Bad Boys and Billionaires (The Naughty List Bundles)

by Synthia St. Claire

* * *

  She walked briskly down the road. The pavement was made of large grey slabs of locally quarried stone, which looked beautiful but which were treacherously slippery when wet. Once again, it was drizzling with a fine rain, but the bus stop by the Post Office had a plastic cover and she squeezed under. There were already five people waiting for the seven-forty-five, and everyone nodded once, and returned to their private thoughts. They all looked like workers, off to Ingholme and beyond for a day in a shop, office or factory.

  The bus trundled up, already half full. It was a small one, not like a big-city double decker, but better for the tight turns and narrow roads of the moorland areas. She paid in a handful of scattered change she’d dug out of pockets and bags around her house, and took a free double seat at the front, across from the driver.

  “Not seen you on here before!” he shouted cheerily, looking more at her than at the road he was careering along.

  “I’ve just moved here, about three weeks ago. I thought I’d try to be a bit more environmental and not drive to work this week.”

  “Good on you, love! No fuss - take the bus!” He laughed at his own joke even though it was the slogan that was written all over the posters on the inside. Why did they have to advertise the benefits of bus travel once you were already on the bus?

  She couldn’t quite think of an appropriate reply. It didn’t seem to bother the driver, who continued to make conversation. “So, you’ve moved to Arkthwaite have you! How’re you finding it, eh? Eh?”

  Aware that everyone on the bus was listening to her reply, and many of them came from the village, she said, “It’s fantastic.” And it was true.

  “Where the hell are you from?” he chortled. “You must have grown up in a bog to think Arkthwaite’s fantastic.”

  “Colin!” An older lady behind Helena leaned forwards, curling one impeccably manicured hand around the metal bar at the back of Helena’s seat. “Don’t be rude.”

  “About Arkthwaite, or about this nice lady growing up in a bog?”

  Helena felt she had to step in, so she said, “No, really, I enjoy the peace. And the views are fantastic!”

  “It hasn’t stopped raining since February, love, when have you had a chance to see any bloody views?”

  “It didn’t rain much last Saturday.”

  The bus fell into laughter and Helena smiled too, feeling a warmth of shared amusement unfold in her belly. “Where are you living, love?” the woman behind her asked, emitting a smell of coffee and ineffective mints.

  “Up on Top Row, in one of the old cottages.”

  “Ahh, yes. You will get cracking views from up there, that’s true. But are you not lonely? Young thing like yourself, I’d have thought you’d want to be in Liverpool or Manchester, dancing all night and shopping all day. I know my two couldn’t get away from here fast enough.”

  It was Helena’s idea of hell. “I’m not a party girl, really. I like walks and being outside.”

  “Walks, is it?” Colin had been listening with no shame. “Take care where you walk! Most of that land belongs to the high and mighty lord of the manor, eh!”

  “I’ve heard of him. Is it true?”

  “Is what true?”

  Helena sucked in her breath, suddenly unwilling to start slagging off a total stranger on a bus full of total strangers. “Oh, nothing, I’ve just heard some funny rumours, that’s all.”

  “Oh, they’re probably all true. He’s a mad, angry man who stays alone in that house and spends all his time riding his horse and getting drunk.”

  “At the same time?”

  “Most likely. He’s a bitter one and you need to avoid him. He was quite the charmer, once, they say, but when he came back from London it had all changed. That business with his mother, you know.”

  The bus lurched to a stop and a few more people got on. Helena squirmed around to face the woman behind her a bit better, and was about to ask what the business was, but the woman was distracted by a friend who had just boarded. They began to exclaim loudly about what had happened in the soaps the previous night, and Helena turned back to face the front once more as the bus lurched off. Outside, the rain continued to mist its way down and inside, the atmosphere was warm and cloying with the drying of people’s wet clothes in the badly ventilated space. Her head was already feeling foggy from the heat and the humidity, and she leaned her forehead on the cool glass of the window. Colin was chattering enthusiastically to a man in green overalls who was standing at the front, his long limbs wrapped around a pole as they swung around corners.

