by Kirsty Ferry
‘No thanks.’ She patted her pocket. ‘I have this little beauty to sort out. I’ll see you later.’
She turned away and disappeared down the corridor towards Alex’s kitchen. Elodie knew she was off to find the biggest bottle of silver polish she could lay her hands on.
Alex headed off towards his front door, which was really at the side of the Hall. ‘I just hope the storm damage isn’t too bad.’ He paused on the step and looked out. There were still visitors milling around and he pulled a face. ‘Actually, I might wait a little while until things settle first. Let the tourists sort themselves out.’ Then he looked down at her and smiled. Her stomach somersaulted. ‘Wait with me?’
She nodded. She couldn’t find a reason to say no.
Alex walked around to the main steps of the Hall, which gave a better view of the estate. He stood, hands on his hips, staring around at what he could see. Even Elodie could tell it wasn’t brilliant news, but it could have been a lot worse.
The lake looked suspiciously full and the ha-ha was flooded, but it didn’t look like the water had reached the public areas. There was the church, of course; and the wooden summerhouse in the dip looked as though water had crept up the steps, so it appeared to be a little island floating around – but seeing the waterline and the bit where the stray twigs and leaves had stuck to the building’s walls, Elodie could tell that it was already receding and draining back into the ground. One of the manhole covers had popped off in the turning circle at the side of the house where the disabled guests could park and water was spouting out of that, which was obviously the problem Cassie had mentioned, but Elodie didn’t know if there was anything else further through. No doubt Alex would find out.
She could see, however, that there was a big tree down in the parkland – an oak tree, one of the old ones that had stood in a clearing on its own. Margaret had once told her it was on a ley line and it was a magical pathway, but it definitely didn’t look magical now. At the moment, it was lying down, split into two pieces with its roots out of the earth and the tips of its branches crushing a couple of younger trees.
‘Ouch.’ Elodie stared across at it. ‘That doesn’t look good.’
‘What? The oak? I’m bloody pleased it’s down,’ said Alex, frowning. ‘I hate it.’
‘How can you hate a tree?’ she asked, surprised. The street where she’d lived in London had only been leafy because of the trees in peoples’ front gardens. It had boasted a few spindly saplings in the pathways and proper, climbable trees within a couple of metres which were one of the things that Elodie had missed the most when she’d been there. Not that she’d climbed a tree for many years – but she would have liked the option to do so if she wanted to.
‘It’s just that one. Somebody told me the roots go down to Hell and it stuck with me. I think I was about eight at the time.’
‘Who told you that?’ Elodie was shocked that someone could be so thoughtless to a child.
‘It was a labourer my Dad employed to do some forestry for us. He was a proper gypsy, I think – at least, to me, as an eight-year-old, he looked like a gypsy and he talked like I’d imagined a gypsy would talk. He was probably just someone who had worked outdoors all his life.’ He frowned, as if bringing the man’s features back into his vision. ‘He had shaggy, black hair and dark eyes. His face was brown, really tanned, and leathery looking. He walked with a kind of stoop and always had his axe over his shoulder. Oh – and he limped, because he told me that one day he’d dropped his axe and chopped his toes off.’
‘Ugh!’ Elodie stared at Alex. ‘Really?’
‘Well, he did have a limp, but he’d lied about his toes. I saw him with bare feet when he had his afternoon break under the oak, the last day he was here – it was a really hot day and he’d taken his shoes and socks off. And he definitely had the full complement of toes on each foot. So I asked him how his toes had come back, and he told me that the oak was magical and it had gifted him the toes out of some old twigs. Then he wiggled them and said he hoped the stiffness wouldn’t go all the way up his leg, as if it did, he might end up wooden and stuck here like the tree. I’m not kidding, I ran back to the house screaming!’
‘What a horrid old man!’ Elodie felt indignant on eight-year-old Alex’s behalf.
‘I think he was more than likely just an old boy with arthritis that liked to spin a yarn. Some kids might have taken it with good heart – I didn’t. My father thought the whole thing was hysterically funny.’ Alex grinned down at Elodie and then looked back at the fallen oak. ‘So yes. I bloody hate that tree and I’m pleased it’s gone. That’ll be my first job tomorrow – getting someone up here to turn the damn thing into logs I can sell off.’
