‘What?’
‘You’d better see this,’ he said, handing her a large envelope. Her heart was beating a little too fast as she put her thumb to the flap, but he stopped her. ‘Don’t open it here.’ Which didn’t do her heart rate any favours.
‘Actually, I have to get home. I’ve exchanged babysitting Alice for babysitting puppies.’ And this time she was the one attempting the unconvincing laugh.
‘Off you go, then. But you didn’t get that from me, okay?’
What on earth… She sat on the bench at the bus stop and opened the envelope, peered inside, afraid that it would be covered with red TOP SECRET stickers.
Nothing that exciting.
It was a photocopy of a planning application made by Mr Henry North to demolish the dwelling known as Primrose Cottage, Cranbrook Lane, Cranbrook.
Her house…
The home that she’d made for herself and for Alice.
Hal was going to knock it down. Drive a bulldozer through the rooms that she’d decorated, where she’d hung the curtains she’d made from remnants. The rooms for which she’d bought furniture from junk shops and car boot sales.
He was going to rip up the floors that she’d sanded, smash the basins whose taps no longer dripped only because she’d taught herself how to change washers, tear out the pipes she’d crawled in the loft, braving spiders to insulate against the cold. Send bulldozers through the garden she had created…
She’d known, when Sir Robert was forced to sell the estate, that her future was uncertain, that her rent would undoubtedly go up. Unlike Sir Robert, Hal was a hard-headed businessman and he was determined that the estate support itself.
She understood that.
But to discover that all the while he was making friends with Alice, making love to her he’d known about this… And not just known about it. This didn’t have anything to do with the redevelopment of Cranbrook Park as a hotel and leisure facility. This wasn’t the work of some anonymous consultant.
Hal North had planned this. Planned to hurt her as her father had hurt him. Take his pain out on her hide.
I’ve had my big moment, Claire…
Oh, yes…
It had been a big moment for her, too. She’d thought, hoped that it was more than a one off, but she’d left a voicemail yesterday morning and he hadn’t called back.
There had been no texts, no messages.
She’d always known, deep down, that there was something going on, something dark driving him, but she’d forgotten all her misgivings as he’d teased her, romanced her, taken her.
No. Not taken. His ultimate revenge was that she had given herself, heart, body and soul, freely, joyfully.
And now he was gone. Back to London. Back to his real life.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CLAIRE’S experience of lagging pipes in the loft stood her in good stead as she searched through the rafters of the elegant eighteenth-century stables—the horses had been housed far more grandly than the humans who did the manual work—for the painting her father had hidden.
Cobwebs, spiders, she brushed them aside without a thought.
It never occurred to Gary to query what she was doing there and when she finally found the crate, nibbled at the corners, covered in dust, cobwebs and mouse droppings, he helped her down with it. Went and found a screwdriver for her so that she could open it.
Being a seventeen-year-old boy, he wasn’t interested in a boring old painting of some boring old bloke and went back to the old motorbike he was stripping down.
He looked so young, but Hal was only a few months older when he’d been turned out to fend for himself.
She turned away. She couldn’t afford to think like that, think of him. Only what he was doing to her and Alice, but as she lifted the painting out, peeled back the wrappings, she felt her heart squeeze tight in her chest. Trailed her fingers briefly along the familiar features, the hard cheekbones, that firm jaw…
When had Hal seen it? Discovered the truth? Had his mother told him, or had he found out by chance and ridden into the house, parked his bike beneath it on his eighteenth birthday, an adult staking a claim to his inheritance. Refusing to be ignored…
Scarcely any wonder that Sir Robert had wanted him, this portrait, out of sight.
She stood it up on a bench, took photographs, then carried it inside and left it on Hal’s desk.
That done, she went home and, about to become homeless, fired up her computer and had her own ‘big moment.’
*
Henry North Revealed As Son Of Bankrupt Baronet
It was today revealed that media shy, multimillionaire, Henry North, founder of international freight company, HALGO, whose background has always been something of a mystery, is the love child of Sir Robert Cranbrook.
As a boy he lived in a humble estate cottage with his mother, Sarah—Sir Robert’s cook—and his stepfather, Jack North.
Sir Robert Cranbrook, who refused to acknowledge his son, had him turned off the estate after an infamous incident in which he rode his motorcycle up the steps of the Park and into the front hall on his eighteenth birthday and parking it beneath a portrait of Sir Harry Cranbrook, his grandfather. The portrait, pictured here, and which Sir Robert ordered destroyed, has now been rediscovered hidden in a stable and leaves no doubt of the connection.
In a remarkable turn of fortune, Henry North recently purchased Cranbrook Park—occupied by the Cranbrook family for nearly five hundred years—for an undisclosed sum when creditors forced the sale. Sir Robert, divorced, with no legitimate heir, is now living in a nursing home.
Mr North could not be contacted today for a comment on his plans for Cranbrook Park but he is quoted as saying that, like all his investments, ‘…it will have to work for its keep…’ Local sources suggest that he will use the property as a hotel and conference facility.