  She’d get the bus again, as it looked like a good way to get to know people. She assumed she’d get used to the mild travel sickness, in time.

  And she was planning another walk, this time towards the manor house, not away from it. No doubt her mother would say that contrariness was deep in her blood, but it was true; as soon as she’d been told to avoid the man, she was immediately drawn to find out more.

  * * *

  For Richard, Saturday and Sundays were much like any other day. Or perhaps weekdays were the same as weekends. What was like the other? He paused, halfway across the courtyard that was tucked to one side of the manor house. Weekdays, weekends, what did it matter? He shook his head and resumed his work with the hoe, digging out the moss that had sprung up over winter in the cracks between the cobbles and the broken concrete.

  He was finding that he drifted off into meaningless internal debate more and more, these days. He had been concerned about it, and even broached the subject to his doctor. Not at an official appointment, of course. He was too hale and hearty - or so he thought of himself - to bother with the surgery in Ingholme. Any little cough or cold could be easily dealt with by taking a vast amount of hot lemon, honey and whiskey, and spending a day in bed.

  But he’d button-holed the doctor after a winter’s day drag hunting, as they mingled in a stuffy pub the other side of the moor. Everyone else mingled, that was; Richard piled a paper plate with pork pies and pickled onions, and glared at the fire until someone politely offered him a seat by it, and he was left alone, unbothered. Doctor Perkins knew him of old, however, and had dealt with more difficult patients than Richard.

  One of them had been Richard’s mother, and that was what concerned Richard. He’d got drunk enough to finally voice his fears to Doctor Perkins.

  “This zoning out. This distraction. Like, attacks of something… vagueness… is it…? Could it be? I’m only thirty-two but perhaps…”

  “No.”

  Richard dragged his gaze from the dancing flames to the amused face of the doctor. He waited for more explanation but Doctor Perkins just shrugged.

  “Come on, though,” Richard persisted. “It’s not normal.”

  Doctor Perkins laughed and his grey moustache bristled. “You’re not normal, more like, boy.” Only the doctor’s long association with the family gave him the right to be so rude, and Richard couldn’t argue back. After all, this man had seen him into the world, naked and slippery and bawling. “Your brain needs more stimulation. You need social interaction, company. There’s nothing wrong with you that a few nights on the tiles and a damn good humping wouldn’t sort out, my lad. That’s my true and honest medical advice.”

  Richard winced as a few heads turned. “Please…”

  “You asked. It would be a dereliction of my duty if I didn’t tell you the truth of it. If you wanted privacy about it, you should have come to see me in my surgery.”

  “Huh.” Richard finished his pint of stout. “What is this, then, if not social interaction?”

  The good doctor gave him a long, flat stare, and Richard could only turn back to the fire.

  * * *

  He was doing it again. In remembering the conversation with the doctor, he’d stopped work once more. He came to himself again, and found that he was resting on his hoe in the centre of the courtyard, and he was being watched.

  “Ah,” she said, not moving, leaning on the corner of the house.
“So the tables are turned, then. Hello again.”

  It was the blasted crazy woman who had been scrabbling about on the moor, muttering to the spirits. Damn. Now who looked like the crazy one? He scowled and jabbed the hoe into a lump of moss, dislodging a great hairy streak of it.

  “Good day. Are you lost?” He continued to work along the edge of some cobbles, making it very plain that anyone up at his house was quite clearly lost, and doubly plain that he was busy. Working. Not to be disturbed.

  Her pixie face was smiling and she pulled off a terrible purple hat, running her hand through short, spiky blonde hair. “No, not lost at all. I’m new here, so I thought it was the done thing to come and introduce myself. But of course, I realise now we have already met. Helena. If you remember…?”

  “I was hardly likely to forget,” he snapped, and was pleased to see that she reddened in embarrassment. Yes. One point back to me.

  “I didn’t realise at the time who you were. Um, Lord Richard?”

  He barked with dry laughter. “No, get away. Not that sort of lord, sorry. Just Richard.”

  “Oh, right. I didn’t know there were different sorts…” she stepped forward, looking curious, waiting for an explanation.

