English Lord on Her Doorstep

by Marion Lennox

  And then he held up his hands in a gesture of surrender, as if acknowledging there was more that could be read into what he was saying and he wished to back off.

  ‘And, Charlie, it’s potatoes and salmon and coleslaw only—as long as I can discover how to make coleslaw. Nothing else. I’m not here to press unwanted advances...’

  ‘What does that mean?’ one of the checkout girls demanded of the other.

  ‘Means he doesn’t want to sleep with her,’ the second girl said. ‘Pity. If he asked me...’

  ‘I can give you a great coleslaw recipe,’ one of the shopping ladies volunteered, and smiled at Charlie. ‘Charlotte, you go for it. You know your grandma would have wanted you to.’

  ‘He’s Thomas Carlisle’s nephew,’ Charlie said helplessly. ‘He’s admitted it. Thomas Carlisle. The guy who called himself Lord Carlisle. He stole from all of us. Why should I trust him?’

  There was silence at that while Bryn was assessed. Clearly Grandpa’s ancient sweater didn’t fit with the remembered Thomas and his sleaze and his car and his lies. And then one of the checkout girls spoke up. ‘I know about this guy.’

  Everyone turned to her. Or maybe not Bryn, but Charlie wasn’t looking at Bryn. She was trying very hard not to look at Bryn.

  ‘I mean...’ The girl seemed embarrassed with the attention and her friend had to elbow her in the ribs before she could continue. ‘I mean...you know my dad’s a cop? He said the creep’s nephew has been here. They thought he was in the scheme too, but he came all the way from the UK to say he wasn’t. This guy must be him. And he’s gorgeous, miss,’ she said in a hurry. And then she subsided as her previous pale complexion transformed to bright pink blush.

  ‘You might be interested in the special on fancy coffee in aisle two, this week only,’ her friend ventured, manfully trying to deflect attention from her friend’s blushes. ‘Just saying. If you’re getting fancy stuff you’ll need good coffee. And we do have saws. Any hardware you want. Anything else?’

  ‘Dog food,’ Bryn said, seemingly not the least perturbed. ‘If you can point us to dog bones...’

  ‘I’ll show you,’ one of the shoppers said warmly. ‘And then I’ll give you my coleslaw recipe. Oh, Charlotte, we were so worried about you.’

  You still should be, Charlie thought wildly. I’m in such trouble.

  * * *

  The next few hours seemed to pass in a blur. They drove home and Bryn cooked them both steak for a late lunch. Steak—and he’d even bought enough for the dogs! Then Bryn headed back to the tree.

  ‘Let’s get ourselves a really big pile and light it at dusk,’ he said. ‘Do we need to notify your fire authorities that the mother and father of a burn is about to happen? Can you do that?’

  Charlie did what she needed to do, then went out to help.

  She had six dogs bouncing around her and she carried Flossie in her basket. Bryn had checked her leg and was happy enough to go without vet’s advice. By now Charlie was trusting enough of his farming and animal experience to take his word.

  ‘I’m thinking she might even be up to a bath tonight,’ Bryn had told her as he’d reapplied the bandage. ‘If we’re gentle.’

  We?

  The word seemed to be seeping around her heart, on one level comforting, inviting, even seductive...

  On another level, deeply scary.

  Of all the things she didn’t need in her life right now it was another man complicating things.

  Except he wasn’t complicating things. He’d saved her dog. He’d bought her enough food to last for a week and he was sawing his way to a clear driveway, free of charge. He was being a friend, so the least she could do was stop quibbling and go help.

  As she walked down the driveway, loaded with dog, he didn’t look up. He’d stripped off to the waist again. He was halfway through sawing a massive limb. His movements were rhythmic, even hypnotic—and that was how she felt. Hypnotised. By a beautiful body?

  She couldn’t afford to be hypnotised by anything—or anyone. But the day was gorgeous, the sun was on her face, the dogs were happy—even Flossie was wagging her tail. She had something to focus on other than the relentless worry and grieving that had been her life for the last few weeks. Or longer...

