brooklyn, or ridiculously luxurious hotels in remote locations like the Hudson Valley – sometimes it felt like having an affair with a rich married man. David didn’t explicitly say that he was testing her out before he went public with their relationship, but Brooke knew the rules of dating were just not the same for men like David Billington. Last month, on Valentine’s Day, he had whisked her off to Paris. Well, it wasn’t exactly the fourteenth of February. It had been ten days later, thanks to work commitments in Beirut and Uzbekistan, but it was wonderful nevertheless. The penthouse suite at the Bristol, shopping in St-Germain, where David had treated her to armfuls of gifts from Saint Laurent, then dinner at Le Voltaire. Back at the hotel, he had popped open vintage champagne on their terrace overlooking the city, which had been studded with hundreds of glowing tea-lights. Even so, Brooke hadn’t expected it when he had pulled a ring out of his pocket and dropped down on one knee. They’d been dating less than a year, but the night had been so perfect, it had been impossible to resist.

It was almost seven by the time they arrived in Duchess County. Light was falling out of the sky, the dipping sun casting an orange glow over the lake. Brooke had been there before to visit the Rhinebeck Antiques Fair for its lovely old chests and gilt mirrors, and loved the area’s raw natural beauty.

‘This place certainly smells good,’ laughed Brooke, breathing in a cool fresh scent of mist and freshly mown grass through the open window. They came off the road and through a pair of white gates, down a long gravel drive curling around the lake, framed by horse chestnut trees bursting with their long ivory flowers. At the end of the drive was a short pier where a small motor launch was moored.

‘Is it across the lake?’ asked Brooke, excitement in her voice. They all climbed out of the car and up onto the pier, David taking Brooke’s hand to help her on. It smelt of linseed oil. The boat took ten minutes to chug across the lake, finally turning into a bay dominated by a huge white colonial house. Brooke gasped.

‘Isn’t it spectacular?’ grinned Alessandro, spreading his arms dramatically. ‘Now, when we get there you’ll see it’s a little rundown, so I want you to use your imagination.’

‘I quite like the fact it’s not too perfect,’ said David as they swung into the dock.

Brooke gave a small laugh. ‘Is that how your mother will see it?’

‘She’ll like it if we do,’ he said, not sounding entirely convinced by his statement. ‘Anyway, I love the location. It’s private.’

Alessandro clapped his hands together. ‘My thoughts exactly, darling. The paparazzi are going to be all over this wedding, so we have to do what we can to keep everything secure. This is the ideal solution. I’ve even had a word with the local sheriff, who has kindly agreed to enforce a no-fly zone over the lake for the wedding, so paparazzi helicopters can forget it. Now, David, I know your mother wanted a church wedding …’

‘Cathedral,’ smiled Brooke.

‘But, I’ve already spoken to Reverend James, the pastor from your family’s local church. He baptized two generations of your family, I believe? Well, he’s happy to officiate here, which should please your mother.’

Alessandro turned to Brooke and touched her arm. ‘And you, my darling, I know you wanted something intimate, but—’

‘But it’s beautiful,’ interrupted Brooke. ‘Big, but beautiful.’

They walked up through the gardens from the jetty and into the house. The building was even more impressive close to, and the entrance hall was huge, with vaulted ceilings soaring forty feet above them.

‘Wow,’ said David simply.

Alessandro held Brooke’s shoulders and turned her around towards the lake. It was glowing a rippling orange as the sun sank.

‘Look over to the west side of the lake,’ said Alessandro, pointing to the lawns next to the formal gardens. ‘See how it slopes down? It’s a natural amphitheatre. I was thinking very simple cherry-wood pews, a carpet of petals as an aisle, and the vows being exchanged looking out over the water.’

Brooke was silent for a moment, picturing the scene.

‘What do you think, Brooke?’ asked David. When she turned towards him, there were tears in her eyes.

‘It’s just incredible.’

David pulled her close. ‘The bride gene surfaces,’ he whispered.

Alessandro walked a little way off, continuing his commentary like a tour guide. ‘The house used to belong to a very wealthy Manhattan family, in mining or something, I think. Now it belongs to an educational trust, but it’s been used for films in the past, one featuring Johnny Depp, can’t remember which. Anyway, don’t worry about the slightly tired exterior. My ex-boyfriend is a Hollywood set designer and we still speak. I think he can do something very special.’

David and Brooke exchanged a small smile at his rapid-fire monologue.

‘We don’t want to go too high concept, Alessandro,’ said Brooke. ‘No Gone with the Wind fantasy, okay?’

‘Well, if we’re thinking left-field with all this, I was wondering about a dusk wedding? We could line the path around the lake with torches and ferry you over to the ceremony in a little boat covered in iceberg rose petals.’

‘Alessandro,’ said Brooke, gently admonishing. ‘No drama, remember? Although, I do like the idea of getting married at this time of day. When is it available?’

‘Pretty much whenever,’ said Alessandro, flapping his hands vaguely. ‘A fall wedding would be magnificent. Can you imagine those trees over there glistening with scarlet leaves? Oh, but realistically a September wedding is way too tight. I mean, your dress is going to take three, four months minimum, more if we’re thinking lots of Lesage beading. I know one bride who had to put her wedding back because the embroidery was taking so long.’

‘Which leaves us with next spring or summer,’ said Brooke thoughtfully. ‘Winters will be vicious up here and I don’t want to make it too difficult for people to travel.’

‘We definitely wanted the wedding within the year,’ said David, looking at Brooke. ‘I don’t want this one to get away from me.’

Alessandro coughed politely. ‘Maybe I’ll leave you two alone for a few minutes,’ he said.

‘So what do you think?’ asked Brooke when Alessandro was out of earshot.

‘I love it.’

‘Oh honey, I’m so glad you said that,’ she gushed, her face lit up like a little girl’s. ‘It’s the perfect spring venue, isn’t it? I mean, smell that air. New beginnings.’

She could see David stifle a wry smile. He was too polite to laugh. He wrapped his arms around Brooke’s waist. ‘It’s perfect.’

‘It’s big though, isn’t it?’ said Brooke, biting her lip. ‘All that talk about amphitheatres.’

‘We have a lot of guests.’

‘Your parents have got a lot of guests,’ she said.

Brooke was a Pisces, a romantic; perhaps that’s what drew her to books. In her mind her wedding would have all the trappings of the fairy tale – the beautiful white dress, the huge cake – but she’d always thought of it as a private ceremony, conducted in front of people she knew and loved. The last thing she wanted was a circus.

‘Should we run off to City Hall and just do it?’ said Brooke impulsively.

David shook his head slowly. ‘You know we can’t do that.’

She looked at him and saw sadness in his eyes; it was the weight of expectation, and most of the time he wore it well. David might be a television reporter right now, but that was not where his future lay. Already he was being touted in serious magazines as a White House hopeful, despite having not a jot of political experience to his name. Their wedding would be talked about and written about for years to come; in many ways, it needed to be a circus, even if it was not a three-ring circus.

‘Honey, are you sure you’re ready for this?’ he asked softly.

She looked at his dark-blue eyes and couldn’t believe that out of all the women in the world he had chosen her.

‘Do you mean have I passed the point of no return?’ she asked.

‘No, I mean are you ready to be a Billington wife?’

Brooke felt a shiver run through her and wondered if it was the chill in the air.

‘Is anyone ever ready to be a Billington wife?’ she sighed. ‘I don’t know if I am. Who could? But what I do know is that I’m ready to marry you.’

David’s face lit up in a broad grin.

‘That’s good enough for me,’ he laughed, and pulled her down into the grass.