by Liz Fielding
He’d never told her he’d been in the house, been in her room.
Like the greenhouse, it was private. Her place. You had to wait to be invited in. He’d broken the rules and, for the only time in his life, wished he hadn’t.
Suzanna cleared her throat. ‘Do you have everything you need, Mr Faulkner? Is your room comfortable?’
He thought about it. ‘Maybe another pillow?’ he suggested.
‘Of course. I’ll see to it.’
He was grinning as he took the stairs two at a time. Obviously Agnès had warned her that he might not be staying.
She was wrong about that.
He was back for good.
He changed into jeans and trainers, took a pair of boots and a small backpack from the boot of his car and headed down the path to the creek.
* * *
Agnès took the case containing the pearl and diamond parure from the safety deposit box in the London security vault.
It had been a gift to Lady Anne from Sir Gerard Prideaux on the first day of their honeymoon. There was a portrait of her by Romney in the hall at the castle. It needed cleaning but her radiance still shone through two centuries of woodsmoke from the fireplace.
Beside her bed, there was a silver-framed copy of the photograph that had appeared in Devon Life of her parents on their wedding day. Her mother had been wearing the earrings, and the tiara was holding her veil in place.
She reached out and touched one of the earrings, her throat tight as she remembered that last moment, the rustle of silk, the elusive scent as her mother bent to kiss her goodnight before she and her father had driven off to a reception for the Lord Lieutenant of the County. There were pictures of that night in the county magazine, too. Men in dinner jackets, women in expensive gowns, their best jewellery on display. Her parents laughing at something.
She could still hear the dull thud of the knock waking her.
She had climbed out of bed to see police at the door. Not some poor constable faced with the terrible task of delivering bad news, but the assistant commissioner in his silver trimmed uniform, with a family support officer at his side. Her job, no doubt, had been to make the tea.
The parure was the only thing of any great worth Agnès personally owned and was infinitely precious.
This was her last resort.
She’d hung on until the very last moment, hoping against hope for some sort of miracle, but Kam’s arrival had brought home the reality of her situation. How close she was to disaster.
It wasn’t just her and her grandmother she had to care for. She had a duty to the people who worked at the castle, who lived there, had looked to her to keep things going.
This pretty trifle would pay for a new boiler, repair the roof, employ a professional to build the kind of website a modern events destination demanded. Selling it meant burning her boats.
It wasn’t the jewels themselves. That life was gone. There would be no big wedding for her with photographs in all the society magazines.
This had been her exit plan and if the business failed there would be nothing to fall back on.
She took one last look then closed the case and placed it carefully in her tote bag.
No one else was going to lose their home on her watch.
CHAPTER FOUR
It’s done. I dropped off Mama’s parure at the auction house and then went to sit in St James’s Park for a while before I caught the train home. Their jewellery expert was not available, but they are going to phone with an estimate of value early next week.
Agnès Prideaux’s Journal
‘WHATEVER TIME DID you start this morning?’ Suzanna asked, when she put her head around her office door and saw the scatter of sticky notes Agnès had been scribbling, stuck in colour-coded rows on her whiteboard.
‘I had some ideas I wanted to get down on paper. Did Kam Faulkner leave yesterday afternoon?’
‘No, but he wanted to know when you’d be back.’
‘You told him I’d gone to London?’
‘I didn’t tell him anything, Agnès. He already knew you’d gone out but I’m a bit concerned about him.’
‘Concerned?’
‘He said he was going to take the dinghy and go across to the island. I explained about the storm damage, that it was off-limits to guests—’
‘But he went anyway. Kam never believed that the words “off-limits” applied to him. Don’t worry about it, Suzanna. He knows the creek and the island better than anyone.’
‘But that’s what I’m trying to tell you. When Pam went to make up his room this morning his bed hadn’t been slept in.’ She gave an awkward little shrug. ‘I did wonder...’
‘If we’d made up when I came back?’ She smiled. ‘Sorry, Suz, it wasn’t that kind of row. It’s business.’
‘Oh.’ She looked disappointed. ‘I could have sworn there was some sort of vibe between the two of you.’
‘Ancient history,’ Agnès said, dismissing it as if it were no more than a teen crush. ‘He’ll be back in his own good time. Is that for me?’
Suzanna looked down at the package she was holding. ‘Oh, no. That’s why I was looking for Mr Faulkner. This came for him by courier. It’s marked urgent.’
On a Sunday?
Agnès took it and turned it over. It was a thick envelope, but it was enclosed in a plastic courier envelope and there was no way of knowing who it was from.
‘Have you tried calling his phone?’
‘It went straight to voicemail.’
‘Okay,’ she said, standing up and stretching out her back, her neck.
With the prospect of a serious amount of hard cash to play with she’d been lying awake, her mind running on how best to use it. The boiler had to be first, repairs to the roof and gutters; the rest she would have to use wisely to create a viable business. In the end she’d given up on sleep and had been in her office since long before dawn, playing with ideas.
‘Leave it with me, Suz. I could do with some fresh air. And coffee.’
