The Secrets of Clover Castle

by Martin, Holly

  ‘I’m not doing it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m just not.’

  ‘It’s only going to be half an hour of your time.’

  ‘I’m not making a fool of myself in front of the whole village.’

  ‘But they’re all in it too.’

  ‘I’m not doing it.’

  ‘Oh, go on.’

  ‘No, absolutely not.’

  ‘Don’t be a bore.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Look …’ Milly was about to protest some more and tell him that they were holding her beloved car ransom when Cameron’s phone rang on the table.

  He stared at her for a moment before he moved to answer it. ‘It’s my PA, Olivia, I’d better take the call.’

  ‘I’ve got some tests to do anyway, so I’ll catch you later.’

  He was smiling at her as she wheeled her bag out to the banquet hall. She needed something to distract herself and there was nothing better than spending a few hours conducting tests, especially in the old kitchen. And if Cameron continued to smile at her later, with that knowing look, she would just bore him with every little detail of the tests and everything that excited her, from flecks of paint to mortar that was hundreds of years old. That would most likely put him off her for good.

  * * *

  Cameron lay in bed staring at the ceiling; insomnia was his faithful friend. He could never turn his mind off. Normally, he would be thinking about his latest story, the twists, the turns, the conversations his characters would have, so he never got a peaceful night. Lately though, his thoughts had been about the castle too, how he could save it – or even if he should. But now his head was full of Milly.

  She had spent the afternoon doing various tests and taking different samples. She had returned to the kitchen with a whole box filled with labelled test tubes all containing little flecks of what looked like dirt, but which Milly had explained were samples of paint, mortar and brick work. He had never seen anyone get quite so excited about test tubes of dirt before and he had spent over two hours listening to her as she explained the procedures for collecting the samples and testing them in the lab and what kind of results she expected to get and what it meant for the castle. He had hung on every word. For someone who had almost no interest in history, he found her completely and utterly fascinating. He had never met anyone who had so much passion and enthusiasm for their job and it was infectious.

  She had gone off to bed in her room in the tower very excitedly earlier. There was something about her exuberance and love for life that he found so endearing. Just being in the same room as her made him happy and hopeful. He liked having her here.

  Suddenly the light came on in the library window that overlooked his room. That was strange. Although he had seen the Grey Lady once or twice outside her dungeon, the ghosts never turned on lights. He rolled over to look at the clock and saw that it was past two in the morning.

  He got out of bed and pulled on his robe. Even though the nights were warm from the day’s heat, the castle was always cool, especially at night.

  He walked through the empty banquet hall and up the stairs. Light streamed through the open doorway and he smiled slightly when he saw Milly curled up in one of the chairs, wrapped in a blanket, reading a book.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, softly, not wanting to scare her.

  She looked up and smiled at him. ‘Hey yourself.’

  ‘Can you not sleep?’

  She pulled a face. ‘Not really.’

  ‘Is it the bed, is it not comfy? Is the room too cold?’

  ‘The room is fine.’

  She looked down at the book she was reading and he suddenly realised why.

  ‘Being trapped in a room with a skeleton, it kind of freaked you out, didn’t it?’

  She nodded. ‘It’s silly, the thing wasn’t even real. It’s just …’ She trailed off.

  There was more to this than she was saying so he sat down and pulled out a chair in front of her.

  ‘Thought I’d read for a little while, see if it would send me to sleep, but this book isn’t doing that.’

  He hadn’t paid any attention to the books that lined the library walls, they were all very old, probably mostly written in Latin. ‘What you reading?’

  She showed him the first book he had ever written and his heart flipped in recognition.

  ‘I love his stuff, well, most of it,’ Milly said. ‘This Dream Pirates series was incredible, it was made into the most stunning movies, but Hidden Faces, the short spin off novellas he wrote about the shape-shifters, was absolutely shite. I’m hoping for better things from him for his next series.’

  He stared at her in shock. No one had ever told him to his face that his shape-shifter series was shit. He knew it was, mostly because that series wasn’t actually written by him. His publishers had arranged for a ghost writer to write them whilst he had gone through the worst time in his life. But no one knew that he hadn’t written it. And no one had ever been brave enough to say, this is crap, even though all the reviewers had slated him. But Milly knew who he was, he’d seen that look of recognition when they had first met, and he didn’t like the way she was pretending she didn’t.

  ‘I know you know who I am.’ He stood up, all sympathy for her gone.

  She looked up at him in complete confusion and then fear. ‘Are you not Cameron Heartstone? But you told me you were.’

  She looked to the door, clearly wondering if she could make a run for it.

  ‘I am Cameron Heartstone, but I also write under a pseudonym and I know you recognise me.’

  There was no way she didn’t know who he was. After the movie deal, his publicist had secured an interview with him in a hugely popular magazine and suddenly a ridiculous fan club, mostly made up of teenage girls and bored housewives, had exploded on social media. Every magazine and newspaper in the country wanted a piece of him. He’d hated it, but for a long while his face had been plastered everywhere and unless Milly had spent that time with her head under a rock, she would have seen it.

  She stared at him in bewilderment as if he’d just grown a second head. Either she was a very good actress or he’d got it all wrong.

