‘Why would you stay in a B&B when you can stay with me?’ Alice demanded and tucked her arm through Charlie’s. ‘Go away, Bryn, and herd some cows or dig a post hole or something to vent a little spleen.’
‘I don’t need to vent some spleen.’
‘Yes, you do, dear,’ she told him. ‘I can tell. Go away and let me talk Charlie into taking advantage of my truly sumptuous bathroom.’
* * *
She gave in. Of course she did. Demanding to return to Australia on the next plane was an overreaction. She’d stay until the dogs arrived.
She lay in the Baroness’s over-the-top opulent bathtub, with bubbles floating around her, surrounded by a sea of pink bathroom décor, and she still thought returning to Australia was sensible.
There was so much she didn’t understand. This place. This man...
Bryn. The man who’d awakened a sliver of trust, who she’d thought...
Yeah, she wasn’t going down that path.
She sank further into the bubbles and thought of what she’d seen so far. The dower house was a manor in miniature and it was pink as far as the eye could see. Pink carpets, pink settees, great bowls of fresh flowers, mostly pink. Chandeliers, glittering, reflecting the pink.
There were pink cupids on the ceiling she was gazing up at.
It should be enough to make the interior designer part of her bolt in horror, but it was so over the top it was fabulous. It was a fine line to admire such over-the-top pinkness, Charlie thought, and she wasn’t sure whether she was brave enough to cross it.
She wasn’t sure she was brave enough...for anything.
Where was Bryn now?
In the Hall? Surrounded by servants? Preparing luxury dog kennels for seven soon-to-be indulged dogs?
That was a crazy thought. It should make her smile but she didn’t feel like smiling. She was so far out of her depth.
And he’d been angry. Was he still angry?
Forget it. Just do what comes next, she told herself, swiping bubbles from her nose. A week here max, to see the dogs settled, then home.
Where was home?
Oh, for heaven’s sake... She had friends. She planned to couch surf while she found a paying job. She had clients who’d surely...possibly...return to her?
But first she had to get away from here.
Get away from Bryn?
‘Don’t think about Bryn,’ she said out loud, but the words seemed to mock her.
Bryn Morgan.
Lord Carlisle.
She did need to go home.
* * *
This wasn’t what he’d planned. He’d got her here, he had her on his land—and she was staying with his mother.
How had that happened?
He was a baron. Didn’t that give him any rights? In the olden days a Peer of the realm could surely insist his wench meekly came at his bidding.
His wench? The thought made him grimace. Charlie was anything but. She was her own woman, a woman he didn’t know enough but wanted to know more.
Heaven knew he’d exposed enough of himself to her now.
He was sitting in the Hall’s vast kitchen, eating eggs and bacon and fried bread straight from the pan, feeding the odd crust to the collie at his feet. His father had given him Sadie as a pup. Bryn had been fifteen. The now ancient dog was now lying over his feet, oozing devotion. She was normally a comfort, but he couldn’t find comfort now.
He should have told Charlie.
If he had she would have rejected him sooner. And now...he’d let his anger hold sway and he knew he’d frightened her.
‘Dammit, Sadie, what would you do next?’ he demanded and Sadie wagged her tail and looked hopeful.
Have another rasher of bacon, her look implied, and Bryn sighed and obliged. And thought of Charlie.
Another rasher of bacon?
If only it were that easy.
CHAPTER EIGHT
WHAT FOLLOWED FOR Charlie were three days in a sort of limbo. She slept fitfully. She walked Alice’s Labradors for miles, exploring a countryside so different from the one she’d come from.
‘There’s an old copper mine with uncapped shafts on the western boundary,’ Alice warned. ‘The rest of the property’s yours to roam, though. Neighbouring farmers are all Bryn’s tenants, so tell them you’re our guest and you’ll be made welcome.’
She didn’t tell anyone anything. She avoided everyone. As much as she could without appearing rude she even avoided Alice. Alice was friendly, open, aching to talk, but Charlie didn’t want to talk.
