The Island Legacy

by Ruth Saberton

  And best of all? It would be a massive V-sign to Max Reynard.

  Jonathan Ambrose took Ness’s hand and shook it. His grip was like iron.

  “Congratulations, Miss Penwellyn,” he said. “It looks as though we’re in business.”

  Chapter 24

  Lucy couldn’t believe it. There was money in the account, Adam had been hired to put a specialist team together and begin the restoration of the Pilgrim’s Gate, and a local firm of builders was already fixing the causeway. Ness had assured her the tea room was next on the list and then they would be refurbishing the castle in order to start a boutique bed-and-breakfast business.

  “How on earth have you managed it?” she’d asked Ness on several occasions, but her cousin had just winked and said something about calling in a favour from an old acquaintance.

  “Some favour,” Annie Luckett remarked on a blustery Tuesday morning in early July as she and Lucy waited in the Small Hall to show the first group of visitors around the castle. “I dread to think what she’s had to do to find the money to start all this work.” Her lined face was creased with concern. “I hope she’s not done something daft like borrow money from somebody disreputable.”

  Lucy hoped so too. “Nessa’s not stupid. She wouldn’t do that.”

  “Hmm,” said Annie, which was short for I have my doubts.

  Lucy didn’t blame her; she couldn’t think of any other explanation apart from a loan. If Ness’s lottery numbers had come up, surely she would have said something. It wasn’t as if there was any hope of finding an unexpected inheritance, either – and nobody knew this better than Lucy. What choice had Ness really been given? They’d been only weeks away from bankruptcy.

  Only a handful of tourists had arrived this morning. The weather was unusually chilly for the time of year and, rather than exploring the island, most of them had headed to the tea room where Fern was making drinks and Merryn was doing some one-handed waiting of tables. Meanwhile Ness was in the library, which she’d turned into an office – and very busy she was too, Lucy thought, with coordinating builders, sorting out insurance for the music festival and generally balancing the books. There had been a bustling and purposeful atmosphere about the castle in recent days, which it probably hadn’t experienced since Armand had hosted his legendary parties at the height of his fame. The energy was contagious and, buoyed with optimism, Lucy had finally taken the plunge and treated herself to the spotty dress. Tonight she and Adam were going to visit the Italian restaurant – just as friends, of course – to give the frock an outing and to celebrate Josh passing his Grade Six violin exam with distinction.

  Lucy was lost in daydreams about the possibilities of entering Josh for the equivalent piano exam when Adam strolled into the Small Hall. The work on the church conversion was all but complete, so he was doing a couple of days a week at the castle now. Already he and his team had made considerable progress.

  “Morning all,” Adam said, with that grin which made Lucy’s heart turn somersaults. “I’m looking for Ness. Is she about?”

  “Library,” said Annie. She peered at him over her half-moon spectacles. “Not so fast, young man! You’re covered in dust and we’ve spent an hour sweeping the floor this morning before our visitors arrive. If you’re going inside you can take your boots off. And your overalls.”

  Adam grinned. “My boots are fine to come off, Miss L. The overalls though you might object to. It’s hot work lifting granite and I’ve only got my boxers on underneath.”

  That was an image Lucy knew she wouldn’t get out of her mind. Now every time she looked at Adam in his blue overalls she’d be imagining him stepping out of them like something from Magic Mike. Oh dear. That wasn’t the way she was supposed to think about a man who was just a good friend.

  But Annie didn’t turn a hair. “You may freeze because it’s always cold in here,” she warned him. “Perhaps it would be prudent to have clothes on in the future?”

  “Yes, Miss,” teased Adam.

  “What’s this about putting clothes on?” asked Ness, who’d just joined them. Her green eyes widened as she caught sight of Adam in his overalls – which were now unzipped to the waist to prove his point, revealing a bare chest dusted with golden hair. “Did I green-light a male stripper business without realising?”

  “Adam was getting dust everywhere,” Annie began to explain, but Ness held her hands up.

  “I don’t need to know where Adam’s getting dust,” she laughed. “I was actually looking for Fern? There’s been a man on the phone for her and I think it must be about the concert. He’s very persistent.”

