A Manor of Faking It (The Clarion Abbey Series Book 1)

by Hadley Harlin

  The current sprawling estate had been added on in pieces and was sort of a collage of all the great architectural styles through the centuries, including six Corinthian columns that supported the carriage drive. Art students came to study it during the fall and spring months.

  For a history buff, it tickled me to no end to stumble across a medieval-monk-scribed book in the library, a silver tray from the 1600s, or a secret passageway between rooms. I loved Clarion, and it had almost broken my heart and soul when I’d left with Mom. Instead of letting it turn me into a shadow of a person, I used my sadness as an opportunity to reinvent myself. I went full American—pass the apple pie, long live capitalism, crown Yankee Doodle Dandy.

  I stopped wishing on 11:11, looking for shooting stars, and ransacking fields of clover for a four-leafed one, which I’d never found anyway. Luck was an illusion. If I wanted a good life, I had to make it happen—with good old-fashioned hard work. The rest was wishful thinking.

  It was weird to be back, but also a little wonderful. I couldn’t wait to explore my favorite rooms and run my fingers along the book spines in the library. Maybe I’d post a few videos of me twirling in the great hall. My @ladypoppyseed account was my restaurant influencer blog, but I could do a grand reveal here about being an actual lady, Downton Abbey-style.

  I wasn’t sure why, but I’d always kept that part of my identity secret in America. While my account said ‘lady’, no one imagined it was a real title. I’d created an image, a brand. As an Instagram influencer and lifestyle guide, my entire life was open for mass consumption via social media. It was secretly thrilling to have something so big that was all mine.

  I walked under the vaulted ceilings and mahogany-paneled walls of the library, breathing in the sickly-sweet stench of cigar smoke still permeating the air—or was that my nostalgia speaking?

  I cocked my head. Things were missing, and it wasn’t the smoke and smell of brandy. The oxblood leather chairs were there, plump and beautiful in front of the fire, but that was it. All the opulent golden astrolabes and hourglasses were missing from the desk, the marble fireplace didn’t have its custom-made peacock fan grate, and all the Mesopotamian plaques my ancestors had dug up in the 1800s were missing. A twisting feeling took up residence in my gut.

  I ran to the rolling ladder and frantically searched for the medieval, illuminated script Dad never let me touch. It was by an unnamed scribe and contained a fantastical retelling of the Alexander Romance cycles that had been circulating since Alexander the Great’s time. People had been copying and retelling the stories for centuries, and you could see little doodles in the margins from a thousand years ago. I loved the stories and the history behind the pages.

  My heart clenched fiercely in my chest. It wasn’t there. Stone—this had his stench. Dad would never have pawned centuries-old family heirlooms. He’d have preferred to starve.

  A deep voice startled me out of my inventory. It was familiar, but different…older, more weary.

  “Lady Perrinton! Welcome home.”

  I jumped off the ladder and went to hug our groundskeeper, a smile stripping away the pain of finding everything gone, but I stopped a few feet from the old man. His face had more wrinkles than not, and his hair had gone completely silver. He was still wiry and trim as ever with deep brown skin from being outside all day, tending to the gardens and lakes around our estate—but something was different. Then it hit me.

  “What did you call me?”

  It may have been ten years since I’d last been here, but I still knew the customs. I wasn’t the heir to my father’s earldom. My brother was, which meant I was called Lady Poppy, not Lady Perrinton. Apparently, the use of first names put Brits in their lower place.

  Jacob shuffled his feet without answering.

  Call it the half-Brit in me, but it wouldn’t do to look silly in front of the hired help—like I didn’t know what was going on in my own family.

  I cleared my throat. “Uh, thank you, Jacob. I’m going to settle in; can I find you later?” I quickly walked to my old room and stopped again, my mouth open. What the hell had Dad been doing for the last ten years? Everything was in disarray. Water damage spots fanned out from the ceiling, the wallpaper hung in strips, and mold had gotten a foothold—and an arm-hold, and a neck-hold.

  I went back into the hallway. Everything looked a little…untamed.

