I suppose,’ said Luke dismissively. ‘But I get a bit bored being a country bumpkin.’
‘Really?’ Marianne was incredulous. She couldn’t understand why anyone coming from here would ever think about leaving.
‘Nearly there now,’ said Luke, manoeuvring the car round an incredibly slow tractor, before putting his foot down and racing through the lanes at an exhilarating speed. The wind whipped back her hair and the sun shone bright on her back. It felt fantastic to be alive.
And then, suddenly, there it was. They came round a bend, and there before them, in the middle of a vast lawn—across which peacocks were wandering—was an imposing Tudor house, complete with two wings, Elizabethan towers, black and white timbering and pretty gables. Marianne felt her jaw drop. Finally she was seeing Hopesay Manor, home to the Nicholas family for generations, and where Marianne’s future might lie.
‘This is the family home?’ she squeaked.
Luke glanced across at her in amusement.
‘Didn’t I say?’
‘Not exactly,’ said Marianne. She’d imagined Luke living in a huge house, of course. But she’d thought it would be a rockstar kind of house, with its own pool and tennis court in the back garden. But this, this was a mansion. Vast didn’t quite cover it.
‘Well, it’s not technically where I grew up. My parents have a pad a bit closer to Hope Christmas. Hopesay belongs to my grandfather. Not that he’s here much. Silly old sod still insists on globetrotting, even at his age. I don’t think he’s been back here for more than a day or two for years.’
Luke said this with unaccustomed savagery and Marianne was taken aback by his sudden vehemence.
‘Don’t you get on with your grandfather?’
Luke smiled. ‘Oh, the old bugger’s okay, I suppose. He’s just a bit blinkered about the way the world works these days. Insists we have duties to our people, as he puts it. He likes to think we live in some bygone feudal age, when everyone doffs their cap to Sir. He can’t see the world’s changed.’
‘What does he think about your eco towns then?’
‘He doesn’t know anything about them,’ admitted Luke. ‘I’m the only one interested in the business side of things in this family. My mum and dad are more into playing bridge and drinking G&Ts than anything else. They’re pretty shortsighted too. I run the show in his absence. If he doesn’t like the way I do things he should turn up at board meetings more.’
He swept the car into the circular gravel drive in front of the house and they got out and crunched their way up the path to the house. The large oak door was about twelve foot high and looked immensely imposing. Marianne could just about make out an inscription carved in stone above the door. Something about being happy and owing it to God.
‘What does it say?’ she asked, squinting up to try and see better.
‘Oh, nothing important.’ Luke dismissed her question with a careless wave, and lifted the brass door knocker and banged it really hard. That, too, was unusual, Marianne noted, as it seemed to depict a man—or was it a man?—wearing some kind of long robe and crushing a serpent underneath his feet. Marianne wanted to ask but, put off by Luke’s evident lack of interest in anything remotely connected to the house, she fell silent. Luke impatiently banged the knocker again, and eventually a rather dusty-looking retainer, who could have been any age from fifty to a hundred, came and opened the door.
‘Ah, Mr Luke, sir,’ he said. ‘It’s been a while.’
‘Hello, Humphrey,’ said Luke. ‘This is my friend, Marianne.’Why doesn’t he say girlfriend,Marianne thought, with a disappointed lurch of her heart. ‘I just thought I’d show her round the old pad before we go to see the folks.’
Humphrey nodded, and disappeared somewhere into the bowels of the house, while Marianne stood and looked at the vast hallway in awe. Compared to the suburban London semi that she called home, this was massive. The hallway was panelled in dark oak, and pictures of people in old-fashioned dress lined the stairs, which swept upwards to an imposing landing above. The black and white tiled marble floor echoed as she walked on it. She felt fantastically overexposed in such a huge space. Marianne’s stomach contracted. This was so different from where she grew up. How could she possibly ever fit in here? Surely now Luke had her on his home territory it was only a matter of time before he saw it too?
‘Jeez, it’s dark in here,’ said Luke, and opened some shutters to let in the evening light. Motes danced in the beams cast by the setting sun, dazzling Marianne as she stood, silently drinking it in.
‘Well, what do you think?’ said Luke.
‘It’s fantastic,’ murmured Marianne.
He drew her to him, and her heart thumped erratically as he kissed her on the lips. Marianne felt a familiar flutter in her stomach. She had never desired someone as strongly as she desired Luke. It terrified her how much she wanted him. Suppose he didn’t want her as much?
‘There’s a four-poster in the master bedroom,’ he said mischievously.
‘We can’t,’ she protested. ‘Not here.’
‘There’s no one here but us,’ said Luke. ‘Who’s to know?’
‘Er—your butler?’ She went out with a man who had a butler? This felt so surreal. Any minute she was going to wake up.
‘He won’t say anything. Besides, he’s as deaf as a post so you can be as noisy as you like,’ said Luke, with a grin on his face that was impossible to resist.
He dragged her giggling by the hand up the stairs, pointing out various ancestors en route: ‘The original Ralph Nicholas, went with Richard I to the Holy Land; Gabriel Nicholas, hid in the priest hole under Edward VI and lived to tell the tale; Ralph II saved Charles II at the battle of Worcester, nada, nada, nada…’
‘How can you be so dismissive?’ said Marianne. ‘I mean, in my family the height of historical interest is the time when Great Aunt Maud stood next to George VI at Windsor Park. I come from a noble line of labourers and serfs. This is…just…incredible. I’d love to have this kind of ancestry.’
‘You wouldn’t if you knew my family,’ said Luke, with a grimace.‘With power comes responsibility,manners maketh the man. We have a duty of care. We even have a Latin family motto, Servimus liberi liberi quia diligimus, which translates as: “Freely we serve, because we freely love”. Having that shoved down your throat from birth is pretty stifling.’
‘Oh,’ exclaimed Marianne. They had come to the landing, and Luke flung open the window shutters to reveal a landscaped lawn complete with fountains, walled gardens and, in the background, a deer park. ‘This is amazing. You’re so lucky.’
‘I am lucky—to have found you,’ he said, and her heart skipped a sudden beat. This was why she was with him. For the way he looked at her as if she was the only woman in the world. For the way he made her feel so incredibly special. All her doubts and anxieties disappeared as Luke took her hand and knelt down. ‘I wasn’t going to do this now, but seeing you here looking so incredibly sexy, I can’t resist.’
Oh my God, Marianne thought, was he going to…?
