The Inheritance
Page 1
The Inheritance
Tilly Bagshawe
Copyright
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
77–85 Fulham Palace Road,
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by Harper 2014
Copyright © Tilly Bagshawe 2014
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014
Tilly Bagshawe asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007472512
Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007481385
Version: 2014-06-30
Dedication
For Sarah and Kris Glynn
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Map
Prologue
Part One: The Usurpers
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Part Two: The Reckoning
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by Tilly Bagshawe
About the Publisher
PROLOGUE
Dawn broke late over the Swell Valley. The May sun rose sleepily into a cloudless sky, streaking it first red, then pink, then a gorgeous, deep, burnished orange, like melted rose gold. Bathed in this magical light, Furlings House shimmered above the village of Fittlescombe, tranquil and magnificent. The family seat of the Flint-Hamiltons for over three hundred years, Furlings was frequently referred to as the most beautiful estate in Sussex, if not the whole of England. Certainly it lived up to that accolade this morning, a study in Georgian splendour, with nothing to puncture the peace of its rolling parkland and idyllic views except the occasional whinny of a pony in the top fields, or plaintive bleat of a lost lamb somewhere on the Downs.
‘You fucker!’
A loudly slamming door sent a slumbering heron soaring into the air above the river.
‘You lying, shallow lowlife! Go to hell!’
Each word was screamed at deafening volume. It was a woman’s voice, delivered in a cut-glass accent, and it was followed seconds later by the woman herself, crunching over the gravel. She was striking for two reasons. The first was that she was young, blonde and stunningly beautiful. And the second was that she was stark naked (unless one counted the pair of Wellington boots she’d slipped on as she exited the kitchen; or the heavy, cast-iron frying pan she was brandishing menacingly above her head, like a Zulu warrior with a machete).
‘For God’s sake, Tatiana, calm down. You’ll wake up half the village.’
Her intended victim, a much older man with dishevelled salt-and-pepper hair, was half running, half limping towards his car. Barefoot, he’d only managed to partially dress himself before the Amazon had beaten him out of doors. In an unbuttoned evening shirt, with his suit trousers slipping repeatedly towards his knees, he cut a pathetic, cowering figure. Only the keenest of political observers would have recognized him as Sir Malcom Turnbull, Secretary of State for Trade & Industry, married father of three and tireless champion of family values.
‘You think I give a flying fuck about the village?’ the girl hissed at him like a snake. ‘I’m Tatiana Flint-Hamilton. I own this village. Besides, why shouldn’t people know what a lying, cheating scumbag you really are?’
Sir Malcom had only just managed to scramble into his Porsche when Tatiana caught up with him. Lifting the frying pan high above her head, she brought it down with a deafening thwack on the car’s roof, leaving a dent the size of a small meteor strike and missing the minister’s skull by inches.
‘Jesus Christ.’ Shaking, Sir Malcom rammed the key in the ignition and turned it, but the bloody thing was jammed. ‘Have you lost your mind?’ he stammered. ‘You knew I had a wife.’
‘Yes. And you told me you were going to leave her! At least twenty times.’
‘My dear girl, I will. But it’s not that simple. Henrietta’s terribly fragile at the moment. And Nick’s got his GCSEs this summer …’
‘Spare me.’ Tatiana Flint-Hamilton lifted the pan again, like a shot-putter about to let rip.
‘No! Please. Perhaps after the next election …’ Sir Malcom spluttered.
‘The next election?’ Tatiana laughed out loud. ‘That’s years away. What about the money?’
‘Money?’
‘The money I need to fight for my inheritance. The money you promised me, along with using your influence in the High Court. That was all bullshit too, wasn’t it? You treacherous snake!’
Wham! The pan struck again.
Wham! And again.
At last the Porsche’s engine roared into life and the panicked minister sped away. Thank God it was still early and Furlings was so remote. Just imagine if I’d taken her to the London flat. The paparazzi would have seen us for sure. Sir Malcom Turnbull shuddered at what might have been.
Tatiana Flint-Hamilton was an incredibly beautiful, sexy girl, but the tabloids were right when they referred to her as a ‘wild child’.
Forget ‘tigress’. The young lady was a velociraptor.
The minister wasn’t a religious man but as he drove away he prayed fervently that he never saw Tatiana Flint-Hamilton again.
Tatiana stood and watched as the battered Porsche disappeared into the distance.
Like my future. Like my house. All of it’s disappearing, she thought morosely. But she quickly pulled herself together.
What a bloody cliché to drive a red sports car in your fifties, anyway?
Tosser.
A cool dawn breeze made her shiver. Tatiana looked down at her own nakedness, and the frying pan hanging limply from her hand, and laughed. All of a sudden a pair of knickers, or even a dressing gown, had a certain appeal. Come to think of it, so did a bacon sandwich. The combination of sex and rage had made her ravenous.
