An Eligible Bachelor Read Free Page A

project.
    After her husband’s death four years before, it had soon become apparent to Madeleine that keeping Eversleigh Manor running just for herself was quite ridiculous. With Tony alive, there had been some point. But now her charming, absent-minded, genius of a husband had gone, the house felt as redundant and useless as she herself did. Its rooms echoed with emptiness. But Madeleine wasn’t one to be defeated. She was determined to find some way to suppress the dreariness of grief. It was that or a bottle of paracetamol, and although sometimes she went to bed with a dread of waking up, she wasn’t one for melodramatic gestures. She was a coper; a doer. She needed a challenge, a purpose, for herself and the house, something that would bring them both back to life.
    Friends urged her to do bed and breakfast. People would fall over themselves to stay the night in a manor, they insisted. But for Madeleine this didn’t have quite enough glamour or cachet. It smacked of drudgery, watery poached eggs and bed-changing and having to be polite to people you couldn’t stand the sight of. She had in mind something with more impact; something with a bit of style. After much deliberation, she hit on the idea of country house weekends. It was the perfect compromise, allowing her to live unhindered during the week and then pull out all the stops for forty-eight hours. Guests – a maximum of twelve – would arrive on the Fridaynight and enjoy a simple kitchen supper. The men would spend Saturday shooting, fishing or at the races. The ladies would spend the day shopping in Cheltenham or being pampered at a local day spa. Saturday evening would be a magnificent five-course dinner in the dining room, with fine wines and Havana cigars, and guests entering into the spirit of the occasion, with the men in black tie and the women in evening dresses. The very best of everything would be served, from Loch Fyne oysters to Prestat after-dinner chocolates. The shining mahogany table in the dining room would be laden with gleaming silver, glittering glass, the huge five-armed candelabra dripping beeswax, Waterford rosebowls stuffed with magnificent blooms, their scent mingling with the smoke from the fireplace. Then on Sunday, the guests would be gently nursed back to reality with a late breakfast, the newspapers, a roaring fire and the offer of a place in the family pew if any of them were in need of salvation before taking their departure.
    Simple but opulent. Unashamed but tasteful luxury. Live like a lord for a weekend. A taste of the life that people craved, that they’d read about in Wodehouse and Mitford and seen in Gosford Park . It was an ideal fortieth birthday celebration, or anniversary, or an excuse for well-off thirty-something couples to escape their responsibilities for the weekend and totally indulge. Of course, it wouldn’t come cheap, but Madeleine had a shrewd idea that she could get away with charging outrageous prices, as the sort of people she was likely to attract got a kick out of being thoroughly profligate. She knew it was new money she was going to be entertaining, and that morelikely than not they wouldn’t be sure which of the knives and forks they should be using, but she didn’t mind exploiting the nouveaux riches, not at all. And if she could teach them something, so much the better.
    So when the location manager sat down in the kitchen at Eversleigh and outlined exactly how much she stood to make, Madeleine grasped the opportunity with both hands. It was serendipitous. While Lady Jane Investigates was being filmed, the rest of the house could undergo a refurbishment financed by the hefty location fee. The film crew only wanted to utilize the exterior and the main reception rooms – the magnificent hall and stairs, the drawing room, the dining room and, for each episode’s denouement, the library – and part of the deal was that they would decorate those to Madeleine’s order, as well as leaving the