by Kate Hardy
‘And said butterfly house,’ the solicitor said, ‘must be designed and built by you, Mr Grey.’
Rosemary had left him a loophole, then. As an architect, Hugo knew what happened if there was a breach of building and planning regulations, or a breach of conditions in a contract. ‘So the bequest is conditional. What happens if the conditions of my great-aunt’s will are breached?’ he asked, trying to sound more casual than he felt.
‘Then the house must be sold and the money given to a dementia charity,’ the solicitor explained.
Meaning that any scheming done by this Dr Walters would fall flat, and something good would happen with the money. Which was fine by Hugo. It wasn’t the money he was bothered about, even though he knew the house would raise a lot of money at auction; it was the fact that this woman appeared to have taken advantage of his great-aunt’s kindness, and in his view that was very far from being OK. ‘I see,’ Hugo said. It looked as if this was going to be easy, after all. ‘Then I’m afraid I won’t be designing or building a butterfly house.’
‘But you have to,’ Dr Walters said. ‘It’s what she wanted.’
Or what Rosemary had been persuaded that she wanted, which was a very different thing. Hugo shrugged. ‘We don’t always get what we want.’
‘Rosemary wanted the book finished and the house turned into a proper memorial to Viola,’ Dr Walters said, folding her arms and narrowing her gaze at him.
Was that meant to intimidate him? He’d already survived the very worst life could throw at him. He had nothing left to lose, and he wasn’t playing her game.
Philip Hemingford looked uncomfortable. ‘This is meant to be a simple reading of Miss Grey’s will, not a discussion.’
‘That’s fine by me,’ Hugo said. ‘I have nothing to add.’ He wasn’t letting this woman get away with scamming his great-aunt. And it was going to be very easy to defeat her; all he had to do was refuse to build the butterfly house.
‘You can’t let Rosemary down,’ Dr Walters said, glaring at him.
Oh, was she trying to pretend that she cared? ‘Perhaps you’d like to explain, Dr Walters, what your business association was with my great-aunt?’
‘As I said earlier, I was working with her on Viola’s journals,’ she said. ‘I’m a lepidopterist.’
The only people Hugo knew who were interested in butterflies were his great-aunt and some of her friends who were from the same generation, all of whom had been slightly eccentric and who hadn’t cared about whether their clothes matched or even if they’d brushed their hair that morning. This smart, sleek woman didn’t look anything like that kind of person. She looked brittle and fake and completely untrustworthy—much like he remembered Chantelle the potter. ‘Indeed,’ he drawled, putting as much sarcasm into his voice as he could.
‘I lecture on lepidoptera at Roxburgh College at the University of London,’ she said. ‘Your great-aunt contacted my department and asked if I could help with her project. We’ve been working on it together part-time for the last six months.’
‘She never mentioned the project to me,’ he said.
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Maybe you didn’t talk to her enough.’
Playing that game, was she? His eyes narrowed. ‘I was working in Scotland for six months from last October, so I admit I phoned rather than visiting—but I’ve seen her twice a week since I’ve been back in London.’ Not that it was any of her business.
‘Maybe she thought you wouldn’t approve of her plans, so she didn’t discuss them with you.’
If he’d known of Rosemary’s plan to leave her house to a stranger, he would definitely have asked questions. Why hadn’t his aunt trusted him? Had this woman coerced her?
‘I really don’t think this is a helpful discussion,’ Philip Hemingford said, looking awkward.
For pity’s sake. Why were lawyers so mealy-mouthed? If Hemingford wasn’t going to stand up for his great-aunt, then Hugo would. ‘Oh, I think it is,’ Hugo said. ‘I’m sure that professionally you’d want to make quite sure that your client hadn’t been cozened into making a bequest. There are laws to prevent such things, I’m sure.’
‘As you’re such an expert in the law, Mr Grey,’ Dr Walters said crisply, before the solicitor could reply, ‘I’m sure you’ll also be aware of the laws of defamation. I had no idea your great-aunt was going to leave me the house and I certainly didn’t ask her to do so.’
