An Unforgettable Man

With the exception of the PA, all the other staff appeared to think very highly of Gideon.

Courage prided herself on her professionalism where her work was concerned, and by the time Gideon returned she intended to have familiarised herself thoroughly with the demands of her new role.

After working in a series of busy five-star hotel complexes running one house, however large, should not present too many problems to her. But having to please a variety of guests who, no matter how demanding, would inevitably move on, was not like having to please one individual man who would not.

A swift check of Gideon’s diary for the next month had shown her that in addition to the dinner party he had asked her to organise he would also be entertaining a small party of Japanese businessmen for four days, a group of officials from the Californian company who were consulting him about re-landscaping the large tracts of land devastated by fire, and a Kuwaiti prince and his entourage, as well as making several trips abroad himself.

This afternoon Courage planned to leave early, so that she could do some personal shopping before accompanying her grandmother on her first appointment with the heart specialist. They had both already been warned that before an operation could take place her grand-mother would have to undergo a series of exploratory tests.

‘All this fuss,’ her grandmother had grumbled, ‘and it’s not even as though there is anything seriously wrong with me. I just get a bit tired and dizzy sometimes, that’s all.’

‘Think how much better you’re going to feel afterwards,’ Courage had coaxed her, trying not to let her own real feelings show.

In the morning, Courage was going to London to interview the woman who she hoped would take Alphonse’s place, and then in the afternoon she and the woman in charge of the team of cleaners were going to go through the linen cupboards and allocate to each of the house’s ten bedrooms its own specific supply of bedlinen and towels.

Gideon had employed a firm of interior designers to redecorate and refurbish the house and they had done an excellent job but, as the cleaning team had complained to her, there were simply not enough changes of bedding and towels.

‘So far Mr Reynolds has only had a few guests staying here, but if the house was ever full…’

It was the same thing with the china cupboards. The interior designers had provided Gideon with an exquisite eighteenth-century dinner service, plus a good supply of basic, everyday crockery, but there were no individual breakfast sets, for instance, so guests could not be provided with breakfast in their bedrooms.

Since Gideon had given her carte blanche to purchase and order whatever she thought was necessary, Courage intended to take him at his word. There would be no point in telling him that his Japanese guests could not have breakfast in their rooms because they didn’t have sufficient china and she had not wanted to buy any without his approval—she could already imagine just what his reaction would be.