me, so I might take a quick run back tomorrow to check him, but the team are pretty good and he was looking stable when I left.’
He turned his head and she caught the flash of teeth as he smiled. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t abandon you. I’ll leave you with Will, if I have to dash off. He’ll look after you.’
‘I’ll look forward to meeting him. He sounds interesting. ’
‘He is, but I hope you’re tough. He’s got a wicked sense of humour and he’s a bit of a tease, and I don’t suppose for a moment he’ll be subtle. Stand by to be quizzed.’
‘I’m sure I’ll cope,’ she said drily. ‘I manage the boys on the ward.’
That made him laugh, and as they turned off the road and rattled over a cattle grid, he threw her a grin. ‘Ready for this?’
‘As I’ll ever be,’ she said, although she wasn’t really sure. Not now she knew a little more about them and the scale of the estate. It was sounding grander by the minute. ‘What do I call your mother?’ she asked as an afterthought.
‘Jane—and my father’s Tony.’
Or Lord Ashenden. Or should it be Sir Tony? Sir Anthony? She had no idea. Was he a lord? An earl? A baron? A marquis?
The titles were confusing, the whole aristocratic hierarchy a mystery to her, and she resolved to find out more about it. Not that it would be necessary to know, after this weekend, of course, because it would never affect her again. She reminded herself of that as they pulled up in what looked like the courtyard of an old stable block and he cut the engine. So far, so good, she thought, looking around in the gloom. It didn’t look too outrageously grand—except of course this was the back. The front was probably altogether different.
By the time she’d fumbled with the catch on her seat belt, the door was open and he was helping her out. ‘Watch where you walk, it can be a bit uneven on the cobbles and you don’t want to fall off your stilts and wring your ankle.’
‘What about our cases?’
‘I’ll get them later, unless you want anything from yours now?’ he said, and when she shook her head, he ushered her towards a well-lit doorway with a firm, steadying hand on her back.
‘We’ll see if Will and Sally are still here—they’ve got the east wing,’ he said, and she just about stopped her jaw dropping. The east wing? Good grief! Well, she’d known it was big, but for some reason it was only just starting to sink in how big, and she realised her whole house would probably fit into one of the stables!
‘Shop!’ he yelled, banging on the door, and it swung in to reveal a younger version of him, slightly taller, identical ice-blue eyes mocking as he scanned his brother’s face.
‘You’re cutting it a bit fine, aren’t you?’
‘Yeah, well, some of us have to go to work. And it’s not as if you’re in there already.’
‘I have been. I came back to check the dog and ring you. Ma was starting to panic. Hi, you must be Libby,’ he said, turning the full force of his charm on her. ‘Come on in. I’m Will,’ he said, and shook her hand firmly. He was looking intrigued and curious and welcoming all at once, and she smiled back, relishing the strength of his grip and utterly charmed by his smile and frank, assessing eyes—eyes just like his brother’s.
‘Hello, Will. It’s good to meet you. Andrew’s just been telling me a bit about you.’
‘It’ll all be lies,’ he said with a grin. ‘So—how come my brother’s failed to mention you? Is he keeping you a deep, dark secret from Ma?’
She chuckled. ‘I couldn’t possibly comment,’ she said lightly, and he laughed.
‘You don’t need to. Discreet isn’t the word—getting information out of him is like getting blood out of a stone,’ he said with a grin, and then stepped aside to let a great, shaggy grey dog through. ‘This is Lara. Are you all right with dogs?’
‘I’m fine with dogs. Hello, Lara. Aren’t you gorgeous?’
‘No, she’s a pain,’ Will said affectionately as the lurcher thrashed her long, skinny tail against his leg and slurped Libby’s hand. ‘She’s a terrible thief, so I’ve cleverly trained her to steal my father’s newspapers every morning, but the downside is if we leave anything on the worktop, she eats it.’
Libby laughed and rubbed the dog’s head. ‘Oh, darling, are you a naughty girl?’ she murmured, and Lara slurped her again with her tongue.
‘You’d better believe it,’ Andrew said drily, then sighed. ‘Come on, then, I suppose we ought to go and get this over with. Where’s Sally?’
‘In the kitchen trying to stop Ma interfering with the caterers. Come on, let’s go and find them and then the birthday girl can make her grand entrance.’
Leaving the mournful Lara on the other side of a door, Will ushered them down a corridor into what was obviously the main part of the house, and then Andrew took her coat, putting it on a hook beside his as they went through into a huge and beautifully equipped kitchen and a scene of organised pandemonium.
‘Andrew, darling! At last—I thought you were going to make some weak excuse about work like you usually do!’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he teased. He bent his head and kissed his mother’s cheek, hugging her gently, and then turned and drew Libby forward.
‘Mum, this is Libby Tate. Libby, my mother, Jane.’
Lady Ashenden was elegant, beautifully groomed and she looked a little flustered. Her dark hair was threaded with silver, swept up into a smooth pleat—unlike Libby’s own which was twisted up and skewered more or less in place with faux-ivory pins—and she realised that Andrew and Will both had her eyes.
Piercing eyes, searching, which turned on her and seemed, to Libby’s relief, to like what they saw, because she embraced her warmly and kissed her cheeks. ‘Libby, welcome to Ashenden. This is Sally, my daughter-in-law. ’
Sally was small, obviously pregnant and had the same friendly openness as Will. She buzzed Libby’s cheek and grinned. ‘Hi, there. Welcome to the madhouse. I’ll look forward to catching up with you later, but in the meantime, Jane, isn’t it time we went up?’
‘I’m sure it is. They don’t need us in here fussing and you’ve done enough, darling. Let’s leave them to it, I’m sure they can cope without us.’
And Jane turned away from her, missing the eyerolling and laughter that passed between her and Will, and the intimate smile which followed as Will drew the pregnant woman up against his side and hugged her tenderly. They were obviously very much in love, Libby thought, and felt a wash of restless longing. If only there was someone in her life who felt like that about her, but even if there was, there would be no guarantee they’d have Will and Sally’s happy ending.
The question-mark hanging over her future loomed again, but there wasn’t time to dwell on it, and as they left the kitchen and walked along a magnificent curved hallway with tall, elegant windows overlooking the floodlit front of the house, she was brought firmly back to the here and now as the scale of the house began to register.