  Ness held the castle’s phone in one hand and a spiral-bound notepad in the other, and her wild red curls were skewered to the crown of her head with a biro. She looked like this a lot recently, Lucy thought, probably because she was so busy. The light in the library burned deep into the small hours, the telephone was constantly shrilling and there always seemed to be a stream of tradespeople traipsing in and out of the place.

  “Fern’s in the tea room,” Lucy told her. “I can take a message if you like? What did he say his name was?”

  Ness frowned. “He didn’t. He just said Fern would know him and that he’d be in touch. Do you think there’s a problem?”

  “I don’t know. I hope not.” Lucy felt uneasy. Nobody knew where Fern had come from or why she was all alone at such a tender age. Lucy remembered the bruises on the girl’s thin arms and the haunted look she’d had for months, and a sixth sense told her this caller was not good news.

  “Now that you’re here and I don’t need to strip off,” Adam was saying to Ness, “unless Miss Luckett wants me to, that is, I just need you to clarify that we can go ahead with the next stage of the gate? We’ll be needing three more masons, if that’s still okay?”

  Ness nodded. “That’s all fine. Just try and keep it within budget if you can? Under would be better, obviously.”

  Adam looked doubtful. “I’ll do my best, Ness, but it won’t be easy.”

  “No,” shouted another voice, “it won’t be easy, because you’re supposed to be bloody working for me!”

  This angry interruption, called across the Small Hall from the open entrance to the kitchen, made Lucy jump and Ness spin around. Max Reynard was framed in the doorway. The expression on his face was as black as his hair.

  “You could have knocked,” Ness said, and was rewarded with a glower from those slate-grey eyes.

  “The door was open. Perhaps my project manager left it that way so that the rest of my employees could wander in too?” His words dripped with sarcasm and Adam winced.

  “Mate, where I chose to work is up to me,” Adam said evenly. “The same goes for my team too, since they’re freelance.”

  “You’ve all been hired by Reynards!” Max blasted, striding across the flagstones until he and Adam were practically eyeball to eyeball. “I go away on business for a fortnight and when I come back I find that my project manager’s walked off the job and is moonlighting somewhere else. What the hell are you playing at?”

  Everyone in the room was struck dumb. Max’s icy grey gaze swept contemptuously around the Small Hall before returning to Adam.

  “Well?”

  Adam sighed.

  “Come on, Max, you know as well as I do that the work on the church is all but finished. My part in it certainly is. There’s nothing more for me to do there and I’m not going to sit on my backside, twiddling my thumbs and taking your money for nothing. I’m off the payroll since last week when my team finished. I had thought that was just until our next project, but now...” He paused and let the silence speak for him. “Now I’m not too sure.”

  “I’m sorry you feel like that,” Max said curtly. “But the work isn’t completed. There’s more to do.”

  “Mate, there really isn’t,” Adam replied patiently. “It’s all finished and that other project you mentioned isn’t quite coming off as planned, is it?”

  “It will,” Max said
crisply. “And your working here for free won’t make it happen any quicker.”

  “He’s not working for free.” Ness stepped forward. “I’m paying Adam in his professional capacity.”

  “What?” Max turned to face her, his feet slightly apart and every sinew of his lithe frame tensed. “Don’t be ridiculous. You can’t do that. You couldn’t possibly afford it.”

  “Says who?” answered Ness.

  “Don’t play games with me, Nessa. We both know how things stand here.” His handsome face wore a sardonic expression. “There’s no money to fund it.”

  “Interesting that you seem to know the ins and outs of my finances,” Ness remarked. “And even more interesting that you seem to be totally wrong. There’s plenty of money to get us started on some repairs now that I’ve asked Jonathan Ambrose to help.”

  Max stared at her incredulously. “You’ve borrowed money from Ambrose Investments? Are you absolutely insane?”

  He looked ready to explode, and Lucy’s heartbeat accelerated.

  Ness merely shrugged her slender shoulders. “There’ve been a couple of occasions lately where I’ve wondered that myself,” she agreed.