‘You’re going over there?’ Suzanna followed her to the kitchen. ‘On your own?’
She filled her coffee mug, took a sip, grinned. ‘Are you volunteering to come with me?’ she asked, well aware of Suz’s aversion to small boats.
‘Er...’
‘I have my phone,’ she said, taking pity on her. ‘If I find Kam’s bleeding body, I’ll dial 999.’
She looked shocked. ‘You don’t think—?’
‘I’m kidding, Suz.’
‘Oh.’ Then, ‘You seem a bit chirpier this morning.’
‘Chirpy might be pushing it,’ she said, filling a second plastic mug and tightening the lid. She wrapped up a couple of croissants left over from breakfast and put everything in her bag. ‘If I’m not back by four, call the coastguard.’
* * *
Kam heard the engine before it rounded the island and Agnès brought the small vessel expertly alongside the dock.
‘You’re disturbing the fish,’ he said as she slung a rope around an upright to prevent it drifting off.
‘Have you got a licence for that?’ she replied, nodding in the direction of the line extending from a rod propped against a tree where it was screened from the creek.
‘What do you think?’
She hesitated, unsure. He hid a smile. Off balance she would be easier to deal with.
‘I think you’re being a nuisance. Suz was worried I’d find you with a broken ankle or worse.’
‘So you came sailing to my rescue in that noisy little wasp?’
‘I tried to rescue you once before,’ she said, ‘but my grandfather wouldn’t listen to me.’
‘I’m sure he had plenty to say.’
She just looked around at the bivouac he’d made with the dinghy’s tarpaulin, the deep hollow he’d dug for his
fire so that the glow wouldn’t be spotted by anyone passing by.
‘Old habits die hard,’ she said, a fact borne out by the remains of the sea trout he’d caught and cooked for his supper, eaten cold for his breakfast.
‘Did he hurt you?’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘He didn’t say or do anything.’ And yet her knuckles as she clutched at her bag were white. ‘Did he hurt you?’
‘No.’ She didn’t look convinced—they both knew that her grandfather had a violent temper—but it was the truth. ‘Maybe it was the shock.’
‘Maybe.’ The absurdity of the idea provoked a wry smile. ‘I’m sorry about yesterday, Kam. I want to explain.’
‘There’s nothing like a bacon sandwich to improve my hearing.’
‘No bacon, I’m afraid, but I have hot coffee and an almond croissant. Take it or leave it.’
‘I’ll take it,’ he said, shifting along the log to make room for her.
After the barest hesitation, just long enough to show that she wasn’t going to be a pushover, she sat beside him, opened her bag and handed over a reusable mug and a pastry.
They sat in silence for a while, eating, drinking their coffee, listening to the clang of rigging on the yachts moored in the marina, the cries of gulls. Watching the wash of the creek as it flowed around the island.
‘Some of the best memories are of moments I spent here,’ he said, after a while.
‘And the worst.’
‘The past is another country, Agnès.’
‘Foreign,’ she said, correcting him. ‘It’s “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘It’s from a book. The Go-Between. You picked it up one day, when we were in the greenhouse, read the first few lines and then dismissed it as girls’ stuff.’
‘That sounds like me.’
She shook out the last dregs of her coffee, replaced the lid and put the mug back in her bag. ‘I’m sorry about the state of your cottage, Kam. That you had to see it like that. I tried to persuade Grandfather to let me renovate it so that we could use it for a holiday let, but he never listened to women.’
‘And after he died there was no money.’
She sighed. ‘It’s on my five-year plan.’
‘I don’t think it can wait that long.’
‘No.’ She glanced at him. ‘How did you get in?’
‘I don’t imagine any of the windows would have offered much of a challenge but, when we left, I put my key under a stone. A promise that I’d be back.’
‘And here you are.’
‘Everything I’ve done since that day has brought me one step nearer to making Priddy Castle my home.’
‘The castle. That was a big ambition.’
‘And yet, as you say, here I am. I’m just sorry your grandfather is not alive for me to spit in his eye while I take it from him.’
She grasped the log and looked up into the sky. Either the sun was making her eyes water or that was a tear running from the corner of her eye.
‘Tell me about the entail,’ he said, resisting the urge to reach out and hold her, comfort her. ‘Shouldn’t the estate have gone to the next male in line? Isn’t that how it worked back in the bad old days?’
She gave a little sniff, but her voice was steady enough as she said, ‘The entail simply states that the estate can only be inherited by someone born in the castle. There is no distinction between male and female. If, for any reason, the family can’t hold it, then it automatically passes to Henri Prideaux’s descendants through his first wife.’
Clearly there was a story there, but he was more interested in the present. ‘Is it possible for an entail to be broken?’
‘If all the relevant parties agree,’ she said.
‘Are you saying that Henri’s French descendants are still out there?’
‘He wasn’t French. Henri was from the island of Norhou, off the coast of Brittany.’
‘I’ve never heard of it.’