‘As I wasn’t privy to the discussions, I wouldn’t know,’ he pointed out.
‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘You weren’t there.’
Hugo stared at her, outraged. Was she trying to claim that he’d neglected Rosemary? The gloves were coming off, now. ‘So if the project goes ahead,’ he asked, ‘what exactly do you get out of it? Let me see.’ He ticked them off on his fingers. ‘You’ll be the one to bring any of Viola Ferrers’s discoveries to light. Your name will appear on any papers written. Your name will appear on the cover of the journals as the editor, your name will be on the cover of the biography, and your name will appear as the director of the education centre. You appear to be doing rather well out of my great-aunt, Dr Walters.’ The way he saw it, this woman was using Rosemary to further her career—to further it rather a lot.
‘I can assure you, Mr Grey, that Rosemary’s name will be on the biography and the journals as co-editor,’ Dr Walters corrected, ‘and I’ll give her full credit on any papers. And, if the education centre goes ahead—which I very much hope it does, because it’s clearly what she wanted—then her name will be prominent because it was her bequest.’ She stared at him. ‘And it’ll be your name on record as the designer and builder of the butterfly house.’
‘Ah, but it won’t,’ he said, ‘because I’m not building it. Which means the conditions of the will are breached, so the house will have to be sold and the money given to charity.’
* * *
Smug, self-satisfied, odious man.
And to think that she’d felt sorry for him in the waiting room—that she’d actually considered going over to ask if he was all right. This man wasn’t the sweet nephew Rosemary had mentioned to Alice a couple of times—a man who’d been very busy and struggled to see her. Instead, he was just like Barney and his cronies: posh, entitled and living on a different planet from the rest of the population. This was all just some kind of game to him, and he clearly thought he’d won.
Well, he could think again.
The barely veiled accusation that she was a gold-digger had made Alice angry enough to absorb the shock of the bequest and decide that yes, she’d do this and carry out her friend’s dream. Hugo Grey wasn’t going to get his own way. At all. He might be able to sell the house, under the terms of Rosemary’s will, but he certainly couldn’t dictate who bought it.
Alice didn’t have the money to buy the property, let alone turn it into Rosemary’s vision. But she could apply to the university for a grant to buy the house, and apply to plenty of other places for grants to do the work to convert it into an education centre and build a butterfly house. If she couldn’t get enough money through grants, then she’d crowdfund it. Help save Rosemary’s butterflies.
This man wouldn’t know a butterfly if it came flapping past and settled on his arm. Rosemary did, and Alice wasn’t going to let her friend down. The solicitor might have referred to her as a ‘business associate’, but the elderly lady was more than that; Rosemary had become a good friend over the last six months, and she deserved better than this arrogant, self-centred great-nephew slinging his weight around. A man Rosemary had obviously seen through rose-tinted glasses.
‘As you wish,’ she said.
He looked surprised.
Did he really think she was some kind of gold-digger?
She wasn’t sure whether anger or pity came uppermost: anger at the insult, or pity for a man who clearly lived in a world full of suspicion and unkindness. It was
a confused mixture of both, but anger had the upper hand. Hugo Grey might be gorgeous to look at, with that floppy dark hair and those cobalt-blue eyes, but he was as much of a snake as Barney.
Let him think that the world would go his way. Too late, he’d find out that it didn’t. Not in this case.
‘Do you have a key to the house?’ he asked.
And, damn, her face was obviously very easy to read, because he nodded in satisfaction. ‘I thought so. You need to hand it over to Philip Hemingford.’
No way. Not until she’d managed to rescue the last few journals so she could finish her work. ‘As Rosemary left the house to me, I think not.’
‘The conditions of your bequest have been breached, so technically the house belongs to the dementia charity she named in the will,’ he pointed out coolly.
‘I’m not the one who breached the conditions.’
‘Really, really,’ the solicitor interjected, squirming and looking awkward. ‘This isn’t...’
