Finn took her hand as they neared the lake and Alex entwined her fingers with his, glad of his strength. Finally they reached the low platform bordering the lake. The same platform she had fished from, launched boats from and swum from summer after summer. She stepped onto it, looking out into the dark, inky depths, thinking of the young woman who had died there exactly ten years ago and in doing so had set in chain a series of events which had totally changed Alex’s life.
‘She was high,’ she said after a while. ‘So out of it that she thought it was a good idea to swim in the lake on Christmas Eve night. The inquest said that if she hadn’t drowned she would probably have died of hypothermia. Dad realised she was missing and came to find her. He pulled her body out of the lake. She was only twenty-three, did you know that? Meanwhile my mother was sleeping with that girl’s husband back at the castle. We thought normal rules didn’t apply to us, that we were somehow above it all. But we were so wrong. And that poor young woman paid the price. Kate paid the price.’
She hadn’t spoken the name for years, and doing so now lifted a weight from her heart she had been carrying for so long she’d forgotten it was there.
‘And my dad. I never knew whether he was taking the coward’s way out or whether he truly thought he was doing the right thing. I’ve always wondered if he thought about me at all...’
Finn held her close, his clasp firm and reassuring. ‘You are not your parents. What happened here was tragic, and it was desperately sad, but it shouldn’t define you. You can’t let it define you any more. I told you. I don’t care if you call yourself Alex or Lola or anything else. Names are just words. What matters is what is in here.’ Finn touched his chest. ‘You have a good heart. That’s what matters. And you have my heart, whatever you want to do with it. It’s yours.’
He reached into his pocket and brought out a small paper bag.
‘I didn’t get a chance to wrap it...sorry. Happy Birthday, Alex.’
She recognised the logo on the bag. It was from the glass shop in Austria, where she’d bought the girls’ necklaces, now both wrapped and in her bag ready for the morning. Opening it, she saw a tissue-wrapped object. She slowly pulled it from the bag, unwrapping the tissue to reveal an exquisite crystal Christmas tree ornament—a heart.
She held it up to the lantern light, watching the light sparkle off it. ‘It’s beautiful.’
‘Will you take it, Alex? Will you take my heart? I come with a lot of baggage, I know. Memories you want to forget and two pre-teen girls and a castle full of your ancestors. But I love you. I always have. I want to be by your side no matter what life throws at you. You think you need to be alone. You don’t. I’m here. I’ll always be here.’
Alex looked at the crystal heart a little longer, her own heart too full for her to find words. Then, slipping it into her pocket, she reached out and took Finn’s hand, drawing him away from the lake. She looked back at the lake for one long moment and felt the last ghost slip into its depths.
She waited to speak until they were halfway along the path, drawing him close to her under a tree, looking at the castle lit up against the snow-heavy sky.
‘I’m scared,’ she said honestly. ‘Scared that I’ll let you down, that I’ll let the girls down. Scared that one day you’ll wake up and realise I’m not enough. It’s almost overwhelming. It’s as if I pushed all that fear deep down and hid it, along with every other emotion. That I survived by not feeling and not living, by being asleep in my own life. And then you fought your way back into my life and woke me up, and it’s been more painful and harder than I could ever have imagined. But also more wonderful. You, the girls, being back here at Blakeley... It’s like all the wishes I never dared to dream have come true. And it’s all thanks to you. My knight, the only person who has always seen me. I can’t believe you love me. I can’t believe I get to be that lucky. I have always loved you, Finn. Always.’
‘I know you have your business, and your life in London, and I know you have huge ambition and that’s part of what I love about you,’ Finn said hoarsely. ‘But we can make it work. You can have your own offices here or commute. Whatever you need. All I know is that if you agree to give this a go then I won’t be stupid enough to let you walk away a third time.’
‘I can’t believe that I can be this lucky. That I get to have my agency and my friends, you and the girls and Blakeley. There were so many times when I never thought I’d be happy again. But you do know, don’t you, that Hawk and Blakeley don’t change anything? I’d want to be with you and the girls no matter where you lived or what you did. Being able to come home is just the cherry on the cake, but you’re the cake.’
Finn gave a sudden shout of laughter at her words, his expression turning serious as he gazed down at her. ‘Welcome home, Alex.’
He bent to kiss her and she reached for him, entwining her arms around his neck, pressing so close to him she could feel every sinew and muscle, feel the beat of his heart in time with hers.
As his mouth found hers the snow began to fall, settling in her hair, on her arms and shoulders, but she was warm within his arms, warmed by his embrace.
‘Merry Christmas,’ she whispered against his mouth, and felt him smile.
‘Merry Christmas, my love.’
* * *
If you missed the previous stories in the Fairytale Brides quartet, check out
Honeymooning with Her Brazilian Boss
Cinderella’s Secret Royal Fling
And look out for the next book Coming soon!
If you enjoyed this story, check out these other great reads from Jessica Gilmore
Summer Romance with the Italian Tycoon
Baby Surprise for the Spanish Billionaire
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Excerpt from Snowbound with the Heir by Sophie Pembroke.
