Heiress on the Run (Harlequin Romance)

by Sophie Pembroke

  ‘Whereas you don’t even bother with the façade,’ he snapped back. ‘You just run away when things get hard. You pretend to be anyone except the person you really are. Don’t talk to me about denying my true self, Lady Faith. I doubt even you know who you really are any more. But it sure as hell isn’t this woman in pearls and evening dress.’

  * * *

  Faith’s skin burned pink above the fabric of her gown, and Dominic took a perverse pleasure in knowing he could still affect her that way. ‘Maybe not. But I know something else I’m not. I’m not going to be your scapegoat any longer. I’m not taking the blame for this. Life is risk. You fail. People leave. And until you take that chance, you’ll never be happy. You wanted one night with me, and you got it.’

  ‘And you always told me you were going to leave,’ Dominic said. ‘At least that was one thing you didn’t lie to me about.’

  ‘What, you expected me to stay? As your events co-ordinator, right? No thanks.’

  ‘I might have wanted more if—’

  ‘If I weren’t such a scandal? An embarrassment?’

  ‘That’s not it,’ he said, but even he knew he was lying.

  ‘Yes. Yes it is.’ Faith shook her head and reached for the balcony door. The buzz and noise of the ballroom filled his ears again as she stepped through. They were talking about them again. It seemed to Dominic they might never stop.

  ‘Goodbye, Dominic,’ Faith said, and he had to grip onto the railings to stop himself hauling her back, from making her finish this. He needed her to understand what she’d done to him, what it meant...

  He watched as she made her way back into the crowd. Saw her put on her smile, the one that looked completely different to the quick, bright grins he’d seen when she was just Faith Fowler. And nothing at all like the slow, secret smiles she’d given him between kisses, on that last night.

  He studied her a little closer. The tension in her shoulders, the slant of her head. The desperation in her eyes. All things he’d never seen before she became Lady Faith again.

  She looked as if the walls were closing in on her, bricking her up alive. How hadn’t he seen that before? This life, here, was killing her. And he didn’t know how to live anything different.

  No wonder she’d only ever wanted one night.

  ‘You know,’ Sylvia said, sidling up to him, ‘that wasn’t entirely what I meant when I said “be boring”.’

  ‘Faith doesn’t know how to be boring,’ Dominic said.

  ‘No,’ Sylvia agreed, staring out across the ballroom at Lady Faith Fowlmere, too. ‘I always liked that about her.’

  ‘Me too,’ Dominic admitted.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ‘SO. THAT WAS an interesting little show you and Lord Beresford put on for us all.’ Faith scowled out of the taxi window at her father’s words. Bad enough that the whole of London society had been watching through the glass. She didn’t need to deconstruct the misery with her father, too.

  ‘It wasn’t meant to be for public consumption.’ It should have just been her and Dominic, working things out. Making sense of everything that had happened between them. Not just trying to hurt each other without anyone else noticing.

  ‘Wrong venue then, buttercup.’ He patted her knee. ‘Come on. You know people are fascinated by you. By all of us, really. But especially by you.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why I left.’

  ‘And here I thought you didn’t care what people thought about you. Wasn’t that always what you used to say, when your mother would complain about another photo of you showing your knickers outside a nightclub?’ He spoke the words lightly, as always, but Faith thought perhaps there was something harder underneath this time.

  ‘I’m not that girl any more.’

  ‘No, you’re not.’ Her father smiled at her. ‘After all, you came home this time.’ He stretched out his legs as far as the taxi seats would allow and folded his hands behind his head. ‘So, are you ready to tell me why you did leave? Really, this time?’

  Faith shrugged. ‘Nothing complicated. I wanted to be myself, and I felt I couldn’t be that with the title round my neck and everyone watching my every screw-up.’

  Except Dominic had been right about one thing. She would always be Lady Faith, however much she pretended otherwise. Maybe she really was no better than him. Hiding from her true name wasn’t very different from hiding behind a reputation.

  ‘And now?’ her dad asked. ‘Now you’re back. What do you want to be now?’