  And she had someone to do it with. Someone like Bryn.

  Don’t think about Bryn. Do what he’s doing: focus on the job at hand.

  Yeah, right. A girl could work and look at the same time. A girl could work and feel.

  A girl would be nuts not to.

  * * *

  He had company. Charlie.

  Bryn was working with an excellent saw, and it made a difference. It should be making rhythm easy to maintain.

  It wasn’t. He was distracted.

  Charlie had set Flossie’s basket under a nearby tree, positioning it so she could poke her head into the sun if she wanted, or curl back into her basket into the shade.

  She was a dog who’d run away. The gate was wide open now but she wasn’t even looking at the gate. She was snoozing. Her fellow dogs were frolicking around her. They were occasionally stopping by to give her a conspiratorial sniff, but Bryn was sure there were no break-out conspiracies happening.

  Why would there be? He glanced again at Charlie and his saw faltered as if it’d caught a knot in the wood.

  It hadn’t. The falter had been his call entirely.

  Charlie was collecting armloads of fallen branches, small stuff, carrying it out into the midst of the paddock, the place he’d decreed would make a great bonfire setting.

  She was dressed in old jeans, a faded windcheater and wellingtons. Gum boots, he’d been told when he’d bought some from the general store. Charlie’s grandpa’s feet had been just a bit smaller than his so he’d splurged.

  ‘You can’t spend all of this,’ Charlie had expostulated and he’d thought of how little gum boots cost and how little Charlie’s debt would be in the scheme of things. He’d wanted to write a cheque right there. Only his lawyer’s stern decree had stopped him.

  ‘One payment and you admit liability. This is a no-fault situation unless you do anything stupid.’

  They’d probably think chopping up dead trees on one of the victim’s farms would classify as stupid.

  It didn’t feel stupid. It felt good.

  Charlie’s copper curls were tied back with scarlet ribbon into a...a what? A ponytail? It bounced as she walked.

  She was whistling, a happy, tuneless little whistle. It was a good sound. No, it was a great sound. The dogs were bouncing around her and he thought, She’s making them happy.

  And then he thought of her last night, of her fear, and he knew things hadn’t been happy for a long time.

  Even before his scumbag uncle had made things worse?

  Maybe he was imagining things, but he didn’t think so. Something about Charlie mirrored Flossie’s misery—something spoke of long-term weariness, almost defeat.

  He shouldn’t be staying on. He’d pretty much forced himself on her but there was something...something...

  About the way her ponytail bounced?

  It wasn’t just that. Surely it wasn’t. There were plenty of attractive women back home and he was sure lots of them had ponytails. One hint to his mother and he’d have a bevy of ponytails lined up for his inspection. She was desperate for him to move on but he wasn’t interested. Since the tragedy on the estate, he’d steered clear of any serious relationship. Love hurt. Ponytails could keep their distance.

  But this one...

  It wasn’t guilt that was keeping him here, he conceded. Even though this scam of Thomas’s was a bit different in that it had directly involved him, he was pretty much over feeling guilt about his appalling uncle. ‘That man was born evil,’ his mother had told him. ‘I have no idea why. He was born into such a lovely family but your father says he wa
s born wanting to hurt people. He’s given your grandparents such grief. Do what you need to protect the title and put him out of your mind.’

  He did. He had.

  So why was he still here? Why not just arrange someone to pay to do what he was doing?

  Because a bouncy ponytail was whistling across the paddock towards him. She saw him looking and paused and smiled, and that smile...

  It was enough to make a man almost break the saw on the next knot.

  It might even be enough to break through the fear he had of relationships.

  Um...not. But it was enough to make him think: There are things in this woman’s past, and I need to find out what.

  * * *

  At dusk they lit their bonfire and it was pretty much the most spectacular bonfire Charlie had ever seen. The evening was warm and still. The mountain of dead leaves caught and blazed, sending sparks sky-high and radiating scorching heat. Bryn had lit the base and stepped back. And stepped back again. And stepped back again and again and again.

