One Night In Collection

by Various Authors

  42 missed calls.

  She scrolled through them. There were a couple from Fliss, but the vast majority were from the solicitors and the estate agents. She activated her voice mail and listened.

  The initially impassive tone of various secretaries grew increasingly desperate, until eventually messages were being left by senior partners at the solicitors and Monsieur Ducasse himself at the estate agents. Their client was most keen, he stressed in his impeccable, formal English, to complete the purchase with the utmost urgency …

  Of course he was, thought Anna dully. He wanted to get those papers signed and the sale completed while he had me on board. No wonder he wanted to keep me another night.

  In the final message, left at about six p.m. yesterday, Monsieur Ducasse stated that the sale was in jeopardy if she didn’t make contact before ten a.m. this morning. That must have been Angelo’s last-ditch attempt to get things signed and sealed because he had known he would be returning her this morning.

  She looked at her watch. Still only nine o’clock.

  Hurriedly she rifled through her rucksack for some clean clothes, remembering with a groan that she’d left her only decent dress in Fliss’s hotel room. None of the rest of her tattered and tie-dyed clothes seemed remotely suitable or appealing. Have I changed that much in just two days? she thought, pulling out a long tiered gypsy skirt and a midriff-skimming white cotton top. It felt like dressing up as someone else, putting on a costume to act a role in a play.

  Outside the tent she could hear sleepy voices and the familiar sound of the camp waking up. With one last look around, she picked up her bag and started to walk in the direction of the road.

  She hadn’t gone very far when there was a shout behind her.

  ‘Anna! Bloody hell, you’re back! Where did you get to?’

  ‘Hi, Gavin.’ She smiled wearily, setting down her rucksack. ‘It’s a long story.’

  ‘OK, well, let me tell you this first, then. I’ve found out what Emiliani has in mind for the château, and the good news is that I’m pretty sure we can stop him. He wants to turn it into a research centre for childhood respiratory diseases—asthma, tuberculosis, that sort of thing—which is why Grafton-Tarrant are on board, and we’re pretty sure the plans will include some sort of residential or clinical type facility. I think that once the word tuberculosis gets out there our work is done …’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s almost too easy. We won’t even have to bother dredging up all the animal rights scandals attached to Grafton-Tarrant …’

  ‘No, Gavin. I’m signing the papers. Today.’

  Gavin blinked. ‘What? What about the pine forest … the landing strip … the château being stripped of its features and made into a clinic?’

  She looked at him steadily, her new-found confidence surging through her. ‘I’m sorry, Gavin. Château Belle-Eden is just a building … an empty old building with a lot of memories and ghosts, and it’s probably high time it was put to some good use. A research centre for childhood respiratory diseases sounds like a wonderful idea. I’m letting it go. Sorry, I know you’ve worked hard.’

  Gavin’s small, short-sighted eyes looked peculiarly naked without his glasses. He ran a shaking hand over his matted hair.

  ‘Why, Anna?’

  She picked up her rucksack. ‘Because buildings don’t need protecting. People do.’

  ‘My God.’ He shook his head disbelievingly, his voice suddenly very cold. ‘You’ve changed.’

  ‘I know.’ She smiled sadly at him. ‘Goodbye, Gavin.’

  Walking back towards the road, Anna took out her phone and dialled.

  ‘Monsieur Ducasse? It’s Roseanna Delafield. I’m on my way to Nice now to sign the sale contract.’

  Dropping her phone back into her bag, she turned around. Behind her, above the trees, she could just make out the pinnacled tip of one turret.

  ‘Goodbye,’ she whispered, feeling a lone tear slide down her cheek.

  Walking on, she dashed it away impatiently. She knew it wasn’t the loss of the château she was crying for. It was the loss of Angelo.

  Later that afternoon Angelo arrived at the Nice office of the Marquess of Ifford’s solicitors for what should have been his moment of triumph. His PA had called mid-morning to let him know that his legal team had just had confirmation that the papers had been signed agreeing the sale of the château.

