‘Ever seen a renovation after a fire?’ Isabel asked perkily.
‘Well, no, but you know what I mean. By the way, you sounded just like your nephew—your older nephew,’ she added.
Isabel laughed. ‘Heaven forbid! Although he has been pretty good lately. But if you really want to know the reason for the speed and efficiency of this renovation, it’s quite simple.’
‘Your expert management of things?’
‘Well, that too,’ Isabel conceded. ‘But it’s money. It buys the best product, best workmen and in the long run it saves money.’
‘Spoken like a true capitalist,’ Harriet said but with affection.
‘All right.’ Isabel uncovered several platters on a long counter containing snacks. There were also plates and napkins plus bottles of champagne in ice buckets and gleaming glassware in amongst glorious vases of flowers.
‘How many people have you asked?’ Damien enquired as he pinched a smoked salmon savoury and had his hand slapped.
‘Just the neighbours—don’t,’ Isabel replied.
‘Just the neighbours!’ Damien echoed. ‘If you mean everyone we know around here that could be twenty to thirty.’
‘Twenty-five. When has that ever been a problem?’ Isabel enquired with her arms akimbo.
‘Beloved, I was merely thinking that you must have done an awful lot of work. And I happen to know you don’t like it.’
‘Ah. I gave someone a trial run. She’s applied for the cook’s position. No, she’s not here now,’ she said as Damien looked around, ‘but the proof will be in the pudding. There’s plenty more to eat.’
One good thing about this party—people had been especially asked not to dress up since it was a kitchen party. So Harriet had been happy to attend in jeans and a lilac jumper. She’d been just as happy to leave after an hour although everyone else seemed to be content to stay on.
But it was a hollow feeling she encountered when she was upstairs in the flat. Hollow and lonely—hollow, ruffled and restless. And all due to watching Damien at his best.
Damien fascinating his neighbours with a blend of wit, seriousness, humour and setting not a few feminine pulses fluttering.
One of them was Penny Tindall, although she’d fought to hide it, Harriet thought with some scorn.
She almost immediately took herself to task for this uncharitable thought, not only uncharitable towards Penny but investing herself with a superiority she did not possess. If she did she wouldn’t be feeling miserable, lonely, stirred up and generally like crying herself to sleep all on Damien Wyatt’s account, would she?
But she knew herself well enough to know that sleep would not come, so she took herself downstairs, closed herself into the studio, drew the curtains and sat down on a high stool. She’d just finished notating a beautiful ivory chess set and she pushed it aside to study an object she wasn’t all too sure about.
It resembled some giant curved tooth set on a brass base and embellished with scrimshaw of African wildlife—an elephant, a rhino, a lion, a cheetah and a buffalo.
She was handling it, turning it this way and that, when the door clicked open and Damien stood there.