  Until he reached the spot where Charlie had set up a picnic rug—actually two picnic rugs because there were seven dogs who thought rugs beside bonfires were meant to share.

  ‘It’ll be an hour before we have enough embers to bake potatoes,’ Charlie said, offering a bottle from a capacious basket. ‘Want a beer?’

  ‘And crisps and cheese and biscuits,’ he agreed and flopped down beside her.

  He’d pulled on her grandpa’s sweater again. Some time during the afternoon he’d finally managed to access the car. He now had his own stuff, but he’d only brought business gear, plus a cashmere sweater for the plane—and this wasn’t the night for cashmere sweaters.

  He was filthy. It had been a day of hard physical work, and it felt...excellent.

  He poured wine for her and a beer for himself and sat beside her and looked at the fire and felt...

  As if this were home?

  There was a crazy thought. Home was on the far side of the world. Home wasn’t here.

  This woman was here.

  This woman who he’d met less than twenty-four hours before.

  ‘Tell me about you,’ he said, not for something to say but because he suddenly very much wanted to know. Needed to know?

  ‘I’m hungry,’ she said and loaded a cracker with Camembert and popped it into her mouth. There followed a couple of silent minutes while the Camembert was given due reverence and then she smiled. ‘Now I’m not quite so hungry. But I do need more. Is that Stilton? Wow!’

  ‘There’s possibly more to you than the fact that you’re hungry and you like cheese,’ he ventured and she smiled.

  ‘I like sausages and baked potatoes, too. And wine.’

  ‘A woman of depth. But—’

  ‘Tell me about you first,’ she said, hurriedly.

  Yep, he thought, that’s a woman thing. A learned thing. Ask a guy to talk about himself and the conversation’s pretty much taken care of.

  So what to tell her? How much?

  He sat and loaded his own cracker and drank some beer and thought of home, of the vast estates, of the title, of the responsibilities that went with it.

  But he didn’t want it. Okay, the land, the cattle, the estate, they were things he loved, but the title should never have come to him. Baron Carlisle of Ballystone Hall... Lord Carlisle... His grandfather’s death had made it all slam back. He’d had the title for a mere two months, but its inheritance had made the whole tragedy of the past slam back.

  And now... Charlie had been scammed by a title. How to tell Charlie that was who he was? If she’d done a thorough search of his uncle’s background she might have discovered that Morgan was the family name of Baron Carlisle, but she obviously hadn’t searched that far.

  Did she really want to know?

  She was scoffing cheese, savouring every mouthful. She had dogs draped over her legs. The firelight was playing with her hair, making the copper curls glint. This was time out of frame for both of them.

  To announce his title...he couldn’t bear to. He could tell the truth without it—as he’d like to live the rest of his life without it.

  ‘Okay, potted history,’ he told her. ‘I’m a farmer. My family’s run beef cattle for generations. I love farming. It’s in my blood—it’s who I am. I’m thirty-five years old and still single, much to my mother’s disgust but that’s the way I like it.’

  ‘You prefer your own company?’

  And there was another decision.

  He paused and thought about all the flip answers he could give. None seemed appropriate.

  What was it about this setting, this time, this woman...? He rarely spoke of the tragedy that underpinned his life. He couldn’t tell her about the title but the rest, with Charlie it seemed right.

  ‘There was...an appalling accident when I was nineteen,’ he told her, softly, almost tentatively. Exposing a wound that could never heal? ‘I guess it’s taught me that solitary is best.’

  ‘Oh, Bryn,’ she said softly. ‘You want to tell me about it?’

  Did he? Somehow it seemed he had to.

