by Anna Martin
“Now you’re making me want to ask.”
“I couldn’t possibly,” Nell said. “You’d think badly of me.”
He moved on to a safer topic of conversation, wanting to know more about the house he’d inherited.
“You were born there?” he asked as the sun started to set in the gardens beyond her conservatory.
“Oh yes,” Nell said. “My mother moved in when she married my father. This was when it was just on the cusp of respectability to have serving staff, before the first war made it an excess few could afford.”
“Was she local?”
“Almost. She came from the south coast somewhere. Devon, I believe. She was aristocratic, and my father wasn’t, but he was a colonel in the British army. He’d served in India for five years and came home to find a wife. Their marriage wasn’t arranged, not as far as I know, anyway. They were introduced by a friend of the family that knew mother’s family, and they got married before the turn of the century.”
“Did they ever go back to India?”
“No, gosh no. Father was quite a lot older than Mother. About ten years, I think, but you can check that if you want to track down birth certificates, I’m sure they still exist somewhere. He was released from the army, and then they had Bert, and Bill, of course, and me.”
More than the story of Nell’s parents, Henry wanted to know about her own love story with the original Henry Richardson, but she didn’t seem to be very forthcoming with sharing it. It took a few more weeks of requesting, pleading, and dropping hints. She got a faraway look in her eye and started to talk.
Nell Herrington was eighteen years old.
She had been allowed out to a dance, held in the village hall, with three of her friends—Peg, Nora, and Bettie, all other village girls whom she’d been at school with. Nell remembered little things, like how, for some reason, the smell of lavender seemed to be particularly strong in the evenings, and how the heel of her shoe kept getting caught in the cobbles that still paved the main street through the village at that time.
It was a warm evening, so they didn’t bother with coats, but had been encouraged by their mothers to wear hats and gloves. Nell had a blue dress that tied with a red belt—something her father had disapproved of, so she rolled the belt up and hid it under her hat until she was outside, when she slipped it back through the loops on her dress.
Warnings of war were still only gentle rumbles. Belief perpetrated that the conflict in Japan would never reach European shores, that there was nothing to worry about. There wasn’t any reason for concern, not yet anyway, and the light spilled out of the village hall to show them the way.
They were the days when young men slicked their hair back and smoked cigarettes and had plans for the future. Days when one’s class could be determined by the age of one’s clothes and how many other family members had worn them before, how patched the elbows were, how worn the hems.
He hadn’t yet joined the army, was little more than one of the wealthier boys in town whose parents were landowners. With a father who travelled to London weekly for business, Henry Richardson wore Savile Row suits and had his hair cut by a barber who knew all the most recent fashions.
Back in the little Somerset village, he was regarded as one of the most desirable bachelors by the younger female residents—and some of the older ones too.
He was the sort of man that Nell was not interested in. Donald, the butcher’s son, had been asking to take her out, and she was considering accepting. Donald was a gentleman. He knew how to treat a lady properly.
Henry Richardson didn’t stop smoking his cigarette as Nell and her friends approached the doorway, where light and the noise of the band spilled out into the street. He gave the girls a friendly smile, causing Bettie to giggle and Nell to elbow her in the ribs.
Later in the evening, he asked Donald if he could cut in and take this dance. Her image of him as rude, above his station (and certainly above hers) was cemented.
But there was something about a young Nell Herrington that intrigued Henry Richardson—the angle of her jaw, the rosy pink of her cheeks, her delectable hourglass figure. She was all that and didn’t simper in his presence.
It took him months to woo her, and she never once during that time admitted to falling for his charms. And Henry had charms, many of them, that he used frequently and without a dot of shame.
And when she finally fell in love, she fell all the way, unconditionally, irrevocably, with no preamble and no stipulations on the fact. Theirs was not a marriage of convenience. It was one of deep devotion, through the birth of one living child and the birth, or not birth, of many children who had passed in the womb, through war and tragedy and death and change.
She became a Richardson in more than name. Nell knew her responsibilities as a woman of the Richardson family, knew what was expected of her and knew what her future would hold. There were no scandals in their marriage, no infidelities, not one breakdown of trust in over sixty years together.
Then, in the end, she held his hand as the love of her life passed away and promised him, promised him ferociously, that she would protect what he’d given her. This was why, she explained to Henry, her great-grandson, who had that same strong jawline as her late husband, the same twinkle in his eye, this was why she had entrusted the future of the house to him.
It wasn’t just a house. It was a legacy.
Chapter Seventeen
The morning was balmy warm, so much so that Henry had dressed in jeans and a loose long-sleeved T-shirt with nothing on over the top. Light, fluffy clouds suspended themselves neatly in the sky, and the smell of Ryan’s wildflower garden was sweet and beautiful.
However.
Spoiling his tableaux, the children were a noisy, chattering mess of blue school sweatshirts and neat pigtails, each wearing a pair of brightly coloured wellies. Henry looked on with more than a little amusement as one teacher and her teaching assistant attempted to round them up, ready for the tour of the farm.
Hulk watched them warily too, sitting close to Henry’s heel. He’d refused the order to go inside, instead stubbornly sticking close to Henry’s side as if to say don’t worry—I’ll protect you. With a surge of affection for the ridiculous dog, Henry leaned down and ruffled his fur.
