Authors: Liz Fielding
‘Promises, promises...’ For a moment they just looked at one another, then she turned away from the intensity of it and he allowed her to break the contact between them. ‘Actually, robust is good. My family still treat me as if I’ve been stuck back together with some very dodgy glue and might fall apart at any moment.’
‘No swimming, because pools are a germ factory and who knows what’s in the sea?’ he suggested.
‘That’s pretty much how it went.’
‘It must have been difficult for them to truly believe that you’ve made a full recovery,’ he said. ‘I imagine you never quite trust the fates once you’ve been through something like that.’
‘It wasn’t just my parents. I’ve got three older brothers and they lived through it, too. Tom, the eldest, became a doctor because of what happened to me.’
‘What about the other two?’
‘James is a vet; Harry is a sports teacher. He’s nearest in age to me and appointed himself my personal bodyguard when I started school. If anyone got too close, too rough, watch out.’
He knew he’d have been the same, but he could see it wouldn’t be much fun to be on the receiving end of that kind of protection. ‘How did you cope with that?’
‘I regret to say that I loved it. I was a proper little princess,’ she admitted ruefully, ‘and, with three gorgeous brothers, everyone wanted to be my friend. It was only when I was fifteen and Harry discovered that I had a crush on a boy in the lower sixth that it all got out of hand.’
He grinned. ‘I suppose he warned him off his little sister?’
‘Oh, it was worse, far worse than that. The poor guy obviously didn’t have a clue that he was the object of my desire. He always smiled at me in the corridor—probably because I
was
Harry’s sister—and I’d just built up this huge fantasy. As you do...’ He glanced at her and she rolled her eyes. ‘Teenage girls.’
‘An alien species,’ he agreed. ‘And?’
‘And my sweet brother asked him, as a personal favour, to take me as his date to a school disco.’
‘You’re kidding?’
‘I wish,’ she said, ‘but Harry was captain of sport and played under-eighteen rugby for the county. A request from him was in the nature of a decree from Mount Olympus.’
‘So you had your dream date?’
‘Bliss city.’
‘But?’
She sighed. ‘There is always a “but”,’ she agreed. ‘I discovered what Harry had done, which was a total nightmare, but worse, much worse, I discovered that everyone else knew.’
‘Before? After? During?’
‘During. The classic overheard gossip in the loo... The girl he would have taken if Harry hadn’t stuck his oar in was giving vent to her feelings about the spoiled, fat little cow who’d got her brother to twist her boyfriend’s arm.’
‘Ouch,’ he said, flippantly enough, but deep down he was imagining what that must have been like for an over-protected fifteen-year-old girl. The embarrassment, the shame... ‘What did you do?’
‘I waited in the cubicle until they’d gone, then I slipped out of school and walked home.’
‘Of course you did. How far was it?’
‘A couple of miles. It wouldn’t have been a problem, but I’d abandoned my coat because I didn’t want anyone to see me leave.’
‘Coat? What time of year was this?’
‘It was the Christmas disco,’ she said, and he let slip a word that he immediately apologised for.
‘No, you’re okay.’ She held up her hand and began to count off the reasons why that word was just about perfect. First finger... ‘There was the no-coat thing, which on any level was pretty dumb.’ Second finger... ‘There were the sparkly new shoes which weren’t made for long-distance walking and fell apart after half a mile.’ Third finger... ‘Then it began to rain.’
‘Your date didn’t miss you?’
‘Not for a while. When a girl disappears into a cloakroom who knows how long she’ll be and I don’t suppose he was in any hurry...’ She shrugged. ‘Anyway, my feet hurt, my dress was ruined and my life was over. Worse, I knew my parents would be waiting up for me, wanting to hear about my date. I couldn’t face all that concern, all that sympathy, so I hid in the garden shed.’
‘Oh, I can see where this is going. No one knew where you were. They organised a search party, called the police, dragged the river?’
‘All of the above.’
‘You’re kidding?’
She laughed at his horrified reaction. ‘Okay, not the river. Tom came looking for a torch and found me before it got that far. I was given a severe talking to by the local constabulary on the subject of responsibility and Dad grounded me for the whole of the Christmas holidays. No parties or holiday outings for me. Not much of a punishment, to be honest. I wanted to hibernate.’
‘He knew that. He was making it easy for you.’
‘Oh... Of course he was.’ She shook her head. ‘I never realised.’