‘What Rosemary wanted. I agree, Mr Hemingford,’ Alice finished. ‘And I don’t have the key with me.’ That wasn’t actually true, but she was working on moral rights. Rosemary would’ve approved of the white lie, she was sure.
‘Then I suggest,’ Hugo Grey said, with that irritating drawl, ‘that you bring the key here to Philip Hemingford by ten o’clock tomorrow morning.’
‘Provided,’ she said, ‘that you do the same. Because the house doesn’t belong to you, either.’
He looked shocked at that. ‘It’s my great-aunt’s house and I’m her executor. I’m responsible for it.’
And she was responsible for the butterfly project. ‘I’ll hand my key over when you hand yours over,’ she said.
‘That,’ the solicitor said hastily, ‘sounds like a good solution for now. Perhaps you could both bring your sets of keys to me—say, tomorrow at ten?’
‘I’m in a lecture at ten, but I can make it at twelve if that works for you.’
‘Twelve’s fine.’
‘Thank you for your time, Mr Hemingford,’ she said, giving him a brief nod of acknowledgement. Then she gave the younger man a glance of pure disdain. ‘Mr Grey.’ And she hoped he interpreted ‘Mr’ as ‘Entitled piece of pond-life’, because that was exactly what she meant by the word.
And she walked out, leaving both men open-mouthed.
Normally, Alice didn’t take taxis, but she needed to get to Rosemary’s house before Hugo Grey did, to make sure she could still access the journals. So she whistled the first black cab that passed her—to her shock, it actually stopped for her—and took a taxi to the house in Notting Hill.
It felt weird, letting herself into the empty house. Right now the only moving things here were herself and the dust motes dancing in the sunlight.
It was weirder still, not seeing her elderly friend pottering around in the garden, or sitting at the kitchen table with her cup of tea and a welcoming smile.
Tears prickled against Alice’s eyelids. Rosemary Grey was special. Kind, eccentric and with a lively mind. In a lot of ways, Rosemary reminded Alice of her grandfather, and she was sure they would’ve enjoyed each other’s company—despite the fact that socially they were worlds apart.
‘I’m not going to let him win,’ she said fiercely. ‘You deserve better than that entitled, spoiled buffoon. I’m going to finish our book. And your name is going on the cover before mine. I’m not going to let you down, Rosemary, I promise. And I keep my promises.’
She went into the study and found the last volumes of the journals. No doubt Hugo would figure out very quickly that she’d taken them and demand them back, so today she’d need to photograph every page and make sure she backed up the images in three places for safety’s sake. Hugo Grey and his pomposity were absolutely not going to get in the way of Rosemary’s plans.
‘We’re going to win,’ she whispered to the empty house, and locked up behind her again.
* * *
Hugo had half-expected Alice Walters to be there, stripping out whatever she could, when he got to his great-aunt’s house; but it was empty. Nothing but dust-motes and echoes. His great-aunt’s vitality had gone from the place.
He let himself into the garden and wandered through it. The shrubs were overgrown and needed cutting back, but he could smell the sweet scent of the roses and the honeyed tones of the buddleia, and for a moment it made him feel as if his great-aunt were walking right beside him.
The butterfly house.
He could see exactly where Rosemary wanted it. They’d talked about it three years ago, when he’d been so broken after Emma’s death and desperately needed distracting. Rosemary had suggested using the rickety old wall at the back of the garden for one wall of it; they’d talked about a house of glass, filled with plants that were the perfect habitat for butterflies.
Rosemary had loved glasshouses. So had he. She’d taken him to see stately homes with amazing conservatories and domes when he was small, as well as the glasshouses at Kew and the Chelsea Physic Garden. They’d had a road trip to the Eden Project, too, when he was in his teens. They’d both been fascinated by the biomes—Rosemary for their contents, and himself for the structure. And Rosemary had been the one who’d championed him when he’d decided to become an architect, specialising in glass.
