A Manor of Faking It (The Clarion Abbey Series Book 1)

by Hadley Harlin

  “Are you ready to go?” he asked.

  I nodded, suddenly anxious to get away. Before I endured too many more cross-examinations, we needed to get our stories straight.

  “Oh, but you’ve only had one drink. You must stay,” Simone exclaimed.

  A disturbance cut off our conversation. I looked up to see my brother, riding a croquet mallet like it was a horse and slapping the asses of women as he rode past them.

  He caught sight of me, galloping past to circle me. I could smell the alcohol and overpowering scent of a woman’s perfume on him as he continued moving around me like a shark.

  “Well,” he slurred, “look what the money dragged in.” He leered for a moment longer before charging away.

  Chapter Eleven

  Finn

  Let me say for the record, Stone was an idiot. It wouldn’t have been the first society event he’d been forcibly removed from, and frankly, it wouldn’t be the last. He was well on his way. Madden shook his head and walked the other way. He’d given up on Stone long ago. Poppy, on the other hand…

  She raged across the lawn after him, and I was almost surprised there weren’t any scorch marks in her wake.

  She wrangled Stone off of his glorious steed, and I swore she had enough strength in that moment to break the wooden mallet over her knee, but she settled for throwing it to the ground.

  I slid behind Poppy, feeling the silk of her dress against my fingers. She was livid, and I could practically feel the heat radiating off of her as she stared down her errant brother.

  “Where have you been?” she demanded. “The memorial—you missed it.”

  Stone slurred a laugh. “With what body? They’re never going to be able to retrieve it on that mountain. And why the fuck are you actually here? You didn’t care about him in real life, but suddenly when there’s an estate and title up for grabs, you put aside all your revulsion for the man?”

  “First, I’m not going to get into my complicated feelings with you when you’re shit-faced drunk. Second, I didn’t even know about the inheritance until Jacob told me. He quit, by the way, because you snorted all his paychecks.”

  Stone weaved a little on his feet, but I was positive he was acting more pissed than he was. After years of hard partying, he had a few tells. His eyes weren’t dilated enough, and they looked extremely focused on one person: Poppy. I’d seen enough of Stone to know he treated women like shit. I should have seen more of it in our childhood, for that matter.

  I stepped closer, steadying him with an arm on either shoulder. “You should address Lady Perrinton as is her due. More than that, you should celebrate her as your sister and welcome her long-overdue return.”

  Stone refused. “Half-sister.”

  “Bow,” I ordered softly.

  “Hardly,” Stone said. He swung at me, but even if he wasn’t drunk, he had still been drinking. I easily ducked it and aimed an uppercut at his jaw. Stone staggered back, barely catching himself as he fell to the ground. He sat on the ground laughing.

  “Oh, this is too good,” he coughed out, rubbing his jaw. “A new pussy shows up and suddenly you’ve grown a moral backbone. Prop yourself up all you want—you’re still a shitty pilot and a shittier friend.”

  Before I could stop her, Poppy nailed him in the same spot I had. Stone howled, clutching his bleeding mouth where her ring had caught his lip, and gave us a look of pure venom.

  Poppy shook her finger at him. “Don’t you ever come to Clarion Abbey again. There’s nothing left for you there anyway after you sold it all away.”

  “You can’t keep me from my birthright. I’m the eldest. I should be the heir.”

  “Fight me, then,” Poppy said fiercely. “I look forward to it.” She turned and swept away.

  I gave one last checkmate look to Stone, who glared in return. I followed behind, and Poppy heard me coming.

  “I don’t need you being gallant.”

  “I know.”

  “So don’t do it. Making him bow will only piss him off more.”

  “Let it.”

  Poppy kept walking.

  “Poppy, wait.”

  She twisted her head back but didn’t stop, as if she needed to get as far away from garden parties as possible.

  “Come with me to dinner. I promise it’s only dinner.” Although my body was straining against such notions, the tightness in my pants told me nothing would ever be so simple around Lady Perrinton.