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Snowbound with the Heir
by Sophie Pembroke
CHAPTER ONE
TORI EDWARDS STARED up at the crenellations and chimneys of Stonebury Hall and wondered which eighteenth-century aristocrat had decided to build a house with battlements in the middle of nowhere, on the north-westerly edge of the North York Moors National Park. Who did they think they were defending themselves from out there anyway?
She supposed the answer was probably in the plastic information file she’d been given on arrival, but her fingers were too frozen to open it and check. The agent who’d welcomed them could probably have told her too, but Tori wasn’t here for the guided tour. She was here to judge exactly how Stonebury Hall could be the next link in the Earl of Flaxstone’s chain of profitable estates, since apparently he’d bought it without consulting her, his deputy, anyway. The agent could only tell her what the property had been. She needed to explore it alone to get a feel for what it could be.
That said, maybe she could explore inside for a while, on the off chance it was ever so slightly warmer away from the biting wind. She looked up at the crenellations again. The stonework matched the heavy grey of the sky, and the whole building gave off a ‘go away’ vibe. She had a suspicion that inside would be just as chilly.
Still, she needed to see the rooms too. Get a feel for if this building was itching to be a hotel, or a business centre, or a r
estaurant and tea room with craft and independent shops around it. Maybe a place for team-building retreats. Or a farm shop and café, if the land around it proved profitable. So many options...and, for once, Tori might actually get to decide what happened to the space next. Her own project, her chance to show the earl how far she’d come in his employ, that she was ready for more—more responsibility, more challenges, more independence. More life.
‘This place is smaller than it looked on the agent’s website.’ A clipped, plummy voice swept in on the cold draught through the windows, before its owner even appeared in the room. Wasn’t it just like Jasper, Viscount Darlton, the earl’s only son, to assume she’d be there waiting breathlessly to hear him talk? ‘Come have a look at the kitchens.’
He disappeared back through the doorway, not even waiting to see if she followed. Typical. Jasper always expected women to be at his beck and call—there when he wanted them, and then gone when he didn’t. Just like everything else in his privileged life, she assumed.
She did follow him, though. Not because of his aristocratic manner, or his dark, handsome looks, or even his air of expectation and confidence. Because it was her job.
And because she wanted to see the kitchens. She was definitely leaning towards some sort of culinary enterprise for this place...
‘Huh.’ She looked around what, in a building without battlements, would have been a nice, average, farmhouse kitchen, with space for a dining table.
‘See what I mean?’ Jasper ran his hand over the battered wooden table in situ. ‘This is more like an oversized home than a commercial property.’
A place can be both, Tori thought, but didn’t say. Just those simple words would give away more of her past than she’d be comfortable with Jasper—or anyone in her new life—knowing. It was the sort of comment that would raise questions. Ones she was far happier not answering.
She’d let Jasper get too close precisely once in her life. It wasn’t a mistake she intended to repeat.
‘It’s cosy,’ she admitted instead. ‘But I can still see a lot of potential here. I’m going to go check out the other rooms.’
She’d meant alone, but Jasper followed her all the same, adding his own observations about the property. To Tori’s irritation, she found they often matched her own—which meant she then went out of her way to find evidence to the contrary. Apparently, five years away from Flaxstone hadn’t made the earl’s heir any less irritating or persistent. Or maybe she was just oversensitive to it, given the last time they’d seen each other.
Strange to think that for one night she’d honestly thought there might be more to him than the spoilt playboy he portrayed to everyone else. Stupid of her, really.
‘This would be a fantastic master bedroom,’ Jasper said, once they’d reached the upstairs. He crossed the room to the window—rising from Jasper’s waist level almost to the high ceiling, and wide enough to fit a cosy loveseat beneath. ‘Look at those views over the moors.’
Tori didn’t want to look. Out of that window was just another memory she was working on forgetting. She knew what those moors looked like. She’d grown up there. And she was far happier now she was away from them, she reminded herself, in case nostalgia slipped in again just at the sight of the landscape. Living in the tiny cottage on the earl’s estate, just south of York, was far more pleasant. And more than that, a sign of how far she’d come. How right she’d been to leave.
Whatever the consequences had been.
It was important to always remember that. Especially at this time of year, when the temptation to go back was so strong.
‘Those clouds look heavy,’ Jasper added, squinting up at the grey skies. ‘Did they forecast more snow? I know they’re even talking about a white Christmas.’
‘That’ll be good for the Christmas fair at the estate,’ Tori replied. That was what this season meant to her now. Revenue and marketing potential. It was better that way.
‘I was rather thinking it would be good for snowball fights.’ Jasper turned away from the window with a wicked grin.
Tori rolled her eyes. ‘Your father is hoping for a spectacular event this year.’
Jasper’s grin fell away at her mention of the earl. Interesting.
What had brought the errant Viscount Darlton home to Flaxstone, after five long years away? Tori found herself wondering—not for the first time—as they toured the rest of the upstairs of the house, then made their way back to the wide entrance hall. Before he’d left, Jasper had been the quintessential aristocratic playboy. Laid-back, permanently amused by life, and confidently parading a selection of beautiful women through Flaxstone Hall—and never the same one twice.
