Page 9 of The Battle of the Bookshops
Now here he was. Roman had been summoned to refill the treasure chest and, in doing so, gradually take up his new role as the patriarch of the Montbeau family, whether he liked it or not.
There had been endless rows since he had returned. It was the old, old story of the head of the family ceding power, reluctantly,to his successor, Roman mused. Young buck taking over from old buck. He sighed as he surveyed the busy scene and a heavy weight settled in his stomach. He was supposed to want this. It was his birthright, although it felt to him more like a curse. And his mother pushing suitable young women at him every five minutes wasn’t helping.
When he had looked around for something he could make his own, the opportunity to deliver the brutal but necessary coup de grâce to Bootles and launch a new venture in its place had been too good to miss. Okay, so it didn’thaveto have been a bookshop, but he genuinely had no desire to cause unnecessary pain to the Capelthorne family. Business was business, and it was just that the premises were perfect for books, he acknowledged to himself, looking around him. Sparkling, new, and expensively fitted out, the shop looked stunning. It was light, bright, and modern but also graciously steeped in history, with its stunning balcony curving around the top floor, its soaring high ceilings and vast, twinkling art deco chandelier. It was the opposite of the dimly lit, labyrinthine, crooked, and cozy Capelthorne’s across the way.
Whether this Capelthorne woman, Jules, knew it or not, Capelthorne’s was already doomed, Roman reminded himself with a twinge of regret. He gave it six months, but even if the competition from Portneath Books hadn’t already finished it off, the financial equivalent of a hand grenade was already primed and set to explode. Unfortunately, when it did, that was going to be the fault of the Montbeau family too. Yep, the ancient feud was set to continue, which was a shame. He had surreptitiously inquired about her name all those years ago, pretending his questions were of no consequence but attracting teasing from his mates all the same. He found out she was a Capelthorne, and at the time, it had just made her more intriguing. And now here she was. In the normal course of events, Roman might even have made a play...He had only had his fleeting memories of her as a teenager to go by until the other night, but now their meeting at the train station was haunting him. She had become even more beautiful than he remembered. She was spiky too, but that was fine, he decided with a smile. Unlike his father, he had no interest in yes-women. Roman liked a challenge, and Jules, he suspected with some pleasure, was a worthy adversary.
Not that he was short of opportunities for romance, if he wanted it, he thought, watching a tall, slender woman with a waterfall of shiny blond hair introduce herself charmingly to an equally polished brunette wearing quietly expensive clothes. This must be one of the local influencers his glamorous right-hand woman, Cally, had identified. Cally was an asset. She had excellent credentials in the social media side of marketing; in fact, there seemed no end to her skills. A smart, Ivy League–educated American beauty, Cally had been quick to accept Roman’s invitation to return to Devon with him from New York. And she had made no secret of being prepared to take things to a more personal level... Roman, uncharacteristically, had, so far, failed to take her up on the offer. It was good to know the option existed, he admitted to himself, accepting a drink from a member of the waitstaff and catching the eye of the mayor with a smile.
But he couldn’t afford to be distracted by women. Not now. Dismissing thoughts of JulesandCally from his mind in favor of greeting his guests, he dived into the fray. Minutes later, chatting to Portneath’s suave, blue-suited MP about his work in the States, he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder and heard his father’s booming voice:
“My boy telling you how it’s done?” he inquired. “Chip off the old block, don’t you think?”
The MP made some sycophantic noises, and Roman tried hard to arrange his face into a pleasant, neutral demeanor. It wasn’tthat he didn’t share a desire with his father to win at business—he was hungry enough for that, all right—but his father was content with success only if it included annihilating the opposition. He was spiteful. A bully.
In that sense, Roman told himself, he wasnothinglike his father.
It was late, but Jules was too wired to sleep. She was curled up at the foot of Flo’s bed in the little office, her hands wrapped around a mug of hot chocolate. With Flo regarding her kindly over the rim of her own mug, Jules pressed her hand to her chest to soothe her suddenly pounding heart. It had been doing it all day, whenever she relived the moment the hoardings came down, followed by her brief but fierce row with Roman.
Aunt Flo raised an eyebrow in gentle inquiry, and Jules summoned a wobbly smile. “I’m fine,” she said. “I just keep thinking... we’ve got to find a way to fight back.”
“Of course,” Aunt Flo began. “But... look, darling, the last thing I want you to think is that I am giving up—”
“Good. Because you’re not,” Jules insisted. “Over my dead body.”