“Okay, are we ready?” the teacher called out, and the noise level dipped—but only slightly. “This is Mr. Burgess.”
“Good morning, Mr. Burgess,” the class chanted.
“And this is his farm. He’s going to show us around today. Remember the rules we talked about this morning, and stick with your partners, please.”
She nodded to Ryan, who seamlessly took over the conversation with the twenty or so round, fresh faces that looked up at him.
“Welcome to Twelve Acre Farm,” he said easily. “Who knows what an acre is?”
The suggestions were more than a little amusing, and Henry worked hard not to draw attention to himself by laughing aloud. They were only seven, bless their little hearts.
Ryan led the group down toward the chickens, and Henry purposefully hung back, bringing up the rear with Hulk, making sure none of the children wandered off. The whole farm sloped gently downhill from the house, meaning he was always at a higher vantage point than Ryan at the front.
The teaching assistant stuck to the middle of the group somewhere, and the teacher herself dropped back into step with Henry.
“You’re Mr. Richardson, aren’t you?” she asked. “From America. Nell’s great-grandson.”
“Yes,” he said, and wiped his hand on his jeans before offering it to her to shake. “It’s Henry.”
“I’m so pleased to meet you,” the young woman enthused, tucking a strand of her curly blonde hair behind her ear, revealing bitten-down fingernails and several earrings in one ear. “My great-nan worked at Stretton House with Nell, during the war. She was a nurse too.”
“Oh?” Henry said. He was always interested in hearing more about the house and the people who h
ad worked there. Nell had remembered a lot, but he was sure there was a lot more she’d forgotten. “Is she still living?”
“No,” she said. “She passed a few years back, now. I can remember her telling me about the ‘house on the hill’ when I was a little girl. That’s what she used to call Stretton House. The house on the hill.”
“I’m collecting stories,” Henry said. “Hopefully, I’ll put them in the guidebook when the house opens to the public. If you don’t mind jotting down any memories you have, I’d love to include them.”
She beamed. “That would be great.”
They’d stopped outside the pig pen, and Ryan had hopped up to sit on the top rung of the gate, his strong hands gripping the wood and his ripped jeans gaping at the knee. He was talking easily about pig rearing, something Henry had no interest in but unfortunately knew far too much about.
“Have you thought about doing this sort of thing when you open the house up to the public?”
Henry looked at the teacher in surprise. “No. Not really.”
She laughed. “You should. I know the school would be interested in bringing groups around, same as we do here, that sort of thing.”
“I’ll think about it,” Henry said.
“Let me know if I can help at all.”
He fumbled with pulling his phone out of his pocket and programmed in her number, promising to call if he thought of anything. His network of Somerset people was growing by the day.
“Do you know when it’ll be ready?” the teacher—Alana, he knew her name now—asked.
Henry shook his head and laughed. “Every time I think I’m getting close, something else comes along and sets us back,” he said. “The number of forms and regulations is starting to give me a headache.”
She nodded. “I know that feeling.”
They moved on to the goats.
His garden runaway had been returned to its owner, not another farmer, but someone who kept them because they were “cute.” Henry couldn’t say he agreed. He wasn’t a big fan of any of the animals, really. They were dirty and smelly and made his boyfriend dirty and smelly when he had to deal with them.
Still, they were part of what made the farm what it was, and Ryan who he was by extension of that, so he could tolerate the little bastards. On occasion. For short periods of time.
“’Scuse me.”
Henry looked down to where a small child was tugging at his jeans.
“Yeah?”
“Can I pet your doggy?”
Henry grinned. “Sure.”
The kid—a boy with a shock of bright red hair and explosive freckles—beamed at him and leaned down to rub Hulk’s head. The dog nodded lazily in satisfaction, apparently liking this turn of events.
“Shouldn’t you be listening to the talk?” Henry asked, not wanting to get in trouble for leading the child astray.
The kid shrugged. “My grandma has goats. I knows all about them. One of them escaped, and Mr. Burgess found it and brought it back.”
“Did he, now,” Henry said drily.
“He did, honestly!”
“It’s okay. I believe you.”
“So I knows all about ’em.”
Maybe unsurprisingly, the tour didn’t include Ryan’s gin shed, as Henry liked to call it, that, or his “den of iniquity,” mostly because he liked the way it sounded. They did, however, trek down to the orchard, then back through some of the crop fields, learning about crop rotation and fallow fields, and seasons and harvests.
The handful of livestock weren’t intended for slaughter; chickens aside, and even then most of them were more valuable as egg producing hens rather than for meat. Their main use, to both Henry and the children’s disgust, was for the purpose of organic fertiliser for the fields. Shit machines Henry immediately dubbed them.
He hated to admit he was actually learning something. Aside from the first time Ryan had showed him around the farm, he hadn’t been out here all that much, even though, from their regular mealtime discussions, he’d learned a great deal about organic vegetable farming.
