Without hesitation he reached around her and opened the front door. Sunlight flooded into them. She stepped outside and paused to wait while he pulled the door shut behind them.
‘Where shall we go?’ he asked as he came to stand beside her.
‘The—the Bressingham,’ she responded unevenly. ‘I n-need to see what you’ve done to it…’
CHAPTER TWELVE
FROM the moment she stepped through its heavy oak and glass doors, Samantha felt the tears threatening to fall once again. Beside her, André stood silent and still, waiting for her first response.
‘It’s finished,’ she whispered.
‘With the greatest test yet to come.’ He smiled briefly, following her as she walked forward until she was standing in the middle of the foyer where she began to turn in a slow circle, taking in every dearly loved, perfectly reproduced detail as she did so.
‘Nothing’s changed.’ She breathed out eventually, in a fantastical voice that drew another mocking smile. ‘Okay.’ She allowed. ‘So everything has changed. But…’
She was truly overwhelmed by what she was seeing. In fact she found she couldn’t quite believe it. The last time she had been standing right here the whole place had been reduced to a building site. She had not long since buried her father, and it had felt like the end of a special era.
Now everything was back right where it should be. The same look, the same smell, the same aged patina on the same pieces of oak, felled centuries ago and since preserved by layers of lovingly applied beeswax, many of which she had applied herself. Even the same lazy old staircase ambled up to the mezzanine dining hall, she saw, whereas the last time she’d been here there had been only a great ugly hole.
Drawn towards it by a power stronger than will, she walked up a few steps with fingers trailing the rich dark wood banister as if she was making contact with a long-lost friend; then she turned to take in the scene from this new position.
Born in the hotel, she had lived here and worked here from the time she had been old enough to carry a plate without dropping it. Her soul resided here in this great old building. Her birth name hung above its doors. She knew every quaint nook and cranny, every piece of wood, every vase and ornament or gold-framed painting on the walls.
And everything, everything was back where it should be.
‘So…what do you think?’ André prompted.
It was like asking a new mother what she thought of her baby. ‘It’s…perfect,’ she whispered.
Oh, she wasn’t so lost to sentimentality to ignore the fact that there were, in truth, many changes. Having felt the weight of the two-inch-thick health and safety report, she was well aware that, behind this outer dressing, the hotel had been virtually gutted and rebuilt. But what had risen from the rubble turned her heart over.
‘I can’t believe it,’ she said, referring to what the architects and designers had managed to achieve.
‘Why?’ André’s deeply dry voice queried. ‘Did you expect me to put the Visconte stamp on it the moment your back was turned?’
If nothing else, his remark made her focus on him for the first time since they’d arrived here. He was still standing where she had left him, a lean, languid figure wearing an impeccably cut suit and a cynical smile.
Her own expression changed, cooled and hardened fractionally. ‘I would rather do this by myself if you’re bent on spoiling it for me,’ she said coolly, watching his cynical look change to a grimace in acknowledgment of her chilly set-down, and she looked away from him again.
‘Who took over the project after I—left?’ she asked after a moment.
He began walking towards her. ‘The whole thing came to a halt for a while,’ he confessed. ‘Then the contractors starting yelling at me to let them get on with it, so…’ He shrugged, paused to look around him. ‘The final result is pretty impressive,’ he opined. ‘I’m pleased that you are pleased with it.’
‘Is the rest of it as impressive?’
He declined the invitation to give an opinion. ‘I’ll let you be the judge of that.’
‘You didn’t answer my question,’ she said as he drew level with her.
‘Which one was that?’ he posed.
‘About who took over the project after I left it.’
‘Only one other person was qualified to do so,’ he drawled with a self-mocking smile which sent her eyes wide in surprise.
‘You mean—you took it over?’
‘Don’t sound so shocked.’ He scolded. ‘Being the very busy, hotshot tycoon does not absolve me of the right to a few small pleasures in life.’