  Jacob trailed behind me. “Sorry to follow you, Lady Perrinton, but I would like to give my notice. I haven’t seen your brother in a month and it’s been six months since I’ve gotten paid. I love your family, but I have to support mine, too.”

  I licked my drying lips. “Jacob, I’m so sorry. Let me reimburse you.” I doubted I could afford to keep him on full-time, but it made my stomach turn to think I couldn’t pay him for his work and loyalty. Call that the half-American in me.

  My day job was more than enough for that. Back in California, I swayed people’s opinions about the hottest spots to eat, drink, and be merry in LA. I was typically invited to any hot new club, restaurant, or bar opening, and if I wasn’t, it wasn’t worth the public’s money. Instagram influencing was extremely lucrative, which left me plenty of free time to pursue my true passion: writing a sprawling historical fiction series following one family over six centuries, of course.

  One thing kept nagging at me, however, and I was too antsy to wait until Mom woke up in a few hours to grill her. “Jacob, why do you keep calling me Lady Perrinton?”

  The graying old man moved from one foot to the next, the check in his hands. He clearly would have preferred to bolt rather than tell me whatever this horrible news was.

  I asked the obvious question. “Is my brother okay?” As the only son, my brother Stone inherited my father’s title of Earl of Arun. Clarion Abbey came with the title.

  Relief spread across Jacob’s face. “Oh, yes, Viscount Everlight is fine. At least, he was fine the last time I saw him a month ago.”

  “Then what is it?”

  Jacob swallowed deeply. “Lady Perrinton, I had hoped you already knew.”

  “Jacob! I really don’t, so please tell me. The only thing I can think of is that—” I cut myself off, feeling my stomach plummet and my hands go clammy. “No. He didn’t.”

  Jacob looked like he wanted to sink into the floor, which was pretty much on par with my own desires. He nodded. “Your father made you heir to Clarion Abbey over your older brother before he left for his expedition. He said you were the only responsible one of the whole lot and he’d be damned—excuse my language—if Clarion Abbey suffered under your brother. It’s the new laws. They were going to be changed to allow the eldest to inherit regardless of gender, but a last-minute effort in the House allowed for the ‘most fit’ to inherit. They’re calling it the ‘Alexander the Great’ law. ‘To the most fit’ goes the estate. I think they’re hoping it will save some of these old homes and appease calls for gender equality, although in my opinion, if I may, it will worsen gender inequality. Unlike your father, most lords will say their female offspring are unfit and it will be lawful.”

  I finally did sink to the floor, my legs betraying me, just like my father had all over again. Right then, I only had one question.

  “Jacob?”

  “Yes, Lady Perrinton?”

  “Why is there a dead mouse curled up next to my toe?”

  After we tossed out the mouse skeleton, Jacob filled me in on the last ten years. It was the same old tired story. The housekeeper had quit a year earlier, leaving Dad and Stone to their own sorry excuses for cleaning. Same with the butler, and now, finally, Jacob.

  What had once been nine hundred acres of pristine landscaped gardens and wild yew woods was slowly turning over to weeds. It was all he could do to keep the brambles at bay. Even the massive wrought iron gates that delineated the woods and manicured gardens were covered in ivy.

  “The pond has gone to ground, as well. There are way too many pike, choking out all the other life,” he said.

&n
bsp; “Well if that isn’t a fitting metaphor, I don’t know what is,” I muttered. “Jacob, thank you for sticking around as long as you did. Fish as much pike as you can stomach. You always have an open invitation here. I hope to hire you back full-time as soon as I go through the books.”

  “I’m afraid I’m too old for gardening these days. You’ll want younger backs out here.”

  “Maybe your head then, overseeing those young backs.”

  Jacob knew folly when he heard it, but he gave me a smile and a swift nod anyway, leaving me to wander.

  I walked the gardens, taking in the rare, beautiful May day. Wood smoke drifted on the breeze along with a faint perfume of wild roses, struggling to be free of the brambles. If I listened closely, I could hear the hum of bees flitting around the apple blossoms. That was where the beauty ended.

