by Liz Fielding
‘A baby? Another generation to keep the Prideaux clan at bay?’
‘No. A child who will grow up to be her own person. No strings, no ties, no expectations, just loved.’
‘Her?’ He had a sudden image of a small girl, the image of Agnès, running wild and free on the estate, but loved, cherished. Teaching her to swim, as he’d taught her mother...
‘Or him. You’re bleeding into the cheese.’
He swore under his breath, crossed to the sink, ran cold water over his hand then grabbed a piece of kitchen paper to wrap around it before opening the first-aid box.
‘You could bleed to death while you’re trying to open these things,’ he said, trying to rip open a dressing with his teeth.
Agnès stood up, took it from him, opened it and, having removed the paper towel, bent over to examine the wound. Then she placed the dressing carefully over the cut and smoothed it into place with her fingers, holding his hand for a moment, checking her handiwork.
‘Will I live?’ he asked and when she looked up to answer him, her mouth was just inches from his. Soft, pink, slightly open so that there was a glimpse of white teeth.
If he leaned forward a few inches he could kiss her again and, this time, if she kissed him back, they could take their time about it and discover if the attraction he felt for this new, grown-up version of the Agnès he’d fallen in love with would find an answering echo.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The parure is a bust. I am bust. Where are the matches?
Agnès Prideaux’s Journal
‘IT’S JUST A SCRATCH.’
Agnès, head spinning, took a step back.
Kam had been going to kiss her again and every cell in her body had been screaming for her to lean in to him and take the initiative. Show him how much she wanted that.
Like that had worked so well before.
There had been half a dozen times since he’d been back when they had seemed to be hovering on the threshold of a kiss but one or other of them had taken a step back.
The kiss on the island hadn’t been like that. It had been no more than a reaction to her outburst. For a moment she had allowed herself to respond but had torn herself away before she had betrayed herself utterly.
Kam hadn’t come back for her.
He’d made no secret of the fact that he blamed her for what had happened to him and his mother, that it was his avowed intention that she should lose her home at his hand, as he had done at hers.
The realisation that he couldn’t buy it had forced him to reconsider. He’d softened towards her, apparently sharing her concerns, but there was nothing here for him except the chance to achieve some kind of closure by finishing what she had started.
She couldn’t afford that kind of self-indulgence.
‘You left your bag on the step,’ she said, needing to escape before she flung herself at him like the desperate teenager she had once been. ‘I’ll bring it in. Check on the dogs.’
‘Leave it. No one is going to run off with a bag of dog food. I’ll pick it up later and if you’ve never heard the phrase let sleeping dogs lie...’
Kam cleared away the tainted cheese, lifted down an omelette pan that was hanging from the overhead rack, turned on a burner.
‘Bread?’
‘In the larder.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘You want me to get it?’
‘I’ve got my hands full. Don’t forget the butter.’
‘Eggs, cheese, butter... Can your heart take it?’
‘I rowed across the creek and I’ve walked seven miles today. I think my heart could do with a break, don’t you?’
There it was again, that look, that connection. It grew with each exchange, with each smile, each touch.
It would be so easy and maybe, if the stars lined up, the baby would be a small version of him, grow into a boy to run wild in the woods like his father. Who she could teach to fish and swim, the way he’d taught her.
No. Just no.
This wasn’t about the past. Every moment of discord, every half-smile, teasing moment, touch laid down a new memory, some bitter, some sweet, but all risking a deeper hurt.
She fetched the bread, took butter from the fridge, filled a jug with water, laid out a knife and fork for him while Kam, very efficiently, created a fluffy cheese omelette that he broke in half and divided between two plates he’d taken from the warming rack.
He placed one in front of her, the melted cheese oozing out.
‘Oh, I didn’t realise...’ He’d cooked for her? ‘Who taught you to cook?’
‘My mother.’ He cut two thick slices of bread from the loaf, buttered them generously and handed a slice to her. ‘She considers it an essential life skill.’
‘How is she, Kam?’
‘She’s well. She has a finca in Spain where she runs cooking classes.’
It was the first information he’d volunteered, she realised.
‘How often do you see her?’
‘Every month or so. She has a great many friends and has a good life. One would like to be more, but she values her independence. She won’t allow him to move in.’
‘I’m glad she’s happy. My grandmother said something today...’
Realising that she wasn’t eating, he handed her his fork. ‘Eat,’ he said, leaning back to take another one from the cutlery tray.’
‘Yes. Thank you.’
Kam watched to make sure she was obeying him, then said, ‘What did your grandmother say?’
‘Her memory isn’t that great these days, she rambles, but I told her that you were here. In case she saw you,’ she added, quickly. ‘She remembers your mother. That she liked her...’ She hesitated, remembering his sarcasm about the word ‘treasure’.
Kam looked at her. ‘And?’
‘She said that my grandfather liked her, too, but that she wouldn’t...’
He frowned. ‘Wouldn’t what?’