  He had won.

  Standing in the extremely upmarket waiting area, he wondered why he didn’t feel like the victor.

  This was the realization of a long-held ambition, the culmination of twelve years of private planning. He had hoped that funding a designated research centre for childhood asthma, and combining it with a state-of-the-art treatment centre for respiratory illness, would bring him just a tiny bit closer to the inner peace that had always eluded him.

  He sighed, tipping his head back and gazing up at the impossibly ornate chandelier above in black despair.

  It was the same old story.

  Once his goal was in sight, achieving it ceased to bring him any sense of satisfaction at all. This was supposed to lay the ghost of Lucia to rest, make him feel that he had done something for her.

  It didn’t.

  He felt colder and emptier inside than ever.

  ‘Signor Emiliani? Monsieur Clermont will see you now.’

  Angelo stood up and followed the petite blonde secretary into the solicitor’s office, noticing her narrow back and long legs automatically and completely without interest.

  Where was Anna now?

  The thought took him by surprise, causing an odd pain somewhere in his gut. Her face swum in front of his eyes until he wondered what was the matter with him.

  ‘Are you all right, monsieur?’

  He looked distractedly across the desk. Monsieur Clermont’s face was creased into a frown of concern and Angelo realised he hadn’t heard a word that he’d said.

  ‘Yes. Sorry, I’m just tired. It’s been a difficult deal to finalise.’

  Anna’s mutinous face and defiant eyes flashed into his mind.

  Monsieur Clermont smiled. ‘I’m sorry. Lady Delafield was most apologetic when she arrived this morning to sign the papers. Hopefully now everything should proceed smoothly. Please—if you could sign in the places I’ve indicated…?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Angelo’s eyes skimmed the document, swiftly checking and double checking the details.

  He swore softly as he read the name printed on the contract again. Checked the spiky black signature.

  Roseanna Josephine Delafield.

  So that was the real identity of the mysterious Anna Field.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  England. One month later.

  THE cold wind cut through the stable yard, sending a hail of fallen leaves scurrying across the ancient cobbles. Autumn had come early this year in a succession of cold damp days that perfectly matched Anna’s mood.

  It was difficult to get through them.

  Locking up the dairy with stiff fingers, she sighed and leaned her head briefly against the door. She had spent the afternoon with a party of eager seven-year-olds from a local primary school, showing them how to churn butter and make bread, and the cold had seeped through the thin cotton of her Victorian dairy maid’s dress into her bones, wrapping itself around the icy lump of her heart. The children’s enthusiasm had been sweet and touching but, like everything else since she’d returned from France, she observed it rather than felt it.

  She used to hate the days when Ifford was opened to the public, and remembered the scorn and derision with which she had regarded the steady stream of visitors who had toured the chilly staterooms and echoing marble halls with their painted ranks of scowling Delafield ancestors.

  Times had changed. She had changed. She was ashamed of her former arrogance. She had thought she was so liberal, rejecting everything her family stood for, but she had just been cowardly. And in denial about her own snobbishness.
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  Well, Angelo would have been proud if he had seen her this afternoon. She smiled, remembering how one little girl had stroked a hand down the crisp sprigged cotton of her dress and said, ‘I like your dress, miss. It’s beautiful. I wish I was a dairy maid.’

  Anna had knelt in front of her, and fixed her firmly in the eye. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Emma, miss.’

  ‘Well, Emma, I’m going to let you into a secret. If you were alive one hundred years ago, you would have considered yourself quite lucky to be a dairy maid. You would have had to get up very early in the morning—about five o’clock, in the cold with no heating and no light, and you would have had to work all day, hard, for very little money and hardly any time off. And your hands would have hurt from the cold and the damp. And choice and freedom and relaxation would have been things that you couldn’t ever really hope to have, but you wouldn’t worry about that because you’d be so glad to have a roof over your head and some money coming in. And you’d need the money because you would have to send it home to your mother because you’ve got five brothers and sisters at home who need food, and the baby’s sick and the medicine she needs is expensive.’