Had he been so cocooned in his grief that he’d not paid enough attention? He hadn’t thought that she’d really meant it about the butterfly house; he’d assumed it was her way of distracting him. Particularly when she’d talked about using the wall of Viola’s old conservatory; he’d checked it out and it would’ve needed completely rebuilding before it could be used to support a structure. He’d assumed that she’d realised the idea was impractical. Had he been wrong?
Standing with his hands in his pockets, he stared at the space in front of him. A lawn that had been cut but not cared for, so it was straggly and patchy, with weeds taking over completely in places. Overgrown flower beds with shrubs drooping, their dead flower heads unpruned. Right at that moment, it was a mess. But, with careful planning and a bit of hard work, he could just imagine the garden transformed and showcasing a butterfly house. A modern twist on a Victorian palm house, perhaps, marrying the past and the present. Something that looked like the past but had modern technology underpinning it; something that would last for the future.
Back in the kitchen, he made himself a black coffee in one of Rosemary’s butterfly-painted mugs and sat at the kitchen table.
‘What did you really want, Rosemary?’ he asked the empty air. ‘If the butterfly house was your dream, then I’ll back it all the way and I’ll build it for you. But if it’s this woman trying to use your name and tread on you so she can get to the top, then it’s no deal.’
How did he find out which one it was? He knew nothing about Dr Alice Walters. Rosemary had mentioned her friend but Hugo hadn’t really paid attention. He’d been caught up in work and brooding—because, without Emma’s warmth in his life, he’d been going through the motions. Existing, not living. It had been hard enough to get from the beginning of the day to the end.
Something about this just didn’t sit right. It felt as if Alice Walters had taken advantage of Rosemary in the same way as Chantelle had, using a shared interest as a way to befriend her and then cheat her.
He flicked into his phone and looked up the website for Roxburgh College.
And there she was, listed in the staff of the biology department.
Dr Alice Walters.
He clicked on the link. Her photograph made her look much softer than she had in the solicitor’s office. Her light brown hair had a natural curl rather than being ironed into the sophisticated smoothness he’d seen. She wasn’t wearing make-up, either; her natural beauty shone through and her grey eyes were huge and stunning.
He pushed the thought away. This wasn’t about being attracted to a woman who might or migh
t not be a gold-digger. This was about making sure the woman hadn’t taken advantage of his great-aunt.
According to her biography on the university’s website, Alice had taken her first degree in biology at Oxford, and studied for her Masters and her PhD at London. She was a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society. Her research interests were in biodiversity, conservation ecology and the impact of land use—all of which fitted with what Rosemary had asked her to do. She’d written an impressive list of papers, including some on re-wilding; she’d been a keynote speaker at several conferences; and she was supervising half a dozen doctoral students.
The academic side of it stacked up.
But were the ideas in the will Rosemary’s, or had Alice influenced her? Was Alice Walters involved in this project because she’d liked Rosemary and wanted to help her make a difference, or because she wanted to make a name for herself and had no scruples about taking advantage of others to get there? Had she lied when she’d claimed to have no idea that Rosemary intended to leave her the house?
Until Hugo knew the truth, he wasn’t budging.
CHAPTER TWO
TWO WEEKS LATER, Alice slid into a pew at the back of the church. She didn’t want any animosity with Rosemary’s family, but she did want to pay her respects to her friend at the funeral. It mattered to her. She’d leave quietly after the service, so the Greys wouldn’t even know she was here.
There were lots of people in the congregation; she recognised some as Rosemary’s neighbours, and a few of them smiled at her or lifted a hand in acknowledgement. And she definitely recognised Hugo Grey; he was sitting in a pew at the very front of the church, comforting an older couple she guessed were his parents.
The service itself was lovely, with the organist playing Chopin’s Nocturne in E flat major as the pallbearers brought in the coffin. ‘Morning Has Broken’ was the first hymn—if Rosemary hadn’t suggested it herself, whoever had chosen it had clearly known Rosemary’s spirit well.
