Character interview: meet Willem Bentinck-Stanley from The Object of His Desire
I meet Willem Bentinck-Stanley in a smart little wine bar, tucked away in the back streets of London’s Soho. I get there early, he’s bang on time, pulling up in a chauffeur-driven limo. He finds me at my window seat instantly; we’ve never met before, but my friend Trudy Parsons had warned me that he would have had me thoroughly vetted before agreeing to meet me.
Indeed, that he agreed to meet me at all was something of a miracle: as I’ve already discovered in preparing for this interview, the Honorable Will guards his privacy most effectively. For a man to have almost no online presence is rare these days; for a man with Bentinck-Stanley’s high profile and rather shady past to be so invisible is quite remarkable. I must state at this point that Will – let’s call him that; his full name is so cumbersome and stiff – has stipulated certain subjects I must not raise in this interview, and that if they do crop up I am not to document them. I should probably also state that I don’t like being pushed around and I’ll write what I damn well like.
He pauses in the doorway for an instant, eyes scanning the room, and then he sees me, nods, and approaches. He’s about six foot tall, slim with square shoulders and an easy athleticism in the way he walks. His jaw is thick with dark stubble and his black hair is tousled and in need of a trim. He wears his tie knotted tight but pulled loose, the top button of his shirt undone.
And his eyes. Trudy has warned me about the eyes: dark eyes, moody eyes, but so sharp that when they fix on you you’re pinned to the spot. Predator eyes, she called them. He’s the kind of man who dominates any gathering, without even trying; Trudy told me about that, too, but it’s not the kind of thing you really understand until you see it in person.
“Ms Grayson?” he says, stopping by my table and reaching for my hand. His grip is firm, in control, and I mentally kick myself for my immediate melting response. I’m not a girly woman, and I don’t respond to powerful men like that; no really, I don’t!
He sits opposite me, raises a finger and immediately a waitress is at our table taking his drink order. I thank him for agreeing to see me, and he smiles. “I don’t do interviews,” he says. “I have no need of the attention.”
“So why the exception for me?”
“Trudy vouched for you. She can be very persuasive.”
It’s a reasonable answer, but even from such a short encounter I can tell that Will isn’t a man who is easily persuaded to do anything.
“Trudy’s great, isn’t she?” I say. My aim is to build up a personal bond from the start to set him at ease, but he sees through it immediately.
“Ms Parsons is unlike any other woman, but I’m not here to discuss my acquaintances.”
He takes a sip of his single malt, while I struggle to find another approach. He is polite, charming even, and he totally throws me off my usual professional approach.
“She’s just an ‘acquaintance’?”
He raises one eyebrow and says nothing.
“Sorry, erm, let me see.” I feel such a blushing fool before him. I’m not usually like this. Damn it, I’m never like this! But somehow he makes me feel like a schoolgirl, blushing and stumbling over my words. As a journalist I meet plenty of good-looking men and I never act this way. I glance up and he’s smiling, as if he enjoys my awkwardness. That’s when I realize that he’s playing me. He’s the one who mentioned Trudy, after all.
“What’s the story behind the exhibition at the Walker?”
“My family has a long association with the arts,” he says. “Constable painted the grounds of our estate in Norfolk. Rembrandt was a friend of the Dutch side of my family. We have one of the most distinguished private collections in the country, and it’s been an interest of mine since an early age. I grew up thinking it was normal to have a van Gogh hanging on your wall; when I came to understand how privileged I was, I decided that at some point I would find ways to share that privilege. This exhibition is part of that endeavor.”
“It’s a very public thing to do for a man who guards his privacy so effectively.”
He shrugs. “I stay behind the scenes,” he says. “Apart from this interview I will not be taking part in promoting the exhibition, and I trust that you will stick to our agreement that we’re only meeting in order to provide you with background information: this is not about me, it’s about the exhibition.”
“Of course,” I say, and oh my but he has a sharp, steel edge when he’s laying things out like that. He’s a man who likes to control things, clearly; and from what I’ve heard that extends to his private life, too.
“You really are very good at staying behind the scenes, aren’t you? Is that because of your work?”
He takes another sip from his drink, gives that enigmatic smile, and seems quite prepared to sit through any length of awkward silence rather than answer me. Yes, I know: his people have warned me about the No Go areas for this interview. We’re not to talk about his relationship with my friend Trudy; I mustn’t ask about his work with the Foreign Office, or the intelligence services and his contacts with foreign governments; and I must, most certainly, avoid any mention of…
“Or does it go back to the Sally Fielding scandal?”
Sometimes it pays to drop a bombshell into the middle of an interview. It breaks through those protective layers and gets a real reaction. It’s a high-risk approach, but then I like to think that my interviews are never dull.
But sometimes the bombshell is just never going to work, and I really should have known that Bentinck-Stanley was bomb-proof.
Those eyes. They fix me now. He’s impossible to read. And his presence is almost over-powering. He takes a long draw at his whisky now, and then another and his glass is empty.
Then he stands, nods, and walks to the door, the interview over.
He’s set out the ground-rules and I’ve broken them, but I’m not here just to do his PR. He’s an intriguing man with a history, a man who protects himself fiercely and also he’s a man who is seeing a very good friend of mine and I worry about her.
So there it is, my interview with the Honorable Willem Bentinck-Stanley. Over before it had ever really started. Unpublishable, of course: there’s only about one paragraph in there that sticks to the safe topics his people have set out.
It really isn’t like me to be so unprofessional, and I’m frustrated that I haven’t been able to dig beneath the surface and find the real man, but then this was no ordinary interview, and Willem Bentinck-Stanley is clearly no ordinary man.
[This character interview was first published at Drugs Called Books.]
The Object of His Desire by PJ Adams
When Trudy goes to her estranged brother’s wedding, the last thing she expects is one of those moments: a handsome stranger, their eyes meeting across a crowded room… a tempting, but dangerous stranger. Determined to find out more, she discovers that dark secrets bind him to her brother; she also learns that he’s the kind of man who gets what he wants, and what he wants right now is Trudy.
Introducing her to the world of the super-wealthy, he showers her with designer clothes, shoes, and diamonds, whisking her off to dinner dates by private jet… what more could a girl want?
But as she finds out more about him, Trudy begins to wonder if she can ever love a man she can never fully trust. A man involved in murder and blackmail, who may just be using her as an alibi. Should she run or let herself fall for him? And will he give her a choice?
A passionate erotic romance, where scandals buried away in the past lead to murderous intrigue in the present, in the intensely steamy world of the super-wealthy and powerful.
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