  “I want to go home,” she confessed finally. “I forgot how exhausting high society is.”

  “Let me make you dinner then. Simple country cooking to shore you up.”

  I hovered over her, slanting my head down to hers. She breathed in roughly before turning away, moving out of my reach.

  “We don’t have anything to cook,” she said. “I haven’t had a chance to go to the store.”

  I called Alistair. “First stop, groceries. Then, to Clarion Abbey.”

  “You’re not going to give up, are you?” She sighed.

  I gave her a dashing grin until she nodded her agreement.

  I knew she was only saying yes because she felt guilty after I’d handled Stone, but I took my opening and ran. By the time we reached Clarion Abbey, Alistair was waiting for us with bags of food, and the sun was setting over the gardens so you could only see the disarray if you tried.

  The downstairs kitchen at Clarion had been updated around fifty years ago, so it was functional by modern standards, but only barely. I laid out all the food and stocked her fridge with a few essentials: champagne, caviar, smoked salmon mousse.

  Only kidding. Alistair got toast and juice like every other bloke.

  “What have you been living off of?” I asked, tossing a few withered potatoes in the trash.

  “Mostly stale biscuits.”

  “Poppy!”

  She picked a tin out of the trash and put it back on the shelf. “Boris likes those,” she said in the way of an explanation. “In my defense, I’ve been a little preoccupied. Food has not been at the top of my priority list. That spot and the next twenty down the list are taken by Clarion Abbey.”

  “Fair enough. You’re lucky I’m not a complete idiot in the kitchen, otherwise we’d have to order out.”

  Poppy watched me chop an onion, carrots, and mushrooms like it was an especially riveting porno. Her pink lips were slightly parted and looking particularly delectable.

  “Where did you learn to cook?”

  I threw an onion skin at her. “This onion has nothing on my layers.”

  She lobbed it back. “I’m serious, mostly because I’m still shocked you can even get dressed alone. Are you sure you don’t want Alistair to stay?”

  “I don’t need anyone to dress me.”

  I finished my chopping and set to work sautéing everything in butter and oil with a sprinkle of salt and pepper. “I always think it’s a little ridiculous when men claim they don’t know how to cook. It’s not rocket science, just intuition.” I glanced at her sideways to see if she was buying it. The lift of her eyebrow told me no. “Okay, intuition and a lot of time in Wodehall’s kitchens. I was a hungry boy.”

  Her proximity was distracting, and I quickly turned down the flames before I burned the delicate garlic. She held her hair off the nape of her neck for a second, and I immediately imagined fisting it back, letting its glossiness mound over my stomach as she sucked my cock dry.

  This was madness. I used my RAF training to breathe and keep my cool.

  “So what are you making me tonight?” she asked.

  Questions, answers—good, something else to focus on. I dragged myself out of my fantasies. “Shepherd’s pie. This mince is the most important part.”

  Poppy sat back in her chair, arms crossed. “Well, I’m still impressed.”

  I put the mince in small, individual cocottes and topped them with the mashed potato puree then set it to bubble in the oven. The wine I’d been decanting surely had to be ready.

  “Fancy a glass
?”

  She nodded and accepted the red Bordeaux with a soft “Thanks.” The light was low, but I could have sworn I saw a red blush creep into her cheeks. The thought inflated me.

  “Hey, remember how you love all that history stuff? Why don’t we light the candles and eat in the dining room? Just like the old days—the really old days, like 1700s and shit, not our old days.”

  Poppy jumped up and rummaged around in the cabinets. She emerged holding a few tapers that were broken, but we melted some of the wax into a candelabra and stuck them in. By flickering candlelight, we could easily ignore the disrepair and fading wallpaper.

  “Finn, this is really good,” Poppy said after I served her a generous slice. “What’s your secret?”

  “It wouldn’t be a secret then, but I will tell you it has to do with caramelizing the onions and mushrooms. I always take that extra step for a great depth of flavor.”

  “Wow, you really do have layers.”