‘You’re the boss,’ Elodie replied and he laughed.
‘I am that.’ He gazed out over the parkland. ‘But not forever. All I’m doing is being a guardian for the place. Trying to keep it going for future generations.’
Elodie felt a moment of panic. Future generations?
‘For your children?’ she asked, before she could stop herself. She wished she could have thrown herself into the lake at that point – how snipey she must have sounded.
‘Or Cassie’s. Whoever has mini-Aldrichs first, I guess. Oh!’ He looked at Elodie and his eyebrows went up into his hairline. ‘Sorry – did you think I was having an illicit affair or something? With somebody you know nothing about? And planning mini-me’s?’ He laughed and folded his arms. ‘No.’ He stared off into the distance again, shaking his head and making his fringe flop around. Elodie couldn’t take her eyes off it and felt her jaw slacken.
Her jaw came back together with a snap when she realised those clear, midnight blue eyes had glanced back at her. ‘No. There was only ever one girl for me. And I think I blew it. There was lots of rebound stuff – but nothing lasted. So no. I have no immediate plans for marriage or children.’
‘I’m sure it wasn’t your fault.’ Elodie tried to keep the words light. In a way, though, she was pleased. It might help this silly, sudden crush disappear if she knew he was lusting after some woman.
‘Nah, it was definitely my fault. But it’s fine. Well – it is at the minute,’ he clarified. ‘Things could change. Anyway. Let’s get to the cottage. I’d hate to think of the place floating down the river.’
‘What, and me not floating away with it?’
‘Something like that.’ Then he winked. ‘Joking! Come on. Let’s go.’
Yes, he’d blown it, all right.
Even as they began to walk towards her cottage, so many years later – with poor Elodie keeping to the grass, still barefoot – he cringed, remembering Prom Night. Why on earth had he thought the stables were an appropriate place to take her? Especially knowing how she felt about horses – she was terrified of them …
‘Do you really, even, want to go all the way to the Faerie Bridge?’ he had asked, a last-ditch attempt at pouncing on that immediacy; teasing her, running his fingers down her face, settling his thumb under her chin and raising her face to his.
‘I don’t know.’ A little catch in her breath as she moved closer to him. ‘Now you come to mention it, even the Faerie Bridge is quite a long walk …’
Alex didn’t want to remember. ‘Oh, look. Your cottage is still in one piece.’ He exhaled carefully as they rounded the corner. The red-brick cottage with its thatched roof and two first floor dormer windows looked as sturdy as ever.
‘Oh, I hope so!’ she said, everything surrounding that previous conversation apparently forgotten.
Elodie hurried on ahead – surprisingly quickly for someone without shoes – and she pushed the white door open, disappearing inside the cottage. Alex, a few moments behind her, stood on the doorstep. She had left the door swinging wide, but he wasn’t about to just barge on in there.
‘Everything okay?’ he shouted, leaning in as far as he dared. The place smelled of Elodie – that floral perfume she wore and the Linen Fresh scented candles she favoured, merging with
freshly ground coffee.
There was also a welcoming aroma of some sort of casserole, stewing away in the slow cooker. Elodie was always organised with her meals, probably because she had lived such a hectic life in London and had never been sure when she was coming home or when Piers or Paulo or whatever the idiot was called that she had married was going to be around. Old habits died hard, even here in Suffolk – but at least, she had said laughingly one day – she would never starve.
Alex was completely the opposite. He’d forget to eat or be too busy to prepare something; but luckily Margaret and Delilah were observant ladies. They’d often bring him slices of pie or servings of lasagne or neatly plated up roast dinners, claiming they had simply made too much for tea.