‘You were upset.’
‘It got worse. School insisted that I had “counselling”,’ she said, making quote marks with her fingers, ‘because obviously anyone who behaved so irrationally, so irresponsibly, had problems and needed help.’
Hardly irrational, he thought. More like a wounded animal going to ground. Something he knew all about.
‘Not a Christmas to remember, I’m guessing.’
‘White-faced parents, Harry in the doghouse with everyone. A total lack of ho-ho-ho. On the upside, by the time the holidays were over there were other scandals to talk about.’
‘And the downside?’
‘I’m still trying to prove that I can put one foot in front of the other without one of them holding my hand. Proving to my brothers that their broken little sister is all mended.’
Darius, thinking that if they’d seen her laying into him they might be convinced, said, ‘Any luck?’
‘The nearest I came was last Christmas when I drove home in the BMW.’
‘Ho-ho-ho!’
She dug him in the ribs with her elbow. ‘Men are so shallow. If I’d known how easy it was to impress them I’d have saved my bonuses for a flash car instead of putting down a deposit on my flat.’
‘The fact that you didn’t proves how smart you are.’
She sighed. ‘Not smart enough to see this coming. Every morning I wake up and, just for a moment, everything is normal.’
Ten seconds, he thought. You had about ten seconds when you thought life still made sense before that jolt as you remembered and it was like the first moment all over again.
‘I just feel so stupid.’
‘Only someone you trust, someone you love can betray you, Natasha. It always comes out of left field.’ He felt, rather than saw her turn to look at him. There would be a question mark rippling the creamy skin between her brows and he held his breath, waiting for the questions.
How did he know? When had his world come crashing down? Who had betrayed him? For what seemed an age the only sound was a blackbird perched high in the cedar tree. It was one of those long silences that the unwary rushed to fill and, even though he recognised the danger, he found himself tempted to tell her anyway.
She stirred before he could gather the words. Begin...
‘The real downside was the guilt,’ she said. ‘I was old enough then to see what it did to my mother, to understand what she must have been through when I was little, so when Dad suggested I take my degree at Melchester University...’
Conflicting emotions twisted his gut. Relief that she’d let him off the hook, regret that he’d missed his chance.
‘You wanted to make it up to them,’ he said.
‘It was okay, actually. Melchester has one of the best estate management courses in the country and, with all those lads living away from home for the first time, I was never short of a date.’
He doubted her mother’s cooking was the only lure but he didn’t want to think about that. ‘So what made you toss away the dream job with the National Trust and run away to London to work for Miles Morgan?’
‘I live in a small town. I was the little girl who’d had leukaemia. My sickness defined me. No one could see past it, not even my family.’
‘So you finally made the break.’
‘No... I lied to them, Darius.’
‘Lied?’
‘I knew that if I took the National Trust job, just down the road, I’d never leave. Never do anything. I’d marry someone I’d known all my life, who knew everything I’d ever done...’
‘You told them you didn’t get it?’
She nodded. ‘It felt like breaking out of jail.’ She tossed away the dregs of her coffee, staring out over the neglected lawn. ‘I’ll be honest. This isn’t where I saw myself five years on from my degree, but I’ve worked harder than anyone so that I wouldn’t have to go home and prove them all right.’ She turned to look at him. ‘You think I’m terrible, don’t you? That I don’t know how lucky I am to have a family who cares about me.’
Close. Very close. Apparently he wasn’t the only one reading body language, studying inner depths. She must have learned a thing or two watching the men and women trying to hide their reactions to the houses she showed them, playing their cards close to their chest.
‘I have no family,’ he said, ‘so I’m in no position to judge.’
‘None?’ And in a moment her expression turned from inward reproach to concern. ‘I’m so sorry, Darius. That’s really tough. What happened to your parents?’
Yes, well, that was the thing about trusting someone with your secrets; it was supposed to be a two-way deal but his moment of weakness had passed and he was already regretting this excursion into her past. Why complicate something as simple as sex?
‘I have no parents.’ He drained his coffee, screwed the top back on the flask and put it back in her bag. ‘Did you ever tell them the truth?’ he asked before she could push him for details. ‘About the job?’
She shook her head.
‘Maybe you should,’ he advised. Clearly she was harbouring the guilt.
‘They’d be devastated. And now, after all that horrible stuff in the paper, all those between-the-lines insinuations that I’m mentally unstable, they’re out of their minds worried again.’
