Page 39 of Finding Love at Roseford Blooms
‘And I am sorry for my part in it,’ Sarah repeated. ‘I should have gone after you. I should have stood up to Nina and called out her shitty behaviour. But I was a coward, and I was afraid I was going to be next.’
‘Self-preservation?’ Lizzie said bleakly. ‘I think I can understand that.’
Sarah nodded. ‘I’m glad you came back here, and that we could address it. Maybe we can try to be friends, or at least be kind to each other while you’re here?’
Lizzie fought the urge to laugh. Accepting an apology was one thing, but she wasn’t sure if she’d ever be ‘friends’ with Sarah Treloar. That being said, an awful lot had changed for her this year. Perhaps it wasn’t entirely out of the question.
‘Maybe.’ Lizzie smiled. She knew that was enough to let Sarah off the hook a bit, as she saw Sarah visibly relaxing.
At that moment, Simon, laden with two plates of food from the buffet, approached the table. He cocked an eyebrow at them both. ‘Am I interrupting?’
Lizzie glanced at Sarah, who smiled tentatively back. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. Then, focusing on the food, ‘Is one of those plates for me?’
Simon nodded and gave them both a quick, relieved smile. ‘If you want it. I wasn’t sure if you had any allergies, so I thought I’d go for a general selection.’ He plonked the two plates down on the wooden table with a clunk. ‘Sorry, sis,’ he added, turning to Sarah. ‘I only had enough hands for two helpings.’
‘Typical,’ Sarah grumbled good-naturedly, but Lizzie could hear the relief in her tone. ‘I’ll, er, grab some myself.’ She looked back at Lizzie as she stood up. ‘Would it be all right if I came back and joined you?’
Lizzie, without even looking at Simon, smiled gently. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It would.’
34
The next morning, Simon turned the invitation from Cross Dean School over and over in his hands. He still hadn’t sent his RSVP, and in truth he still wasn’t sure which way to jump. Yet again he wondered why he didn’t just chuck the thing in the bin; he didn’t owe anything to that place, and he had no desire to go back there and relive the awfulness of his school days. But there was something about Lizzie facing her own demons that made him hesitate. She’d been brave, and confronted the traumas of her past; shouldn’t he try to be brave, too? With a sigh, he put the invitation down on his desk again.
His gloomy thoughts were alleviated by the deluge of positive social media posts about how wonderful Montana and Serena’s wedding looked. Roseford Hall, its chapel and the grounds really did look great on camera, and the carefully curated ‘official’ shots that Montana and Serena had selected, as well as the more candid ones taken by various guests, cast his home in a wonderful light. There was so much to be positive about, and although he knew that credit was mostly due to the British Heritage Fund, he still felt a sense of pride.
It wasn’t such a leap for the idea of the festival to come creeping back into his mind after seeing all of the positive images of the wedding on social media. While the British Heritage Fund now owned Roseford Hall, the chapel and the surrounding gardens, the Treloar family still owned several acres of fields beyond the immediate gardens, which, hitherto, had been rented out for grazing to local farmers. It didn’t provide much of an income, but it meant that the family still had some notional claim on the land. It had been ruled out for building on, as it was agriculturally tied, but Simon had been formulating a few ideas about what he’d like to do with the land in the longer term. Grazing was fine as far as it went, but he was feeling increasingly as though he’d like to leave a bit more of a mark on what was left of his family estate.
Of course, he hadn’t discussed any of this with Sarah or his mother. Sarah probably wouldn’t have any objections, but his mother was another matter, and, despite the fact that he’d inherited his father’s title upon his death, his mother still had some share in the leftover land.
Simon, despite his unworldliness in some areas, was no fool. He knew that he could sit out his days in Roseford Hall, being the figurehead of an estate that he no longer owned, being employed as the site manager. He knew he’d probably be perfectly content doing that. But contentment was different from happiness, he thought. Contentment had got him this far; maybe it was time to take a risk.
Feeling a frisson of excitement, he clicked open a file on his laptop and waited for it to load. As the document splashed up on screen, he reminded himself of the details that he’d sketched out after that initial conversation with Finn some weeks ago. One word jumped out at him from the screen: RoseFest. If nothing else, he thought wryly, he’d hit on a great name.
A knock at the door drew him out away from the screen.
‘Come in,’ he called. His mother had a habit of popping over each morning to catch up on things, and keep a largely figurative hand on the tiller, but this time, it wasn’t her. Instead, Lizzie walked in.
‘Hey,’ he said, rising quickly from his chair and rounding the desk. She’d gone back to Bee’s after the post-wedding party yesterday afternoon, and although they’d exchanged a couple of texts after that, she hadn’t suggested meeting up today.
‘Hi, you.’ Lizzie smiled as he drew closer. They shared a long, warm kiss, and Simon tasted coffee and toothpaste on Lizzie’s breath. ‘Got time for a coffee? I’ve brought you one just in case.’ She reached down to the hessian tote bag she’d placed by her feet when he’d come across the office for the kiss, and pulled out a cake box and two Thermos mugs of coffee. ‘Lucy let me borrow the mugs, so long as they make it back to the café at some point.’
‘That sounds great,’ Simon replied. Lizzie opened the cake box and passed Simon his coffee. She made her way over to the window behind his desk and looked out over the grounds.
‘I can see why you chose this office!’ she joked as she turned back to Simon, who, having skipped breakfast again, was tucking into his rosewater cupcake with gusto.
‘Lucy knows how to bake,’ he said, once he’d taken a sip of coffee to wash down the cake. ‘But if you make this a habit, I’ll be the size of a house by Christmas!’
Lizzie laughed. ‘No danger of that, with all the running around that you do.’ The light from the window cast her in a soft, warm glow, and Simon was suddenly struck by exactly how strongly he felt for her, even in the short time they’d known one another. He reached out a hand and pulled her down onto his lap, relishing the feeling of holding her close again, after a night’s absence.
When they broke apart, both of them were more than a little breathless and flushed, and the sound of Lizzie’s nervous laugh made his heart race.
‘I’ll never get any work done at this rate,’ he said, trying to take a deep breath and to still his thumping pulse. It would be so easy to dump everything he had to do today and escape back up to his private rooms with Lizzie. But, regrettably, he had things to attend to.
While he was still thinking about all the things he’d rather be doing with Lizzie than sitting at his desk, he realised that she’d been glancing at the screen of his laptop with interest.
‘Sorry,’ she said, looking back at him when she realised that she probably shouldn’t be looking at his screen. ‘The name caught my eye. What’s RoseFest?’
Simon, suddenly embarrassed, reached for his mouse. ‘Oh, nothing,’ he said. ‘Just something I’ve been thinking about to try to diversify my own interests in this place.’