  “Google it.” He reached the end of the line of cobbles and turned around, searching for more moss to attack and destroy.

  “Right. Yes, I will.”

  There was an awkward pause. He kept a firm hold on the hoe, and narrowed his eyes at her. “Was there anything else I can help you with? Beside the ancient baronial rights of the English feudal system?”

  “Yes, actually.” She tipped her head back slightly, and he had a flutter of admiration. She wasn’t to be cowed, that was for sure. Maybe she hadn’t heard the rumours about him.

  “You do know who I am?” he said, aware as soon as he said it that he sounded like a complete prick.

  “Er…”

  “The folk in the village will have told you some terrible tales about me.”

  “I don’t listen to gossip.”

  “You should.” He leaned forward, and hissed, “It’s all true.”

  And she laughed, right in his face, and he had to straighten up and compose himself. She laughed! “Excellent,” she said, “Next time, I’ll bring a few bottles of wine and a shovel.”

  “Wine, yes, if it’s quality stuff. Why the shovel?”

  “Because they say you… um, well, as I said, I don’t listen to gossip.”

  He spun away from her and strode towards a tool shed, brandishing his hoe like it was a knight’s lance. He didn’t want to look at her. “Oh, that old rumour. Buried my mother up on the moors.” He slammed open the tool shed door and flung the hoe into a corner, causing a clatter and a bang as things were dislodged. “Shit.” He couldn’t leave his tools untidy, so his fit of temper was somewhat diminished as he was then forced to go into the shed and sort things out. He took his time, cleaning off the hoe and hanging it up, then organising the half-empty paint tins that ranged along the shelves. Hopefully, if he took long enough, by the time he went back out into the courtyard, the annoying woman would be gone.

  “Shit. Again.” Nope, she was still there, the lumpy woollen hat back on her head. She was peering into Nerada’s loose box and making silly noises that she probably thought was some kind of horse-whisperer bollocks.

  She turned at his profanity, but stayed by the half-door, her forearms resting on the ledge. “Lovely horse.”

  “Do you ride?”

  “No, of course not!”

  He bit back his instinctive “why not”. He was determined that he was not going to be drawn into proper, adult, polite conversation with this interloper. Instead he said, “You haven’t told me why you’ve trespassed onto my property yet.”

  “It’s not trespass if I have a reason to be here.”

  “And your reason?”

  “We need your help!”

  “We, being…?”

  “The village!” She beamed at him, and he noticed she had sparkling green eyes. Dammit, he should not be noticing things like that, so to punish himself, he frowned a bit more.

  “And the help the village wants is…?”

  She moved away from the stable and began to wave her hands in the air as her words tumbled out. “I’ve just moved here, as you know, and I think it’s great but you know what, it’s awful the way everyone’s so negative all the time. Like, yeah, I can see the village has some problems but it seems so stuck, so accepting of it. You know, that it’s just the way it is and nothing can change.”

  He shrugged. “If you wanted change you need to live somewhere else.”

  “But don’t you see?” She was animated in her eagerness. “Why live anywhere else when Arkthwaite could be made so much better?”

  “Then it wouldn’t be Arkthwaite, would it.”

  “It would, but meeting its potential! There’s a bit of community spirit here, but no pride, you know! I was talking with the headmistress of the school, Vicky Botham, and she agrees with me! We could have a street party, bring people together. What about the unemployment issues? Why don’t we start a co-op? That’d be great because it gets people together and they could source and sell local organic food. And have you heard about LETS? Local exchange trading systems? Bartering and swapping skills, it would be ace! We could produce a newsletter and…”

  She stumbled to a halt. Richard could feel his eyes rolling in his head and he made no effort to hide his disdain. “And who’s going to do all this?”

  She folded her arms and looked at him. Looked and looked. Those deep eyes fixed on his and he pursed his lips and set his face hard and tried to resist her ridiculous, unfettered, naive and silly energy. “No, no. Not me.”

  “You’re a figurehead!” she insisted. “The lord of the manor! You represent things!”