‘Wouldn’t be nice to him.’
‘Nice?’ He stilled, fork halfway to his mouth, then lowered it. ‘Are you suggesting that he expected droit de seigneur?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Yes, you do.’ He swore, put the fork down. ‘It was never about us, was it? He didn’t give a fig about you.’
‘It’s still my fault, Kam. If I hadn’t...’ She let the sentence trail off, unwilling to say the words out loud. To bring that moment into the daylight.
Kam had no such compunction. ‘If you hadn’t swum naked over to the island with the sole purpose of seducing me, he wouldn’t have had an excuse to get rid of her?’
She had shrunk from saying the words, from even thinking them but, despite all the vile things her grandparents had said, she had nothing to be ashamed of. She had loved him. She had wanted to give him, not just her heart, but her body so that he would know how much she loved him.
‘He would have found one sooner or later,’ she said, ‘but I handed it to him on a plate.’
‘We, Agnès. You weren’t alone out there. I had my hand on you but he didn’t care about that. Any other man would have turned on me, lashed out, and we both know that he had a violent temper. He was carrying a stick and I expected a beating but he just told you to go home and waited to make sure you obeyed him. He didn’t even look at me. He just turned and walked back to the summer house. That kind of control is a lot more terrifying than violence. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to follow you to make sure you were all right but thought that would only make things worse. In the end I went home and told my mother what had happened. She was already packing when he turned up at the door next morning.’
‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘Nothing. You don’t have to say anything. He didn’t get angry because we had given him exactly what he wanted.’
We, she thought, was the most beautiful word i
n the English language. In any language, and she sat watching him, as he sliced into the egg with his fork as if nothing had happened, trying, without success, to control a grin that was doing its best to break out.
He glanced up and smiled back. ‘Don’t let it get cold.’
‘No,’ she said, and ate every scrap.
When they had finished he cleared the plates, stacked them in the dishwasher, wiped the omelette pan with kitchen paper and then sat back down beside her.
‘Are you feeling better?’
‘Yes. Thank you. I’m sorry I was such a cow about Henry. He can sleep wherever he likes.’
She was half on her feet, when he caught her hand. ‘Don’t run away.’
‘I wasn’t. Running. I have to sort out the rooms for the weekend guests. Make a laundry list. Pay some bills—’
‘The laundry will wait, and, as for the bills, I have a proposition for you.’
‘We’ve been through all this.’
‘Just listen to me. You owe me that.’
‘I thought we were past owing each other anything,’ she said. She would always hold herself responsible, but with that ‘we’ he’d forgiven her.
‘Let’s say we owe each other.’
She sank back down onto the chair.
‘First let me tell you what I want to do here.’ She opened her mouth to tell him that it was pointless. ‘You can have your say when I’m done.’
She raised a hand a few inches, as if to say it was a waste of time, but she would hear him out.
‘I lived in some pretty appalling areas after we left here.’ His turn to hold up a hand when she would have interrupted. ‘This is not about blame. No more apologies. The past is the past.
‘I don’t need to spell out the dangers that inner city kids run every day of their lives. You see the worst of it every night on the news.’
‘You?’ she asked.
‘If I’d been a different boy maybe, but I knew something different. I knew that there was another life. And I knew how to be quiet, how to be invisible and I mostly stayed out of trouble.’
‘You did a lot more than that.’
‘Because of what I’d learned. I want to give that chance to some kids. Bring them here and show them more than concrete and graffiti.’
‘How did you survive?’ she asked.
‘I couldn’t fish to make money so I made myself useful at the market, working before college, at the weekends, helping with the set-up. At first I just worked for tips but then Raj gave me a job.’
She hadn’t meant that. She meant how had he survived in such an alien environment, but she supposed it was the same thing.
‘On the clothing stall?’ she prompted. ‘I saw a photograph. When I looked online. It was in one of the financial papers.’
He nodded. ‘Raj had a decent business. He was bringing in good quality stuff from his cousin’s factory in India that attracted, not just the locals, but people with the money to shop in Knightsbridge. How they found out about us, goodness only knows.’
‘The market is famous. Big companies, banks, have offices in the area. It only takes one woman at a loose end, while she’s waiting for a husband or lover who works in one of those city offices, a woman who works in one herself maybe, to spend her lunch hour browsing the stalls. She tells a friend about an amazing little stall where she found a bargain, who tells someone else... There’s nothing like word of mouth. You’re the man with the millions, you should know this.’
‘I understand about word of mouth, but it’s that first one... I hope whoever she met makes her happy.’
‘I hope she’s CEO of a bank.’
He laughed. ‘Yes.’
‘You sold shares in more than a market stall. How did you go from that to an Internet phenomenon?’
‘A woman—not in designer clothes, but smart—started coming early several times a week, choosing one or two items of baby and young kids clothing and buying them in every size. It was obvious what she was doing and, London traffic being what it is, I had no trouble following her on my bike. She had a smart little children’s boutique where she was relabelling and selling our stuff on for five times the price.’