Her eyes were shining, but the tears were more of anger than anything else, he was certain. Was that how it was? Love? This complicated mishmash of guilt, anxiety, the desperate need not to hurt, to protect? Add in passion, sacrifice, the world well lost and you were well and truly stuffed... Or maybe blessed beyond measure.
Natasha blinked back the threatening tears and he put his arm around her, drew her close. There was a moment of stiffness, resistance and then she melted against him. ‘My mother is desperate for me to go with them on the annual trek to Cornwall so that she can look after me,’ she said. ‘Heal me with sea air, walks on the beach, evening games of Scrabble.’
‘Instead, you’re playing hide the sausage in the woods with a disreputable sculptor who’s going to put your naked body on display for the entire world to see,’ he said.
She snorted, buried her face into his shoulder and suddenly, sitting there, his arm around her, both of them shaking with laughter, felt like a perfect moment.
Above them the swallows swooped just above head height, the scent of roses was drifting on a warm breeze and the temptation to stay there, looking out over the heat-hazed valley, almost overwhelmed him.
SEVEN
‘Darius?’
He stirred and Natasha lifted her head, looked up at him. ‘I’m sorry I shouted at you.’
‘I’m not.’ Tears of pain and laughter had clumped her eyelashes together. He used the pad of his thumb to wipe away one that had spilled over, kissed lips that were raised in what felt like an invitation. ‘You can tell your family from me that they don’t have a thing to worry about. You are strong in every way and I’m really glad you’re on my side.’
Really glad as he kissed her again and, lost in the sweetness of her mouth, for once in his life not thinking about an exit strategy. It should be scaring the wits out of him, but the connection between them had an honesty that overrode any fear of commitment. Natasha needed him on her side to re-establish her career, didn’t know that security guard from Adam and yet she had instantly empathised with him and she hadn’t hesitated to give it to him with both barrels when she thought he was wrong. How many women in her situation would have done that?
When he was with her, he had no sense of losing himself, but of becoming something greater.
Blessed.
It was Natasha who moved.
‘Enough of this maudlin self-pity,’ she said. ‘I’ve got work to do.’
He looked back at the house. Huge, empty... ‘Are you going to be all right on your own?’
She gave him a warning look and he held up his hands. ‘Sorry...’
‘No... I shouldn’t be so defensive.’ Then, as he made a reluctant move, ‘Actually, there is one thing.’
‘Yes?’
Tash had felt the exact moment that Darius had wanted to move. For a blissful few minutes he’d been still, utterly relaxed and his kiss had been so tender that tears had once again threatened to overwhelm her.
After such an emotional exchange most men would have said
anything
but that shuttered ‘yes’ was warning enough, if she’d needed it, not to get too deeply involved with Darius Hadley. He wasn’t a keeper and no one could protect her from that kind of pain.
‘If I find any diaries, can I borrow them?’
‘Diaries?’
‘I imagine there are diaries, letters?’ she prompted. ‘Something interesting must have happened in three and a half centuries. You’ve got a ballroom, so presumably there were country balls? The occasional drama over a little inappropriate flirting? Maybe a duel?’ she added, just to get a response.
‘I have no idea,’ he said stiffly, all his defences back up.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Darius, lighten up,’ she said crossly. ‘If there had been any scandal to be dug up, the newspapers would have been all over it when that blasted ad became a news item.’
It didn’t mean there wasn’t a family skeleton rattling around in the cupboard because it was obvious that something wasn’t right. He’d changed the subject faster than greased lightning when she’d asked him about his parents.
She lifted an eyebrow, inviting him to come clean, but even yesterday, with a bulge in his pants that had to have hurt, he’d been unreadable, hiding whatever he was thinking, feeling. What had it taken to build that mask?
What would it take, she wondered, to shatter it?
No, no, no...
‘A house that grand, that old, must have hosted some interesting people over the centuries?’ she persisted. It was all very well to casually toss out the words ‘social media’, but posting pictures of the house on Facebook and flinging ‘buy this’ Tweets around like confetti wasn’t going to do the job.
‘Not interesting in your sense of the word. The Hadleys were riding, shooting, fishing country squires with no pretensions to high society.’