  The stone walkways were chipped, and not in a rustic way. While there was some semblance of a maintained garden beneath the new spring growth, everything would have to be weeded and trimmed. The flowers would have to be brave indeed to poke through all the undergrowth. A thick layer of dust covered the windows of the gardening cottage, and the paint was chipping.

  The manor was in even worse shape. This was going to be so much work, and I clearly couldn’t count on my brother to help. I never could. He was both tormentor and companion, playmate and oppressor.

  We’d explored our little world here, but while I nurtured little nests of goldfinches that had fallen from the tree, Stone was the one who had shot them down with his skeet gun.

  But he was the heir to my idol, so he couldn’t be all that bad. Dad had taken him to check the land or talk to the tenants, and when they’d return, Stone would revel in my attention as I clamored to know how it had gone.

  Except he was that bad. Just over there was where he’d used me as target practice with his blunt-tip bow and arrows, claiming he’d been aiming for the chestnut tree. And there he’d pinned me to the ground, pretending I was a fey witch he had to slay. I’d screamed and screamed and flailed until my shoulder almost dislocated and the dirt turned to mud under the weight of my tears.

  He had sounded so contrite when he finally helped me up that I’d let him spin me tales of regret.

  Over and over and over.

  While it didn’t surprise me that Dad would pick me—or really anyone—over Stone, I wished he would have told me first. I wished I could have prepared.

  Guilt stabbed at my chest. How could he have? I’d ignored every phone call and every birthday card that had come religiously since the split. This tomb of silence had been my doing, and now he was in an actual tomb without me having spoken to him once, a tomb of ice on the side of a desolate mountain that no one could reach.

  Just as I was about to get really weepy between the petunias and the peonies, the most vicious-looking pig I’d ever seen came barreling through the gardens, snorting and growling. Spittle flung from his jowls as he bucked his bristly black head everywhere, clearly looking for his next victim.

  Oh my God. Pigs eat people. It was in all the movies. Want to dispose of a body? Forget the fish—feed it to the pigs.

  “Ah!” I screamed and ran like mad for the house. Hoofbeats pounded behind me like the four horsemen of the apocalypse, but I was too afraid to turn around. Only a few more meters. I could make it. Think positive! My lungs weren’t giving out, that was the burning adrenaline coursing through my veins. Come on, spin classes, don’t fail me now!

  Frantically, I grappled with the lead-lined wooden door and flung it open. In my mind, I barely slipped through as the rabid pig nipped at my heels, drawing blood. I dusted the window with my fist and peered out.

  In reality, the pig had stopped chasing me twenty meters back to eat a few of the daisies.

  Unbelievable. I couldn’t even get chased properly. A fluttering piece of paper caught my eye. It was a handwritten note from Jacob hanging at the window.

  Don’t forget to feed Boris. He likes earthworms, but he’s too lazy to dig them up himself. Also, he gets slightly grouchy when hungry, but he’s mostly harmless.

  I wiped my sweaty bangs off my forehead with the back of my hand as Boris pawed at the door and bumped it with his nose, letting out an unnatural bray every few seconds. It was like he’d learned how to talk from a donkey, or an apocalyptic demon.

  This was just my luck. Not only had I inherited a run-down grand estate, but it also came with a hangry pig named Boris.

  Could this homecoming get any worse?

  Chapter Five

  Finn

  The architects had constructed the winding avenue of ancient oak trees so that horse-drawn carriages could glimpse the imposing castle as they rolled up to whatever grand parties they’d passed their time with centuries ago. The quick peek that left the mind to imagine was more intimidating than the full view.

  While it may have been impressive then, today it only added to the feeling of impending doom as our car crunched along the pristinely raked gravel driveway. It took five minutes of careful driving before Wodehall came into full view.

  The grand castle had been built for my ancestors in the 1600s as a thank you for killing other Englishmen during the bloody English Civil War. Nothing says ‘good job at killing’ like a sprawling, sixteen-hundred-acre estate complete with an English- and French-style garden, a vineyard, and enough pasture to breed a Royal Ascot winner even Catherine the Great would want to fuck.