‘Back then it was a rats’ nest of smugglers. Nationality meant nothing to them and they spoke their own patois. During the Napoleonic wars there were important people on both sides of the Channel who used it to make a fortune in illicit trade. Notionally it’s part of France but is governed by a seigneur, a title held by Henri. Having inherited it, his son arrived with an armed force to claim the castle but Elizabeth rang the bell in the tower to summon the local militia.’
Kam smiled to himself. Was that where Agnès had inherited her resolve? Her determination?
‘He didn’t return?’
‘No, but an emissary from Norhou has never failed to arrive at the castle, on the death of the incumbent Prideaux, to check the resolve of the new heir. One went so far as to propose marriage to the widow over her husband’s coffin.’
‘And when your grandfather died?’
‘Pierre Prideaux, the present Seigneur of Norhou, presented himself at Grandfather’s funeral.’
There was an edge to her voice.
Until that moment this had all been a story, ancient history, but this was different. This was about Agnès and that made it personal... ‘Did he make you the same offer?’
‘Nothing so attractive,’ she said, refusing to meet his gaze.
‘What could have been worse? I’d like to know what I’m up against,’ he said, when she shook her head.
‘You’re thinking of making me a counter offer? Save your breath, Kam, you don’t have a horse in this race.’ He waited and finally she threw up a hand. ‘If you must know he’s fifty if he’s a day, has two ex-wives and a mistress he was quick to inform me that he had no intention of giving up.’
She had turned away and didn’t see his instinctive urge to reach out to her, hold her. Relieved, he let his arm drop, unnoticed.
‘Where were you expected to fit in in this ménage?’ he asked, as if it were no more than casual interest.
‘I was to be available when he visited the castle, although he had no objection to me taking a lover during his absence if I was discreet. He’d taken steps to ensure that he had no more children so if I thought to cheat him by becoming pregnant, I would lose everything.’
‘I imagine he thought he was doing you a favour,’ he said, to disguise an outrage that he had no business feeling. He’d been feeling far too much since he’d watched Agnès having that disastrous telephone conversation with the plumber and it wasn’t the anger that had been driving him for as long as he could remember. ‘It would have given you everything you want.’
The look she gave him should have turned him to stone.
‘He was lucky I didn’t throw him and his oily tongue in the creek.’
Not ‘have him thrown’ but ‘throw him’, Kam noticed, doing his best not to smile at her fierceness. And not succeeding.
‘What’s so funny?’ she demanded.
‘Nothing. I was just remembering cheering you when you caught your first fish and you called me a patronising oaf.’
‘You didn’t know what it meant.’
‘I looked it up in the dictionary when I got home. It was pretty cutting from a six-year-old.’
‘I was a precocious brat,’ she said, ‘and you were mean and wouldn’t let me use your rod after that. I had to go up into the spidery attic to find my own.’
For a moment they were both grinning at the memory but then, as if remembering why he’d come, she looked away and he said, ‘Prideaux must want the estate very badly.’
‘I could smell the hunger on him and I’m not the only one under financial pressure. Pierre lost a lot of money during the banking crisis.’
‘How would the castle help? It’s loaded with debt.’
‘The entail ends once it is passed to that side of the family. Unlike me, he would be free to sell off the choicest bits of the estate to developers.’
‘Developers?’ That would mean this untouched side of the creek would be carved up into plots for holiday homes occupied for just a few weeks a year. ‘Do you know what he has in mind?’
‘He didn’t confide in me, but I was informed that he and another man thoroughly explored the estate while he was here. I was also told that, coincidentally, a surveyor from London was staying locally.’
‘Where exactly?’ he asked.
She glanced at him. ‘The Ferryside Inn. Does it matter?’
He curbed the urgency in his voice. ‘I meant what part of the creek?’
‘Oh, I see. Is that why you’re here? Is that how you’ve made the money to buy such an extravagant car, stay in the Captain’s Suite?’
‘Good grief, Agnès, nothing could be further from the truth. I founded an online textile business that went public a couple of months ago.’
‘Textiles?’
‘Clothing, bedding, curtains...’
She stared at him. ‘There was a story on the news recently about a company that started out on a market stall. They were talking about hundreds of millions.’
He lifted a shoulder, almost embarrassed at the amount of money involved. ‘Now you know. So can we talk business?’
She shook her head. ‘It makes no difference, Kam. I can’t sell. Of course, if you were looking for an investment opportunity?’ she prompted, only half seriously.
‘An investment? What would I get out of it? You’re never going to make a profit.’ He’d been more abrupt than he’d intended. ‘I want to own the land I walk on, Agnès. Own any roof over my head that I call home.’
‘So why here? Why not buy yourself an island in the Caribbean, or somewhere fabulous in France or Italy with a vineyard and a swimming pool?’
‘Because when I think of home, this is the place in my head. In my heart,’ he added.
He hadn’t realised that, but sitting here with Agnès on their log brought home to him how deep his feelings went, not just for this place, but for her.
She, on the other hand, was staring at him as if he’d grown two heads. Large sums of money had that effect on people, he’d discovered.