"Fares please..."
"The Old Hall, please..."
Chapter Two
He ditched the car and took the Harley to tour the estate. It was faster, and he loved to be in the open air. Half his life was spent in an office, and he had determined that the other half would be spent right here. He exulted at the thought that all this glorious countryside belonged to him. All that remained for him to buy was the house. Set like a jewel in a frame of lush green fields and shaded thickets, the house was perfect—both as a base for him, and to fulfill a long–held ambition to build a kids' center where children who had grown up like him, with no advantages, could experience the outdoors, or be inside, if they preferred, studying whatever the hell.
This unpolluted air was the perfect pick–up. He couldn't ask for more. The tranquil lake was full of trout. He could go trekking in the hills—there was even a raging river for whitewater rafting. It was a place where he hoped delinquent kids could reboot their thinking as he had done. In his case, a chance gift of an unwanted computer to the orphanage had changed his life. Who knew he had a talent for programming? That was how he made his first fortune. He wanted to do the same for other kids, and nothing and no one was going to stop him.
From a practical point of view, the Old Hall and surrounding estate were everything he'd hoped for. The thought that he might not be able to charm Lady Frost tonight had never crossed his mind. He'd got on in life by being warm and openly friendly, whilst hiding his calculating brain, and occasionally his cold and ruthless side. He would buy this house. It meant too much to him not to.
There was only one thing missing and that was the redhead. He'd been thinking about her a lot since their chance encounter in the rain. He needed a woman like he needed food, water, and clean, fresh air. And with her feisty nature and full figure, she was his ideal woman.
That was one frustration. Harold Frost was another. Jack frowned with impatience as he gunned the bike. Was Lady Frost such an old boot that her husband couldn't convince her of the advantages of selling to him? He was offering way over the asking price, and the agent had told him the house was practically falling down, and the Frosts didn't have any money to repair it.
His expression hardened as he skidded the bike to a halt outside the gates. He was just in time to see a man he presumed to be Harold Frost leading a team of friends into the house. He couldn't see the man clearly from where he'd stopped, but had seen enough to know that the owner of the house he intended to buy had had too much to drink. Was Frost mad taking that drunken crew inside the house? It would hardly put his wife in the best of moods for signing the contract.
He stayed until he saw the front door open in the hope of catching a glimpse of Lady Frost, but he couldn't make out who was standing in the shadows. The old boot, he presumed.
She couldn't believe it. In one breath Harold had told her that she needed to smarten herself up and prepare to entertain an important guest tonight, and in the next he arrived with a posse of drunken friends—the type who consumed every drop of liquor in the house, and then proceeded to smash whatever few heirlooms remained as they lurched drunkenly out of the house. She was furious—so coldly furious she came up with a plan.
"No. Please. I insist. You must finish the bottle," she said when one of Harold's friends asked for another drink. "Here," she said helpfully, reaching beneath the wet bar that had meant tearing out half of the antique paneling in the library to fit it in. "Here, look at all these bottles," she said with a big smile. "Drink the lot of it—please. I insist."
"That's uncommonly generous of you," Harold mumbled into his glass.
His friends all agreed.
"Now. If we could just have a few sandwiches to go with that?" Harold added.
"No trouble at all," she said, bustling off in the direction of the kitchen.
Bracing her hands against the pitted marble surface, Arabella dipped her head and bit back tears. The smell in the library reminded her of a backstreet bar—not that she had too much experience with backstreet bars.
"I hate this," she said, addressing the ceiling as if the spiders were her friends. "I hate it so much."
She took a deep breath to steady herself, and then made a large platter of the most delicious–looking sandwiches, and carried them through.
She stood back as the men started to trough. Not one of them asked if she would like a sandwich. Not that she would. She had some standards left. They were so rude. She despised them. They were greedy, and crude, and selfish, and there was too much history in these walls to allow them to carry on like this.
"Another drink," one of them demanded with a belch.
He had just sealed his fate, along with all the others.
"Of course," she said brightly.
She made sure that she tipped every last dreg from every bottle into all the outstretched glasses. "Drink up," she encouraged, and then her expression changed, "—because that's the last drink you'll ever get here—unless Harold feels like stumping up the cash for a fresh supply."
Their shouts and cries of alarm probably reached the next village. She couldn't have cared less. They were hangers–on and users, all of them—and the gravy train had reached the station.
And as for Harold?
Firing a warning glance at him, she told him as clearly as words that if he said anything out of place she wouldn't be slaving away in the kitchen to entertain his important guest tonight.
Stalking out of the room with her head held high, she ran up the stairs to the bedroom. Closing the door behind her, she leaned against it for a moment to catch her breath. She had never done anything quite so anarchic before. She had been brought up to mind her P's and Q's, and to welcome every guest into the house as if they were members of the family—the men downstairs were Harold's family, she thought, starting to laugh hysterically. They were nothing to her.
Crossing to the bed, she flopped down and cuddled a pillow until she heard the last of the men stagger out of the house. She wasn't too worried about Harold trying to wreak vengeance on her tonight—he needed her, and he also needed to sleep it off before he entertained their guest.
And what was she going to do until it was time to light the fires and start cooking?