  ‘Still myself,’ Faith replied, because that was always, always going to be true. But... ‘Lady Faith, I guess. Whoever she turns out to be.’

  ‘Well, if you really want to find out, seems to me the best place to learn is Fowlmere Manor.’

  ‘I suppose it is.’ Could she stay? Should she? Not just for a quick pit stop, but long enough to figure out what it really meant to be Lady Faith Fowlmere, here and now.

  ‘I’ve got a meeting with Jack tomorrow. We’re going to be talking about some of the plans for the estate. You should come with me.’

  Was she ready? Getting involved with Dad’s scheme...that wasn’t something she could just run away from. If she committed to it, she’d have to see it through. Not doing so would mean leaving her parents in the lurch, more than ever before.

  Was she ready to take on the responsibility she’d always avoided? Yes, maybe her parents had been responsible for running down the estate. But did that mean she shouldn’t help build it back up?

  ‘There’ll need to be some changes...’ she said.

  ‘I know, I know.’ He gave her a self-deprecating smile. ‘I know I haven’t always done right by you. Or your mother. But we’ve been trying, you know. When you left...things were bad for a while. But we’ve turned a corner, I think. And having you home...maybe we can all make it work. Together.’

  She’d heard it before, plenty of times. But something in her wanted to believe it was true this time. ‘How do I know you won’t gamble it away, or get bored and find something better to do?’

  ‘You don’t.’ He took her hand and squeezed it lightly. ‘But, buttercup, what you do know is that it’s a lot more likely I’ll make a mess of it without you.’

  That was true.

  Maybe this was something she could do. Something she could be good at.

  Maybe, against the odds, the place in the world she’d been searching for, the space she needed to feel at home was, actually, home.

  Faith bit her lip. Then she said, ‘Give me the guy’s number. I’ll call and tell him I’m running the project with you now.’

  Her father beamed, and Faith hoped she wasn’t making a colossal mistake.

  * * *

  ‘You really should talk to her,’ Sylvia said, and Dominic sighed into his paperwork. Was even the office not safe now?

  ‘I can’t help but feel we’ve had this conversation before,’ he said, shifting a pile of folders to the middle of his desk, making a wall of filing. ‘Don’t you have a tea room to run, or something?’

  ‘Russell is taking care of it for the day.’ Sylvia dropped into his client chair and kicked her feet up on his filing wall. ‘Which leaves me free to bother you.’

  ‘How wonderful and special.’ Dominic reached for the next folder in the stack. He had no idea what it contained, or what he might need it for, but if it meant not talking to Sylvia, he was all for it.

  Except she was still sitting there. Watching him. Waiting for him to crack.

  ‘What do I have to do to get rid of you?’ he asked.

  ‘Talk to Faith,’ she replied promptly.

  He sighed and put down the file. ‘What on earth could I possibly have to say to her that wasn’t already covered, in excruciating public detail, at the event last month?’ And in the gossip rags the next day. Every
one was speculating about their mythical on-again, off-again romance. Some even dared to speculate that Faith had spent the last three years in their private love nest on the Continent.

  If only they knew the truth, he thought. They’d be so disappointed. Not unlike him.

  ‘That doesn’t count,’ Sylvia said, which made no sense at all.

  ‘Trust me. It was the most honest conversation we’ve ever had. Possibly the only honest one.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t think there’s anything left for Faith and I to say to each other.’

  ‘Except that you’re in love with her.’

  For a moment it seemed so obvious, so profound a truth, that Dominic couldn’t speak. Then reality reasserted itself.

  ‘Of course I’m not,’ he said, grabbing another handful of files. Where did all these bits of paper even come from? And what happened to them normally, when he wasn’t using them to help him ignore his sister?

  ‘Oh, Dominic.’ When he looked up, Sylvia was shaking her head sadly. ‘Are you really that stupid? I mean, I always knew I got the brains in the family. But really?’

  ‘Hey,’ he said, a little sharper than he intended.

