Alexia’s head was beginning to throb. If there were builders everywhere, why was Mark so keen for them to begin work on the garden? It couldn’t be because he wanted to see her. Could it?
‘Here we are,’ said Charlotte after about ten minutes, indicating right and turning into a drive. ‘The Copper Beeches.’
Ahead was a large stone-built house surrounded by scaffolding, its entrance obscured by several builders’ vans. ‘Looks as if the electricians are still on site,’ Charlotte observed. ‘The whole place needs rewiring. I thought they’d be finished with that by now though. I haven’t been up here for a while. It’s been a bit manic at HQ without Mark.’
Charlotte parked by the side of a mobile home, reaching through the front seats for a pair of daisy-patterned Wellington boots. ‘I’m afraid it’s a bit muddy everywhere. But I expect you’re used to that.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Alexia.
‘Good,’ said Charlotte. ‘The worst of the mud is near to the house, where the builders are in and out. Mark tries to keep it reasonable round here so Bosun doesn’t tread mud into the mobile home. Bosun’s his dog.’
The dog had its own mobile home? Alexia took a look and saw net curtains at the windows.
‘I don’t know how Mark puts up with living in there,’ Charlotte continued. ‘It would drive me crazy. It’s not so bad in the summer, but now autumn’s here, it’s a bit damp. I’m always amazed Mark’s shirts don’t smell bad.’
Whoa, whoa, whoa! Alexia wanted to shout. Information overload! Mark was living in the mobile home, not just the dog. Charlotte knew that it was damp. And the way his shirts smelled… But what was it to Alexia? She was just here to do a job.
‘I’ll go and speak to the builders while you make a start, if that’s okay? I imagine you’ll want to take notes and draw up plans. The key to the mobile home is under the mat, if you need a table to work at. I’ll bring you out a cup of coffee in a little while.’
Alexia looked at Charlotte, feeling slightly stunned. She’d expected the PA to walk round with her. Or at least to give her some information about what Mark wanted. ‘What about my instructions?’ she asked. ‘I mean, about how Mark… envisages the project?’
But Charlotte looked at her blankly. ‘Oh, I assumed you’d already discussed that with Mark. If not, then perhaps he’s intending to leave it to you.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I’ll try to catch him between meetings just to confirm that with him.’ And she walked away in her feminine wellies, taking a circuitous route to avoid the worst of the mud.
Left alone, Alexia took a deep breath, held it for a few moments, then exhaled slowly. She would not think about Mark, or Mark’s shirts, or even wonder what kind of dog Bosun was. For the next hour or so, she was just going to walk slowly around this garden, absorbing everything and getting a feel for the potential. It would be impossible to plan effectively without knowing exactly what Mark wanted, but she wouldn’t think about that, because that would involve thinking about Mark, and she wasn’t going to do that.
Still standing in the spot where Charlotte had left her, Alexia took a notebook and a camera from her bag, then looked around her. The Copper Beeches looked as if it had once been a farm – there were outbuildings to one side, and it was easy to imagine a herd of cows being brought in from the fields for milking. It was a handsome house. Not being an expert at architecture, she didn’t know how old it was, but thought it probably dated from the nineteenth century. Right at the top, there was a large, unusually shaped window; a semi-circle, Alexia guessed it must let in a lot of light. Certainly, it would get a very good view of the garden. She took a picture of it, and resolutely refused to examine her motives for doing so.
The garden. Turning from the house, Alexia let her gaze sweep to the area of ground adjacent to the mobile home. In the distance, there was a belt of trees, including three copper beeches, which had no doubt given the house its name. It was a windy day, and although the trees were too far away for her to be able to hear it, she could imagine the sound the branches, and the rustle of the leaves. The space between the trees and the mobile home was the main garden, but it was obvious nothing had been done to it for years. Most of it was a wasteland of brambles and weeds, with only a few tall garden canes left to reveal a former vegetable patch.
Opening her notebook, Alexia walked down what was left of the garden path towards it, only just managing to keep her balance when she tripped on a broken paving stone. Clearing all this undergrowth away would be a priority – the place would be a death trap otherwise. God, there was weeks of work to be done here. Could she leave the trainees to it and just visit occasionally to see how they were getting on? Once a week perhaps?
