Page 5

The red light went solid. Show over. I set down the garden shears and exhaled deeply, my shoulders sagging as three hours of enforced enthusiasm finally drained away. My feet were killing me—these heels looked great on camera but murdered my arches during long demonstrations.
"Brilliant show, Lili." Carmen, the floor director, gave me a tired thumbs up. "The phones actually jumped during that last segment. Don't know if it's enough, but..."
"Thanks, hon." I forced another smile, though it felt like lifting weights at this point. "Same time Friday?"
"If we're still here Friday," she muttered, then immediately looked guilty. "I mean, of course we will be. Management's just... exploring options, you know?"
I knew. We all knew. The question wasn't if Gardens & Home Television London would close, but when.
And what that would mean for all of us who'd moved across an ocean chasing dreams that were currently circling the runway with no place to land.
The drive to the manor took me through streets that still felt surreal, even after a week. London was nothing like Austin—where everything was spread out under a big Texas sky. Here, history pressed in from all sides with buildings older than my entire country.
Sometimes I felt like I was driving through a period drama, especially at night when the streetlamps cast everything in golden pools of light.
I'd been in England exactly three weeks now, and every morning I woke up surprised to find myself here. The Gardens & Home Television opportunity had seemed like a miracle whenit landed in my lap—a chance to work abroad, just like I'd dreamed about since college. The company's expansion into the UK market had felt like destiny calling my name.
What they forgot to mention was that British audiences weren't exactly eager to buy Texas gardening wisdom from a curly haired American who pronounced "herbs" wrong and got way too excited about compost spreaders.
My phone buzzing in the cup holder reminded me to check my bank balance. Again. £324.67. That number gave me the same stomach-dropping sensation as a broken elevator.
After burning through my savings at that cramped Paddington hotel—£150 a night for a room the size of my Mama's pantry—I'd been down to my last fifty pounds when I finally broke down and called Daphne.
Thank God for Daphne. When I'd confessed during one of our video calls that I was rationing instant noodles and seriously considering sleeping in the studio, she'd immediately offered me the staff quarters at her family's place. "Just until you find your feet," she'd said in that sweet way that somehow didn't make me feel like a complete charity case.
Well, mostly didn't make me feel like a charity case.
The GPS directed me through countryside that looked like someone had taken a Thomas Kinkade painting and made it three-dimensional.
Stone cottages with actual thatched roofs, every village pub looked old enough to have served ale to Shakespeare. It was gorgeous, intimidating, and so far from the strip malls and barbecue joints at home that I might as well have been on another planet.
"You have reached your destination," the posh GPS lady announced with considerably more confidence than I felt.
The Grosvenor estate gates loomed in my headlights like something from a gothic novel. Massive iron scrollwork twistedinto patterns that probably told the family's entire history, all mounted on stone pillars that could've been used to anchor a suspension bridge. A discreet speaker box sat to one side, looking incongruously modern against all that medieval grandeur.
I pressed the button and waited, suddenly very aware that my rental car was making that weird rattling noise again.
"Good evening. How may I assist you?"
The voice was so perfectly butler-ish it could've come from a BBC period drama. I cleared my throat, hoping I sounded more confident than I felt.
"Hi there! I'm Lili. Lili Anderton? Daphne's friend from university?" Every word came out with too much enthusiasm, too much volume, too much American. "She said she'd leave word that I was coming."
A pause that lasted just long enough to make me question everything. "Ah yes, Miss Anderton. Welcome to Grosvenor Manor. Please proceed to the main house."
That familiar knot formed in my stomach—the same one I'd felt every day since arriving in England. One week living here, and despite Daphne's generous offer to rescue me from that awful hotel, I still felt like I needed written permission to breathe the rarefied air of this place.
The driveway stretched ahead like a runway, lined with oak trees that must've been standing when America was still a British colony. My little rental car crunched over perfectly maintained gravel, the sound inappropriately loud in the hushed landscape. Moonlight filtered through the tree canopy, creating shadow patterns that danced across the windshield.
When the house—mansion, castle, monument to old money—came into view, I had to grip the steering wheel to keep from hitting the brakes.
Grosvenor Manor wasn't just impressive, it was a statement written in stone and mortar that some families had been important for longer than others had existed.
Gothic towers rose into the night sky alongside Georgian wings and what looked like a Victorian conservatory, all somehow harmonious in their grandeur. Windows glowed warmly in the darkness, suggesting rooms beyond counting. The whole structure seemed to crouch in the landscape like a benevolent dragon, ancient and powerful and completely beyond my small-town Texas comprehension.
I parked near a side entrance, my pathetic little car looking like a lost beetle next to this architectural masterpiece. Even after living in the staff quarters for a week, the sheer scale of this place still made me feel like Alice after she'd fallen down the rabbit hole.
A figure emerged from the shadows—well-dressed, moving with the silent efficiency of someone who'd spent decades perfecting the art of appearing exactly when needed.