years ago, she had it all. And now look at her, a guest at her own house.
Unlike Gabe, Laura Baxter felt sorry for Tati. She didn’t blame her for fighting her father’s will. If I grew up in a house like Furlings, I’d fight like hell to keep it too, she thought, glancing over her shoulder at the Queen Anne mansion perched serenely at the top of the hill.
The house looked more gorgeous than ever today, dazzling in the May sunshine with its sash windows dripping in wisteria and its lawns criss-crossed by box hedges and winding gravel paths, dotted with elaborate topiary. How awful to think of it being lived in by strangers! And how hard for Tati to have to stay there now as a guest, even before her hated cousins had arrived. Secretly Laura was rather rooting for Tati to turf the interlopers out, although that was highly unlikely. The bylaw that Tatiana was hoping to invoke was properly ancient. As for convincing the naysayers in the village that she was suitable lady of the manor material? With her history, that was going to be a tall order. It would certainly take a lot more than a Julie Andrews dress and a hair ribbon.
‘It’s impossible,’ Tatiana complained good-naturedly to the woman standing next to her at the coconut shy. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t this hard when I was a girl. Are you sure it’s not rigged?’
‘Pretty sure,’ the woman laughed.
‘I reckon they’ve glued them onto the stands.’
‘Nonsense.’
A wildly attractive Latin-looking man whom Tati dimly recognized appeared at her elbow. ‘You just need the right technique.’
In chinos and a blue linen shirt that matched his eyes and perfectly offset his olive skin, the man was easily the best-looking specimen Tati had seen since her return to Fittlescombe. With the Cranleys due to arrive in a week, she would soon be kicked out of Furlings and have to find herself more modest accommodation in the village while she put together her legal case against her disinheritance. The prospect of months spent living in some dismal local hovel had been filling Tati’s heart with gloom for weeks now. As had the idea of begging for a job as a lowly teacher at the village primary school.
The real kicker in Rory’s will, the part that no one in the village even knew about yet, were the conditions the old man had placed on Tatiana’s trust fund. Not content with robbing her of Furlings, he’d effectively taken steps to cut her off from all family money unless she, as he put it, ‘got her life in order.’
With this in mind, the old man had stipulated that if Tati agreed to take a teaching job at St Hilda’s Primary School in the village, he would authorize the trust to release a ‘modest’ monthly stipend. Even then, the money would only ever be released to her in the form of regular income payments. At no point would Tatiana receive a large lump sum of money.
For Tati, this had been the final twist of the knife. She recalled the scene in her godfather’s London office as if it were yesterday.
‘You’re telling me I’m penniless?’ She’d glared at Edmund Ruck accusingly.
‘Hardly,’ London’s most eminent solicitor responded evenly. ‘You have the equivalent of a modest trust fund for the time being. As long as your life remains stable, the monthly payments will go up considerably every year. Any capital remaining at the end of your life will pass to your children.’
‘It’s a fucking pittance!’ spat Tatiana.
‘It’s more than most people earn in a lifetime, Tati.’
‘I don’t care what “most people” earn. I am not “most people”.’ Tati’s arrogance hid her fear and profound shock. ‘And I won’t get any money coming in at all till I’m thirty-five. Thirty-fucking-five! I might as well be dead.’
Edmund Ruck suppressed a wry smile. He’d known Tatiana all her life and was fond of her, but he understood why Rory had declined to trust her with the family fortune, still less with the magical historic seat at Furlings. Even so, leaving the estate to a distant cousin he’d never met had been a surprising move on the old man’s part. The will had raised Edmund Ruck’s eyebrows, so he could hardly expect it not to raise his goddaughter’s.
‘Some money can be released to you earlier,’ he explained, ‘as long as you comply with the conditions set out in your father’s letter of wishes.’
Tati let out a short, derisive laugh. ‘As long as I go back to Fittlescombe and become a schoolteacher, you mean? Don’t be ridiculous, Edmund.’
‘Why is that ridiculous?’
Tati looked at him witheringly, but Edmund pressed on.
‘You trained as a teacher, didn’t you?’
It was true that Tatiana had studied, abortively, for a teaching degree at Oxford Brookes, before dropping out. She’d always been incredibly bright, especially at maths, but had never worked hard at school, or cared about her grades. The world of yachts and private jets and wealthy lovers, of winters in Kitzbühel and St Barth’s and summers in St Tropez and Sardinia, had exerted an irresistible pull. Besides, why bother with university when one was never going to need to get a job?
‘Did my father seriously think, even for a moment, that I was going to agree to become a village school ma’am? That I would be content to live in some poxy cottage, while Furlings – my house, my bloody birthright – was occupied by some jumped-up bloody Australian and his family, the Cranfords?’
‘Cranleys,’ her godfather corrected, patiently.
‘Whatever.’
Tatiana had been full of fight that awful day in Edmund Ruck’s offices. And yet she had returned to Fittlescombe, just as her father had demanded. And she would take the job at the school, because she needed that money. But anyone who interpreted those things as her acceptance of Rory’s will would be making a grave mistake. Tatiana was here for one reason and one reason only: to fight for her real inheritance.
The Adonis standing next to her at the coconut shy might at least provide a welcome distraction while she did what had to be done.
‘You hold the ball like this.’ He slipped one arm confidently around Tati’s waist, placing the ball in her hand. ‘And throw overarm, aiming downwards. Like so.’
‘I see,’ said Tati, inhaling the delicious, lemony scent of his aftershave as she released the ball into the air. She looked on as it sailed skywards in a perfect arc before dipping to strike the coconut clean onto the ground.
‘That’s amazing,’ she said delightedly, spinning around to face her instructor. ‘Thank you. I’m Tatiana, by the way.’
The handsome man smiled and shook her hand.
‘I know who you are, Miss Flint-Hamilton. Santiago de la Cruz. A pleasure to meet you.’
De la Cruz. The cricketer. Of course! Santiago played for Sussex. Tati had heard he’d moved to the valley last year. After a week holed up at Furlings with nothing but Mrs Worsley’s scowling face for company, or trapped in deathly dull fete committee meetings with the church flowers brigade, it felt wonderful to be flirted with again. Tati tried to remember the last time she’d had enjoyable sex or even been on a date with an attractive man – she didn’t count this morning’s disastrous encounter with the semi-fossilized Minister for Trade and Industry