  ‘Why do I have to pay for it out of my money? That’s not fair!’ Emma had wailed indignantly.

  Anna had paused and smiled sadly. ‘Exactly.’ She’d stood up, brushing a hand down her white apron. ‘Life isn’t fair. Wasn’t fair. It was full of misery and exploitation. Of people forced into rigid roles and restricted and repressed.’

  How easily his words came back to her. If only she could forget them.

  Forget him.

  ‘Are there any questions?’ The children had stared up at her, enraptured. Then one of the boys had asked shyly, ‘Are you really a real Lady?’

  No.

  ‘It’s just a name,’ Anna had said briskly. ‘Anyone else? No, well, I think it’s time for you to get your things and get back to the coach. Mrs Harris?’

  The teacher had smiled at her in admiration. ‘Yes, yes, thank you, Lady Delafield, it’s been fascinating. Very informative, hasn’t it, children?’

  A chorus of enthusiastic agreement had risen from twenty-three small mouths, followed by a babble of excited chatter. Anna had shouted her goodbyes above the din and turned and left the dairy.

  But, stepping out into the thin afternoon sunshine, the smile faded from her face. That was the busy part of the day finished, the part where she was saved from her own thoughts, and now the quiet hours of the late afternoon beckoned, where there was nothing to do but make dinner for her father’s increasingly weak appetite and steel herself for another long, dark night.

  Of course, it was the nights that were the worst.

  During the interminable dark hours it was impossible to stop her thoughts from straying to Angelo. Wondering where he was and, agonisingly, who he was with. Sometimes, driven to distraction by hour upon hour of tossing and turning, worn out and defeated by the hopelessness of trying to focus her thoughts on something else, she would get up and sit on the window-seat in her bedroom and confront her fears. He was on the yacht, he was with a beautiful blonde woman, they were laughing, drinking champagne, collapsing into bed. He was undressing her, tracing his long fingers over her perfect body …

  And then the masochistic fantasy would slip inexorably into blissful memory.

  He was dancing with her on the beach at the château, he was hauling her off the pole on the yacht and throwing her on the bed, he was laying her down on the sand at St Honorat and making her weep with ecstasy …

  Hugging herself in the darkness, she would look up at the serene face of the moon, hanging low over the horse chestnut trees at the edge of the parkland, and wonder if he was looking at it too. And it was in those moments that she wondered if she’d ever be happy again.

  The answer seemed horrifyingly obvious.

  She straightened up abruptly, pushing back the hair that was blowing across her face with a nervous flick of her hand and walking briskly towards the tack room. The really grim thing about being totally desolate, Anna had discovered, was that the world kept spinning. Days kept coming, with hours that needed to be filled with other stuff besides crying and watching black and white movies in the afternoon.

  Other stuff besides dwelling on the humiliation. The sadness. On Angelo.

  Grabbing a saddle and bridle, she looked down doubtfully at the ridiculous dairy maid costume for a second. She should get changed, obviously, but that would mean going back into the house and getting caught up in conversation and probably making tea for her father. An awkward peace had settled between them and she was doing her best to make amends for the years of pain she had given him, but it wasn’t easy. Not when she was also carrying around the heavy burden of her broken heart.

  She couldn’t face it.

  Speaking soothingly, softly, she unbolted the stable door of her father’s chestnut hunter. Since she’d been back she’d taken to riding him round the parkland often, and the exercise was beginning to tell in the improved condition of his glossy coat. He tossed his head as she slid the saddle swiftly on to his back, eager to be off.

  It wasn’t until she had led him out into the stable yard that she realised she hadn’t got her hard hat.