‘What? That’s outrageous.’
‘My thoughts precisely. I asked my mother to go in and buy something, so I had the label and the price tag to show Raj. He’d made his profit and shrugged it off, but I could see that he could be making a lot more money.’
‘Clearly he could put up the prices,’ she said.
‘No.’ He shook his head, then realised she was kidding and grinned. ‘No, but I put together a plan, made a spreadsheet to show him how much he could be making if he went online.’
‘Not a hard sell.’
‘You’d think not, but he was making a good living and he didn’t want the bother, or the risk. People will always cling to their comfort zone unless you give them a very good reason to move. In the end I told him he could carry on doing exactly what he was doing. That I’d set up the online business, but I wanted sixty per cent of it.’
‘Sixty?’
‘The risk was all mine and I could have gone direct to his cousin and cut a deal with him.’
‘And now you’re going to sell your plan to me.’
‘I get the feeling that it will take more than a spreadsheet.’
‘It will take a miracle, but I interrupted you telling me how smart you are.’ His look suggested he was not taken in by her change of subject. ‘No, seriously. I’m interested.’
He shrugged. ‘I found a smart IT student who built a website for peanuts and shares in the company, then I set up media pages, started posting pictures of what we were selling alongside pictures of the same stuff in the boutique.’
‘How did the boutique owner take that?’
‘She was furious but she went on buying from Raj until he closed the stall so presumably she was still selling to her niche market.’ Agnès shook her head. ‘I contacted mummy bloggers, sent them free stuff to review with the message, why pay West End prices when you could buy exactly the same thing direct at a fraction of the price?’
‘Clearly it worked.’
‘It was slow at first but we gradually gathered momentum and then one of the mother and baby magazines I’d targeted ran a paragraph with a picture of a very sweet dress and before we knew it we were renting a warehouse instead of a lock-up. Now we have three factories, and total control means that we can offer decent wages, safe working conditions and health benefits for the men and women who work for us.’
‘Doesn’t that push up the price of production?’
‘It’s all a matter of scale. We’re about to expand into—’
‘No. Stop.’ She shook her head. ‘Please, stop.’ She’d heard enough.
‘You have a question?’
‘No.’ She didn’t know what she had except that she’d had a really bad day and he was sitting there telling her how clever he’d been, how well he’d done. ‘You’ve said enough.’
‘You did ask.’
‘I know, but here’s a thing, Kam. You were angry with me when you left,’ she said. ‘Really angry. It’s okay, I get it. You’d just been turfed out of your home. But you were still angry with me when you came back a few days ago. You were rude, you wanted to humiliate me, wanted to evict me from my home the way my grandfather evicted you from yours. All that “revenge is a dish best served cold” stuff.’
‘I was—’
‘Normally, I’d say that when you carry anger that long,’ she continued, as if he hadn’t spoken, ‘you are the only one it hurts.’
‘What I’m trying to say—’
‘I’m not finished, Kam.’ She waited and after a moment he gestured for her to continue. ‘You talked about having to force Raj Chowdry out of his comfort zone but how comfortable were you?’
/> He frowned. ‘I don’t—’
‘That was a rhetorical question.’
This time he held up his hands in a gesture of surrender.
‘You had the entire estate to run wild in, as much cash as you needed from the fish you poached, everything you ever wanted without a whit of responsibility. You said it yourself. Everything you’ve done was to bring you a step closer back to Castle Creek.’
His face was stony now, but she’d lived with the guilt for years and at that moment all she was feeling was fury.
‘The truth is, Kam, that I did you the world’s biggest favour. If you had stayed here you wouldn’t be a multimillionaire and heading for billionaire. You would still be cutting the grass.’
‘Like hell I would.’
Her turn to raise her eyebrows and he had the grace to return a slightly rueful smile. ‘Okay, but I’d be getting paid for it. And running private side excursions for visitors who wanted to visit the smugglers’ cave.’
‘You think it would sell?’
‘You’d need someone who could tell a good story.’
She shook her head. ‘I’ve heard enough. Since you can’t return to the island, I will concede the point and allow Henry to stay in your room tonight, but you need to find alternative accommodation tomorrow.’
‘Don’t you want to hear my offer, Agnès? Or are you going to keep running away?’
‘I’m not running. I’m walking.’
‘It’s not the speed, it’s the intention. What are you afraid of?’
‘I’m not afraid, I’m being realistic. This isn’t a market stall and I’m not a trader who’s happy just getting by. There is nothing you can do here.’
‘I can pay your tax bill, your debts. I can have the castle roof, and anything else, repaired and have a new boiler installed. I can save your home for you, Agnès. All I want in return is to live in my old home, which I will renovate and extend, and the chance to help some kids turn their life around.’
‘I thought you wanted to own the land you walk on. The roof over your head.’
‘Maybe that isn’t as important as I thought.’
‘And the castle? I thought you wanted that.’