‘More Jane Austen than Georgette Heyer,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I don’t suppose she ever came to tea? Jane Austen,’ she added. Much as she loved Georgette Heyer’s books, a visit from her wouldn’t arouse the same kind of interest. ‘I need a way in, something to grab the attention, create interest, start a buzz going.’
‘Why don’t you make up a story?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Most family history is based on Chinese whispers—expanded and decorated with every retelling. Our story is that James Hadley was given the estate by Charles II for services rendered during his exile. How much more likely is it that he bought it cheap for a quick sale from one of Cromwell’s confederates who, come the Restoration, decided the climate in the New World might be better for his health?’
‘You’re such a cynic, Darius Hadley.’
Off the dangerous territory of recent history, he grinned. ‘A realist. Who’s going to challenge you if you say Jane Austen stayed one wet week in April and, confined to the house, spun a story to keep everyone amused?’
‘I have no doubt that some obsessive Janeite would know exactly where she was during that particular week.’
‘Really?’
‘I’m afraid so. They didn’t have email or Skype or television to keep them amused so they wrote long detailed letters to their family and friends telling them where they were, what they were doing. And instead of blogging, they kept
diaries
...’ She lifted her hands in a
ta-da
gesture.
‘Being caught out in a blatant lie might grab the house another headline.
Mad Estate Agent Lies About Austen Connection
?’ he offered. ‘You did say any publicity would be good publicity.’
‘I think you’ve had all that kind of “good” publicity you can handle and I’m trying to restore my reputation, not sink it without a trace so, unless you can point me to an entry in one your ancestors’ diaries along the lines that “Mrs Austen visited with her daughters, Cassandra and Jane. It rained all week, but Jane kept the children amused acting out scenes from a little history of England she has written...” we’ll save that as a last resort.’
‘You’re the expert,’ he said. ‘You’ll find the diaries in my grandmother’s room. She was writing a history of the house. I don’t know if she ever finished it.’
‘A history?’ She was practically speechless. ‘There’s a history! For heaven’s sake, Darius, talk about pulling hen’s teeth!’
He grinned. ‘I’ve made the woman happy. If there’s nothing else?’
‘No... Yes...’ She fished in the picnic bag and produced a small plastic box. ‘Take Gary these cookies from me. They’re not as healthy as grapes, but they’ll help a cup of hospital tea go down.’
* * *
Tash let herself into the house, dealt with the alarm and then, as the Land Rover rattled into life, she turned and watched it disappear as the drive dipped and curved through the woods. It seemed a little early for hospital visiting, but he’d shown no interest in going inside the house and she suspected that it served as a useful excuse to avoid whatever it was that he didn’t want to talk about.
Despite her airy assurance that she would be fine, it was a huge old place, undoubtedly full of ghosts and, as she opened the glazed doors that led from the entrance lobby into the main reception hall, what struck her first was the stillness, the silence.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw something move, but when she swung round she realised that it was only her reflection in a dusty mirror.
Heart beating in her throat, she looked around but nothing stirred except the dust motes she’d set dancing in the sunlight pouring down from the lantern fifty feet above her and, just for a moment, she was back in the studio with Darius holding her, limp, sated in his arms. Reliving the desperate frustration when that wretched guard had turned up.
They were so not done.
No, no, no... Concentrate...
Beneath the mirror, an ornate clock on the hall table had long since stopped. Dead leaves had drifted into the corner of each tread of that dratted staircase. All it needed was a liveried footman asleep against the newel post and she would have stepped into the
Sleeping Beauty
picture book she’d had as a child.
As the germ of an idea began to form, she began to film the scene in front of her, panning slowly around the grand entrance hall with its shadowy portraits, an ormolu clock sitting on an elegant serpentine table thickly layered with dust, paused on the room reflected in soft focus through the hazy surface of the gilded mirror.
She opened doors to shuttered rooms where filtered light gave glimpses of ghostly furniture swathed in dust sheets, climbed the magnificent Tudor staircase—not a woodworm in sight—and explored bedrooms in varying stages of grandeur.
There was a four-poster bed that looked as if Queen Elizabeth I might have slept in it in the master suite. Next door was a suite for the mistress of the house—a comfortable, less daunting bedroom, a dressing room and bathroom and a small sitting room with a chaise longue, a writing desk and a bookshelf filled with leather-bound journals. Research material for his grandmother’s history.