  I held up my wine glass by the stem to acknowledge the compliment. We talked about general things, what had changed, the dissolution of many village activities in the last few years, gossip about nothing. Then the wine loosened her lips.

  “Why did you write those letters when we were kids?” she asked.

  I didn’t react outwardly, but it wasn’t the question I was expecting. There were many things I’d done to wrong her. The fairy letters were the least.

  Maybe she was starting me off easy.

  I cleared my throat. “I thought it was the least I could do. After your arm, I mean.”

  “So you pretended to be a fairy and wrote letters to a nine-year-old kid?”

  “It was the only way my twelve-year-old self could think to make it right. It made you happy, didn’t it?”

  “Until Stone told me the truth and everyone laughed at me for months!”

  “Then I’m sorry for telling Stone. He caught me ‘posting’ a letter to you one day at the tree house and I couldn’t think of a good enough excuse, but I won’t apologize for doing it.”

  Poppy swirled her wine and watched me. I kept my face impassive, fighting the urge to swipe everything off the table and crush her to my chest. She needed to be protected, which was another issue we had to address sooner rather than later. After I felt she’d had enough to drink to relax her, I brought up a sticking point I knew wouldn’t help her cause.

  “You should really consider deleting your social media handle. @ladypoppyseed is not going to help you fit in, which is what you’re getting out of this bargain.”

  Poppy carefully set her fork and knife down and shook her head adamantly. “Absolutely not. It’s my lifeline to the States, and I love it. Over a million followers love it. I won’t let them down.”

  I matched her crossed-arm stance. “Poppy seeds are for bagels, not a dignified countess. Money talks, wealth whispers.”

  “Ha! Like you know what dignified looks like. I’ve seen all the articles and blogs on your latest dignified stunt. Last week’s tramp screamed class. So did your jail time. Let me show you what a dignified countess looks like as I dance-party my way through my morning YouTube update. It’s my signature move, along with my trademark winged eyeliner.”

  This was going to be a lot more work than I’d expected. It was like Poppy had forgotten all about how life worked in landed gentry, or she was willfully ignoring it. You can take the girl out of California, but you can’t take the California out of Poppy. As we cleared the plates, I tried talking sense into her, explaining how things were done here.

  “We don’t invite the media in. We give them tidbits to salivate over our lifestyle and keep them somewhat tamed beasts.”

  “That’s ridiculous. In fact, I’m doing the opposite. I’m literally inviting them in. I want them to come see Clarion Abbey and write all about the work I’m doing here.”

  We were arguing, like usual, like a married couple, like we probably always would, minus the sex. I didn’t take the bait. Call it centuries of British breeding. “This is going to be a lot more work than I bargained for, isn’t it?”

  “No one is making you choose me as your fake girlfriend.”

  I winced. She was right. I wished I could go with someone safe like Simone, but I knew I couldn’t.

  “So you think you can do this on your own?”

  “I know I can.”

  “At least think about changing your handle,” I implored.

  “Do you realize how much money I make from my embarrassingly real Instagram posts?”

  I leaned against the fireplace mantel.

  “No?” she prodded. “Let me enlighten you, since you insist on being stuck in the sixteenth-century dark. I receive about ten thousand dollars per post. I’m at a modest level for now. Once I get to hundreds of millions of followers, I’ll get hundreds of thousands of dollars per post. Imagine what I could do to Clarion Abbey with that kind of money.”

  I was much too well bred to let my mouth drop open in surprise.

  “So no, I’m not giving up @ladypoppyseed. If you must know, I’m actually creating a new one specifically for Clarion Abbey, and you’re going to help me.”

  I stood straight, anger in all of my lines. “Now wait a second. This is the opposite—”

  “I won’t have to sell Clarion or find renters or do anything,” she continued. “If this first event goes well, I’ll start doing them regularly. It will be the most important one. You are only on the proverbial hook for the first one. I’ve got it planned to coincide with the English wine week Simone told me about.”

  “That’s in three weeks!” I protested.

