The Layton Prophecy

by Tatiana March

  I slanted him a long look. “What have you told people, then? Apart from the fact that you were proposing to me at the Royal Goat?”

  He grinned. “Very little. You’d be surprised how easily people make up their own information if you give them none. They know that I’m American, and that I’m interested in the Layton Prophecy because of my academic field. People have seen me walking up to the ruins, but I doubt that anyone knows I’ve been securing the place. I’ve seen no one around while I’ve been up there, except you, and now these two.”

  “Everyone will know by tomorrow.”

  “Fine,” he said. “I wasn’t trying to hide it.”

  His explanation made sense, but it bothered me that Miles seemed capable of presenting only the facts he thought people should be entitled to know. I recalled Aunt Rosemary’s outburst about him running our project to break the Layton Prophecy on a need-to-know basis. Was there some other information that Miles possessed, but didn’t feel inclined to share with Aunt Rosemary and me?

  ****

  That night, I cooked dinner for Miles. I’d had boyfriends stay with me in Rose Cottage before, but somehow their impact had never been quite as powerful as his. It almost felt as if his presence permeated the air, clung to plaster that covered the solid stone walls, seeped into the cracks in the wooden floors.

  “I’ll leave the diaries in the bookcase for you.” I heard his rumbling voice and I turned around at the kitchen sink. While I’d chopped vegetables and marinated the tuna steaks that I’d bought on my way down on Friday, intending to cook for Aunt Rosemary, Miles had gone out running. Now, he’d showered and changed into a clean pair of jeans teamed with a white canvas shirt. The rolled up sleeves left his corded forearms bare. My whole body clenched with need as I looked at him.

  Aunt Rosemary had been right.

  Saying goodbye to him would be the hardest thing I’d ever done.

  “The Francis Layton diaries,” he said when I merely stared at him in silence. “You remember, I asked you to study them while I’m gone?” He held up a pile of three identical, tattered books, each the size of a paperback novel.

  “Yes,” I said. Gratitude filled me at the prospect of something to occupy my mind, to fill my solitude after he’d left. “I’ll start with them on Monday.”

  He went back to preparing for his departure. I finished cooking, and then I extended out the oak dining table that collapsed into a narrow shelf against the wall. Miles sat on one of the sofas, engrossed in his emails. He offered to help, but I told him he should finish taking care of business, so we could have a relaxed time in the morning, before he had to leave for the airport.

  Over dinner, we shared a bottle of Rioja. After two glasses of the robust red wine, insidious warmth spread over me, loosening my inhibitions. “You will come back, won’t you?” I asked when we had coffee. “It’s not going to be all over between us when you drive off tomorrow?”

  His gaze flickered over me. “No,” he said. “There’s too much between us for it to be over when I leave.” He left his seat and circled the table to me, took the box of chocolate mints I was about to open from my hands and set it down. “We’ve already agreed that if I can’t get back for Christmas, you’ll fly down to join me South Africa.”

  “It’s more than a month away,” I said miserably.

  “It will pass quickly.” He leaned down, dropped a kiss on my lips. “I don’t know if my cell phone will work in South Africa, but I’ll call from the hotel, and I’ll email you when I’m somewhere with internet access.”

  I smiled, holding back the threat of tears. “This year I’ll be looking forward to Christmas even more than I used to do when I was a kid.”

  “So will I,” Miles said and pulled me to my feet. I lowered my head on his shoulder. His arms closed around me, holding me in a tight embrace, rocking me until my anxiety faded. I tilted back my head, and he brought his mouth down to mine in a hard, devouring kiss.

  “Let’s go upstairs,” he said. “We can clean up in the morning.”

  By the time we reached the bedroom, half my clothes were off. Miles shed his own and stripped away the last of mine. He lowered me on the bed and made love to me with a determined, straight forward intensity that left me shaking.

  The fire of his passion burned away the last of my doubts.

  I truly believed that he cared, if not as much as I did, then at least some.