  The opulent splendor never failed to impress the hordes of tourists and visitors we received. Eventually, my father put a stop to the constant flow and instituted Bracon Days. Tourists were allowed to tour the grounds every Saturday during the summer months and play at high tea in the winter. Unlike many grand estates dotting the British countryside, Wodehall didn’t need the income from gaping tourists. We still had our inheritance, which had only grown over the centuries. Thanks to my father’s business in investment banking, our heirs would be set for life. Even I wasn’t fucked up enough to ruin that.

  I quickly showered off the stink of women and booze and dressed in a conservative button-down. This summons could have been about anything. He could very well already know about the RAF discharge, the bachelor auction debacle, or any number of other petty faults he knew I possessed, much as he had possessed them himself. Most likely it was about the previous night’s episode, but it paid to be prepared around the duke.

  A fire was roaring in the fireplace, and my father was shooing out a maid holding a silver tray of matching bone china tea cups, biscuits, and a vase of lilacs.

  Instead of greeting him, I nodded at the maid. She curtsied, eyes down.

  “Lord Damford, would you like me to get you anything?” she asked, trembling. I knew my father terrorized the staff, though not on purpose. He didn’t go around beating them and never had, as far as I could tell. It was merely the force of his personality. It shook people to their core.

  “No thanks. I’ll manage,” I told her, opening the great oak doors. She didn’t need to hear whatever the fuck this was about.

  My father watched me warily from over his two-lumps tea. Nearing eighty, he was weakening. Once upon a time, I’d thought age would soften him. I knew better now.

  It only meant he couldn’t walk over and smack me with his cane as quickly as he’d been able to the year before. The following year, he might not even be able to lift it at all. A son could hope.

  Despite the early hour, I popped the knob off of the crystal decanter and poured myself a few fingers worth of whiskey. I saluted him. “To your health, Your Grace.”

  We made quite the pair, him sitting and glaring as I stood glaring, both of us drinking. He’d finally been able to quell his demons and settle down after decades of running around London. He’d assumed my grandfather’s banking mantle as well as one of the few remaining hereditary seats in the House of Lords, which was why it had taken him so long to have a family. My little sister Brontë had been a surprise, a birthright she couldn’t help but live up to.
<
br />   “You dragged me here all the way from jail for this delightful chat. Let’s get on with it.”

  My father barked a laugh. “So this whole thing is a joke to you.”

  When I responded with a smirk and a raised glass, he smashed his wolf-head cane on the ground, nearly shattering the wooden stick.

  “Let’s have it then,” he began. “Your life as you know it is about to change—dramatically. Your time as a bon vivant womanizing gambler is over. No more money for your lavish, little, meaningless life until you prove you can settle down with someone seriously. You’re cut off.”

  “You’re quite cranky today.” I clinked the large whiskey ice cubes around in my tumbler. “Go ahead. It’d only take a few anonymous tips to my pick of the tabloids, revealing my whereabouts for the next few weekends to support my ‘lavish little life’. Then it’ll be a waiting game for you to die so I can inherit Wodehall and the Bracon title.”

  Father’s lip curled cruelly. “I’m not done, son.”

  I froze, not liking the sound of his voice. He sounded too happy, and this was too easy.

  “In addition to being cut off for the time being, I will name your little sister Brontë as heir. She will be the Duchess of Bracon in her own right, while you remain nothing more than a marquess.”

  “Father, you really are getting old. That’s not what’s written in the entail, and you couldn’t possibly change it.”

  He leaned back, his sharp eagle eyes not unfocused in the least. Damn.

  “Times have changed. While you’ve been busy fucking anything with tits that walks upright—I hope—I’ve been taking our seat in the House of Lords. There’s a new law, and I plan to use it to my full advantage.”

  My heart rate sped up, and my father came into focus with crystal clarity. While the little hair he had left was completely white, his startlingly blue eyes were as icy as my worst memories of him. Today, they looked deadly.