She especially didn’t want to talk to Bryn—and he didn’t seem to want to talk to her.
Each morning he turned up to his mother’s kitchen for breakfast in what seemed to be a long-standing tradition and he was...nice to her. But he was respectful of her boundaries.
She tried to respect his. She was here to settle her dogs and her cows, and then she’d go home. She shouldn’t ask questions.
But three days was a long time to hold back questions.
‘Why don’t you live in the Hall?’ she finally asked Alice. Yes, she was being careful of boundaries but surely it wouldn’t hurt to ask.
‘Bryn doesn’t like pink,’ Alice said darkly.
Bryn had just left, striding off to do whatever peers of the realm did all day. Charlie was watching him as he negotiated the path through his mother’s overcrowded—and very pink—rose garden and thought he looked anything but a peer of the realm. He looked like a farmer, in faded, stained moleskins, a khaki shirt with sleeves rolled to show muscled arms, his hair already tousled from working before breakfast, doing...what she was trying not to think he was doing. Being an ordinary farmer?
He wasn’t. He was something that scared her.
‘It wasn’t just my love of pink,’ Alice said and Charlie realised she’d been silent too long after her question and Alice had been watching her watching Bryn. Maybe she hadn’t closed her face enough. Maybe something of what she was feeling was showing.
Except she didn’t actually know what she was feeling.
‘Sorry?’ she said, feeling confused, and Alice poured herself another cup of tea from a pot with pink roses all over it and prepared to expand. But with another cautious look at Charlie. It was as if she was measuring what she wanted to say against what she saw on Charlie’s face.
‘After the tragedy I was...in trouble,’ she said softly. ‘And so was Bryn. We’d lost so much. My father-in-law, brother-in-law and nephew had been living in the big house and we’d been living here, so suddenly there were two houses between three people. Bryn came home from university and threw himself into the breeding program. I grieved and did hardly anything but eventually I thought I’d redecorate. In pink.’
‘Pink,’ Charlie said faintly.
‘I know it’s over the top but I was desperate for a project,’ Alice admitted. ‘And I may have lost a little perspective. In the end Bryn said it was either pink or him, but, to be honest, we were both so grief stricken we were feeding each other. Seeing Bryn’s grief made me sad and vice versa. Meanwhile Bryn’s grandfather was like a ghost in that mausoleum of the Hall. It was the same between us. My father-in-law could hardly bear to look at me and I was no help to either of them. So Bryn moved over there. I knew it was awful. It was as if he was abandoning any chance he had of ever forgetting, of ever having fun, but there seemed no choice. He’s done everything in his power to help his grandfather and I love him for it but I regret so much...’
Her voice trailed off. Bryn was striding into the distance with his ancient collie by his side. Charlie watched him go and thought of him as a teenager, hauled shockingly from university, trying to cope with his mother’s and his grandfather’s grief as well as his own.
‘He’s gone for the morning and then he’s off to collect the dogs,’ Alice said and C
harlie realised that she was being watched. Alice was back to being brisk, practical and bossy. ‘So now...wouldn’t you like to see the Hall? You’re an interior decorator and I’d love your opinion. Sooner or later Bryn will to have to put resources into the Hall, and, I’ll admit, pink may not be the way to go. Though it’s tempting. Come and tell me what you think.’
She hadn’t been in the Hall. She didn’t want to. She was almost...afraid to?
It was Bryn’s home and there seemed all sorts of reasons she should stay away. The agreement was that she’d see the dogs settled and then she’d leave—without getting any more involved than she was now.
But Alice was rising, taking dishes to the sink, brisk and efficient.
‘It’s nonsense that you leave without seeing the Hall,’ she told her. ‘Two minutes while I redo my lipstick and let’s go.’