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  Chapter Twelve

  On Sunday, I oscillated between heartbreak and relief at the prospect of Miles leaving. The emotions he stirred up inside me left me too raw, too vulnerable. As I stood on Rose Cottage doorstep at two o’clock in the afternoon, watching the AVIS car pull out of sight, I understood why my previous relationships had failed.

  I hadn’t really loved any of those men.

  I might have been in love with the idea of being in love, and eager to settle down as one half of a couple. And yet, I’d always maintained a small distance that had allowed me to assess my partner through cool eyes, add up his merits and failings.

  Some of my former boyfriends had even been astute enough to catch on. They’d complained that I appeared to be keeping some kind of internal scorecard about their behavior. Baffled and hurt, I’d denied their accusations.

  But now I knew they’d been right.

  I knew, because it was different with Miles. I loved his shortcomings, just as much as I loved his virtues. His stern scowl made me melt inside, and the way he expected to be served at mealtimes was endearing. The fact that he believed he was always right was nothing but an amusing quirk.

  With a rueful shake of my head, I went back inside Rose Cottage and closed the door. My self-preservation instinct must have been well and truly switched off, considering I’d fallen in love with a man as self-contained and remote as Miles. It would end in tears, as Aunt Rosemary had warned me, and this time I was bound to be left with wounds that would take a long time to heal.

  I tried to overcome my brooding thoughts by tidying up the kitchen. As I bustled around, I considered whether to drive to High Wycombe that night, or stay until morning and go straight to the Bodleian. I had just finished stacking the clean dishes in the cupboard when I heard a knock at the door.

  It was Grace Parker. “Can I come in for a minute?” she asked in a voice that sounded hoarse, as if she had a throat infection.

  “Sure.” I stepped aside, perplexed.

  Grace was wearing faded green cargo pants two sizes too large, from before she lost the excess weight, and her hair was scraped back into a scrawny ponytail. Her face was bare of make-up, which drew attention to the red rims around her eyes. She shut the door behind her and crouched down to remove her heavy jungle boots.

  “Do you want a coffee?” I asked.

  “I’d love one.” She sounded subdued.

  I started walking off. When I looked over my shoulder, I saw her meekly trailing me into the kitchen. “Is everything all right?” I asked.

  Grace burst into tears. “I’m so sorry,” she sobbed. “I knew we shouldn’t have done it. But Brandon was so keen to see the inside of Layton Manor, and I didn’t want to disappoint him.”

  “It’s all right.” I turned to her and clasped my hands around her upper arms, shaking her gently. “No harm done. Miles isn’t angry. He’s only worried that someone could get hurt. The place isn’t safe.”

  “I didn’t know about Miles,” Grace said quietly. “I knew you might be a Layton, but I didn’t know he owned the place.”

  “He doesn’t.” I spoke a little sharper than I had intended. Like Aunt Rosemary, I believed in equal opportunities, and it annoyed me when people assumed that men were in charge of everything. “The property belongs to his niece,” I added in a milder tone.

  I let go of Grace, and we went into the kitchen, where I busied myself filling the kettle with water while I inspected her from the corner of my eye. I couldn’t recall having seen her cry since we were in our teens and her cat
got run over. A clumsy child who loved animals with a burning intensity, Grace had never shown much interest in boys, or later men, but now she appeared to have latched onto Brandon Hastings with the same fervor she used to bestow on stray dogs.

  “Is anything else wrong?” I asked as she continued to hover behind me.

  Grace sniffled. Then she rolled her eyes and grimaced. “Yes,” she said bluntly. “Me. That’s what’s wrong.”

  “You?” I asked.

  She gestured at herself. “What I’ve turned into. What I’ve done to myself.”

  “You look good,” I told her. “What’s wrong with that?”

  “I’ve starved myself and exposed my body to chemicals in order to make myself more attractive to a man.”

  “Brandon?” I ventured, although the answer was obvious.