  So what? she thought despairingly, springing into the saddle in a billow of skirts. My heart’s already in pieces. I’m not sure that anything much worse could happen.

  Setting her chin determinedly, she kicked the horse on and clattered out of the yard.

  Angelo brought the helicopter in lower, letting his gaze drift over the picture-perfect patchwork of fields and hedges below him. There was something peculiarly beautiful about autumn in England. This was Anna’s landscape, he thought grimly—peculiarly magnificent, but somehow sad. The trees wore their autumn colours with great bravado, but already one could see the bare branches beneath the red and gold—naked, vulnerable, just like Anna.

  The thought needled him and his knuckles were white on the gear lever as he circled and banked, looking for the house. Whether she was sad or happy or bloody over-the-moon was of absolutely no interest to him whatsoever, he reminded himself tersely. He was only here on a completely practical matter.

  That was all.

  The last month had been non-stop and he’d hardly had time to draw breath, never mind dwell on Anna. He had two more projects on the go—exciting ones, in Corsica and Ibiza. Of course he was too busy to wonder how she was and what she was doing. He probably would have forgotten her altogether had it not been for a call from the building manager on site at the château, asking him what to do with all the stuff in the attic.

  His automatic response had been, ‘Dispose of it.’ Ending the call curtly, he had tried to get back to the other business of his meeting with the financial team, but had found it impossible to concentrate on profit margin and potential growth. Excusing himself abruptly, he had left the meeting and phoned back.

  ‘What is there in the attic?’

  ‘Nothing of value. You’re right, signor, it should be disposed of. I’ll see to—’

  ‘I asked what there is.’

  ‘A few boxes. Photographs and letters. Some kids’ stuff—dressing-up clothes and a dolls’ house.’

  ‘Keep it.’

  ‘Signor?’

  ‘I said keep it. I’ll be down later.’

  Late that evening, after a day in the Rome office, he’d flown the helicopter back to the château and gone up to the attic. The light had been fading, casting hazy rainbows on the majestic staircase as he’d run up it, two steps at a time, trying not to think of her as he had first seen her there.

  He’d seen the dress straight away, draped over an old washstand as if she had taken it off and dropped it there only minutes ago. Picking it up, he’d held it out in front of him.

  A miniature wedding dress.

  Ragged. Mildewed. Fit only for disposal.

  The sharp noise of self-disgust he made now was drowned out by the noise of the hel
icopter. It wasn’t his to throw away, he rationalized impatiently, which was why it was currently in the back, wrapped in tissue paper and folded carefully into a box.

  Below him he could see the rolling parkland and lush woodland of Ifford Park and the sight sent a shot of adrenalin-fuelled indignation through his veins that made him bring the helicopter into a steep upwards climb. The sulky, vulnerable, sensitive girl he was remembering from the yacht was an act. That was Anna Field, and she didn’t exist.

  The person he was about to meet was Lady Roseanna Delafield. Heiress, aristo-party girl, deceiving bitch.

  It would be good to confront her with some of that.

  Swooping low over the trees, he looked for somewhere suitable to land. To the right he could see the imposing house, with its stone frontage and pillared portico, its outbuildings arranged around a courtyard to one side. The wide sweep of lawn to the front of the house was flanked by huge sycamore trees, making it impossible to land there, so he banked away again, going out and beyond the trees to more open ground, and coming down lower again.

  As he did so he noticed a dark shape break from the cover of the trees, moving at breakneck speed into the open. Cursing violently in Italian, he saw that it was a horse and rider and swung the helicopter almost vertically back into the sky.

  Righting it again, he swung round in a circle, banking around the fixed point of the house, frantically scanning the ground below for any sign of them. On the controls his hands were perfectly steady but his jaw was set in a tight line of tension, which softened slightly as he spotted the horse for a moment as it galloped beneath the trees some distance away. It was another split second before he realised with a sickening lurch of his stomach that the rider was no longer astride.