He’d also been an incurable flirt, and seen Tori as a challenge, she figured, since she couldn’t imagine why he’d waste time flirting with her otherwise. Not when he had all those moneyed honeys to seduce.
Since he’d returned to Flaxstone, Jasper was still all those things, but with a darker edge to them somehow, one she didn’t quite understand. And it niggled at her, not knowing what had changed.
Not knowing why he’d left in the first place.
If she had more of an ego she’d think he’d left and then returned purely to make her life hell, except she was certain she didn’t rank that high in his thinking or priorities. Except for that one night, just before he’d left. He’d been thinking about her then, as he’d kissed his way across her naked body, whispering her name against her skin in the darkness.
But that night was something she definitely wasn’t thinking about. Ever again. It was another thing that was better left in the past. She’d known better then, and she absolutely knew better now.
‘I think we’ve seen all we need to see,’ Jasper told the agent, who was loitering in the chilly hallway waiting for them, his hands jammed into his armpits to try and keep warm. ‘Right, Tori?’
She tried to think of a reason to disagree, just on principle, but nothing sprang to mind, and it was cold, so she gave a short nod of agreement.
‘We’ll be back in touch to organise our next moves once we’ve shared our findings and ideas with the earl,’ she said, shaking hands with the agent before they left. With the sale in the bag already, he didn’t seem particularly bothered by how long that might take, or what they had planned for the place.
‘My turn to drive.’ Jasper held out his hand for the keys to the four-by-four as they strode across the gravel driveway to where she’d parked, an hour or more earlier.
Tori’s fingers flexed around the keys in her pocket, reluctant to give them up. ‘I can drive back.’
‘I know you can. You drove here, after all. Which is why it’s my turn,’ Jasper said, with exaggerated patience.
Tori hesitated, and he sighed.
‘What? Are you afraid I’ll crash? Or steal you away to some secluded inn in some village and treat you to dinner—I am actually starving, though, so that one might happen.’
Depends on the inn.
But she couldn’t tell him that either, so, reluctantly, she handed over the keys.
‘Thank you.’ Jasper’s smile was wide, bright and genuine—the sort of smile only someone raised with advantages rather than disasters could smile.
It just made her resent him more.
‘Come on,’ she said as she opened the passenger-side door and climbed in. ‘I want to get home.’
Home to Flaxstone, that was, where she could put the past firmly behind her again. Not anywhere along the way that might have once held the title of ‘home’.
Because maybe once she was safely back in her bright, light and solitary cottage, she’d be able to stop thinking about the one night she’d spent with Jasper, and forget all about a dark, cosy inn out on the moors that she used to call home.
* * *
Jasper eased himself into the driver’s seat and immediately turned up the car’s
heating. It was colder than ever out there—chillier even than his father’s reception when he’d returned home to Flaxstone a week or so earlier. And Jasper hadn’t honestly thought that was possible.
The earl, in all his aristocratic glory, had obviously decided that the rift in the family had to be Jasper’s fault, rather than a result of his own behaviour. Jasper had had plenty of time to think about it over the past five years, and the only conclusion he’d been able to reach was that his father’s life hadn’t ever allowed for the possibility of not getting everything he wanted—so he just took it, and to hell with the consequences for everybody else.
Well. One thing he couldn’t just take was his son’s respect. That had been lost five years ago when he’d discovered the truth about his father—and nothing that had happened since showed any signs of the earl winning it back.
But he was done thinking about his father for the day. He’d done what he came here to do.
Coming back to the UK at all hadn’t been his first choice; he was happy with the life he’d forged over in America, with the reputation he’d built up and the portfolio of work he’d created. But then his father had emailed and told him that, given Jasper’s absence, he intended to legitimise his other son as his heir, too. The title was Jasper’s by law, and Flaxstone went with the title, but everything else—the business, the money, the properties—that was the earl’s to distribute as he pleased.
And apparently his illegitimate son by the housekeeper was what pleased him most. The son Jasper had only discovered existed by accident, five years ago, and the reason he’d left home in the first place.
His best friend, Felix.
Jasper hadn’t come back for the money, or the property, or the business. He’d come back for his reputation and, most of all, for his mother.
And it was his mother that had brought him to Stonebury Hall with Tori.
Stonebury Hall would be the perfect home for his mother, if Jasper couldn’t dissuade his father from making a big, public announcement, and the earl went through with his latest, ruinous plan. Jasper wasn’t even sure his mother knew about Felix, or if his father had any intention of telling her before the rest of the country. His mother, lovely and loving as she was, had never really seemed to inhabit the same world as the rest of them, as far as Jasper could tell. She was perfect for opening church fetes, throwing Christmas parties and keeping their little corner of England the way things had been fifty years ago, when she’d watched her mother run her own home in a fashion that was out of date even then, but she’d never really caught up with the changing times—or shown any desire to.
Reawakened by His Christmas Kiss Page 16
