by Dee Palmer
“It doesn’t matter now, does it?” She lets out a half laugh and resigned sigh. I guess it doesn’t.
“So what happens now?”
“With?”
“With the Hall? With us, with Logan?” In no particular order even if the latter is irritatingly playing more on my mind.
“What happened to one day at a time?”
“Patience is not one of my virtues, princess.” I quirk my lips in an unapologetic smile.
“Remind me what your virtues are exactly?” She shakes her head and snickers.
“Cute, I’m sure I must have some. You wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”
“I have nowhere else to go.”
“We both know that’s not true.” I raise my brow nice and high at her wholly inaccurate statement. “I’m not going to push you, Tia. You’ve had a lot to deal with, and I will give you one day at a time. I just never said I would make it easy.”
“Is anything easy with you?”
“Oh I can think of one thing.” I flash my most wicked wide smile, and instead of chuckling at my shamelessness, she hesitates, folds her hands neatly and nervously together, and shuffles from one foot to the other.
“Cass, about that…” She swallows thickly and fixes me with a wide-eyed, serious stare. I brace because I know what’s coming. “Last night felt like a dream, and I’m not going to lie and say I didn’t enjoy it, needed it even, but it’s not happening again.”
“I understand.” Spot on, I nod and smile.
“You do? Honestly, I was expecting a little more resistance than that.”
“I said I understand. I didn’t say I agree.”
“Of course.” She rolls her eyes, and I step right up close to her body. She holds her ground. Her breath catches, and her pupils dilate enough to make my cock pay the utmost attention. It’s a kick that her body is so responsive and reacts the way it does, but I’d be an idiot to push this. This has to be in her time. And however unplanned this situation is, we seem to have all the time in the world and we’re finally together. The planets are aligned.
“Tia, you have a shit tonne of stuff to process, but the fact that you didn’t kick me out this morning means you do still trust me, and that’s probably more than I deserve.” My hand sweeps the dark strand that constantly falls over her face when it’s not tied back, and she follows my move, securing it with the rest of the sloppy knot of hair on top of her head.
“You were backed into a corner, Cass, I know that.” Her flash of a smile is genuine, and the sincerity in her gaze has me rooted to the spot. My breath mingles with hers we’re so close, and my fingers lose the battle to not touch her and then rest on her hips. My gaze flits between her mouth and her dark emerald eyes. “I believe you were deceived by the best, lied to by people who were supposed to love you, and despite that, you did still try and help when I was sent to prison. If we’d actually met back then, I don’t think any of this would’ve happened. You would’ve seen I was telling the truth, and you would’ve ended it. In my heart, I know that much is true. Whether either of us would’ve found out the real truth about my bloodline, I can’t say, but none of it matters now. It’s in the past and part of the whole me being utterly exhausted thing. I need time for me.”
She draws in a shaky breath and steps back, away from my touch, and I feel it like I’ve been sucker punched.
“You hurt me. Logan hurt me. Even though I understand why, it doesn’t sting any less. The only thing I’m certain of is this: I’m in no position to make any decisions. You need to keep the company going, Cass. There are people’s jobs at stake, and you need to do whatever for Tartarus. I love this place as much as you, and it shouldn’t end its days like this, unloved and destroyed.” She jumps over the thigh-high wall that used to be the boot room entrance and starts to walk toward the rear rose gardens.
“Where are you going?” I call out.
“I don’t know. I need some time on my own.”
She turns and I have to shield my eyes to keep her in view. The blazing sunlight casts a blinding white halo of light around her, rendering her short summer skirt almost translucent. A light breeze picks up the hem, and the material dances until she snaps her hand to her side, protecting her modesty and making me grumble. “Don’t look so worried, you’ll still know where I am.” She lifts the necklace with the tracker I gave her all those weeks ago. Was it only weeks? If feels so much longer.
“I was going to ask, why are you still wearing it?”
“I don’t want to go back to jail, and—”
“I never pressed charges, Tia.” I make my confession. “I tricked you into believing I had that kind of sway with the police. I wanted you close.”
“To find your money.”
“I think you and I both know it had nothing to do with the money.”
“So I can take it off?” She threads her fingers along the chain, pulling it back and forth.
“You can.”
“See you later, Cass.” She releases the chain from her fingers and the lock glints in the sunlight settling once more against her neck. Spinning on her toes in a flourish of flying hemlines and sass she skips off into the horizon.
“I’ll be waiting.” I yell with cupped hands around my mouth to make sure she hears me, her quick steps making light work of the increasing distance between us.
I pick my way around the perimeter of the house, waving off Atticus and trying to come to terms with the utter devastation surrounding me.
It’s unbelievable and heartbreaking.
Such a great house with grand rooms and fine furniture reduced to ruins. Mounds of brick, dust and rubble piled high next to partial walls barely defying gravity and likely to crumble with the first gust of a summer breeze. Blistered wood and centuries-old oak panelling that lined the long corridors and reception rooms, now ash beneath my feet. Hundreds of ancient oak beams lie all around, charred and glistening with pockets of molten black substances oozing from the cracks in the wood. Evidence of the fury of the flames that engulfed the Hall, where the heat was so intense it melted and melded materials into new forms. So much destruction, deadly mountains of broken glass, bricks, remnants of pieces of furniture too sturdy to succumb to the fire but torn apart by the violent explosion which blew the house to smithereens, Atticus’s home. My heart aches; his must be in pieces.