“More likely mine, statistically,” Aunt Flo observed prosaically. “I think we need to be reasonable and not let this enmity between the two families get in the way of making sensible commercial decisions.”
Jules wasn’t listening. “He didn’t need to open a bookshop,” she burst out, not for the first time that day. “I mean, why a bookshop? That’s deliberate provocation. That’s war.”
“I know, I know... but this shop’s not been going well for a while now,” Aunt Flo reasoned. “Even if the Montbeaus do deal the final blow, one can’t blame them entirely if Capelthorne’s has reached the end of the line anyhow. We have been underinvestedfor a very long time. We need new systems, a thorough refit, more staff...”
“I love the shop just exactly the way it is,” protested Jules. “I don’t want it to change.”
“Unfortunately, not enough customers feel the same way as you.” Aunt Flo smiled sadly, putting her hand over Jules’s and giving it a comforting squeeze. “If it’s time, it’s time.”
“Well, what if it isn’t?” declared Jules. “I’mhere—I’ve got nowhere else to be, not now that I’ve lost my job anyhow—and I’m not going to let that horrible man beat me. Us.”
Aunt Flo’s head drooped in acknowledgment and what looked like deep fatigue. She was an elderly woman, Jules remembered with a twinge of remorse.
“I’m just saying I can help,” she explained less stridently. “All is not lost.”
And even now that she had been fired, she should still really go back to London shortly and start a new job search. The idea filled her with gloom. She had not forgotten her boss’s habit of scuppering the careers of people she disliked. It was a legitimate concern.
They both drank their hot chocolate in silence for a minute, lost in their own thoughts.
“Tell me about the Montbeau and Capelthorne feud,” said Jules at last. “Whyarethe families at war? I mean, obviously, I know whyIam...”
Aunt Flo sighed and settled herself more comfortably against the headboard of the little bed, causing Merlin, who was on her lap, to dig in his claws crossly. She stroked him placatingly as she began:
“The two families have been living side by side in this area for centuries,” she said. “Both were aristocratic, although many would argue the Capelthornes, by the beginning of the nineteenthcentury at least, were the more highly regarded of the two, being particularly beloved of the prince regent, so the story goes. In fact, you could call the nineteenth century the heyday of the Capelthornes, although, however classy, they never seemed to quite reach the level of conspicuous wealth enjoyed by the Montbeaus. Anyhow, if anything, the families were allies at first. The rift opened up more than two hundred years ago. It was 1814, and Edward Capelthorne, son and heir, was courting Lucinda, the oldest daughter and heiress of Charles, Earl of Havenbury, up at Middlemass Hall. Both families approved of the match, and an engagement announcement was imminent. And then that Christmas, Edward’s old schoolmate Troy Montbeau came home fresh from the Napoleonic Wars, and he’d had a good war.
“So, there he was, suddenly back on the scene, a dashing, brave, handsome soldier. He quickly made it clear he was interested in Lucinda himself. Well, of course, Edward Capelthorne felt utterly betrayed by his old friend and was unable to see such a clearly stated intention as anything other than an affront to Lucinda’s honor and reputation. Hotheadedly, and to his mother’s horror, he challenged Troy Montbeau to a duel at dawn.” Aunt Flo’s eyes were fixed dreamily on the wall above Jules’s head as she lost herself in the tale she was spinning.
“What happened?” prompted Jules, enthralled.
“The outcome was bound to be disastrous, of course,” Flo went on, recollecting herself, “with two beautiful young men hell-bent on destroying each other, but on that particular day it was Edward Capelthorne who was fatally injured. The Capelthorne family was devastated, as was Lucinda, who, eaten up with guilt at being the cause of the affray, refused Troy’s advances. History relates that she ended up dying an old maid decades later.
“That tragedy marked the beginning of a seemingly endless period of disaster for the Capelthorne family’s fortunes. Youcouldsay it’s a litany of disasters that continues to this day: untimely deaths, faltering inheritances, poor business deals, and a gradual fall from consequence. In one particularly insalubrious episode your—what would he be?—great-great-great-grandfather Rory Capelthorne, a hopeless gambling addict, squandered an enormous inheritance in the course of just a few years. There was a fateful night—it would have been around a hundred years ago, give or take—Rory was drunk, as usual, and catastrophically lost a game of cards to his Montbeau contemporary. On the turn of a card, he lost the majority of the Capelthorne holdings here in Portneath, because,” she broke off to explain, “historically the Montbeaus have always owned the east side of the high street, and the Capelthornes, the west side—”
