with Nigel’s social circle. As soon as they got back to London, Nigel surprised Coco over breakfast with a question.
“Where are we going to move to?”
“We’re moving? Why?” She looked confused.
“We can’t live here as a married couple. It’s an adorable matchbox. We need a proper house that we can entertain in. This was suitable as a temporary place for a girl your age, here for a short time, but we need a respectable home suited to our status now.” He sounded definite about it. It had never occurred to her. She had two homes in New York. But they lived in London now. And Nigel wanted them to have a proper home.
“I don’t know. I never thought about it. I don’t even know who to call.”
“I’ll start calling some estate agents, and see what’s on the market.” He was matter-of-fact about it, as though she had agreed to the plan, which she hadn’t. She was still a little stunned when they left for work. A serious house in London was going to be a big expense and undertaking, and she assumed that he expected her to pay for it, since he had no money of his own. How did he know she could afford it? What if she couldn’t?
From then on, Nigel saw two or three houses a day, sometimes as many as six, during his lunch hour and after work. He told her not to worry about it. He would vet them first, and only bother her with the good ones. She tried to pretend it wasn’t happening, but Nigel was deep into it.
In March, six weeks after the search began, he said there were two houses that he wanted her to see. He set up the appointments for a Friday morning without asking her, and Coco called Leslie and said she would be coming in late. She was still working at Time and enjoying it, and now that she was staying in London, she saw no reason to quit. Leslie liked having her on her team.
Coco was stunned when she saw the houses. They were both large, imposing family homes, with enormous reception rooms, many bedrooms, in excellent condition, in the best neighborhoods. Both of them were worthy of a captain of industry, a financial titan, someone like her father or Ed Easton, or an aristocrat with a huge fortune. She had no idea that he’d been looking at houses that large, worth that kind of money, and she nearly gasped when the realtor told her the asking price for each of them. One of them even had a ballroom. Nigel pointed out that they could give dances. There was one she liked better than the other, the slightly smaller one. She said nothing to the realtor and she turned to Nigel when they left the last appointment, without making a commitment. At twenty-three, she couldn’t imagine owning that kind of house, married or not.
“Why do we need a house that size? Shouldn’t we wait till we have children? We’re fine where we are for now, Nigel. Those houses are incredibly expensive, and we don’t need anything that big.”
“Of course we do. Do you have any idea how many dinner parties and house parties we’ve gone to in the last six months? If we’re going to have an active social life and be part of the London scene, we have to reciprocate. We need a home we can entertain in. Dinners, dances. We can’t go around like thieves, going to everyone else’s parties and giving none of our own.” But few of the houses they’d been to had been as lavish as these two. They would need a full staff to run them, and somewhere between four and six children to fill them, or a constant flow of houseguests. It was all way beyond the way she or her parents had lived. Nigel clearly had very grand ideas about their status on the London scene.
“I don’t even know if they would be a good investment,” she said in the cab to the Time building.
“I can assure you they are, or I wouldn’t have shown them to you,” he said tersely, looking insulted. “And I know you can afford them.” How could he be so sure? She wasn’t even certain of it, whatever she had.
“How do you know I can?”
“I read our contract and I knew anyway. You weren’t here on the salary Time is paying you. I know who your father was. His fortune was