  A dark look passed between them. Intriguing, thought Lucy. Had Ness seen more of Max Reynard than she’d been letting on? Surely not? After the sneaky way he’d tricked her when she’d first arrived, Ness had made it clear she couldn’t stand the man.

  “Why didn’t you come to me?” Max was clearly shocked. “Why on earth borrow from a shark like Ambrose? I’d made you an offer for the castle. We could have done this together.”

  “You’ve borrowed money?” Annie looked horrified.

  “It was the only way to get things started,” Ness said. “Don’t look so worried, Annie! I haven’t been to the local loan shark. I’ve an arrangement with one of the biggest venture capitalists in the city. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Until Jonny Ambrose calls the loan in!” Max was shaking his head. “You should have come to me, Ness. This is madness.”

  “That’s your forte, waiting for people to get desperate and then pouncing, isn’t it?” Ness’s voice was filled with scorn. “Excuse me if I’d rather not just hand the island to you.”

  “So you’d rather let Jonathan Ambrose screw you over?” Max was unable to hide his disbelief. “Have you any idea just how tough these guys can be? They exist to make money. They’re not the good guys here.”

  Her top lip curled. “And you are, I suppose?”

  “I’d like to be. Come on, Ness. Why don’t you give me a chance and let me help?”

  “Because I don’t trust you,” Ness said bluntly.

  They stared at each other and Lucy felt the atmosphere crackle. She looked at Adam, who raised a blond eyebrow – a gesture that confirmed he felt it too.

  “Fine,” Max said coldly. “It’s up to you. I’ll just wait until Ambrose calls in the debt – which you’ll never service, by the way – and buy the island then. It makes no difference to me, Ness, but it would have done to you. I’ll probably buy it for less than I offered you now.”

  With that, he turned on his heel and strode out of the Small Hall. Lucy knew it was a ridiculous thought, but he seemed genuinely upset by what Ness had done. She wasn’t sure how she felt about the loan herself, but what other choice had there been? Without the causeway they’d be in huge trouble; not only that, but no tea room meant no income, and the Pilgrim’s Gate would still be damaged now if her cousin hadn’t found some cash from somewhere. Desperate times did call for desperate measures.

  But just how desperate they were yet to get was what really worried Lucy. From the look on Max Reynard’s face this was far from the end of the matter.

  “He calmed down eventually,” Adam assured Lucy later on that evening. They were seated in the window at Sorrentina, St Pirran’s pretty Italian restaurant, tucking into piles of delicious seafood pasta. He leaned forward and topped up her glass.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Lucy answered. “Whoa, that’s enough! I’ll never make the walk back otherwise!” She placed her hand across the top of the glass. Her cheeks were already glowing and the red shoes which matched her dress were hard enough to walk in when she was stone cold sober, never mind when tipsy and navigating cobbles. “He was really angry though. I hope we haven’t got you into trouble with your boss?”

  Adam laughed. “The day Max is my boss is the day I know I’m doomed! We’re old school friends, Lucy. My dad worked for his, back in the day when Reynards was just a building firm. Max is my best mate and probably the closest thing I have to a brother.” He paused and a faraway expression filled his brown eyes. “To be honest, if it hadn’t been for him, I don’t know how I’d have managed after Elly died. Max picked me up and dusted me down, and he was there for Josh too. I know he gets a bad press here, but trust me on this: he’s one of the good guys. Josh adores him and he’s a brilliant godfather.”

  Lucy was taken aback to have her view of Max Reynard turned upside down. It was a bit like discovering that Cruella de Vil worked for the RSPCA and had actually been saving little puppies.

  “The thing you have to understand about Max is that he feels things very deeply,” Adam continued. “He loves this town and he loves the island too. His ideas might not be the same as Nessa’s but they both have the same goal in mind.”

  “If Max buys the island then it’ll get developed and it’ll be for private use only. The place will be gone forever and the magic will be lost.”

  “I totally agree,” said Adam, “and I think Max will too in the end, but he needs to figure that out for himself. I think he and your cousin could be a really good team if they actually worked together rather than fought one another.”