No, of course she couldn’t. They were trainees, and she was their trainer. And there was so much potential for learning here – not just the donkey work of garden clearing, but planning the whole thing – deciding how much to keep for vegetables, and how much for flowers and recreation. Not that Mark had children – he wouldn’t want a slide and swings. Though, come to think of it, how did she know he didn’t have children? A wife, even? He’d lied to her about who he was, hadn’t he? Who knew how many other things he’d kept from her.
There was a low wall around the old vegetable patch. Pushing thoughts of Mark and his possible family aside, Alexia climbed onto it to better survey the area. After it had all been carefully planned out, the soil would need digging and nourishing. It was too large to do by hand – they would need a rotivator – another excellent opportunity for training. Plants would have to be selected and bought. Then these would need to be planted and cared for… It wouldn’t take weeks; it would take months.
Oh, God.
‘Careful of that wall – It isn’t safe.’
At the warning, Alexia whirled round and promptly lost her balance. Falling to the ground, she landed on her side, hitting her face on a loose brick.
Chapter Fourteen
Mark strode into the shell of his house to be greeted by a surprised-looking Charlotte. She was holding a mug of coffee, as were two of the three builders and the electrician. It didn’t look as if very much work was getting done. ‘Mark! I didn’t expect to see you here today,’ Charlotte said.
‘One of my meetings got cancelled.’ He didn’t tell his PA that he had cancelled it himself; that, in fact, it was a meeting he had only arranged in the first place to fill his diary and make it completely impossible for him to be around while Alexia was here.
‘Since you’re here, Mark, can I give you a progress report on the upstairs rooms?’ asked the building supervisor, putting down his unfinished coffee. ‘We’ve run into a bit of a problem with the beams you wanted in the master bedroom.’
‘If they’re a problem, skip them,’ said Mark, turning away. ‘Or schedule a meeting for some other time? I don’t have time to talk about it right now, I’m afraid. I just popped over to speak to our new project worker. Is Alexia here, Charlotte?’
‘Didn’t you see her? I left her looking around the garden. Mind you, it would be all to easy to get lost out there, wouldn’t it?’
Normally, Mark might have responded to his PA’s quip, but today he wasn’t in the mood for jokes. ‘Thanks, I’ll take a look,’ he said, and strode away.
Out in the garden, he took the path down to the vegetable patch, cursing as his foot collided with a loose paving stone, and once again, as he trod in a patch of mud. Great, he was going to look very dapper for his next meeting. But none of that would matter, if he could just see Alexia. Where the hell was she?
Pushing his way through some feral gooseberry bushes, he walked as far as the scum-covered pond, and then turned right to what had once been a flower border. Nothing. Had she gone into the trees? But why would she do that?
‘Alexia?’ His shoes getting muddier by the second, Mark followed the route Bosun had taken a few days previously to get to the foxes hole. But there was no sign of Alexia anywhere, so he retraced his steps. Perhaps she’d gone into the house
to use the loo, unnoticed by Charlotte?
Then, as he drew close to the mobile home, he saw a small pair of mud-splattered boots at the bottom of the steps. Next to them, was a pair of steel-capped builders boots. What the…?
Clumping up the steps, Mark tore the door open. And saw Alexia seated at his dining room table, with Craig, one of the builders, bent over her as if coming in for a kiss. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
Both of them whirled round at his angrily barked question. And Mark noticed two things – one, Alexia had a painful-looking graze on her face, and two, Craig had a first aid box open on the table in front of him, and a piece of gauze in his hand.
‘Mark!’ said Alexia.
Three things. She was every bit as attractive as he remembered. Four things. He wanted to tear good-looking Craig away from her before he succumbed to the temptation to punch the poor guy in the face.
‘Miss Bright took a tumble from a wall. I’m just fixing her up. It was my stupid fault – I called out to her while she was up there and made her jump.’
‘What did you do that for? And for God’s sake, are your hands even clean enough to be doing that, man? Here, let me do it.’
