of your bedroom window?’
‘Is that what Lily did?’
‘That would be telling.’
In other words, yes, but by the time she was old enough there had been no one to be bad with. Make that no one she’d wanted to be bad with.
She shook her head. ‘I had too much homework to spend my nights hanging around in Maybridge,’ she said, turning away to pull down her seat belt. ‘Okay, sweetheart?’ she asked, twisting in her seat to smile at Ally as he shut the door and walked around to take the seat beside her.
Ally nodded but she was sitting very still, clearly anxious not to do anything to make this unexpected treat go away. She was really missing Savannah, but refused to talk about it.
‘Okay?’ he asked, when she’d called Penny.
‘Fine.’
Not fine. He’d offered Penny a full-time job and she’d turned it down because she needed someone to look after Ally. She paid her, but not as much as Hal, who had apparently put all the estate staff on the same pay scale, and with the same benefits, as his HALGO staff. She couldn’t match that kind of hourly rate.
‘I’ll talk to her about working full-time when I see her,’ she said. ‘So, what’s wrong with your ceilings?’
‘My ceilings?’ He shrugged. ‘A combination of old age,’ he said, looking over his shoulder to check the traffic before pulling out, ‘and a leaking roof.’
‘Ouch. That sounds expensive.’
‘It will be. You might be better occupied devoting your front page to the scourge of thieves who are stripping lead from the roofs of churches and listed buildings.’
‘If you’d talked to me about it, I would have done.’ She lifted her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, no. That’s not possible. You don’t talk to the press.’
‘I’m talking to you.’
‘Too late. I’m off the news desk.’ She shrugged. ‘Actually, with several million to spend on property I think I’d have chosen something rather less of a liability than Cranbrook Park.’
‘Would you? And here was me thinking that you were in love with the place. All those Christmas parties in the great hall, picnics, gymkhanas courtesy of Sir Robert.’
‘You can mock, but it’s been the backdrop to my life since I was four years old,’ she told him. ‘It’s a big part of local history and every stone is full of stories. That doesn’t mean I’d want to be responsible for it. Or live in it.’
‘I was born in Cranbrook,’ he reminded her, ‘which gives me a good few years on you, but you’re in excellent company. My accountant would endorse the former sentiment and my PA would definitely agree with the latter.’
‘Miss Webb doesn’t enjoy country life? Or is that Mrs Webb?’ she asked.
‘Does it matter?’
‘Not to me. Presumably it does to her.’
‘She’s Mrs Webb. Divorced but—’
‘There’s a lot of it about,’ she said, not wanting to know about her ‘buts.’
‘Her problem isn’t with country life, it’s to do with country plumbing.’
‘Wimp,’ she murmured.
‘I wouldn’t let her catch you saying that,’ he replied. There was nothing wrong with his hearing. Nothing wrong with any bit of him…
She was the problem. She had the wrong name.
She glanced back at Ally, but she was too busy looking out of the window to be interested in them.
‘So?’ She kept her voice light as she asked the big question. ‘Why did you buy Cranbrook Park?’
They were paused at the traffic lights and he looked at her. ‘Because I could?’ he offered.
And then he smiled.
It was nothing spectacular as smiles went, no more than the tiniest contraction of lines fanning out from indigo eyes but the effect was like sticking wet fingers into a live socket and the fizz went all the way down to her toes.
‘It’s about power, then,’ Claire said, doing her best to ignore the tingle. Was there anything more galling than getting that kind of a sexual buzz from a man you didn’t want to fancy? That it would be crazy to fancy?
Working with Hal North Rule Number Four: Don’t say anything that will make him smile.
‘No, it’s about a promise I made the day I left Cranbrook,’ he replied. Clearly the memory was not a good one because he abruptly lost the smile and the tingle was reduced to something more like the aftermath of pins and needles.
It wasn’t over, but you could breathe again.
‘Really?’ she said, working to keep it that way. ‘Did you swear to return rich as Croesus and buy out the wicked baron?’
Bad mistake. As an anti-smile strategy it worked for him but she found her own imagination running wild with the mental picture of some over-the-top confrontation between Hal and Sir Robert as he parked his motorcycle on the marble floor of the entrance hall. The miscreant—in black leathers rather than armour—swearing a fierce oath to return and claim his rightful place. A modern version of the dispossessed knight.
No.
Really.
Why on earth would he do that? Besides, he’d already told her it wasn’t that incident which had got him banned from the estate.
On the other hand he hadn’t bothered to deny it. And why else would he ride in through the front door, if not to make some statement of intent.
‘It’s a bit of a cliché isn’t it?’ she suggested, pushing him to tell her what had really happened.
‘Clichés are what happen in moments of high drama, Claire.’
True her own small drama had contained just about every cliché in the book, but it was his story she was interested in.
‘What drama?’ she asked. ‘How high?’
More importantly, who had he made that promise to? His mother? Sir Robert? Or just himself? Who was still around who might know?
Her mother almost certainly, but they’d have to be on speaking terms before she could ask her.
His mother…
‘How is your mother?’ she asked.
He glanced at her, a slight frown buckling his forehead as, unsurprisingly he hadn’t followed her thought processes. ‘She’s well enough. She’s living in Spain.’
‘Will we see her? What does she think of you buying the estate?’