  Grace nodded. “I’m nuts about him.” She shifted awkwardly to the counter where she plucked two mugs from the mug tree. “You’ve seen what he’s like. Trendy. A bloody fashion plate. I knew he’d be embarrassed to be seen with someone who looked like me.” Her shoulders rose and fell in a resigned shrug. “So, I changed.”

  I spooned coffee granules into mugs. “How did you meet him?”

  “In a night club in Salisbury. I was tarted up for the night, not in my usual scruffy gear. We got talking at the bar. When he learned I lived in Layton Village, he told me about his book. I saw him a few more times at the club. Then I invited him up for a weekend, and he said yes.”

  “How come you hadn’t taken him up to Layton Manor before?”

  “This is only the second time Brandon’s been over. The first time he didn’t want to go inside. He hadn’t realized how rundown the place was, and he was worried about ruining his clothes. This time he brought something old to change into.”

  “I’m sure Miles would be happy to let him go inside, if he asked for permission.” As soon as I’d said the words, I realized they might not be true. I didn’t know Miles well enough to assess how far his goodwill would stretch.

  “I don’t think Brandon will come up again,” Grace said quietly. “I’m meeting him in Salisbury tonight, and I’m going like this.”

  “Why?” I eyed her shapeless clothes.

  “I realized I was losing myself in order to hold on to him. New clothes, new hairstyle, always going hungry.” She curled one hand into a fist and slammed it against the countertop. “It wasn’t worth it.”

  I hugged her, and she started to sob again. It took me several minutes to calm her down. Then we drank our coffee and talked about her job at the veterinary surgery in the village. Fifteen minutes later, she said that she needed to set off to Salisbury, where she would show her true self to Brandon.

  “Are you not driving back to High Wycombe tonight?” Grace asked as she laced up her boots in the hall.

  “No,” I told her. “I’ll go straight to Oxford in the morning.”

  “Holly wants to see you,” Grace straightened and patted her pockets, searching for her gloves. “I promised to let her know if you’ll be in tonight.”

  “I’ll be in,” I assured her. “If I’m not here, I’ll be next door. Tell Holly she can pop over any time.”

  Grace fidgeted a little more before she left. I got the impression there was something else troubling her, something she wasn’t telling me, but I decided I was jittery because of Miles and my longing for him. The feeling of loss inside me was escalating at an alarming rate, although he’d been gone less than a day.

  After I waved goodbye to Grace, I settled on the sofa to surf channels. I found a film that had already started and tried to decipher the plot. Twenty minutes later, the doorknocker rattled again. I sighed, turned off the sound, and strolled into the hall.

  It was my other Layton Village friend, Holly Jameson. “Grace said it would be fine to come over.” Holly extended a cellophane parcel at me.

  “There was no need,” I protested as I accepted the gift.

  Holly leaned down to remove her dirty Wellington boots. “It’s only some rock cakes. I baked yesterday.”

  I noticed she was looking unusually pale. She had always had a dramatic coloring, black hair with very pale skin and dark eyes. When we were younger, she used to paint her mouth to look like a slash of scarlet, but after she got married, she’d stopped bothering, and she’d also cut her hair very short, like a boy’s.

  “Haven’t seen you in ages,” Holly said as we drifted into the kitchen.

  “I’ve been up most weekends.”

  “I haven’t been out much.” She clasped her hands together in a nervous gesture. “I try to do a lot on weekends when Tom can keep an eye on the kids. I prepare meals and put them in the freezer.”

  “How is it going?” I asked.

  Holly sighed. “I wish I had a bigger kitchen.”

  “You look too thin for someone who is running a catering company.”

  “You make it sound so grand,” Holly said wistfully. “All I’m doing is baking a few cakes and cooking a few takeaways.”

  “Aunt Rosemary said you catered for functions in the church hall last summer.”

  “That was the summer.” Holly’s tone was bitter. “There’s nothing in the winter until parties start before Christmas.”

  The tension in the air made me clumsy. I misjudged the distance over the sink and clunked the kettle against the tap. “Look,” I said, turning to look at Holly over my shoulder, “before you ask about my wedding, that’s a complete red herring.”

