Page 14 of The Duke Who Saved Christmas
And if it was an emergency sent via email, then it wasn’t much of an emergency at all.
Gramps’ car wasn’t in the driveway when I got home, and I was a little happy about that. I adored my grandparents more than anything, but I was looking forward to some time to myself. It wasn’t something I even had at home in Dorset thanks to the house share I lived in, so I was all about this.
I put away the few groceries I’d purchased, making sure to keep my treats purely for myself. Gramps was a sucker for Maltesers, and if I left them out, he’d eat the box I bought himandmine.
Since mine was bigger, I was hiding the bugger.
I made a hot chocolate and went up to my room with my goodies. After mindlessly scrolling Netflix for five minutes, I settled on the classic that wasFriends, grabbed my laptop from the bedside table, and checked my phone.
There was an emergency voicemail from one of my June brides citing hen party drama with her mother trying to take over the plans and she needed meright now.
I sighed.
So much for that relaxing.
***
“Did you get it sorted?” Nana asked, shampooing the pig in the kitchen sink.
It was like a train wreck. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. It definitely wasn’t on my Castleton bingo card, that was for sure.
“Started to,” I replied, finally dragging my attention away from the pig salon to the freshly boiled kettle so I could make tea. “Elouise comes from an upper-class family, whereas her fiancé is more mechanic than millionaire, if you get my meaning.”
“Let me guess. Her mother is a snob?”
“Something like that,” I said vaguely. “They met at university five years ago and she fit in with his friends right away. She’s aware she has more money than them, so she wanted to keep her hen party something fun and relatively cheap, so her maid of honour decided on Blackpool.”
Nana nodded sagely. “A classic.”
“Indeed. Her mum got the invite and freaked out saying it was too ‘low brow’ for her daughter. Elouise thinks Barbados is more honeymoon than hen night. They’ve spent the last week arguing over why Elouise wants Blackpool over Barbados.”
Nana looked at me. “Does anyone want Blackpool over Barbados?”
I mean, I’d rather Barbados, but it wasn’t my hen party.
I dropped two teabags into the mugs. “Well, Elouise does,” I replied. “I believe she agreed on the condition her mother pay for the entire party of twelve to go out there, and her mum refused, so they were at a standstill. I’ve spent the entire afternoon on the phone with the maid of honour while we got the property in Blackpool locked in, and then I had to call Elouise’s mother to reason with her.”
“I can’t imagine it’s possible to reason with anyone that insane.”
This was coming from the woman who was currently rinsing shampoo off a pig with a gravy boat in the kitchen sink.
I supposed she was rather the authority on ‘insane.’
“It did take a while,” I agreed. “Eventually, I pointed out that her refusal to listen to her daughter will cause problemslonger-term and that Elouise could potentially see it as a refusal to accept her husband because of his social class.”
“Very smart.”
“Thank you. I then pointed out that Elouise had already compromised on the venue at her insistence, forgoing the place she really wanted to keep the peace, and had even agreed to delay their honeymoon because her mother’s birthday is one week after the wedding.”
Nana pulled the Beatrix Trotter from the sink and wrapped her in a towel. “Is it a big birthday?”
“Nope, not even a milestone one.”
“The audacity. What did she say to you?”
“She hung up on me, actually.” I laughed, squeezing the teabags and dropping them on the saucer we used to collect them. “She called me back thirty minutes later, apologised, and agreed that she was perhaps being slightly unreasonable.”
“That’s an understatement,” Nana replied. “At least she apologised.”