Sometimes, Alex worried that he was going the same way as his father – too wrapped up in other things to think about real life. Mostly, he found himself wandering up to the stables of an evening, especially when Cassie was away at her university and he was alone. He’d climb onto Hughie, heedless of a saddle, and take him out for a canter around the estate, holding onto nothing more secure than the horse’s mane. He’d ride around the woods, and across the Faerie Bridge and wonder what had gone wrong. Being with Hughie outside the confines of the Hall was sometimes the only way he could escape from the fact he was Alexander Aldrich, Earl of Hartsford, and all this was his responsibility.
Sometimes, he’d pull Hughie up onto the hill where the folly was and he’d look down on the parkland and resent his father for dying and leaving him to deal with everything.
Elodie’s little coach-light might be on outside her door and he’d look across and see her perhaps moving around behind the windows, or the TV flickering. Occasionally, he’d see her out in the little garden weeding away. And once, he’d seen her sitting in the upstairs window. She was perched on the sill, her legs dangling outside. She was leaning back, her hands on the window seat behind her, her face upturned to the evening sun as it dropped behind the horizon.
He had determined to call in on her on his way back; but she was gone by the time he reached her cottage, so he just kept going.
It was as he was thinking these thoughts, that he heard Elodie pad down the creaky, wooden staircase. He turned his attention to her and once again was struck by how natural and pretty she looked with the sunlight slanting through the landing window and spinning gold into her hair.
Once again, he felt like punching that stupid ex-husband of hers for doing what he had done to her. But then, she would never have come back here and he would never have seen her coming down those stairs and she would never have had a bath in his house …
‘You still have bare feet,’ Alex said.
But it didn’t seem enough, really.
‘They’re not bare. They’re covered in mud again.’ Elodie looked down at them. ‘Which means I’ve tracked it through the house. Never mind.’
And in that moment, the spell – whatever spell there had been, because there was definitely something that shifted – was broken.
‘There’s only a little leak,’ Elodie told Alex. ‘Why are you looking at me so strangely? Did you not want to hear that?’ For Alex was, indeed, looking at her strangely.
‘What was your ex called?’ he asked.
‘That’s a very odd question! Where did that come from?’
‘It’s just that I couldn’t remember his name for a minute. Piers or Paulo?’
‘Piers.’
‘Okay.’ Alex nodded briefly and gestured to the hallway. ‘May I come in?’
‘Of course.’ She stepped to one side. He brushed past her as he walked through the door – it was a very narrow doorway and he had to stoop a little as it was also very low – and she got the zingy thing going on up her arm. Hoping he wouldn’t notice, she shook her arm to try and get rid of it and followed him to the bottom of the stairs.
‘It’s on the landing. The window at the back. It’s just on the sill. I think perhaps the window wasn’t closed properly. These houses were built to withstand all sorts, it seems.’
‘That’s good news at least.’ Alex paused on the stairs and turned back to look at her. ‘I think you’re right. Those old builders definitely knew what they were doing.’
‘Indeed.’ She followed him up the stairs because it seemed the appropriate thing to do.
They paused on the landing and Alex poked around the window frame until he was satisfied. ‘One less thing to worry about. You get a good view of that tree from here, don’t you? I never really stopped to look. The previous tenants were in here so long, they just got on with it and did their own bits of maintenance. And Margaret and your mum came to get the place ready for you moving in.’
‘They did a marvellous job.’
‘They are marvellous. I hope Margaret’s made too much food again tonight. I’m starving. And Cassie won’t find anything to cook with if she’s looking.’ He grinned and patted the window sill. ‘Okay, I’ll get on my way if you’re happy enough to leave everything as it is?’
Elodie wasn’t really happy, because she was dreadfully aware of how close they were to the bedroom and at the back of her mind the Prom Night debacle was threatening to erupt again. Seeing Georgiana and Ben – or rather being Georgiana, as she felt she had been, albeit briefly – had brought the whole train of memories hurtling back, but she found herself nodding dumbly. ‘I’ll still come over at closing time and lock up the Hall for you, after all the visitors have gone.’ Then, as an afterthought, she added, ‘And I’ll bring some food as well, so don’t worry about Margaret providing for you tonight. She might have enough to do once she gets home. We don’t know what the village is like, remember? I’ll call my parents’ neighbours and ask them to check their cottage out too. I can imagine the storm swept through all the villages hereabouts, and the neighbours can pop in quicker than I’ll be able to.’
