The Man She Should Have Married

‘Sounds great.’

Looking up, she felt her stomach jolt even before she recognised his voice.

Shifting against the bonnet of the nearest ATV, Farlan downed his tea and screwed the top back on his Thermos as though this was all completely normal to him.

‘Are we talking snowballs or sledging?’

She stared at him in silence. ‘I didn’t know you were joining us, Mr Wilder?’ she managed finally.

‘I wasn’t.’ He gazed at her, his green eyes clear and steady. ‘But Johnny dropped round to the house to pick up the key for this.’ He patted the bonnet. ‘So we got talking, and he told me you were all meeting up, and—’

And what? she wanted to scream.

His smile could have melted a polar ice-cap. ‘I don’t have much on today, except a call to my producer. So I thought I’d tag along. Have a tour of the estate.’

Tag along?

She felt blindsided, just as if he’d scooped up a ball of snow and thrown it at her head. Surely he wasn’t planning on spending the whole morning with them?

As if he could read her thoughts, his eyes met hers. ‘But only if that’s okay with you, Lady Antonia?’

No, it’s not. It’s actually extremely inconvenient, she thought, biting back a strong desire to tell him so. And unfair.

It felt as if the whole world was weighted against her, tipping her ever more into his orbit just when she had come to terms with their last encounter.

‘It’s really not very exciting,’ she said.

‘Good,’ he said softly. ‘I’ve had quite enough excitement in the last twenty-four hours.’

His eyes rested on her face, and for a second she couldn’t breathe as his words wound around her skin.

‘Well, I don’t have any objections,’ she lied. ‘So, shall we get on? Or does anyone have anything they want to discuss before we leave? Any questions?’

There was a general shuffling of feet and then Johnny raised his hand. ‘Just the one. Is Mr Wilder going to be using Lamington as a location for one of his films? Only Allan, here, got his drama badge in Scouts…’

Everyone roared with laughter.

Farlan grinned. ‘That’s my leading man sorted, then.’

Watching him, Nia felt dizzy. Most of the men who worked on the estate were reserved with strangers, and yet here they were, chatting to Farlan as if they’d known him their whole lives. As if he was one of them.

But Farlan had a knack of engaging with people…making them see the world differently, act differently. It was what made him such a successful film director, she thought. With him, everything seemed possible.

Unlike her family, he made everything feel as simple and certain as the heather-covered hills.

She had felt more sure of herself when she was with him. He had seen qualities in her that others had ignored…seen beneath the poise and reserve and made it clear how much he liked what he saw.

For those six months they’d been together she had never been happier. It had been an actual tingling feeling, like sherbet exploding on her tongue. And in that state of unending, incomparable happiness she had thought that she could have it all. Farlan and Lamington.

Only life didn’t work like that. You could never have it all. Sacrifices had to be made.

But she hadn’t wanted him to have to make them.

He’d had so much passion and talent and determination. He’d wanted to travel, to see the world and seize his place in it, and she hadn’t been able to bear the idea of tethering him to her.

But without him her world had shrunk…grown small and domestic. The days had slipped by unmarked. Outside of Lamington’s thick walls the seasons had changed, but she had stayed in hibernation, neither asleep nor awake.

Until yesterday.