A Night of Scandal

Katie hurried down the steps. Like Cinderella, she thought, running from the ball. Except that she hadn’t lost a shoe.

Both shoes were on her feet, but her heart was in pieces.

CHAPTER NINE

BEFORE you can go forward, you have to go back.

In a dangerous mood, Nathaniel floored the accelerator of his Ferrari and shot down the long drive that led to Wolfe Manor.

He’d swum with sharks, leaped from moving vehicles, skydived and climbed vertical cliffs but none of those activities had left him shaking the way he was shaking now. Fear, he thought. It lodged itself in his chest and gripped him by the throat.

What if, by going back, he was unable to move forward?

Centuries before, his ancestors had carefully planted an avenue of horse chestnut trees and they added an air of grandeur which was abruptly shattered as the main house came into view.

In a state of crumbling disrepair, Wolfe Manor stood like an ancient aristocrat struggling to maintain dignity in the face of advancing years and little maintenance.

Nathaniel killed the engine and sat for a moment, his fingers drumming a rhythm on the steering wheel.

What was he doing here? How did torturing himself with the past help solve the issues in his present?

Swearing under his breath, he sprang from the car and prowled through the tangled, long-neglected gardens. After the warmth of California, the bite of a British winter was particularly brutal and he turned up the collar of his jacket and blew clouds in the freezing air.

Afterwards, he realised that it had always been his intention to walk to the lake—to confront that part of his past—but now, as his feet moved, he felt as if he were being drawn there against his will.

He kicked his way through grass that was untended and overgrown. It brushed against his knees and wrapped itself around his ankles, impeding every step, as if warning him about the danger.

And then there it was.

Bulrushes clustered at the edge of the water, tall and straight as sentries as they guarded the dark, sinister pool that had dominated his childhood. It had begun here, he thought, and it had almost ended here, in the depths of the lake.

‘You sank like a stone.’

His mind still trapped in another place, Nathaniel turned sharply to find Jacob watching him. Apart from that br

ief glimpse at the theatre, it had been almost twenty years since they’d laid eyes on each other and both had spent that time running. Isolating themselves from their past.

Nathaniel felt the anger rush down on him, vivid and scorching hot. The full force of twenty years of simmering resentment and pain powered the fist he slammed into Jacob’s jaw. Pain exploded through his hand and Jacob staggered. But he didn’t retaliate.

Nathaniel was shocked by how badly he wanted him to. As if a good earthy physical pounding might right all the wrongs.

Deep down he felt sick with himself because he knew the person he wanted to lay out cold had been dead for twenty years.

He stepped back. Let his hands fall. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

Jacob touched his fingers to his jaw, checking for damage. ‘I thought it was time.’

‘Why? Because we’ve all grown up?’ Nathaniel heard the bitterness in his tone. ‘We did it without you.’

There was a long silence, broken only by the ghostly howl of the bitter wind. ‘Don’t you ever pick up your phone?’

‘Only when the caller is someone I want to speak to.’

‘You have every right to be angry. I’m sorry about what happened at the theatre. I should have warned you I was coming.’

‘Why did you come?’

‘I wanted to see you.’