* * *
So like it or not, she got the grand tour of the Hall, and at the end of it she was starting to see why Alice was veering towards pink. A one-solution-fitted-all approach seemed the only way to go when the prospect was so daunting. It was a vast mausoleum of a place, a three-storey rabbit warren with almost three hundred years of history.
Most of the rooms were dust-sheeted. ‘We’ve never been brave enough to do more than peek under them,’ Alice told her and Charlie peeked and saw a household frozen in time. Faded grandeur, mouse-chewed furnishings, great windows with massive, frayed drapes rotted with years of too much sunlight from the south-facing windows, or mould on the north-window drapes. There was one massive bedroom that looked ready to sleep in—the bed was made up and a fire laid in the grate, but it seemed that wasn’t used either.
‘That’s where Bryn’s grandfather slept,’ Alice told her. ‘When Bryn inherited the title I told him he should take it over. It’s where every baron has slept since the Hall was built and I keep it ready. He has to accept it one day, but the idea of taking on that role... Alone...’ She shook her head as if shaking off a weight and then kept going, towing Charlie from room to room until she felt her head spinning.
‘This is crazy. How many bedrooms?’
‘Fifteen,’ Alice told her. ‘Though I may have miscounted. The servants’ rooms make it more. They’re upstairs and horrid. I’d never put a servant in there. Not that we have servants any more. We have a lovely lady from the village who comes and cleans but Bryn said live-in servants make him nervous. We do have staff working with us on the land, of course. But come and see the living rooms.’
Living rooms! They were faded, ancient, never stepped in. Vast reception rooms, a ballroom, a great hall set up as a massive dining room, a library to take her breath away... This was true aristocracy stuff.
She was right to run, Charlie thought, as she wandered from room to room. That Bryn could possibly want her to stay...share...
The thought was crazy.
And then Alice led her into the kitchen and that gave her pause.
The kitchen was also vast but it was a used room. An enormous Aga took pride of place, radiating gentle heat. The floor was stone, worn with generations of use. The ceiling had wooden beams that seemed to match the enormous table running almost the length of the room.
Bryn obviously used this as his office and his living room. A computer sat at one end of the table, with a pile of bookwork. More bookwork lay on a beautiful old desk beside the dresser. A worn dog bed lay before the fire and the south sunlight shimmered through casement windows that looked feet deep. There was an ancient club lounge to one side, liberally covered with dog hair, and a small television on the top of the dresser. It was warm, comforting...great.
The place reeked of history, of centuries of good food and friendship, of warmth, of laughter...
Of home?
‘We should put a false floor over these horrid stones,’ Alice said. ‘Linoleum would be so much easier on the feet.’
‘Did she tell you she brought home samples of floor coverings?’ And Bryn was there, standing in the doorway, smiling at his mother with fondness as well as exasperation. Seemingly unaware that Charlie had stilled in shock. ‘And they were all...well, guess.’
Guess? When her heart was hammering in her chest? But some things were too obvious for words.
‘Pink?’ she managed, and there was that smile again...
‘So, Charlie, what would you do with my kitchen?’ he demanded, smiling straight at her. ‘You’re an interior designer. Pink linoleum?’
She had to collect herself. She had to ignore that smile and make herself breathe. ‘Sorry, Alice, it’d be a crime,’ she managed and she even managed to smile back at Bryn. ‘The floor has to stay as it is. Most of this kitchen has to stay as it is. It’s fabulous.’
‘One in the eye to you, Mum,’ Bryn said cheerfully and then he paused. ‘Most?’ he queried.
‘I’d be tempted to sand back those beams,’ she told him. ‘You don’t want to lose that fabulous patina of age but they were obviously put up rough. To be honest...a few hundred years of grease and spider webs... It could be improved.’
Bryn gazed up at the beams towering above their heads. ‘I’ve never really looked,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Spiders, eh? You’d destroy a three-hundred-year-old ecosystem just to make the place look pretty?’
‘This place isn’t meant to be pretty,’ she retorted. ‘But if you mean would I consider stopping the result of three hundred years of spider-breeding falling into my porridge, yes, I would.’