The desk had just one wide drawer and nestling inside it was a heavy card folder tied together with black ribbon and bearing the title
A History of Hadley Chase
by Emma Hadley
. She had just untied the ribbon and laid back the cover to reveal a drawing of the Tudor house that had been added to and ‘improved’ over the years when her phone pinged, warning her of an incoming text.
It was from Darius.
* * *
Darius stopped twenty yards from the main gate and the gatehouse cottage that Gary shared with his grandmother.
Mary Webb had been his grandmother’s cook and the nearest thing to a mother he’d ever had. She’d given him the spoons to lick when she was making cakes, stuck on the plasters when he’d scraped a knee, given him a hug when his dog died. And, like everyone else in this place, had known his history and kept it from him.
When he’d learned the truth he’d walked away from the house and everyone connected with it and never looked back. That had been his choice, but while he had a home, a career, there was no guarantee that Gary, a few years older, who’d made him a catapult, lain in the dark with him watching for badgers, taught him to ride a motorbike, would have either when the estate was sold.
This is my land...
The words had come so easily. But they were hollow without the responsibilities that went with it.
Noblesse oblige
. Natasha hadn’t used those words, but when she’d rounded on him that was the subtext.
She’d asked him how long it had been since he’d set foot on this estate. Almost as long as he’d lived here. An age. A lifetime. He would never have come back if he’d had his way and yet, because of her, he was here. Not for the land, but for a woman. The irony was not lost on him.
He took out his phone, sent her a two-word text and when he looked up Mary Webb was standing on the doorstep. Seventeen years older and so much smaller than he remembered.
* * *
Sixteen years.
The text was unsigned, but it came from Darius and could only mean one thing. She’d asked him how long it was since he’d last set foot on Hadley Chase. He hadn’t answered, but he had been listening.
Sixteen years...
The article she’d read about his commission for the sculpture of the horse had mentioned that he’d been at the Royal College of Art and from the date she’d been able to work out that he had to be thirty-one, maybe thirty-two. That meant he’d have been sixteen or seventeen when he left the Chase, long before his grandfather became sick or he’d left for art school. It suggested a family row of epic proportions. A breach that had never been healed. Scarcely any wonder he hadn’t wanted her digging around, poking in the corners stirring up ghosts.
But this was a tiny crack and through it other questions flooded in. Not just what had caused the rift, but where could a hurting teenage boy with no family have gone?
She tried to imagine herself in that situation. Imagine that instead of hiding out in the shed, she’d run away. It happened every day. Teenagers running away from situations they couldn’t handle.
Where would she have run to? How would she have lived?
How would she have felt returning home after sixteen years, a stranger, changed beyond recognition from the cossetted girl who’d painted her nails, pinned up her hair, put on a new dress and sparkly shoes to go to a school disco?
He’d shown no interest, no emotional attachment to the property until that security guard had ordered him to leave but then the claim had been instinctive. Possessive.
‘This is my land...’
She looked around her. Darius had lived here while he was growing up, going to school. All his formative years had been spent roaming the estate. In this house. It had made him who he was, given him the strength to survive on his own. She would have expected a photograph on the desk, on the bedside table. There was nothing, but there had to be traces of him here. His room...
When she’d visited the Chase in order to prepare the details for the kind of glossy sales brochure a house of this importance demanded, there had been a team of them from Morgan and Black, walking the land, detailing the outbuildings, the cottages, the boathouse. Inside, she had concentrated on the main reception and bedrooms while junior staff had gone through the minor rooms, the attics.
She arranged the desk to look as if the writer had just left it for a moment, took photographs of that and the view from the window, then picked up the folder and went in search of the room which had been Darius Hadley’s private space.
She found it at the far end of the first floor corridor. Grander than most bedrooms, with a high ceiling, tall windows looking out over the park and furnished with pieces that had obviously been in the house for centuries. And yet it was still recognisable for what it was. A boy’s bedroom. Unchanged since he’d abandoned it.
Her brother Tom was about the same age and he’d had the same poster above his bed, the same books on his shelves.
The similarity ended with the books and posters. Tom had always known what he wanted to do and by the time he was seventeen he’d had a skeleton in his room, medical diagrams on the walls.
Darius, too, had been focused on the future. There were wall-to-wall drawings, tacked up with pins, curling at the edges.
One of them, the drawing of a laughing retriever, each curl of his coat, each feather of his tail so full of life that he looked as if he was about to bound off the paper after a rabbit.