After her father retired, Elodie’s parents had moved out of the tied cottage Elodie had grown up in, and now lived in a nearby village. They usually spent the summer in her mother’s old family property in France, where her mother had, in her turn, grown up. After devoting their lives to Elodie and the young Aldrichs, nobody begrudged them their adventures, although Elodie did miss not being able to pop in and see them regularly.
‘I hope Hartsford’s not too bad,’ Alex nodded out of the window, ‘because there’s Kate from the Folk Museum sneaking out the back way. She’ll quite possibly end up in three feet of mud if she climbs that wall today.’
Elodie took one big step and was at the window, staring out. ‘Kate?’ She laughed. Kate was great friends with Cassie and often clambered over the boundary walls as a shortcut.
‘Yes. Did you think I’d spotted the ghostly horseman?’ One of the Hartsford legends told of a shadowy man on horseback who wove through the trees on moonlit nights. Elodie had always dismissed that tale. The only shadowy horseman she had seen was Alex, riding out there when he thought nobody was around. She wondered now if there was a little more fact to that legend than anyone had thought.
‘Oh, there he is, speak of the devil. I just saw him through the trees.’ He pointed in mock horror.
She shivered despite the warmth on the landing. ‘Oh, don’t be silly. He’s just a legend!’ Maybe she was trying to convince herself as well. ‘And if he is a ghost, a bit of rain won’t harm him.’
The window let in a lot of sunshine and it was always a warm spot. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the puddle of water on the windowsill, she really would have thought the whole storm that afternoon was a dream. Or a nightmare. She shivered again, remembering the empty tomb and the objects they’d found inside it. She remembered also the painting and her plan to restore it for Alex. She sneaked a look at his watch and saw that the Hall had half an hour left of opening.
‘Look,’ Elodie said, ‘you go and get your surveying done, I’ll get changed and then sort out some food. Then I’ll pop over to the Hall and get the closing-up routine sorted for you. Just take your time.’
>
‘All right.’ Alex smiled at her, and she hoped she could pull the painting restoration off. It would be worth it to see that smile again, directed right at her.
Then Alex surprised her by bending over and brushing her cheek with a kiss. ‘You look bloody good in my clothes,’ he whispered, teasing her. ‘No need to change on my account.’ He turned away, heading down the stairs and out of the door with that long, loping stride he had.
She just stood there like an idiot on the landing watching him go. She pressed one hand to her cheek where he had kissed her, and it almost burned.
Chapter Eight
Elodie gave it twenty minutes before she left the cottage. It took her that length of time to wash her feet and change into a long, floaty skirt, sandals and a strappy top. She also called her parents to report the good news that their house was undamaged, and the only issue seemed to be that their front garden had developed a bit of a pond in the middle of the lawn. She spared them the more horrid aspects of the incident at the church, and just told them the roof had been damaged.
‘Poor Alex,’ her mother had said, worried about him as always. ‘As if he didn’t have enough to do!’ Elodie agreed, and was doubly pleased she hadn’t told them about the tomb.
It would normally be a five-minute walk to the Hall, but she had to carry a bowl full of casserole this afternoon. She’d filled a huge dish and hoped the lid was a good enough fit to stop the stuff spilling over her. She’d also managed to roll up the latest copy of some interior design magazine that she’d subscribed to in London. She didn’t need it now, of course, as the cottage was perfect. But she still liked to read it and see what the latest trends were. It was also useful for her career, she told herself. The mere fact that she had no real desire at present to return to costume design was incidental. She liked the pretty pictures. And the magazine was large enough to conceal a certain portrait.
It was, to be truthful, more like a salad sort of evening now the storm had passed over, and it was warm but muggy when she headed across. The air was heavy with the scent of grass and soil and lavender and carnations – and, it had to be said, beef. Elodie wasn’t that fond of a salad when she knew she had some estate-reared stewing steak in the refrigerator. And neither, she knew, was Alex or Cassie.