Her gaze darted around the pub before resting resolutely on him. “I think, perhaps, it’s what I can do for you.” She gave a very small smile, which Owen answered with a grin. Posh, this one, with a voice like the queen, yet skittish too. Clearly she was slumming it here.
“Is that so?” he said, raising his eyebrows. “I’m all ears.”
“Very well, then.” She came closer, taking an expensive-looking bag of navy leather off one shoulder, embossed with a gold label Owen vaguely recognised from the gentry of the village. Expensive, like the rest of her. “I represent Henry Trent, the Earl of Stokeley and the CEO of Willoughby Holidays Charitable Foundation—”
“You represent?” Owen cocked his head. “Are you his solicitor?” Was Henry starting to swing his weight around? He’d been earl for over a year, after all. Maybe he wanted to put his mark on the village as well as the manor.
A faint blush touched her cheeks with pink, making her look even lovelier. “No, I’m his executive assistant.”
“Ah.” He folded his arms across his chest as the woman minced her way towards the bar. “What’s he wanting, then?” He kept his voice friendly as he always did, but he couldn’t keep a faint, instinctive tension from banding his temples.
Owen didn’t know Henry Trent, because the great man had never deigned to talk to the likes of him, but he’d seen him buzzing through the village in his Jag, or cutting a ribbon at the summer fete, larking around as lord of the manor. None of it particularly impressed him, although he played along, as everyone else did, because they enjoyed the fact that the new earl and his lovely little wife had settled at Willoughby Manor instead of using it as a holiday home.
His friend Jace, who worked for the man, had told him he wasn’t so bad after all, but Owen had yet to be convinced, and he had every bit of reason to be as suspicious of the landed class as Jace once had, before Henry had married Alice James and, according to some, softened a bit.
All this flashed through his mind as he kept his smile wide and waited for Little Miss Prim to speak. Her lips pursed as she stayed where she was, in front of the bar, her bag clutched to her chest as if she thought he might snatch it off her. “You sound as if you don’t like him,” she observed.
How had she sussed that one out? Owen shrugged one shoulder. “I like everybody, as long as they pay their tab. But Lord Stokeley doesn’t come in here much, so I don’t know whether he’s good for a pint or not.”
Her lips pursed even further, drawn up like the strings of a purse. “Of course he is.”
Owen gave another grin. “If you say so, Miss…?”
“David. Emily David.”
“Right then, Emily. Do you want to take a seat and tell me what this is all about?” He nodded towards a stool, which she looked at with that now-familiar slight lip curl of distaste. Admittedly, it wasn’t the cleanest place to park a bum, but it should do well enough.
“All right.” She perched on the absolute edge of the stool, looking as if she could topple off at any moment and deeply uncomfortable besides. Goodness, but she was more than a bit of a ballerina.
“So?” Owen arched an eyebrow, waiting, curious now. What could Henry Trent possibly want with him?
“Willoughby Holidays will be holding a fundraiser up at the manor in late June,” Emily began. “And as CEO, Henry Trent, along with his wife, Alice, would like all the independent businesses of Wychwood-on-Lea to take part.”
“Would they?” Something in his tone must have alerted Emily, because she frowned.
“It’s their hope, not a command,” she said a bit sharply, and Owen merely shrugged. He hadn’t said it was either. “I have the details here…” She reached for her bag again, fumbling a bit, because she seemed to have some aversion to placing it on the bar. Owen just kept watching and waiting, a smile playing with his lips. He realised he was rather enjoying her discomfort. “Here are all the details.” She pushed several paper-clipped sheets across the bar. “The current plan is that Willoughby Holidays will provide a tent and tables for serving, but you’ll have to bring anything else you might need… We’re asking for businesses to give fifty per cent of their profits to the charity, if possible, but there will be no charge for attending.”
“Sounds fair enough, I suppose.” Owen glanced down at the sheets but didn’t pick them up. “All the businesses in Wychwood… Does that include The Three Pennies?”
“We’re hoping so, although I haven’t spoken to them yet.”
“Because I have to tell you, that’s more of Henry’s crowd than The Drowned Sailor. But you’ve probably realised that.”
Emily frowned as her eyes, a clear blue grey fringed with luxuriant lashes and expertly made up, scanned his face. “As I said, Henry and Alice are most hopeful that everyone will take part. The fundraiser is meant to be inclusive.”
“Very kind of them I’m sure.” He meant to sound genial, but he thought a touch of acid had seeped in. Emily drew her slender shoulders back in something like affront.
“I do think it would be a very good opportunity for a place like this—”
Owen let out a crack of laughter that made her blink. “A place like this?”
“A pub,” she stated quickly, but Owen knew she hadn’t meant that, just as he knew The Drowned Sailor was more than a little run-down, the only food on offer peanuts and pork scratchings, the most expensive wine coming in at eight ninety-nine a bottle. But that was how he liked it. Wychwood-on-Lea already had one gastro pub with its craft ales and vegan meals. It didn’t need another, and he wouldn’t change this place for the world—or for Willoughby Manor.
“Right,” he said easily,