This will be just one more step in the history of a property that was granted to Sir Thomas Cranbrook on the dissolution of the monasteries by King Henry XIII for services to the Crown…
*
It was all there. The potted history of Cranbrook Park, the motorcycle incident, photographs she’d found in her father’s box of Hal’s mother, his stepfather, Sir Robert.
There was the portrait of Sir Harry Cranbrook, beside the head shot of Hal at his desk. There were photographs of Hal at school. A photograph of Primrose Cottage that she’d taken when she first moved in.
All she had to do was call the Herald, tell them what she had and she would be paid handsomely for this prime piece of gossip about a man who had, until then, appeared gossip proof.
A fat cheque that she’d need when she was forced to move, a byline in a national newspaper, a chance to move on, be the journalist her mother always wanted her to be.
And if it hurt Hal, well he’d told her himself, it didn’t matter who you hurt as long as you sold newspapers.
She had the phone in her hand. All she had to do was make the call. It was what a real journalist would do.
‘Claire? Are you okay? The mayor is waiting for you.’
‘I’ll be right with you.’
Just press the button. Say the words. What was her problem?
She’d wanted to write his story…
A story about a boy who had made good despite his bad start. A story to inspire. To be proud of.
This was just sleazy gossip. It wasn’t the kind of journalist she wanted to be. Looking at this, she realised that right now she would rather be turning her compost heap…
‘Look,’ he’d told her. Don’t just accept what’s on the surface. Maybe she’d got it wrong… And if she hadn’t she would fight it.
She tossed her phone into her bag and followed the secretary who’d come to hunt h
er down in the loo.
There was a small group of people in the Mayor’s Parlour. Willow Armstrong, who smiled a welcome. The Mayor. The Observer’s editor. And Hal North.
‘There are you are, Claire,’ he said. ‘We thought you’d got lost.’
Her mouth moved, but her tongue appeared to be stuck to the roof of her mouth. What on earth was Hal doing here? He was gone, job done…
‘Come and stand here. By me.’
On the surface he sounded all charm, his mouth was smiling, but there was no warmth in his eyes and as he rested his hand on her shoulder he leaned close.
‘Where were you, Tinkerbell? Counting your pieces of silver?’
‘What?’
‘Look this way, everyone. Claire, lose the bag, darling and let’s see your wand.’
Hal took the bag she was holding and she raised her wand, gave it a little wave.
‘It doesn’t work,’ he said. ‘I didn’t disappear in a puff of smoke.’
‘Okay, big smile… And again… Hold it for one more…’
Hal moved first, his hand around her wrist before she could move. ‘If you’ll excuse me, Mr Mayor, I need to have a word with Claire about the project list.’
‘Actually, Mr North, I was hoping we might…’
‘Call my office,’ he said, heading for the door. ‘Penny will arrange a time for you to come up to the Hall. Lunch?’
‘Oh, yes… Thank you.’
‘Hal…’
‘Not one word,’ he said. ‘Not one more word.’
He opened the door of the Range Rover, tossed her bag onto the floor and waited while she climbed aboard, blocking any chance of escape.
He had her wrong. She didn’t want to escape. She wanted answers.
If he’d told her he was planning on bulldozing her home into the ground, she wouldn’t have fallen in love with him.
How could any woman get it so wrong twice in one lifetime?
When they arrived at the cottage she didn’t go around to the back. In the country, the back door was for friends and she stopped at the front, took out her key, as pointed a message as any how angry she was with him. With herself.
Inside, she went straight into the living room—no more kitchen comfort for him, no more cake—and turned to face him.
‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘Why are you doing this?’
‘Me?’ Apparently she’d taken him by surprise. She was the one who was supposed to be on the defensive. ‘You’re the one who plastered my name, my family, across the tabloids.’
‘Excuse me?’
He tossed a copy of the Herald on the table, open at a headline almost identical to the one on her computer.
‘I didn’t write that!’
‘You climbed up into the stable loft and found the picture they’ve used. Gary helped you. He told me.’
‘Hal, I admit that I wrote a story, had it lined up to send, but it’s still in my draft folder. You can see for yourself.’ She didn’t wait, but turned and ran up the stairs, determined to show him. And then, when she saw the folder was empty, went cold. ‘It’s gone.’ She turned to him. ‘I didn’t, I swear. I came so close, but I couldn’t do it. I told you I wasn’t a real journalist…’
She checked the time it had been sent.
‘Alice… She was using the computer to surf stuff for homework. She probably sent an email to Savannah while she was up here…’
‘What’s this?’ Hal said, picking up the planning document.
She glanced at it. ‘You should know. It’s your application to raze my home to the ground.’ She looked up at him. ‘What are you going to do, Hal? Sow the ground with salt? Do you really hate my family, me, that much?’
He took the paper, looked at it, and then muttered something scatological.
‘Pretty much my first reaction,’ she said.
‘Where did you get this?’
‘Privileged information.’
‘Your friend the Chief Planning Officer, I suppose.’
She didn’t say a word.
‘And the portrait? Where is that?’