‘We could lime-wash them pink,’ Alice said happily and then as both Bryn and Charlie turned to look at her she giggled and held up her hands in surrender. ‘I know. I’m letting go of my pink...slowly. It was there when I needed it but I’m moving on. Bryn, I haven’t shown her the cellars or the outhouses yet but I’ll leave them to you. Or your bedroom! He sleeps where the butler’s supposed to sleep,’ she told Charlie. ‘Honestly, you can see what I’m up against.’ She smiled at Charlie, a warm, deep smile that had meaning behind it, a meaning Charlie couldn’t quite fathom—or didn’t want to fathom. ‘Meanwhile I have roses to deadhead. Bryn, I leave her to you.’
She bustled to the door, and then she paused and skewered her son with a look that mothers used the world over. Mostly parents used that look when they’d reached last resort. ‘Clean your room or else...’
This direction was simpler.
‘Make her stay,’ she said and then she was gone.
* * *
Make her stay.
It was as simple and as complicated as that, Bryn thought.
It had nearly killed him to leave her be for the last few days, to know she was so close and yet so far.
Why hadn’t he told her the facts from the start?
Because it wouldn’t have made a difference, he thought. Or maybe it would. Maybe it would have stopped her coming here in the first place.
She was here to provide for the security of her grandmother’s animals. That was all. She’d make sure he’d do what he’d promised and then she’d leave.
To go home to what? Debts up to her ears? He didn’t need to be told the chances of her accepting more help from him were zero.
And further contact? The chances of that were zero as well.
‘You want a job as an interior designer?’ he ventured. ‘This place is at your disposal.’
‘But you’ve apparently already knocked back your mother’s very kind offer.’
‘I did at that.’ He tried to smile, to make her smile back. It didn’t come off. ‘Charlie, stay.’
She tilted her chin and met his gaze. ‘Why would I?’
‘Because I want you to.’
‘I don’t understand why you would.’
‘I’m sure you do,’ he said gently. ‘But I think you’re afraid.’
‘I’m careful. I need to be.’
‘Of course you are. So accept this as a workin
g proposition. Stay with Mum—she’ll love it. Then work your way through this mausoleum and figure how we can make it a paying proposition.’
‘You want to make this place pay?’
‘It’s too big for one man,’ he said. ‘Even if that man finds a wife, has a family, ends up with a dozen kids and even more dogs. My thought is that we could make part of it a luxury farm retreat. It’s big enough for guests to be completely separate. It could be...fun.’
‘Fun...’
‘For...both of us? I’m guessing that’s what’s been missing in your life for a long time, Charlie bach.’
He was watching her face, watching for a reaction, and a reaction wasn’t coming. Her expression was closed, wary, as if waiting for a trap.
He’d been around creatures enough to know that coming closer would be a disaster. He had to stay back, even though that edge of anger was making its presence known again. Why couldn’t she trust?
‘Wouldn’t it be fun, though?’ he said. ‘To rip off the dust sheets, to uncover history, to work out what we could keep, what guests could use, what we ourselves should treasure.’
‘We...’ She said it as a whisper and he heard the fear. What the...?
‘Mum and I,’ he said, trying not to snap, and then as the fear didn’t fade he decided to say it straight out. He’d shut up once and it had backfired. He had to be honest.
‘Charlie, I’m about to say it like it is,’ he said and he dug his hands deep into the pockets. What he was about to say should be said with a woman in his arms, but if he tried that he knew she’d run. ‘I think I’m in love with you. I think you’re the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with but you’re looking at me like I have a loaded gun and I don’t get it.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘But...love? We’ve known each other for how long?’
‘For little more than a month. So yes, it’s crazy, but you know what’s even crazier? I felt this way from about two hours after I’d met you. So that’s being honest, Charlie, and now I need you to be honest back. Is it possible that you feel the same way?’
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