&
nbsp; Striding back into the kitchen, she pulled a Barbour jacket off a peg by the door and wrapped it round her. Opening the fridge to look for bacon, she discovered there wasn’t any, so poured herself an ice-cold vodka instead and wandered through to the drawing room, taking the bottle with her.
She tried not to think about how much she was going to miss this place.
I mustn’t give up. Not yet.
In a few hours, the entire population of Swell Valley would be milling around in Furlings’ lower fields for Fittlescombe’s annual May Day fete. I can’t face them, thought Tati, slumping down onto her father’s old sofa and knocking back four fingers of Stoli before refilling her mug. I truly can’t. They’ve all come to gloat.
Glancing up, she saw her grandmother’s portrait staring down at her disapprovingly from above the fireplace.
‘What?’ Tatiana challenged the canvas angrily, throwing open her jacket to reveal a perfect pair of round breasts, smooth, flat belly and glossy dark triangle of pubic hair. ‘Didn’t you always tell me to use my gifts. Well these are my gifts!’
She was drunk and angry, with herself more than anything. What on earth had possessed her to trust a slimy toad like Sir Malcom Turnbull? Everyone knew politicians were worse than drug dealers. Tears welled up in her eyes, but she didn’t allow them to fall.
‘I’m doing my best, Granny, OK?’ she slurred. ‘I am doing my fucking best.’
PART ONE
The Usurpers
CHAPTER ONE
‘Well I think it’s crap.’
Gabe Baxter, a blue eyed, broad-shouldered farmer and local Fittlescombe heart-throb, leaned forward over the table and took a long, cool sip of his Merrydown cider.
‘Tatiana Flint-Hamilton hasn’t bothered to show up for a village fete in five years. But now she wants local support to get her precious house back, suddenly she’s swanning in like Lady Muck offering to judge the cakes. It’s so contrived. She doesn’t give a shit about the community.’
‘That’s a bit harsh.’ Will Nutley, another local lad and a friend of Gabe’s from the village cricket team, stretched out his long legs contentedly. Will was drinking Abbey Dry, a local competitor to Merrydown. Gabe described it as ‘cat’s piss’, but this hadn’t deterred Will from ordering himself a third pint. ‘I think it takes guts to come back, under the circumstances.’
‘The circumstances,’ as the entire valley knew, were that the late Rory Flint-Hamilton, long-time lord of the manor at Fittlescombe and owner of Furlings, had sensationally disinherited his only child, his daughter Tatiana. Until now, Tatiana Flint-Hamilton had been most famous for her model looks and her taste for scandal, both of which had made her a favourite with the tabloids. With her long, caramel-coloured hair, slender figure and angular, almost cartoon-like face – huge green eyes, high cheekbones, wide, impossibly sensual mouth – at twenty-four Tati Flint-Hamilton exuded not only sex appeal but class. Breeding. Like a racehorse, or a rare, perfectly cut diamond. Unfortunately she also had a penchant for powerful, high-profile, and often married men, not to mention a well-documented drug habit. What set Tati apart from other society ‘It girls’ was her intelligence, her wit (she could always be relied upon for a suitably pithy and amusing quote) and her refreshing lack of remorse about any of her wild antics. On the scale of Great British Don’t-Give-A-Shitness, she was right up there with Simon Cowell.
The media loved her for it. But her own father had spent his last years in a misery of embarrassment and despair over Tatiana’s behaviour and, in the end, the idea of handing over his beloved Furlings to his tearaway daughter had proved too much. Rory had changed his will, apparently without breathing a word to anyone. Rumour had it that Tatiana had turned up at the lawyers’ offices in high spirits, fully expecting to take possession of her inheritance. Only to be told by her godfather Edmund Ruck, senior partner at Jameson and Ruck, that a house that had been in Flint-Hamilton hands for over three hundred years had in fact been left to distant cousins, and she was out on her pretty little, diamond-studded ear.
‘Guts?’ Gabe spluttered. ‘Come off it.’
‘I’m serious,’ said Will. ‘It must be bloody humiliating, wandering around the village trying to act normally, when everyone knows her old man cut her off.’
Gabe grunted noncommittally.
‘Imagine how you’d feel if your dad had disinherited you?’ Will went on. ‘If he’d left Wraggsbottom Farm to some random Aussie family.’
Brett Cranley, Rory Flint-Hamilton’s appointed heir, was an Australian property magnate. Famous in his native Australia, he was evidently extremely wealthy in his own right. Somehow that made the whole inheriting Furlings thing worse, at least in Will Nutley’s eyes.
‘The Cranleys aren’t random,’ said Gabe. ‘They’re relatives.’
‘Barely,’ said Will. ‘I heard Rory never even met them before he carked it. They’re total strangers.’