  “Work together? They hate each other!”

  Adam took her hand in his, brushing her palm with his thumb. “Are you so sure about that? Sometimes people’s feelings creep up on them. Enemies discover they don’t dislike one another as much as they thought, or good friends come to realise there could be more between them…”

  His words faded away but the thumb continued its delicate caress. Lucy’s pulse skittered. Sitting here with Adam, wearing the dress he’d admired all those weeks ago, and with her hair and make-up just right for once, she felt a million miles away from her usual self. She’d glimpsed something in his eyes that had made the breath catch in her throat and given her hope that maybe, just maybe, there was a new version of Lucy Penwellyn waiting to be discovered.

  “Do you believe friends can sometimes become more?” Adam asked softly.

  Lucy’s eyes widened. “Are you saying—”

  But she never managed to finish her sentence. The door of the restaurant flew open and her brother Jamie burst in, scanning the place until he spotted her. Lucy shrank into her seat and slid her hand away guiltily.

  “They told me in the pub that you were here,” her brother shouted, oblivious to the annoyed glances thrown his way by the other diners as he glanced off their tables, sending glasses rattling and wine sloshing on his uneven route to reach her. “So much for being there for me. So much for all your I love my brother shit. Why weren’t you at the castle? You knew I was coming down this evening to visit and you should have been there to meet me. That bitch told me to get off her property. How bloody humiliating do you think that was for me? And it’s your fault she was able to say it. If you’d been there she wouldn’t have dared.”

  Lucy had a horrible sensation in the pit of her stomach, as though she were descending fast in a lift. She’d known Jamie was due to collect yet more things that he’d been insisting were his, but with all the excitement of the past couple of weeks his visit had completely slipped her mind.

  “Jamie, I’m really sorry,” Lucy said, but her younger brother was in no mood to listen to apologies. His face was scarlet with rage. Lucy’s heart sank; although it was Ness he was furious with, Lucy knew that Jamie would take out his anger on her instead.

  “You let me take that cr
ap from her while you’re out having dinner with your bit of rough,” he spat. “Nice to know you have your priorities right, sis. A little loyalty wouldn’t have gone amiss.”

  “I’d say that some manners wouldn’t go amiss from you, mate.” Adam rose to his feet. He was much taller than her brother, Lucy realised, and all the lifting of masonry and physical work he did for a living had rendered him muscular and powerful. “Your sister’s out for dinner, and so are all these other people around us. I suggest you go away and come back in when you’ve sobered up.”

  Jamie’s face, set in its perpetual sneer, grew redder still. Lucy knew he wouldn’t calm down now. If she didn’t diffuse the situation somehow, he’d be making an even worse scene.

  “Are you going to let your oik talk to me like that?” Jamie demanded.

  Lucy smelt the sour taint of whiskey on his breath and groaned inwardly. Her brother was always foul when he drank spirits. He must have been trawling the drinking establishments of St Pirran looking for her – and if he was staying at the hotel he’d have had a few there too. Jamie was a horrible drunk, belligerent and unpredictable. She had to get him out of here, and fast.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said to Adam, mortified by her brother’s words.

  But Adam was looking amused. “That I’m your oik? Hey, I’m cool with that if you are?”

  Lucy couldn’t think of anything nicer. Not that Adam was an oik, but that he was happy to be her anything. She was just about to say this when Jamie, incensed at being ignored, made a lunge across the table at her companion. As Adam neatly sidestepped the assault, the inebriated Jamie overbalanced and landed face first in Lucy’s spaghetti marinara.

  “If we’d known you were that hungry mate, we’d have got you a plate,” Adam remarked as Lucy’s brother lurched back to his feet.

  Jamie’s hair was laced with spaghetti and a mussel sat jauntily on top of his head. He glowered at Adam, tomato sauce dripping from his face. “I won’t forget this!”

  “Neither will I!” Adam said. His lips were twitching. “I know I’m an oik but I’d always assumed people generally dive for seafood before it’s plated rather than after? Or is this a public school tradition I’m unaware of?”