‘On your desk. Haven’t you been home? To the Hall, I mean.’
‘I went to straight to the Town Hall. I’ve been working all weekend with the consultants, making changes to the plans. I wanted to get everything right before I talked to you.’
‘Changes?’
‘There was your cycle path. The scramble track. If I can get it through planning.’ He looked at the document he was holding. ‘Actually, considering this indiscretion I might be able to twist Charlie Peascod’s arm.’
‘No need. Buy him lunch. He’s anybody’s for the Red Lion’s roast beef.’
‘I think that’s probably slander.’
‘Undoubtedly,’ she said. ‘Roast beef and a good claret. Are you going to tell on me?’
‘I ought to,’ he said. He was looking at her, but it was impossible to know what he was thinking. What he would do. ‘How did you find out? That Robert Cranbrook was my father.’
‘It was Alice who spotted the likeness. I was trying to find something, anything, in my father’s journal about you, about what happened, and she picked out an old photograph of Sir Harry. She thought it was you.’
‘Did you find anything? In your father’s journals?’
‘Yes. Dad wrote something the day he made you leave. He was supposed to destroy the portrait but he hid it. He was so ashamed of what he’d done. He told your mother what he’d done. Where it was.’
‘She never told me.’
‘You’d made your own way. And he didn’t deserve a son like you,’ she said. ‘And now I’m standing in my father’s shoes, but shame doesn’t undo anything.’
‘No…’ He took a step towards her.
‘I tried to call you, Hal. I wanted to show you, wanted to tell you.’
‘I lost my phone on Saturday night. Apparently I dropped it in the hotel. Leaving in a hurry…’ He dragged his hand over his face. ‘This morning is not going the way I planned.’
‘No. Me, either. I didn’t expect to see you. I thought you’d just been stringing us all along. That Saturday night was part of it…’
‘I can see why you might think that. A few weeks ago you might have been right.’ He drew in a slow breath. ‘You would have been right. I was going to evict you, smash this place down, clean the earth…’
‘It was that bad?’
‘Yes, Claire, it was that bad. Jack North knew he was a cuckold and he made my mother pay every day he lived. Drank every penny she earned. All she kept from him was the money Cranbrook gave her to get rid of me.’
‘But she didn’t. And she saved the money for when you needed it.’ She reached out a hand to him. ‘That’s what you meant, isn’t it? When you said it was extraordinary?’
He took her hand, drew her close so that they were leaning against one another, supporting each other.
‘Why did she stay, Hal?’
‘Passion?’ he suggested. ‘I used to roam the house as a boy and I saw them once…’ He drew in a long, shuddering breath. ‘He said that she was a whore. When he signed the contract on this place. Called me trash—’
‘No, no!’
‘I could have forced the paternity issue at any time, but I never wanted that man as my father. I just wanted him to look at me, see me, to know in his heart—always assuming he had one—that he’d made a mistake…’
‘What changed, Hal?’
‘I told myself that I wouldn’t have to look you in the eyes when I evicted you. You didn’t matter enough for that.’ He eased back so that he was looking straight at her. ‘But then Archie got into the act and I was looking into your beautiful grey eyes and I was so
angry with you, because you did matter.’
‘Did I?’
‘Then you took out a ten-pound note to bribe me and that was fine, because I could be angry with you all over again.’
‘It was all I had to last me until the end of the week, but it wasn’t that. I was so disappointed in you. I was so sure that you were bigger than that…’
‘And then I saw what you’d done here and hell, I was still angry because I needed to destroy this place.’
‘And now?’ she asked. ‘Do you still feel that way?’
He lifted his hand to her cheek, laid her head against his chest. ‘It’s not the house, Claire. It’s not Cranbrook Park. He said it would destroy me, said that my anger would eat me up, leave me hollow… Maybe it would have, but for you.’
‘And now everyone knows and it’s all my fault…’
‘Who cares? Tomorrow some footballer will cheat on his wife and all this will be nothing more than something to wrap the potato peelings.’
She looked up. ‘It’s going to be “no comment,” then?’
‘Always. But there is one thing,’ he said, wrapping both his arms around her, holding her close.
‘Oh?’
‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to sacrifice some of your garden.’
Her garden. She was going to be staying…
‘Actually, I’m doing you a favour,’ he assured her.
‘Oh. How, exactly?’
‘You’re going to be busy organising the restoration of the Rose Garden at Cranbrook Park to be double digging your vegetable plot.’
She would? ‘I will?’
‘Double digging is so last century,’ she said. ‘What plans do you have for my garden?’
‘I’m going to extend Primrose Cottage.’
‘Extend it?’
‘Think about it, Claire. Four dogs, two adults, a little girl who’s growing every day. Then there’s your office, my office. It’s just not going to be big enough.’
Four dogs, two adults…
‘The Hall isn’t big enough for you?’
‘I’m not going to live in a hotel.’
‘So you’ve decided you’ll move in with me?’
The Last Woman He'd Ever Date (Mills & Boon Modern Tempted) Page 17
