to Hampshire?’
She nodded. ‘Yes. Indefinitely. I don’t know when I shall be next in town,’ she said, wanting to make crystal-clear her unavailability.
He seemed to accept her answer. ‘I quite understand,’ he said easily.
She felt a sense of relief go through her. He was backing off—she could tell. For all that, she still felt a level of agitation that was unsettling. It came simply from his physical closeness. She was aware that her heart rate had quickened. It was unnerving...
Then, thankfully, the car was turning off Piccadilly and drawing up outside the hotel where she was staying. The doorman came forward to open her door and she was soon climbing out, trying not to hurry. Making her voice composed once more.
‘Goodnight, Mr Tramontes. Thank you so much for a memorable evening at the opera, and thank you for this lift now.’
She disappeared inside the haven of the hotel.
From the car, Nikos watched her go. It was the kind of old-fashioned but upmarket hotel that well-bred provincials patronised when forced to come to town, and doubtless the St Clairs had been patronising it for generations.
His eyes narrowed slightly as his car moved off, heading back to his own hotel—far more fashionable and flashy than Diana St Clair’s. Had she turned down his invitation on account of Nadya? He’d heard Louise Melmott say her name. If so, that was all to the good. It showed him that Diana St Clair was...particular about the men she associated with.
He had not cared for her apparent tolerance of the adultery in the plot of Don Carlos, but it did not seem that she carried that over into real life. It was essential that she did not.
No wife of mine will indulge in adultery—no wife of mine, however upper crust her background, will be anything like my mother! Anything at all—
Wife? Was he truly thinking of Diana St Clair in such a light?
And, if he were, what might persuade her to agree?
What could thaw that chilly reserve of hers?
What will make her receptive to me?
Whatever it was, he would find it—and use it.
He sat back, considering his thoughts, as his car merged into the late-night London traffic.
* * *
Greymont was as beautiful as ever—especially in the sunshine, which helped to disguise how the stonework was crumbling and the damp was getting in. The lead roof that needed replacing was invisible behind the parapet, and—
A wave of deep emotion swept through Diana. How could Gerald possibly imagine she might actually sell Greymont? It meant more to her than anything in the world. Anything or anyone. St Clairs had lived here for three hundred years, made their home here—of course she could not sell it. Each generation held it in trust for the next.
Her eyes shadowed. Her father had entrusted it to her, had ensured—at the price of putting aside any hopes of his own for a happier, less heart-sore second marriage—that she inherited. She had lost her mother—he had ensured she should not lose her home as well.
So for her to give it up now, to let it go to strangers, would be an unforgivable betrayal of his devotion to her, his trust in her. She could not do it. Whatever she had to do—she would do it. She must.
As she walked indoors, her footsteps echoing on the marble floor, she looked at the sweeping staircase soaring to the upper floors, at the delicate Adam mouldings in the alcoves and the equally delicate painted ceilings—both in need of attention—and the white marble fireplace, chipped now, in too many places. A few remaining family portraits by undistinguished artists were on the walls ascending the staircase, all as familiar to her as her own body.
Upstairs in her bedroom, she crossed to the window, throwing open the sash to gaze out over the gardens and the park beyond. An air of unkemptness might prevail, but the level lawns, the ornamental stone basin with its now non-functioning fountain, the pathways and the pergolas, marching away to where the ha-ha divided the formal gardens from the park, were all as lovely as they always had been. As dear and precious.
A fierce sense of protectiveness filled her. She breathed deeply of the fresh country air, then slid the window shut, noticing that it was sticking more than ever, its paint flaking—another sign of damp getting in. She could see another patch of damp on her ceiling too, and frowned.
Whilst her father had been so ill not even routine maintenance work had been done on the house, let alone anything more intensive. It would have disturbed him too much with noise and dust, and the structural survey she’d commissioned after he’d died had revealed problems even worse than she had feared or her father had envisaged.
A new roof, dozens of sash windows in need of extensive repair or replacement, rotting floorboards, collapsing chimneys, the ingress of damp, electrical rewiring, re-plumbing, new central heating needed—the list went on and on. And then there was all the decorative work, from repainting ceilings to mending tapestries to conserving curtains and upholstery.
More and yet more to do.
And that was before she considered the work that the outbuildings needed! Bowing walls, slate roofs deteriorating, cobbles to reset... A never-ending round. Even before a start was made on the overgrown gardens.
She felt her shoulders sag. So much to be done—all costing so, so much. She gave a sigh, starting to unpack her suitcase. Staff had been reduced to the minimum—the Hudsons, and the cleaners up from the village, plus a gardener and his assistant. It was just as well that her father had preferred a very quiet life, even if that had contributed to his wife’s discontent. And he had become increasingly reclusive after her desertion.
It had suited Diana, though, and she’d been happy to help him write the St Clair family history, acting as secretary for his correspondence with the network of family connections, sharing his daily walks through the park, being the chatelaine of Greymont in her mother’s absence.
Any socialising had been with other families like theirs in the county, such as their neighbours, Sir John Bartlett and his wife, her father’s closest friends. She herself had been more active, visiting old school and university friends around the country as they gradually married and started families, meeting up with them in London from time to time. But she was no party animal, preferring dinner parties, or going to the theatre and opera, either with girlfriends or those carefully selected men she allowed to squire her around—those who accepted she was not interested in romance and was completely unresponsive to all men.
Into her head, with sudden flaring memory, stabbed the image of the one man who had disproved that comforting theory.
Angrily, she pushed it away. It was irrelevant, her ridiculous reaction to Nikos Tramontes! She would never be seeing him again—and she had far more urgent matters to worry about.
Taking a breath, anxiety clenching her stomach, she went downstairs and settled at her father’s desk in the library. In her absence mail had accumulated, and with a resigned sigh she started to open it. None of it would be good news, she knew that—more unaffordable estimates for the essential repairs to Greymont. She felt her heart squeeze, and fear bite in her throat.
Somehow she
