‘Was anyone hurt?’
Damien looked at him, his expression sardonic. ‘The dog was retrieved by its owner completely unscathed. All she broke were her glasses.’
He paused as he recalled the melee after the accident and the curious fact—curious from the point of view that it should have stuck in his mind—that Harriet Livingstone had possessed a pair of rather stunning blue eyes.
‘That’s not too bad,’ Arthur murmured.
‘That’s not all,’ Damien remarked acidly. ‘I broke my collarbone and the damage to my car was, well—’ he shrugged ‘—the whole exercise cost me a small fortune.’
Arthur forbore to make the obvious comment that a small fortune would hardly make the slightest dent in the very large fortune Damien Wyatt owned.
But Damien continued with palpable sarcasm, ‘Therefore, dear Arthur, if there’s any possibility it’s one and the same girl, you do see there’s no way I could let her loose here.’ He removed his feet from the desk and sat up.
Arthur Tindall discovered he could certainly see something cool, determined and even quite grim in Damien’s dark eyes but he also found he wasn’t prepared to give up without a fight.
Whether it was the same girl or not, it did sound like it, he had to admit, but the thing was he’d promised Penny, his young and delicious yet surprisingly manipulative wife, that he would get the Wyatt job for her friend Harriet Livingstone.
He sat forward. ‘Damien, even if she’s the same girl—although we don’t absolutely know that!—she’s good,’ he said intently. ‘She’s damn good. So’s her provenance. Your mother’s collection couldn’t be in better hands, believe me! She’s worked in one of the most prestigious art auction houses in the country.’ Arthur emphasised this with rolling eyes and a wave of his hand. ‘Her father was a noted conservator and restorer of paintings and her references are impeccable.’
‘All the same, you’ve just told me she’s vague and distracted,’ Damien said impatiently. ‘And I’ve had the woman literally run into me!’
Arthur said intensely, ‘She may be vague over other things but not about her work. I’ve found her knowledgeable on not only paintings but porcelain, ceramics, carpets, miniatures—all sorts of things. And she’s experienced in cataloguing.’
‘She sounds like a one woman antiques roadshow,’ Damien observed caustically.
‘No, but she’s the one person I could recommend who would have some familiarity with most of the odds and ends your mother collected. She’s the one person who would have some idea of their value or who to get a valuation from, some idea of whether they need restoring, whether they could be restored, who could do it if it was possible, who—’
Damien held up his hand. ‘Arthur, I get your point. But—’
‘Of course,’ Arthur interrupted, sitting back and looking magisterial, ‘if it is the same girl, there’s the distinct possibility nothing on earth would induce her to work for you.’
‘Why the hell not?’
Arthur shrugged and folded his arms over his black and yellow waistcoat. ‘I have no doubt you would have been quite scathing towards her at the time of the accident.’
Damien rubbed his jaw. ‘I did ask her,’ he said reminiscently, ‘whether she’d got her driver’s licence out of a cornflakes packet.’