  ‘Well, right now you are being officially stupid!’ Leaning forward to rest her wrists on her knees, Sylvia stared at him so intently he felt obliged to put down the files. ‘Listen. She’s great. She’s honest—fake identity notwithstanding—bright, efficient, gorgeous. She’s everything you’ve ever wanted in a woman.’

  ‘She’s a liability,’ he countered because he couldn’t exactly claim that any of the above weren’t true. ‘She’d ruin us.’ Just like their mother almost had.

  ‘How? By speaking her mind?’ Sylvia shook her head. ‘You wouldn’t want a docile miss who never said what she was really thinking. It would drive you crazy, trying to figure out what she wanted.’

  ‘She’s a scandal,’ he offered. ‘She was caught having an affair with a married man. A drug addict. No one knows where she was for three years. There are all sorts of stories...’

  ‘You know where she was,’ Sylvia pointed out. ‘Does any of it bother you?’

  Yes, Dominic wanted to say. The idea of Faith being with another man, living with him. Loving someone who wasn’t him. But he couldn’t help but think that might bolster Sylvia’s argument more than his own.

  Which only left him with the truth.

  ‘She’d leave, Syl. It’s what she does.’

  Sylvia’s face fell, her eyes suddenly very wide. ‘Oh, Dominic. You can’t possibly think that’s true.’

  ‘I don’t need to think,’ he said, shuffling his files again. ‘I know. And she’s already done it once! You saw her at the gala last month. She hates that sort of thing. She hates our whole world. Why else do you think she ran away?’

  ‘But she came back,’ Sylvia pointed out. ‘She’s at Fowlmere right now. It’s been weeks and she hasn’t left. So maybe she changed her mind?’

  He shook his head. If only it were that easy. ‘She told me herself, Syl. As soon as she sorts out the mess her father’s made of the estate, she’s out of there. She’ll be back in Florence, or India, or Australia before you can speak. She’s not the staying kind.’

  ‘Maybe she just hasn’t found something worth staying for yet,’ Sylvia suggested in a small, quiet voice.

  He gave her a lopsided smile. ‘Yeah, well. I think she’s made it pretty clear that’s not me. Don’t you?’

  * * *

  ‘Faith? It’s Sylvia.’

  Faith didn’t bother asking how Sylvia had got her number—she just assumed she’d stolen it from Dominic’s phone. It seemed like a Sylvia thing to do. So, instead, she motioned to Jack to keep walking the hedgerow between the lower and upper fields without her. He knew what they were looking at, and looking for, far better than she did anyway.

  ‘Sylvia. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Oh, I was checking in, see how you’re getting on. You’re still at the old homestead, I understand?’ Sylvia spoke airily, as if it was a matter of no consequence, but Faith knew that if she’d spoken to her brother at all, she had to know that it was.

  And yes, she was still at Fowlmere. And, against the odds, actually enjoying being there for the first time she could remember. Which wasn’t to say that her parents weren’t still capable of driving her crazy at times, but working towards something, as a family, seemed to be making a difference. Even her mother was hard at work pulling out long lost heirlooms and trying to restore them to their possible former glory. Maybe all they’d needed all along was a shared goal.

  Maybe that was all she had needed, too.

  ‘I’m still here,’ she told Sylvia. ‘Actually, it looks like I’ll be staying for a while.’

  ‘Helping your father with the estate, I understand?’ Faith wondered where she’d heard that. Well, news got around, she supposed. Even when it was a lot more boring than scandalous nights in hotels and missing heiresses.

  ‘Trust me, he needs the help,’ she joked.

  It was never going to be Beresford, but Faith was discovering that Fowlmere had its own charms, and its own opportunities to shine. To her surprise, she was even excited about them, far more so than planning a tour of some foreign land. This was her home, her heritage, at last. And, for the first time, she wanted to share that with other people.

  ‘So...you think you’ll be staying, then?’ Sylvia asked.

  Suspicion started to prickle at the back of Faith’s neck. ‘Yeah, it seems like it. Look, Sylvia, not that it’s not lovely to hear from you, but was there something that you actually wanted?’

