Banished from the office and with nowhere else to go except home, I opted to try out the local pub. It was a bit classier than the local back home, but I suppose you get that when you set up shop in a royal city. I slid into a booth and checked out their range of beers. Hanging around with Brooks had refined my palate somewhat and I was curious as to what the local beers were like. XXXX Gold (Four X Gold), or ‘mangoes’ as we referred to them back home, weren’t exactly at the top of the beer chain. Brooks and his friends drank craft beers, or indie beers as they were now beginning to be known. Small breweries that produced a short run of a specific, handcrafted beer with sometimes unusual flavour combinations. Don’t get me wrong. I was still planning on getting drunk, I just thought I’d do it a little slower this time and maybe enjoy it a bit more.

When the waitress came over I order a beer paddle - a selection of five different beers with only one hundred mils in each glass. A bit like a tasting plate for beer. And because I was feeling almost human, I also ordered some potato skins with a blue cheese sauce and some hot wings. It might be a pub in a royal city, but it was still a pub with pub food. It was exactly what I needed after my meltdown this morning. While I waited for the beer and the food, I ordered a double shot of whiskey, just to get the party started.

I was glad that Freddie hadn’t accepted my resignation because, truth be told, I really did love my job and I really didn’t want to give it up. I still didn’t know how I was going to get past the whole ‘Jeanette Incident’ as I was referring to it, but however it happened, I needed to stay in Merveille. Going home was not an option - I still hadn’t cooled down enough to call my mother - there was nothing left for me there. I had cut all ties when I’d immigrated. Monticorp had been my future and I couldn’t turn my back on it because of a little heartache.

So I was staying in Merveille, keeping my job at Monticorp, and getting over Jeanette. Those were the current plans and barring something unforeseen happening, I was going to stick with the plan. I might need to sell my bike. I didn’t think I could ride it with the memory of Jeanette riding on the back of it with her arms wrapped securely around me. Or maybe I wouldn’t sell it - it was a really nice bike - but I would definitely have to buy another one to ride. Using the company car for transportation was fine, but there were times when I just needed to escape and I needed a bike for that.

My beers came, followed closely by the food, and I settled in to an afternoon of being a lush. Drink, food, sports on the television above the bar, what more could a man want? I didn’t need a woman to complete me.

Oh my God. I sounded like such a sap. Falling in love with Jeanette had changed me. I knew that if my brothers could see me now they would say that she had turned me into a whiney, sissy, girlie girl who had feelings and crap. In the world I had grown up in, men didn’t cry into their beers over women. Men didn’t whine about broken hearts and feel like their life was over because some dame walked away from them. There were plenty more fish in the sea, more stars in the sky, more grains of sand on the beach etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. The men from my childhood would more than likely go out and immediately find another woman to mask their pain. Or get into a fight. There was nothing better than soothing heartbreak by busting someone else’s jaw. Whatever the chosen outlet, drink would most definitely be involved.

So, I had the drink but none of the other options held any appeal to me. I didn’t feel like getting into a fight and the thought of being with another woman turned my stomach. I was being a misery guts and getting all mopey and that would have to stop - for my own sanity if nothing else. But I would allow myself tonight. One night of my own special pity party and then I would move on… just like Jeanette had done. But for tonight I would let myself feel whatever it was that I felt with no recriminations.

“Whatya doin’?” Elise said as she slid into the booth across from me.

“Getting drunk,” I replied as I sculled the first beer on the paddle. “What’re you doing?”

“I came to check up on you. Freddie told me you tried to quit.”

I shrugged. “He didn’t let me so it’s a moot point.”

“The fact that you wanted to is a bit of a worry, don’t you think?”

I lifted the next beer to my lips and drank deeply. This was a good one; full bodied, not a big hoppy after-taste, and smooth on the tongue.

“Drew?”

I sighed and picked up a potato skin and dipped it in the sauce hoping Elise would get the hint that I didn’t want to talk about it. No such luck.

“Come on, Drew. Talk to me.”

“There’s nothing to say. Jeanette is going to marry Lord Cameron and leave the country to become a viscountess. She doesn’t want me. I’ve nothing to offer her.”

“You have a lot to offer a woman,” Elise defended me.

I smiled wryly, “But I don’t have a title to give her.”

“I don’t believe that she gives two hoots about a title. The woman doesn’t strike me as shallow or a snob.”

I bit into a chicken wing and relished the burn of the hot sauce on my tongue. Anything to dull the pain in my chest.

“The reasons she has for doing it don’t matter,” I said before sipping the next beer on the paddle. I didn’t like this one as much. It was a pale ale and a bit too hoppy for my taste.

“Of course they matter,” Elise said, exasperated. “Men are so dumb sometimes. Is she in love with the guy?”

“No,” I said with a shrug, “But she told me she wasn’t in love with me either.”

“Anybody with the sense that God gave them can see that she is in love with you. Even I knew it the first time I saw the two of you together.”