  ‘I was away at university,’ he said, talking into the stillness. Staring at nothing in particular. ‘My sister was studying, too, but she’d come home for the weekend. Like many farming families, my grandfather, my uncle—my dad’s older brother, not the one who scammed you—my dad, and my cousin Alan were sharing the farm, the land, the work. Our farm’s large. Normally it’s more than enough to support two families—plus my grandfather—but right then we were struggling. It was summer, there’d been a drought, and the huge underground water tank we used for house water had finally emptied. Just as it did, a massive storm came in from the north, with the authorities predicting a huge dump of rain. So my father and uncle decided to work in a hurry and clean it. They used a petrol-driven pressure pump.’

  ‘Oh, Bryn, no...’

  She got it, he thought. How many people would? But then, she had the advantage of knowing a tragedy had happened. His family had had no such warning.

  Bryn had been interested in how things worked since birth. The rest of his family, not so much. It had become a standing joke. By the time he was ten years old it was standard practice... ‘The tractor’s stalled. Go get Bryn.’

  But he’d been away at a house party with university friends. It had been Sunday morning, and there had been no one to tell them that their plan was dumb.

  More than dumb.

  Tragic.

  ‘The fumes made them pass out,’ he said, trying to keep bleakness from his voice. ‘They would have died quickly as the fumes would have built and built.’

  ‘Oh, Bryn...’

  ‘There’s more.’ He closed his eyes, trying to block the scenario. The nightmare.

  Say it like it was.

  ‘Sunday lunch,’ he managed. ‘They didn’t come home. My mother, my grandfather, my cousin and my sister...they were all waiting. So Alan and Louisa—my cousin and my sister—went looking. They saw my dad from the top—my uncle was further along the tank. We guess they assumed my uncle had already gone for help so they rushed down the ladder but by then the fumes had built up so much...’ He shook his head. ‘I guess...the only thing...the only thing that helps is that it would have been fast.’

  He stopped. Was there no way he could ever shake off the grief, the guilt that he hadn’t been there, the aching loss of so much of his family? Knowing he never could. ‘I don’t think you ever get over something like that,’ he said at last and it was all he could say.

  ‘Oh, Bryn, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ he said brusquely, even though it wasn’t. Even though it could never be okay. He shrugged. ‘So there you have it. My uncle and my aunt divorced early so there’s only Mum and me. We don’t live in grief all the time but it’s always with us.’

  ‘S
he lives with you?’

  ‘Um...not.’ He smiled then, laughter unexpectedly resurfacing at the thought of his eccentric mother. After years of dreariness she’d found ways of distracting herself from a grief-ridden past.

  ‘There’s a scary word I’m sure exists for cases like mine,’ he said, ‘and it’s called matricide. Mum is...well, matchmaking’s probably too small a word for it. When she hits me at breakfast with a list of potential brides, she’s in danger of being choked on her toast. And she likes...pink. She lives in the d—in a cottage next to the main house now, where she can pink to her heart’s content and we get on much better. She doesn’t hit me with brides until lunch time and by then I’ve had coffee and can handle it. I listen politely and then head back to the cows.’

  There was a long silence. Charlie seemed to be taking it in, internalising. After so many reactions, so many years of hearing so many platitudes, so many appalled reactions, he found himself grateful.

  ‘So your scamming uncle?’ she asked after a while, quietly, and he was grateful. Past tragedy wasn’t to be dwelt on.

  ‘The uncle who died was my dad’s elder brother,’ he told her. ‘The Thomas who scammed you was younger. Apparently he was a wild child, a wilder young man and eventually he turned criminal. We’ve seen him on and off over the years but only when he was after more money. He broke my grandparents’ hearts. This last scam...’ He shook his head. ‘It’s unforgivable. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘It’s not you,’ she whispered and her hand slid silently into his.

  And that felt...amazing. It was a simple gesture, a momentary act of empathy and why it made him feel...

  He didn’t understand how it made him feel. He disengaged because he didn’t need sympathy, but loss of her hand felt like another grief.

  ‘Enough of me,’ he said, almost roughly. ‘Fair’s fair, Charlie Foster. Tell me about you.’

  ‘There’s little to tell.’

  That was a deliberate deflection. She wasn’t used to talking about herself, he thought.