  Sylvia sighed down the phone line. ‘He’s miserable without you.’

  ‘No. He’s safe without me. Respectable. Just like he wanted.’

  ‘He was wrong.’ Hope tugged at her heart at Sylvia’s words, but Faith stamped it back down.

  ‘I can’t imagine him saying that.’ Or even admitting it to himself.

  ‘Maybe not. But I’m his sister. I know these things. So, you know, bear it in mind.’

  Bear it in mind? What did that even mean?

  But then a car pulled up on the driveway, just across from the field where she stood, and Faith knew, even before he got out of the car, exactly who the driver was.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ‘BETWEEN YOU AND your sister, this is all starting to feel a little stalkery,’ Faith said, folding her arms over her chest as she reached the car.

  ‘My sister?’ Dominic asked, cursing Sylvia mentally in his head. This was all her fault, somehow. If it hadn’t been for her with her insinuations and questions the day before, he’d never have felt the strange compulsion that led him to check up on Faith. Just to make sure she was okay. And maybe, a little bit, to find out what was making her stay at Fowlmere. ‘What did she do?’

  ‘She called. Apparently to check I was still here.’

  ‘And you thought I’d asked her to do that?’ Dominic asked.

  Faith raised her eyebrows and indicated his presence. ‘Not looking entirely far-fetched. Except that I’d have expected it to take you longer to get here.’

  ‘I didn’t ask her to call. I imagine she was just concerned for your wellbeing and wanted to see how you are. She’s nice like that.’ Which sounded much better than, She’s overly invested in our non-existent relationship.

  ‘Which still doesn’t explain what you’re doing here.’

  ‘You wouldn’t believe the same?’ She raised her eyebrows at him. He got the message. ‘Fine. I heard you were still here at Fowlmere. And I didn’t want to leave things between us as they were. The papers seem to have lost interest, so—’

  ‘So it was safe to come see me. I get it.’ There didn’t seem much point denying that one.

  ‘I thought maybe you might need some help.’ He hadn’t been able
to get the image of her, confined by evening wear, desperation in her eyes, out of his head. He needed to know she was still here because she wanted to be. Not because she didn’t have any other options. ‘Word is that you’re trying to renovate the Fowlmere estate. Open it for business, like Beresford.’

  ‘I’m not trying to do anything. I am doing.’

  ‘Right. I just...I didn’t expect you to stay this long.’ Not voluntarily, anyway.

  ‘You mean you didn’t expect me to stay at all.’ She looked away, staring out across the fields at some guy with a tape measure. ‘Maybe something of what you said stuck. Maybe I’m done with running away.’

  ‘Really.’ Stood to reason she wouldn’t decide to stay somewhere until after she’d run away from him.

  ‘You don’t believe me.’ She didn’t give him time to answer. ‘Well, it doesn’t matter what you believe. You, or your sister, or the papers, or my parents’ friends. I’m back and I’m staying.’

  ‘Why?’ Dominic asked, just like he had on the balcony. Would this woman ever stop making him question things?

  ‘Because I found something to stay for,’ she said simply, and Dominic stared at the open truth in her face.

  She’d found a reason to stay. But it wasn’t him. It was never him.

  ‘You were right about one thing,’ Faith said. ‘Pretending to be someone else, living in hiding, that wasn’t being me. I’m Lady Faith Fowlmere, and nothing I do or say will change that. And nobody can take it away from me, either. So I’m here, where I belong. I’m making my own place in the world, not looking for it everywhere else.’

  His heart weighed heavy in his chest. He wanted to be happy to see her so free, so alive again. But he couldn’t help wish she could have found that happiness with him.

  ‘That’s great,’ he said. ‘And really, I can...I can help. If you want. I’ve got contacts, been through a lot of the stuff you’re going to come up against...’

  ‘Thank you, but no.’ She smiled as she spoke, but the words still stung.

  ‘Why not? Because you’re too stubborn?’