Forget Me Knot Read Free Page B

horns with my mother, all hell will break loose. I promise.”
    He came over to the stove, where she was stirring the spaghetti sauce, and put his arms round her waist. “Say youwon’t goad her… please.” He started kissing the back of her neck.
    “I don’t know.”
    More kisses.
    “Oh, all right. If it’s going to make her happy. The last thing I want to do is create waves. God, I sound like my mother.”
    “Good girl.” He began opening a bottle of wine. “You know, I haven’t hunted for years—not since I moved to London. In some ways I miss it. You really feel at one with the countryside.”
    “I’m sure the fox feels the same,” Abby said, sprinkling a pinch of dried herbs into the meat sauce. “As the hounds tear it apart, you can imagine it thinking, ‘This hurts like hell, but, hey, at least I feel at one with the countryside.’”
    He ignored the comment. “Plus,” he said, grinning, “I look absolutely fabulous—don’t you know—in the red coat and cravat.”
    He was laughing, sending himself up, but Abby was in no doubt that he meant it. Toby looked good in anything, and he knew it. With his tall, lean frame and broad shoulders—not to mention the thick blonde hair, cobalt eyes and patrician jaw—Toby had been put on this earth to wear clothes.
    But it wasn’t simply his coloring and build that made him look so good in everything he wore. When it came to matters sartorial, Toby had an unfailing instinct about what worked and what didn’t.
    The first time she’d met him—at a posh charity dinner organized by a friend of Soph’s—he was standing at the bar, looking knee-tremblingly magnificent in his eveningsuit and black tie. Roger Moore in his James Bond prime, she thought. He was drinking what looked like Campari and flirting with three or four braying, hair-flicking Fulham women—all clearly smitten. Abby couldn’t help but be smitten, too, but upper-class, Roger Moore look-alikes were way out of her league.
    Then, while she was waiting to be served at the bar, an elderly woman bumped into her and managed to spill not one but two glasses of champagne over her brand-new dress. In an instant, Toby was at her side, proffering towels and soda water gleaned from the bartender. He must have spent fifteen minutes helping her get the stains out of her dress. During that time, something clicked between them. So much so that, when dinner was announced, Toby persuaded one of the waiters to squeeze in an extra place at Abby’s table. They didn’t stop talking all evening. He had her in hysterics, impersonating some of his more outrageous titled relatives—including a duke who kept a urinal behind a screen in his dining room.
    They’d still been talking and laughing when he dropped her home at two in the morning.
    “But how do you know he’s an aristocrat and not one of those posh con men you read about?” Soph had said to Abby the next morning. Soph was petrified that Toby was about to suggest whisking her friend off to some romantic Far East destination and that Abby would wake up one morning minus a kidney.
    Abby was determined not to give in to Soph’s paranoia by Googling Toby. In the end she didn’t have to. The next day, as she was flicking through an old copy of Tatler at the nail salon round the corner, she came across a picture of Toby and a couple of male friends attending a birthdaybash of some aristocrat she’d never heard of. The picture caption referred to Toby by name.
    Over the next few weeks he wooed her with dinners at exclusive eateries. While the rest of the world had to book months in advance, Toby never had a problem getting a table at Le Caprice or Pétrus. During the day he would forward her jokes and cartoons from the Internet. Thought this would make you laugh. Hope you’re having a good day. Missing you. Can’t wait until tonight. XXX Toby . The jokes always did make her laugh.
    It wasn’t long before small intimacies developed between them. For