  Poppy stood perfectly still, her arms crossed, that stubborn set of her jaw reminding me I was absolutely not going to win this way.

  I caved. “Fine. Go ahead. See what happens.”

  “You won’t stop me?”

  “I can’t stop you. I never could.”

  “I seem to recall it being you who couldn’t be stopped, even if your actions ruined an entire family.”

  Now we were getting to the heart of the matter, the reason why she hadn’t responded to any of my letters or messages, begging her forgiveness. I’d even had a necklace made of her favorite story: George the Dragonslayer.

  Nothing. I didn’t even know if she’d gotten it. She was the reason why I joined the Royal Air Force and tried to discipline thoughts of her away, the reason I never slept well and never would. At least, not without her forgiveness first.

  “Poppy, I’m sorry about that day.”

  “Save it. The girl who cared is gone. Either you’ll help me with this event by inviting all the right people and getting media coverage with your paparazzi-magnet face or this pretend relationship is over. I have no need to be dragged down by your dead weight when there’s too much to do to save my home.”

  I breathed heavily. Making deals with Poppy was going to kill me. I could tell. It was only a matter of time. “I’ll help,” I agreed. “What did you have in mind?”

  Her smile made me wish I hadn’t even asked.

  “We’re going to recreate a dinner from 1798, the year my ancestors invited Admiral Horatio Nelson to dinner. He’d just beaten Napoleon decisively at the Battle of the Nile and was made a baron.”

  “You have got to be shitting me.”

  “No, seriously! He wanted a viscountcy, but he didn’t get one until later.”

  I took in a deep breath and tried not to strangle that beautiful neck of hers. “That’s not what I meant.”

  What I really meant didn’t matter, because that was when my body finally exerted control over the situation, and I took her into my arms.

  Chapter Twelve

  Poppy

  He tilted my head back, as if he wanted to see more deeply, feel more truly. At first his lips only brushed mine, like fairy wings, gently and softly, magically, but it wasn’t enough. He deepened the kiss, grazing my lips with his teeth, seeing how far he could go. I let him in, slow and sweet until even that was too much and not eno
ugh.

  Clinging to him, I curled my fingers in his jacket and molded my body to his. He felt so strong, like he could actually protect me and possibly even save me from so many things. It would solve so many of my problems if I let myself fall fully into Finn.

  He swept me up, grabbing my ass and pulling me closer as if he couldn’t get enough. Then his hands were everywhere, pulling my hair out of its restraints and knotting his fingers in my waves.

  He moved to my ear, nibbling as he moved down my neck and whispered, “You’re such a pain in my arse. You know that?”

  Before I could decide much of anything, his fingers were inside the top of my dress, pulling my breast from the low-cut silk dress, and his mouth was hot on my nipple. Warmth rushed between my thighs and I clenched, involuntarily arching my back.

  Despite standing up near the ornate fireplace with my ancestors staring disapprovingly down at us, I straddled his leg, desperate to relieve some of the rapidly building pressure.

  Finn grinned and grazed my nipple with his teeth, forcing me to gasp. It was all so delicious and beautiful, and suddenly, the idea that Finn would know I couldn’t orgasm raged in my mind.

  I panicked. He couldn’t know something so embarrassingly personal. Then, the rest of the shitty logic followed. Letting myself fall fully into Finn was dangerous. Worse—it was folly. He was not to be trusted, and by the looks of his internet footprint, he had only gotten worse than when he hurt me last. I would be a fool to let it happen again so easily with just a kiss.

  I couldn’t let myself fall into him like this. I crushed my desire and yanked myself away.

  My breath came heavy, panting in the most un-ladylike way. I pulled my dress back over my breast and patted it down with shaking fingers. He could still see my erect nipples poking through the thin silk, but I tried to keep my dignity intact. “Finn, I…uh, thank you for dinner, but I need to sleep. Thank you.” I stepped farther away, out of his reach, back up the cliff to safety.

  Finn’s eyes were dark and curious. I doubted he was stopped often. “Of course, Lady Perrinton. You said English Wine Week?”