I reach the end of the walled garden and face the part of the house that is still standing, only just by the look of it. The glass in the windows of the orangery is blackened with smoke but is intact. The scorched paintwork is flaky in places, yet it is still mostly white, and I think the East Tower directly to its left is the reason it survived at all. The tall structure must have shielded the delicate extension from the blast. The front part of the house that led to the tower was levelled flat by the explosion; however, the tower itself looks untouched. Nevertheless, Atticus said it wasn’t safe, and I have no reason to think he’s lying. I can see him in the distance, carefully working his way through the rooms that were once his playground, and my heart twists with a mix of the sadness he must be feeling and fear, because what’s left of the building doesn’t look nearly safe enough to be wandering around.
“Be careful!” I shout, and even from here, I can see his bright white teeth smiling wide as he waves off my worry with a mocking two-fingered salute. Stubborn arse.
I take the footpath around the edge of the meadow along the riverbank and down toward the boathouse. The sun is high and warms me to my bones through the thin material of my summer dress. I feel a gentle smile when I stop for a moment and absorb the full strength of the English sunshine on my face, closing my eyes as the beams hit me full on. I bask in the heat and begin to lose myself. All I can feel is the rise and fall of my soft steady breaths, the warm sun stroking my skin, and all I can hear is the thrum of nature surrounding me. The smell of summer fills my nostrils, and like the bell in the village shop, I am bombarded with memories. I let them filter across my eyelids like a movie of my
life in slow motion. Fun and laughter, adventure and excitement battle with loneliness and isolation, heartache and more loneliness; mostly the latter dominates each recollection. I loved it here, yet the only happy memories involve my time with Atticus.
It’s a truly beautiful place, but even nature’s most stunning vistas are rendered lacklustre if you have no one to share it with.
The tall reeds and bulrushes rustle with the light breeze and the long grasses on the verges team with life. The vibrant cacophony of nature provides the backdrop with buzzing bees, crickets chirping, mice and more scuttling in the thick undergrowth, hiding from sight if not sound. The river meanders through the fields, and I don’t turn back until the sun has peaked past midday and my legs are aching, itchy too, from making my own path through the fields. My bare legs are striped with slashes of red from the brambles and nettles, cuts, and grass rash, yet I didn’t feel a thing.
The river spills out on a bend and wraps around a tree where the bank has eroded, creating a small island with shallow water and small sandy dunes. I slip my flip-flops from my feet and wade in to the crystal clear pond, sinking into the warm silt bed until my toes are completely submerged. I wriggle them and relish to cool respite the water brings to my legs. The skin on my neck and shoulders feels tight from too much sun, and I scoop some of the water in my hands to pour it over myself. It’s not like there’s anyone around to see if my dress becomes a little see-through. The water trickles down my neck and wicks quickly through the thin cotton. It feels good. The material is slick to my skin and cools me. The breeze makes my skin prickle with goosebumps.
I know I’ve caught way too much sun, and I’m an idiot for not bringing a water bottle. Just the thought makes my mouth feel like I’m sucking down on a cotton ball the size of my fist. I scoop some of the river into my cupped hands and purse my lips.
“Don’t do that!” A deep voice bellows from behind a dense hedgerow in the corner of the cornfield. I jump and spin, twisting my ankle and plopping hard down onto my bottom, waist deep into the river.
“Shit!”
“Oh my, miss, I’m sorry.” The voice chuckles and a man’s head appears above the branches of the hedge. He works his way toward me and along the border and opens a gate I knew was there, only it was so overgrown I hadn’t thought it was still in use.
“Angus, you scared the life out of me.”
His kind eyes crinkle his weathered face. The old gamekeeper must be sweltering in his wax gun jacket, flat cap, and hunter boots, although I can see uncharacteristic concessions to the heat of summer; his shirt collar is open at the neck, revealing a riot of curly grey hair, and the threadbare sweater he always wore is missing. Simply looking at the layers makes me sweat.
“I didn’t mean to scare you, miss, but since you were about to drink a handful of river there, I thought, rather than catching a nasty case of Weil’s disease, it might be worth the risk of getting a fright from an old man.” He raises a knowing bushy brow, and I grimace. I should know better; I do know better. I was just so thirsty. Not so much mind reading as assessing the bloody obvious, Angus lifts his silver hip flask from his deep pocket and throws it my way.
“Here have this.”
I snap catch it between my palms and flip the lid. Gasping for liquid, I suck it down in large unladylike gulps. Big mistake.
“Oh god, is that whiskey?” I cough and splutter my question, feeling the familiar burn at the back of my throat.
“Trust me, its better than the river.” He chortles.