‘Yeah, well, whatever,’ said Gabe. ‘It wouldn’t have happened to me because I’m not a vacuous socialite with no sense of responsibility who’d let the whole estate go to hell in a handbasket before you could say “pass the cocaine”.’
Gabe and Will were sitting in the beer tent at the annual Fittlescombe village fete on what had blossomed into a blisteringly hot May morning. Always held on May Day and in Furlings’ sprawling lower meadow, this year’s fete had been given an added frisson of excitement thanks to the gossip surrounding Tatiana Flint-Hamilton’s disinheritance. The latest word was that Tatiana had decided to take Furlings’ new owners to court over it. Apparently she had some scheme brewing to have her father’s will declared invalid. Although nobody seemed clear quite how such a challenge might succeed. Rory Flint-Hamilton was old but quite sane when he died. And by all accounts the Cranleys were as surprised by the contents of his will as his daughter was, so they could hardly be said to have coerced him.
In any event, the case had split the village, and the entire Swell Valley, down the middle. There were some who approved of Rory’s decision to leave his ancient family estate in safer hands than those of his feckless, scandal-prone daughter. But many others felt aggrieved on Tatiana’s behalf. After all, it wasn’t as if all her Flint-Hamilton forefathers had been saints and angels, especially in their youth. Tati should be given a chance to grow up and prove herself. The fact that Rory’s appointed heirs, the Cranleys, were not only card-carrying nouves but, worse, Australian, only served to fan the flames of local ire.
Of course, no one had actually met Furlings’ new owners yet. The Cranleys were due to arrive next week. But that hadn’t stopped the rumour mill from going into overdrive. Mrs Worsley, Rory Flint-Hamilton’s old housekeeper, was the only person with first-hand information, having apparently Skyped with Brett Cranley and his wife on numerous occasions. On the basis of these conversations, the housekeeper pronounced her new employers ‘charming’ and ‘terribly down to earth’. Of course Fiona Worsley had more reason than most to support Rory’s Australian heirs over his daughter. Mrs Worsley had been there through the very worst excesses of Tati’s teenage years and had seen first hand just how spoiled, destructive and Machiavellian she could be. She was fond of Tatiana deep down, but the thought of working for her, not to mention sitting back and watching helplessly while she and her rich, druggie London friends turned Furlings into some sort of party-house, was more than the old woman could have borne.
On Mrs Worsley’s advice, Brett Cranley had already won over a few cynics by giving permission from Sydney for the village fete to go ahead as usual, and for the meadow to be used.
‘You see what I mean?’ Furlings’ housekeeper had purred. ‘He’s as nice as pie and generous with it.’
What Furlings’ new owner hadn’t anticipated was that his absence had left a window for his cousin Tatiana to swoop in unannounced and effectively take over proceedings. She’d even demanded that Mrs Worsley put her up in her old room at Furlings for the week of the fete.
‘I presume I’m welcome as
a guest, at least? In my own bloody home,’ she fumed.
Once installed, Tati had begun the Herculean task of trying to win over the locals. Her challenge to her father’s will was based on the premise that Furlings had never really been Rory’s to leave. That there was an effective entailment, inferred from generations of local practice. It was a shaky case, to say the least, but it was all she had. In order for it to stand a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding in court, she would need extensive local support. Hence, in Gabe Baxter’s view, her cynical ‘sudden interest’ in the village.
‘You have to admit, she’s done a good job running the fete committee,’ said Will Nutley, draining the dregs of his cider and wiping his mouth on his sleeve. ‘This must be the best turnout we’ve had in a decade. Loads of celebs have shown up because of her.’
‘So?’
‘So it’s all money for the village, isn’t it? I saw Kate Moss earlier at the craft stall. And Seb Harwich said Hugh Grant was milling around somewhere.’
‘Probably complaining,’ said Gabe, downing the rest of his Merrydown in a single gulp. ‘He’s such a miserable git.’
Will grinned. ‘Sure you’re not just jealous because he’s getting all the female attention?’
Gabe gave his trademark, arrogant laugh. ‘Jealous? Please. Anyway, he’s not getting Laura’s attention,’ he added proudly. ‘That’s the only female I’m interested in.’
At the top of the meadow, Laura Baxter, Gabe’s pretty young wife, mopped her brow with a handkerchief. Christ it was hot today! The weather at least seemed to be on Tatiana Flint-Hamilton’s side. At this rate the fete would raise a fortune, and Tati would get all the credit.
‘I’ll ’ave five tickets for a pound, please.’ Mr Preedy, the proprietor of Fittlecombe Village Stores, gazed appreciatively at Laura’s breasts, straining for escape from her pale pink linen shirt-dress.
In the grip of some temporary fever, Laura had agreed weeks ago to man the tombola, without doubt the most boring job at the entire fete. She passed a handful of tickets to the little bald shopkeeper and watched as he carefully unfolded and examined each one.