Reaching out, Mark grabbed the gauze from a startled Craig’s hands.
Craig got to his feet. ‘Right, well, I’ll er…get back to work then. Hope you’re all right, Miss.’
‘Thanks for your help, Craig.’
‘No problem.’ Craig walked away, and the door closed behind him.
‘You didn’t have to snap at him like that,’ Alexia said, her eyes flashing. ‘He didn’t mean to make me fall off. I shouldn’t have climbed up there in the first place. I was to blame.’
‘It doesn’t matter if you were to blame or not,’ said Mark. ‘What matters is getting this wound cleaned properly.’ He leant in closer to her to examine the graze, aware, as he did so, of her breath on his neck. Aware too, of the smell of damp dog that had pervaded the interior of the mobile home ever since Bosun’s moonlit bath.
‘I don’t think it will need any stitches,’ he said.
‘Of course not,’ said Alexia. ‘I took a look in your mirror.’
‘What were you doing on the wall anyway?’ he asked, reaching for the antiseptic spray and giving the graze a good squirt.
‘Ouch!’ complained Alexia, putting a hand up to his arm as if to pull it away. ‘I just wanted to try to get a better view of what I was dealing with,’ she said, letting her hand drop. ‘It’s something of a jungle out there.’
Mark found a clean piece of gauze and some scissors. Then he cut the gauze to size and stuck it to her face with surgical tape. ‘Yes, I’m afraid it is,’ he agreed. ‘When I bought the place last year, the garden hadn’t been touched for getting on for a decade. It belonged to an elderly couple. Before they went into a nursing home, they were pretty much existing in two downstairs rooms.’
Alexia’s eyes had lost their spark of anger. She lifted her hand to pat the dressing tentatively. ‘That’s sad.’
‘Yes. I’ve had to virtually start again with everything. Look, come up to the house. There’s a room at the top of the house where you can get a very good view of the garden. I’ll ask the site supervisor if it’s safe for us to go up there. We don’t want you having any more accidents.’
He packed everything neatly away into the first aid kit, aware of her eyes on him as he did it. Then he replaced the kit into the cupboard and led the way out of the mobile home.
‘Did you –’ he began.
At the same time, she said, ‘How long –?’
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘You go first.’
‘I was just wondering how long you’d been living in the mobile home?’
‘Ever since the spring. Progress has been much slower than I expected it to be. There was rising damp and deathwatch beetle to deal with, to name a few things. I could have booked into a hotel, but it’s useful being close by. And I’ve been abroad quite a lot trying anyway to establish an Eastern European depot.’ Shut up, man. Stop rambling. She doesn’t care about the Rumanian depot.
As they got to the front door, Charlotte was just coming out. ‘Alexia!’ she said, sounding concerned. ‘Craig told me you’d hurt yourself. Are you all right?’
‘She’s fine, as you can see,’ Mark snapped, then heard himself. ‘At least, I think she is. Are you, Alexia?’
He saw her smile at Charlotte. ‘I’m fine, honestly. It’s just a graze. It didn’t really need a dressing.’
‘Well, you can’t be too careful, can you? Especially given your job. You don’t want to get dirt in it.’
They were inside the hall now, where all the builders and the electrician were still gathered. Didn’t anyone ever do any work? No wonder this project was taking so long to complete.
‘Do you want to head back to the office now, Charlotte?’ he said. ‘I can give Alexia a lift back into town after she’s finished here.’
Charlotte looked surprised, as well she might with all the meetings she knew he had scheduled for the today. ‘Oh, okay then. D’you want me to call anyone to tell them you’ll be late?’
‘No, thanks. I’ll do it. See you later.’ He turned to Alexia. ‘It’s this way.’
‘Still no power up there, I’m afraid, Mark,’ the site supervisor told him.
If he’d been alone, Mark knew he’d have asked what the problem was; why it was taking so long to get the power fixed. But right now, he just wanted to be alone with Alexia. It was a physical need. Even though he had absolutely no idea what he was going to do or say when he was alone with her.