  “Two hundred years ago, maybe. Not now. It’s not even an aristocratic title, it’s just some daft legacy of the old landed system. It needs to die out. This one will end with me.”

  Her eyebrows rose in shock and he could see all the new questions pile up in her mouth, and to stop them, he raced on. “I represent nothing except a mad old lord drinking himself to death in a big, lonely house. Anyway, don’t you think I’ve got enough work to do, up here, with the manor and the farm lands and the tenants that rely on me?”

  She looked around the courtyard. “I’m sure the moss can wait another day.”

  “It’s not just this. You have no idea what this entails. I don’t have a spare moment in the day. You’re all right, with your Monday to Friday life and pension and paid holidays. It’s Saturday morning and it’s cold and here I am, working away, because if I don’t do it, who will?” It was his turn to stumble to a halt, aware suddenly that he was saying more than he intended to say. He could hear other voices, voices from his past, from his family, echoing in his words. He didn’t like it.

  Her face had fallen and he remembered what it was like when he’d been on the receiving end of the lectures about obligation and duty. “I’m sorry,” he managed to say, surprising himself, and clearly surprising her. She stared, startled, those lovely eyes wide. “Look. It is cold. I do need to get on with stuff. I really don’t think I can help you. I honestly don’t have time. But… well, let me know how things go. Good luck.”

  “You can help,” she said, but with less insistence. “Thank you for your time. I will let you know how things go, because I will be back with more ideas. Proper, concrete ideas. I know it’s all pipe dreams at the moment, just vague ideas, but once I’ve got things firmed up, I’ll come back and tell you.”

  He shook his head but he couldn’t hide his half-smile. “You’re a pest.”

  “I know.” She grinned widely and stuck her hand out, the unexpected gesture triggering the automatic response in him. He clasped her gloved hand and she shook it, furiously. “Thanks again. Don’t work too hard, now.” And she spun away, and walked off, her tall straight spine carrying the glory of a battle won.
>
  Richard walked over to the stable, where Nerada was hanging her head out, and she blew him a greeting. “What was all that about, hey?”

  Nerada nuzzled at him and he rubbed up and down her mane, once more drifting into idle daydreams.

  * * *

  “Well, he’s got some serious issues!” Helena announced as soon as Vicky Botham opened the door of her ramshackle house.

  Vicky’s broad face was flushed and grinning. “Hell yes. I warned you! Come on in, and tell me all.”

  Helena had been in Vicky’s home once before, after meeting her in the Post Office. Vicky had been attempting to post an incredibly heavy cast iron candle holder, about two feet high and apparently made from girders. Helena was just browsing for some suitable note cards so she could reply to her mother. The idea of phoning her was too terrible to contemplate, and anyway, Mrs Wright was an old fashioned sort who loved letters. It would give her something physical to waft around at her friends, and boast about. What, don’t your children write to you? Oh, what a shame.

  Vicky had sparked up conversation and within moments, they’d connected. Vicky had a bounce and exuberance about her that made Helena instantly warm to her, and it was all she could do to stop herself blurting out, I wish you’d been my head mistress when I was at primary school! She lived next to the village school in a house that appeared to be falling down, and inside the impression was confirmed as Helena had to pick her way past half-full buckets that were in a zig-zag along the black and red tiled hallway. They were still there today, and Helena peered up at the water-pocked ceiling.

  “Are you going to get that fixed?” she asked.

  Vicky was already in the kitchen at the back, plugging a frayed looking kettle into the wall. “Yes, of course. When it’s summer, and the weather’s good enough for the chaps to be scrambling about on the roof.”

  The kitchen was dated and yet cosy, with a riotous mish mash of trends and colours. It was the sort of homely place that demanded you simply sit down, still in your outdoor shoes, and relax. “I’ve made cakes!” Vicky announced. “Well, I made them for last week, for our moot, but there’s some left over. I don’t know why. Oh yes, yes I do, big Tone wasn’t there, that was it.” She bumbled around the kitchen, opening cupboards at random, finding plates in one place and cups in another. There was no rhyme or reason to her domestic organisation.