The day finished by loading all the children onto the back of the tractor trailer for a grand lap of the farm—a bumpy, uncomfortable ride for Henry, who had foolishly decided to ride on the back sitting on a bale of hay instead of in the cab with Ryan. Hulk now took his place on the passenger seat and seemed to be mocking Henry as his big, shaggy grey head stuck out of the window to catch the passing breeze.
That afternoon they both had work to do. Henry on the website he was creating to promote the wedding planning and hosting side of the business, and Ryan disappeared to his office to work on the accounts. Even though he’d been offered use of Ryan’s office—a converted spare bedroom—he’d declined, preferring to work in the kitchen, where the light was plentiful and he wasn’t too far from the kettle or the fridge.
It was a time-consuming project. Even though he’d been working on the copy and selecting the images for weeks, putting everything together in a way that showcased the best that Stretton House had to offer wasn’t easy. He kept the site light and clean on purpose, white with silver and grey accents, with a scrolling header bar that showed the house on the inside and out.
His license to serve alcohol and host weddings and civil ceremonies had arrived that week, making it official that they could now go ahead and start booking. All the little pieces were starting to fall into place.
Most of the work that was left to do on the house was cosmetic, like choosing where to hang certain paintings and finishing the redecorating work. He’d personally selected all the pieces of furniture that had been bought in addition to those that had been in the house already or found in storage, and he’d taken the responsibility of getting things just right very seriously.
Even though he wasn’t sure what his future held for his personal life, Henry was making long-term plans for the future of the house. He wanted to be able to have wedding guests stay in the house for the whole of their weekend, arriving on the Friday night and leaving on Sunday after a delicious brunch. That would mean having all the bedrooms ready though, and they hadn’t even started work on the upstairs yet.
It would probably mean upgrading the catering facilities too, even though what he’d had installed already was pretty good. Being able to finance all of the upgrades relied on being able to make the initial bookings, hence his immediate goal of getting the website up and running.
He had been sending e-mails as well, to the big wedding magazines in the UK, hoping that someone would want to do a special piece on what he was calling “the Southwest’s newest and hottest wedding venue.” Although he was yet to make a booking, the pricing structure he’d put together had been sent out to the few nibbles of interest that had come through, and he was waiting, rather impatiently, for the first big bite.
When there was a sharp knock on the back door, he almost jumped out of his skin, only just recovering in time to meet the woman and small girl who were waiting patiently for him.
“We just came over for some eggs,” the woman said as the little girl hid behind her legs and tugged at the shiny fabric of her jacket. “Ellie came with her class to Mr. Burgess’s farm trip this morning, and we thought we’d come to you rather than go to the supermarket.”
“Oh. Of course,” Henry said. He thought about going to interrupt Ryan, but he’d seen the whole egg transaction a few times now and pulled on a pair of boots to go down to the shed himself. Ryan would appreciate not being interrupted.
“From what I can remember, it’s a fiver for two dozen,” he said to Ellie’s mum.
She nodded and smiled. “That’s what we usually pay.”
“Great,” he said, relieved that he’d remembered. He carefully loaded up a tray with eggs and swapped them for a crumpled five pound note.
“We’re going to have ham and eggs and chips for tea,” Ellie said, finding her voice at last.
“That sounds delicious,” Henry told her. “I hope you enjoy it.”
&n
bsp; Ellie beamed. He led them out of the barn and waved as they headed back up the path to their car. Somewhat reluctantly, Henry returned to the kitchen and his work. Ellie and her mother had been a nice interruption.
“You spend your life hunched over that bloody laptop,” Ryan said as he padded into the kitchen a half hour later.
“Do not,” Henry immediately retorted, straightening his posture.
“Do too,” Ryan mumbled. “Tea?”
“I’d love one.”
While the kettle boiled, Ryan amused himself by fluttering tiny kisses all over the back of Henry’s neck, up to his ear and down as far as the collar of his shirt. Although he’d never admitted it out loud, this was one of Henry’s favourite places to be kissed, and Ryan was exceptionally good at it.
Henry stretched up, his arms reaching for the ceiling, relishing the way each individual vertebra cracked back into place. Where his shirt rode up, Ryan’s hands soon grasped his bare waist, an anchor for his still roaming lips.
Their sex life was still ambling along at a fairly sedate pace, but the most shocking part of the whole thing was that Henry was finding himself not caring. It didn’t matter if they fucked once a week or every night. The undeniable truth was that they were having fun. It felt good. And he was falling into a relationship with a man who could only be described as his best friend.
It was confusing as hell. The last relationship he’d been in, with Drew, was the result of a one-night stand that turned into a week-long fuck-fest, and they pretty much carried on from there. And that was the only basis for comparison he had. With Ryan, each moment seemed to count, all the times they went to the pub with friends or went out to play cricket or… rescue each other from runaway goats. It was layers of friendship and intimacy combined, and it was more than a little uplifting.
Henry swivelled on the stool and pulled Ryan down into a soft kiss, pressing both his hands to the strong chest that was such a turn-on. When Ryan pulled away, Henry reached out and ran his fingertips over the curve of Ryan’s upper arm. He’d wanted to ask for a while, but not really had a chance. Mostly, when Ryan took his shirt off (or was just wearing a tank top, like he was now), Henry was very quickly distracted.