* * * * *
They were going up to the room with the amazing window. Alexia felt excited despite herself, she wasn’t sure why. It had just captured her imagination. And she was keen to see if there was any trace of what the garden had once been like.
‘I’m having a staircase put in,’ Mark told her. ‘But for the moment, there’s just a ladder, I’m afraid. I hope you’re okay with ladders? I’ll go up behind you.’
Which was why she was acutely aware of him behind her, getting a close-up view of her behind. But the minute her head emerged into the loft room, she forgot all about it. Forgot all about everything, in fact, except for the magnificence of the view. ‘Wow! It’s amazing,’ she breathed. ‘Absolutely amazing.’
He smiled, the first time he’d done so since he’d arrived. She tried not to think about the way he had smiled at her in bed, after they’d made love, and crossed instead to the window to look out at the view. The crags and hills of The Peak District were laid out on the horizon in dark silhouette – magnificent and forbidding at the same time. Closer to them were a network of fields divided by dry-stone walls, and closer still, the three colourful copper beech trees.
‘This room sold the house to me,’ Mark said, coming to stand close to her.
‘I’m not surprised,’ she said, moving away a little from him on the pretext of peering down at the garden.
‘The old man I bought the house from had dreams of being an artist – he built this room as a studio. I didn’t get the impression he’d used it very much though.’
‘That’s a waste,’ Alexia said. ‘It’s a room that needs to be used.’ She noticed something just further along from the ruined vegetable patch. ‘Oh, is that an old pond?’
Mark walked past her to open the window, sending in a gust of Yorkshire wind. ‘Yes. It’s set into a sort of stone amphitheatre. There’s a fountain in the middle. It must have been beautiful in its day.’
‘It’s a lot of trouble to go to for a farm house garden,’ puzzled Alexia, her eyes picking out long-forgotten flower borders and a collection of hedges that might, once, have been topiary.
‘It hasn’t been a farm since just after the Second World War, from what I can gather. I think the son and heir was killed in action.’
More sadness. Alexia shuddered and turned from the window to look at him. Somehow, now she had seen the garden, she felt more courageous. She
was here to talk about the garden project, and gardening was what she did. Everything else was irrelevant and had to stay that way. ‘So, what plans do you have for the garden? Do you want to change anything at all, or do you imagine some sort of faithful restoration?’
Mark went over to the window. ‘What I like most about the way it was designed is that there are almost rooms inside of rooms; the garden must have had a very different feel, depending where you were. There’s something for every mood – active, contemplative, colourful, subdued. That appeals to me.’
Alexia’s gardening soul gave a ping of excitement. ‘Yes. That’s exactly as I see it. So, we could maintain that flavour, and maybe update the area closest to the house? Have a patio area? Somewhere for barbecues, that sort of thing?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, that sounds good. And it would probably make sense to fence off the pond – have some sort of gated entrance. Perhaps there could be a winding path down to the trees? With long grasses on either side?’
Perfect for children to play in. Did he have a family? There had been no evidence of one in the mobile home. Perhaps he was divorced and his children visited at weekends?
‘How about your dog? Does he need somewhere to run about?’
He turned to look at her, eyebrows raised. ‘Charlotte told you about Bosun, I suppose?’
Alexia was embarrassed, almost as if it had been she who had been gossiping. ‘Yes, she did mention him. Where is he?’
‘At his second home,’ Mark told her vaguely. ‘His special place is in the trees, sniffing out the wildlife. And there’s a public footpath onto the fells just outside my front gate.’
‘Perfect,’ said Alexia, wondering about the use of the word second home. ‘Does he miss you, when you’re away?’ God, why had she asked that? It sounded as if she cared, and she didn’t. Why should she? This man had lied to her. The fact that he’d been doing it as part of a plan to sponsor The Heath Centre made little difference. He ought to have told her the truth before they’d spent the night together. And he certainly shouldn’t have stood her up the way he had. If he’d wanted a one-night stand, he should have been open about that. She shouldn’t even be in the same house as him, let alone in this amazing, seductive room. ‘Sorry, it’s none of my business.’
Secret Millionaire Page 11