  Her face relaxed, and her laughter carried an echo of more carefree times. “Your aunt told me it was just a joke that went wrong,” she said with a merry gleam in her dark eyes. “Roy’s furious with that American. You know how strict he is that he’ll only reserve tables on special occasions. He feels he was taken for a fool.”

  I grinned. “He should ban Miles from the Royal Goat.”

  Holly’s brows arched. “Grace told me he left today. Is he coming back?”

  “I don’t know.” I set the kettle to boil and glanced at her again, but she didn’t seem to have noticed the strain in my voice. “Why are you asking?”

  Holly opened a cupboard to take out a plate for the rock cakes. “I’d like to talk to him about Layton Manor.”

  “Layton Manor?” I crossed my arms over my chest, my body tensing. “Why?”

  Holly bit her lip. She stared at the plate where she was shifting the rock cakes around. “You know that property company Tom works for now? Dryfield Homes? They are developing the land to the north of the village.”

  “The new housing estate everyone’s up in arms about?”

  “Yes,” Holly said. “That’s it.”

  I lined up two clean mugs. “What does it have to do with Miles?”

  “They’re having trouble with the access road. They need to circle in from the north to avoid the conservation area. If they could bring the road past Layton Manor, it would save a heap in construction costs, and they could charge more for the houses, because they’d have a better access to the village and the main road.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “You don’t need to see Miles for that. I can tell you it’s not possible. Layton Manor is in trust and the owner can’t sell.”

  “But perhaps there is something else that could be done. He could lease the right of way or something like that.” Holly’s eyes pleaded with me. “Could you talk to him? Please? It would be such a coup for Tom, and perhaps then my father...” Her voice trailed away.

  I felt desperately sorry for Holly. She came from a very traditional family. Her father was a retired civil servant with an inflated idea of his own importance. He’d been livid when Holly fell in love with the young builder who’d been hired to convert the stables into holiday accommodation. Holly’s father would never have allowed them to marry, if Holly hadn’t already been pregnant. Two more children followed in quick succession. The constant financial struggle and the long shadow of family disapproval were threatening to erode the love that had seemed so solid in the b
eginning.

  I took a deep breath. “I’ll try. But I’m sure it’s no use.”

  “I know,” Holly said glumly. “Dryfield Homes has been bombarding him with letters offering more and more money for the right of way, but he never replies.”

  “Hold on?” I stared at Holly. “They’ve already approached him?”

  She frowned. “Sorry. I thought I made it clear. They would save a lot in construction costs. Last time they wrote to him they offered two point five million, but that was for the freehold.”

  “They wrote to him offering two and a half million pounds for Layton Manor?”

  “He is...” Holly dug in her jeans pocket. She pulled out a folded scrap of paper. “...Miles Kendrick, isn’t he? The address is in Seattle. They wrote to that law firm in Oxford first. The letter must have been forwarded to Miles, because they got a reply from America. That one was a brush-off to the first offer of a million. They’ve kept increasing their offer, but there hasn’t been another reply.”

  Unease knotted in my stomach. Even if the trust prevented selling, it seemed odd that Miles hadn’t mentioned the offer to me. “If Miles already knows,” I said slowly, “there’ll be no point in my telling him.”

  “I wasn’t asking you to tell him about it. I was hoping you’d persuade him to agree,” Holly explained.

  “I’m sorry,” I said flatly. “I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do.”

  Holly had always been perceptive. She glanced at me, even more ill at ease now. “Have I put my foot in it?” she asked. “Did things not work out with him?”

  “I don’t know.” I shook my head, troubled. “I really don’t know.”

  Holly left without drinking her coffee. I poured it down the sink and went back trying to understand the film. It turned out to be rubbish, but I watched it anyway, too afraid to let my mind dwell on the implications of what I’d just heard about Miles and the potential worth of Layton Manor. It seemed too much of a coincidence that he’d appeared in the village soon after someone was prepared to pay a lot of money for what we’d all taken to be a worthless ruin.