“I’m not so sure.” I toss the flask back to him and pull myself to standing, balancing on one leg as my ankle throbs with pain and won’t bear any of my weight just yet. The water sloshes and slides down my body, slicking my dress to me like a translucent second skin. The patch of leathery cheek above Angus’s grey whiskers turns beet red. I look down and snap my arms over my breasts and place one hand where a fig leaf is currently needed. “Oh god!”
“Here lass, take this.” He shucks his gun jacket and offers it with his arm outstretched.
“Actually I’m not sure I can. I’ve twisted my ankle and—” I don’t finish my objection. “Oh no Angus, you’ll get—”
“A little water never hurt no one.” He strides into the river, the water soaking up to his knees, and only his overly thick calves are preventing his boots filling to the brim. He sidles next to me, one arm around my waist, his bony hand on my hip, and his eyes fixed forward. “Now hold on to my shoulders. I can’t quite lift you, but I can help you to my truck at least, and get you back home.” For an old man, he’s surprisingly strong and spritely. He picks up most of my weight with the one arm and steps us quickly from the river and over to his battered Land Rover truck.
He drops the tailgate and helps me sit, disappears for a moment, returning with my flip-flops and an old towel, which looks like it belonged to the dogs.
“It’s clean.” He assures me after giving it a furtive sniff. I take the towel and dry off my legs; my dress is too wet and will to have to air dry. He helps me into the front passenger seat, and I use the towel to cover the seat. The leather is long past needing protection, but in the glare of the sun, the dark leather retains heat like a fire pit and it’s likely to fry my arse. I shift around to face Angus when he is about to turn the ignition.
“Thank you.” He gives an awkward nod and an odd frown pulls his face into a troubled expression. He takes his time before he speaks, the rumble of the old engine almost completely masking his mumbled words.
“I guess it should be me thanking you.”
“Excuse me? Sorry Angus, I didn’t catch that.” He kills the engine and repeats himself. I shake my head with confusion. “How is that exactly?”
“Well, keeping an old codger like me employed when there are men far more able to take care of the estate.”
“Atticus told you?”
“He did. You must know I had nothing to do with the fire. I was visiting my son. You know I would never—”
“I know Angus, you loved that place almost as much as my mum.” I place my hand over his; the bony knuckles are a little too white for my liking. He draws in a deep breath and lets out a heavy sigh. The sound fills the space between us with regret. He was close with my mother at one time, and although I never knew the specifics, I can see in the sad depths of his pale grey eyes there was something.
“I never held with what she did to you, lassie.”
I give a light shrug because I don’t know what to say, and I can see whatever he’s wrestling with is weighing heavy on his old bones. “I never saw her again after the trial, not like I had, I mean. I was grateful to her for not getting me fired. She was thick with Mrs Kraus, and she could’ve easily done that. I don’t know why she didn’t.” He sniffs.
“Thank you, but honestly, don’t look at me for answers when it comes to my mother. I have none.” I pat the back of his hand hoping my breezy tone lifts his concerns and lightens the sombre mood. It’s done now, in the past, and I so want to move on.
“Well, like I say, she was thick with Mrs Kraus, and although she never told me what, she always believed Mrs Kraus was biding her time before she made good on some promise.”
“Hmm, I guess I can give her that much. My mother was a fool when it came to Mrs Kraus and Mrs Kraus did very nearly make good on her promise.”
“Which was?” He tilts back in his seat as if trying to focus on some great puzzle I’ve proffered, when the answer is all too evident.
“Making sure I got what was owed.” I point to the mound of destruction blackening the horizon, and Angus looks horrified at the suggestion I leave hanging ominously in the air.
Cass appears at the door as Angus’s truck motors to a nosy halt outside the lodge gate. He drops whatever he was holding and rushes from the front door to my side of the truck. His eyes narrow when he clocks my dishevelled state.
“Christ, are you all right? What happened? I knew I shouldn’t have let you go alone.”
&n
bsp; “Would you stop? I’m fine. Twisted ankle and a little dehydrated, nothing a hot bath and a few glasses of wine can’t fix.” He pulls the door open, and it creaks and drops a little on its hinges with only the stubborn rust holding it together. I lift my bottom to allow him to slide his arms under and around me. He lifts me carefully from the truck, cradling me against his body like I’m some recovered precious treasure. He scowls at Angus as if somehow it was the old man’s fault.
“Angus saved me a long walk home, so no need to give him the evils.”
“He’s seen you half naked; he’s lucky he’s alive.” He grumbles low and menacing, the vibrations ripple from his body to mine.
“Thank you, Angus.” I call over my shoulder as Atticus strides off without a backward glance, slamming the front door as soon as we are safely inside.
“A little dramatic don’t you think?”
“No, I don’t.” His face darkens, and I shiver from more than the icy chill in his demeanour.
“What’s wrong? Atticus, you’re scaring me.” He places me on the sofa in the living room, the lumpy cushions sag around my body and the dark shadow from Atticus looming makes me shiver.
“You got this.” He picks a cream handwritten envelope from his back pocket, holding it in front of my face and as far away from his body as is physically possible without dropping it.
