Page 34 (2/2)

Carly said nothing She had done her best not to let Lucy see how much she disliked Nick, and of course there was no way she could tell her friend why Lucy was deeply in love with her new husband, and Carly kne much it would hurt her to learn that Nick had actually co him into the business

‘Oh!’ The pretty young girl looked shocked and almost dropped the telephone receiver

‘It’s the Duke of Ryle,’ she told Lucy theatrically, in a cut-glass upper-class English voice ‘And he wants to speak to you’

Lucy rolled her eyes ‘Don’t disappear, there’s so important I need to discuss with you,’ she told Carly quickly, before saying cheerfully, ‘Uncle Charles—how lovely How is Aunt Jane?’

Sirl, Carly edged her way past the overflowing desks in the outer office and into her s in relief as she stepped into her own circle of peace

A note on her desk caught her eye and she grinned as she read it

BEWARE—Lucy is in major panic mode—Jules

The three of theether, and Carly knew that Jules,

like her, had been extremely dubious at first when Lucy had told theanisation company

But Lucy could be very persuasive when she wanted to be, and since—as Jules had pointed out—neither of thee trust fund, could afford to both set up the business and pay them a respectable salary, they simply could not refuse

Now, three years later and much to her own astonishment, Carly had been forced to adh it had the potential to beco as she continued to insist that they kept a firs

‘Come back!’

‘Jules!’

‘So, how did last night go?’

Carly grimaced expressively ‘Well, let’s just say that the tabloid journalist who snapped Mike Lucas with one hand down the front of the Honourable Seraphina Ordley’s Matthew Willia my far less worthy, five-year-old second-hand Armani silk-clad breast will by now have realised his ’s major shareholder in a poseBrother”’

‘Ordley?’ Jules randdaughter, Julia knew Burke’s Peerage inside out ‘It has been said that the Harlowes’ motto should be “As in name, so in action” It’s a Charles II title,’ Jules explained ‘He handed them out like sweets to his cast-off ,’ she accused Carly

‘Neither would you be if you had been there last night’

‘Oh As bad as that, was it?’

When Carly made no verbal response, but instead siise I should have been the one to go with them, I know, and I backed out and left you to do it for rab your boob, Carly? What did you do?’

‘I re us a profit of £6,000’

‘Ah’

‘And then I dropped a full bottle of Cristal on his balls’

‘Oh!’

‘It wasn’t funny, Jules,’ she protested, when her friend started to laugh ‘I love Lucy to bits andme in her plans—like when she decided to set up this business But when it comes

to events like last night’s…’

‘It was one of Nick’s, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Carly agreed tersely

‘And the weekend—did you et time to see…them?’

Carly frowned The three of them were so close that there were no secrets between therained deeply within her

Jules—or the Honourable Julia Fellowes, to give her her correct title—touched her gently on the arm, and Carly shook away her own reticence

‘It was dreadful,’ she told her simply ‘Even now I don’t think they’ve really taken it in I felt so so sorry for the that ith it—and the prestige living there gave them was very important to them And now this’

‘Well, at least thanks to you they’ve got a roof over their heads’

‘The Dower House’ Carly pulled a face ‘They hate living there’

‘What? When I think of how you’ve beggared yourself to get a e and buy it from the estate for them—oh, honestly, Carly’

‘I ner lifestyle, but I’ve hardly beggaredrent-free in one of the poshest parts of London I’ve got a job I love, all the travel I could possibly want…’

She had balked initially at Jules’s generous offer that the three of the Jules, Carly, and Jules’s notorious ‘I’ a bad day and I need to shop’ habit Other people ate chocolate, or roith their ht shoes