“Yes, really. I was right there, placing the new flower arrangements, and saw it all. He was talking to Ricardo at the registration desk when the duchess swept in, interrupted them, and demanded a room. Calderon stepped aside so that Ricardo could assist her, but when Ricardo told her she had to pay her previous bill before he could offer her a room, she tore him to bits. Calderon jumped into the fray, and she turned her ire on him. I thought you’d want to know.”
“Quite right,” she applauded, hooking her arm through Kay’s and starting for the door. “Come on, Kay. I’ve simply got to see this.”
“You’re looking terribly gleeful, Delia,” Kay commented, allowing herself to be hauled down the corridor at what was almost a run, with Michel following close on their heels.
“I suppose I am,” Delia admitted, unrepentant, as they turned the corner and entered the lobby. “It’s a flaw in my character, I confess, but I do love it when I turn out to be right.”
Simon’s own hotels ran like well-oiled machinery, and he was determined to see that the Savoy did the same. But as the Duchess of Moreland dressed down the poor reception clerk, the Savoy, and himin withering tones, Simon appreciated that changing things around here was going to require more on his part than mere determination.
“I realize,” he said the moment he could get a word in, “that this new way of doing things is a bit disconcerting, Your Grace—I mean, Duchess,” he corrected at once, remembering the rules of etiquette his newfound position required only after seeing the duchess’s mouth twist with contempt at his faux pas.
Cursing the entire ridiculous slew of aristocratic rules that now governed his life, Simon planted a firm but polite smile on his face and persevered. “Perhaps you would care to accompany me to my office?” he suggested, well aware that every eye in the lobby was upon them. “That way we can discuss—”
“I see no need to be shuttled off to some little cubbyhole,” she said haughtily. “Nor do I see the need for any discussion. I merely require a suite for the next two nights until I depart for Paris, where theMéditerrannée Expressshall take me to the Riviera. If you will kindly comply with this simple request, we can end this most unpleasant encounter.”
Simon, who had already explained the hotel’s new policy three times in the most delicate fashion he could manage, decided it was time to be blunt. “That will not be possible, Duchess, until you pay your bill and make the required deposit.”
The duchess was a frail, elderly woman, but her eyes were imperious, her manner supremely confident, and though Simon had little understanding of and even less patience with the aristocracy, he couldn’t help admiring the way they stubbornly clung to the notion of their superiority. “Are you refusing to oblige me, Lord Calderon?”
“The Savoy is not a bank, Duchess, and we will no longer be granting credit to those who have a history of not paying their debts in a prompt fashion. If you were to pay the balance you already owe, then of course we can—”
“How dare you?” The duchess’s jewel-like eyes narrowed, and he knew that if they were living a few centuries ago, he’d be seized by guards, dragged away, and hurled off the nearest rampart. Fortunately for him, this was 1898, and they were not in some medieval castle.
He gave a slight shrug, his polite smile still firmly in place. “It is my job to dare such things, Duchess. As I have already explained, when you have paid your outstanding bill and have put down a deposit on your pending reservation, I will be happy to oblige you with the finest suite the Savoy has available.”
“I have no intention of rewarding your insults in such a way. I shall be informing all my friends of the Savoy’s outrageous new policies. Furthermore, I shall go to Claridge’s. At Claridge’s, the managers are not fueled by naked ambition. They know their place. And,” she added, glancing over him with disdain, “they stay there. They do not presume to elevate themselves above their birth.”
There it was. His place. Everything always came back to that, didn’t it? His new title notwithstanding, to people like the duchess, he was a nobody from nowhere and he always would be. He’d accepted that fact of life a long time ago, and yet, somehow, the duchess’s words succeeded in flicking him on the raw.
Still, it wouldn’t do to show it, and Simon gave a nonchalant shrug. “That, of course, is your prerogative. But,” he added as she turned away, “if you would be so kind as to tender payment for your outstanding bill before you go, it would be much appreciated.”
The duchess, unsurprisingly, did not comply with that request. Not even bothering with a backward glance, she marched toward the exit doors, oblivious to every avid stare.
As Simon watched her depart, he was reminded of another imperious female who’d stalked away from him a week ago in a blaze of offended aristocratic sensibilities.
Your requirements will be regarded as an insult, and peers will go elsewhere.
As much as he hated to admit it, the days following Lady Stratham’s prediction had proven her right, for several members of the ton had already broken with the Savoy over the new policies. He thought he’d been prepared for that, but with Lady Stratham’s words ringing in his ears as he watched the duchess walk out the doors, he felt a sudden, unwelcome glimmer of self-doubt.
In instituting the new credit policies for guests, he’d been absolutely certain that any fury would quickly pass, and that the lack of quality hotels in London would lure people back. Even if the board were forced to fire Ritz, he had been confident that eventually everything would work itself out.
You’re remarkably sure of yourself.
He had been sure, true enough, but what if he was wrong? What if they did not return? What if others followed in their wake and things kept getting worse? Aside from the galling prospect of Lady Stratham crowing about it, he’d be letting Helen and Richard down. He’d also be tossed from the board, his compensation in stock shares would not be paid, and his chance to finally gain a foothold in a London hotel would be lost. And he’d still be trying to lay his father’s ghost to rest.
Simon rubbed four fingers across his forehead, feeling a headache coming on, and he couldn’t help wondering if he could have avoided Lady Stratham’s predictions by being less blunt.
Tact seems to be an alien concept for you.
Another accusation of hers he could not refute at this point. He preferred to call a spade a spade, but as he watched the duchess sail out the exit like a victorious battleship, he appreciated that in the rarefied air of the Savoy, blunt speaking was costly.
If you converse with our aristocratic clients in the same odious way you speak to me… we’ll be broke in six months.
As more of Lady Stratham’s words from a week ago echoed through his mind again, Simon muttered an oath.
“Having trouble?”
Those sweetly murmured words penetrated his consciousness, and he turned to find the very object of his thoughts standing a few feet away, arm in arm with a friend, a tiny smile curving her lush pink lips.