“So why did she tell me otherwise?”

“Why do you think?”

I took a moment to contemplate what Elise was saying before replying. Could it be possible that she was lying to me to save face? Had she only said those things to hurt me?

“There you go,” Elise said with a roll of her eyes and a wave of her hand. “By Jove I think he’s got it!”

Elise helped me stumble out of the pub. I needed to sober up and I needed to find Jeanette and make her listen to me. She had to know that I really was in love with her and that I didn’t want her to marry that toff. He would ruin her. Jeanette needed someone who wanted to reveal her in all her startling beauty, not bury her under obligation and duty. I had seen her beginning to bloom and I’d be damned if I would sit around and let that die on the vine. I was mixing my metaphors but I was drunk and I didn’t really care. The only thing that mattered was making Jeanette understand just how much she meant to me.

“Which way to your place?” Elise asked me as we weaved along the footpath.

I stopped to get my bearings and then turned us around. We’d been heading in the wrong direction.

“This way,” I said. Or maybe slurred.

I didn’t think I’d drunk all that much, but I suppose five drinks at a hundred mils each was half a litre and we weren’t talking light beers either. I was probably looking at one and a half standard drinks which was not enough to make me drunk. Oh, that’s right. I’d forgotten about the whiskey I’d had while I was waiting for the paddle of beer and I hadn’t eaten more than one potato skin and one chicken wing all day. So yeah, maybe I was drunker than I thought. This was becoming a habit.

I took a deep breath and tried to clear my head. This was ridiculous. Being drunk in the middle of the day was not something I did. Then again, knowing Jeanette had made me do a lot of things I never normally did.

Before we could reach my townhouse, a black car came to screeching halt beside us and the door flew open.

“Get in,” Joshua said from the back seat.

I pushed Elise in ahead of me and then followed her into the car, closing the door with a slam. Martin was at the wheel and he gave me a feral grin over his shoulder as he sped away from the kerb. This had a very déjà vu feel to it.

“Haven’t we done this before?” I asked.

“We needed to speak to you and time was somewhat of the essence,” Martin replied.

“Hello, I’m Joshua.”

I turned to see Joshua and Elise staring at each other like they’d never seen a member of the opposite sex before and I rolled my eyes. Seriously? Couldn’t they see this was my romantic drama? There wasn’t enough room for another love story here.

“Elise,” she replied and they shook hands slowly.

“Now that we’ve got the introductions out of the way, would you mind explaining what is going on and why you have kidnapped me once again?”

“I don’t think it can be technically called a kidnapping if you got in the car willingly,” Martin said reasonably and I bared my teeth at him.

“It’s about Jeanette,” Joshua said unhelpfully.

“What about her? Is she alright? Is she hurt?”

“Not hurt,” Martin said, “but I wouldn’t say she was alright either.”

“She’s definitely not alright,” Joshua muttered.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Martin heaved a great sigh and when he spoke his voice was weary. “I don’t think Jeanette should marry Lord Cameron. I don’t like the man and I don’t like the way he treats her or speaks to her.”

“And she’s not the same,” Joshua added. “She has gone back to the timid little thing she was in London. I don’t like it, I don’t like it at all.”

“What am I supposed to do about it?” I asked sadly. “She has made it very clear that she doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

Elise threw up her hands with a disgusted grunt. “Men,” she said with derision.

I turned to her. “What?”

“A grand gesture,” she said, “You need a grand gesture. You need to make a declaration to her that she can’t ignore.”

“I will not do some big public declaration,” I said, “Jeanette would hate something like that.”

“I’m not talking about a public declaration,” she said with shake of her head like I was simple minded, “It just has to mean something to her.”

“Like what?” I asked, confused.

“Well I don’t know,” Elise replied, “You know her better than I do. What do you think would make her sit up and take notice?”

I searched my brain but I couldn’t think of anything. Jeanette would be embarrassed by a big public display and it would ruin any chance I might have with her. A big bunch of roses didn’t seem like enough and a diamond ring with a proposal attached wouldn’t mean anything to her, not in her current situation. The only thing I really knew about her was that she was always trying to please everyone else and no one ever took the time to stand up for her or champion her wants and needs.

“You need to hurry up and think of something,” Martin said, “Because Mother is hosting an intimate dinner party tonight out at the estate and Lord Cameron is going to officially propose to her.”

“And that can’t happen,” Joshua added, “so you need to come up with a way to stop it.”

“No pressure or anything,” I said sarcastically. I took a breath. “What time is dinner?”

“Seven,” Martin said, “But that’s just for drinks. Dinner will be served at eight. I don’t know when he plans to propose.”

“If I turn up, will I be allowed in?” I asked.

I met Martin’s eyes in the rear vision mirror.

“I’ll make sure of it,” he said.

A plan was forming in my mind, but I needed to get home and shower and dress before I could turn up on the doorstep and break up a wedding proposal.