  ‘I’m sorry, I have no idea what you are talking about. Are you really JK Rowling, because that would be a real surprise?’

  He grabbed the book from her hand and waved it in her face.

  Finally the penny dropped and it was clear to him that it was the first time she had made the connection. Her eyes grew huge. ‘You’re Phoenix Blaze?’

  The fight went out of him. ‘You didn’t know?’

  ‘No, I had no idea. What made you think I recognised you?’

  ‘When we first met, you gave me this starry-eyed look.’

  ‘Define starry-eyed.’

  He replicated the face she had made when she first saw him, with wide eyes and open mouth.

  She blushed a deep shade of red. ‘That was most likely my, “Shit this guy is freaking hot” face.’

  Not for the first time, she had left him speechless. There were no games with Milly, no pretence, just complete and utter honesty. Yet now she knew who he was, any chance of a normal friendship or professional relationship had gone completely out of the window. Let the fawning and gold digging commence.

  ‘I can’t believe you’re Phoenix Blaze.’

  He nodded, embarrassed that he’d even brought it up.

  ‘And I just told you your books were shit.’

  ‘Yes, you did.’ He waited for her to back pedal, to tell him they weren’t that bad.

  ‘I loved your Dream Pirates trilogy, it was amazing.’

  He hated it when people fawned all over him, especially women, because he always thought they had an ulterior motive.

  ‘But your Hidden Faces trilogy, I can’t lie, it was the most awful thing I’ve ever read.’

  He felt his mouth fall open, she wasn’t even going to sugar coat it.

  ‘I kept hoping it would get better but it was
tripe. All the magic and wonder that poured from the pages in Dream Pirates, none of that was there. The shape-shifters in Dream Pirates were my favourite characters and you just ruined that. I always wanted to meet you so I could shake you by the shoulders and say, what the hell were you thinking?’

  He threw his head back and burst out laughing. He really liked this girl. And she liked him too, she’d made that very clear, though not for his fame or fortune, just because of him.

  He sat down. ‘I didn’t write them.’ It felt good to say that secret out loud.

  ‘What? I don’t understand. You just said you were Phoenix Blaze.’

  ‘I wrote the Dream Pirates series and then I sent my publishers an outline for the shape-shifter spin off which they loved. I wrote the first five chapters and then my mum died and my wife left me. I asked my publishers if we could put publication back for a year but they said no and that if I couldn’t deliver on time they’d get a ghost writer to do it for me.’

  ‘You’re kidding? Why wouldn’t they wait?’

  ‘I have no idea. At that point, the day before my mum’s funeral, I couldn’t care less, so I told them to get a ghost writer as I wasn’t going to write them. So they did. When they came out, I was horrified. They read like a twelve-year-old had written them and apart from the characters’ names and the location, nothing was what I had planned. It was shit and the reviewers and my fans absolutely hated it. I wanted to go public and tell everyone that it wasn’t me, but my publishers flat refused. They didn’t want to come out and say they’d lied to the fans. So they just said I was going through a bad patch, which anyone who knew anything about my life would know, and promised bigger and better things for my next series. I’ve since ditched them and gone with a new publisher, but those books are still out there with my name on and there’s nothing I can do to distance myself from them.’

  ‘I can’t believe they would do that, ruin your reputation just because they couldn’t wait.’

  Cameron shrugged and passed the book back to her. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time that a publisher used a ghost writer, or the last.’ ‘But if you’re Phoenix Blaze, surely you have enough money to renovate this place. I know you said your ex-wife took a lot of your money but you still must be earning money from the books.’

  ‘I am, but nowhere near as much as you’d think. A lot of the women I’ve dated since Eva thought that too. I was comfortably off before I inherited this place, now everything I had in savings has gone to pay off some of the debts for here and severance pay for the villagers. Beyond my house, car and a few thousand I have in the bank, I have nothing. I’m hoping I can make some money out of the next series. I feel like I have a lot to prove with this next book and I’m not sure how many of my fans will be loyal enough to buy this series when they were so disappointed with the last one.’

  ‘Word of mouth is a wonderful thing. If it’s half as good as Dream Pirates, then word will soon get around.’

  He smiled at her optimism.

  ‘I can’t believe my books are here, in this old library. I never heard from my Dad after we left, I had no clue he knew about my writing career.’

  ‘All the books are there, even the shit ones. He must have been very proud.’

  He smiled at that.

  She cuddled back into the blanket and yawned.

  ‘Why don’t you go back to bed and I’ll come and sit with you for a little while until you fall asleep?’

  She smiled. ‘Underneath this ferocious bear costume, you’re actually really sweet.’

  She stood up and, for a brief moment, he saw a flash of bare thigh. Good Lord, was she naked under the blanket?

  She shuffled up the stairs and he followed her up to the top of the tower. He watched as she climbed onto the bed, still wrapped in the blanket.

  It was only then that he noticed how cold the room was.

  ‘It’s freezing in here. I’ll build the fire back up.’

  He walked over to the fireplace and threw a few more logs on the dying embers, padding it out with dry paper and leaves that he hoped would catch fire. He gave it a few rough pokes, anything to keep his mind from Milly, sitting in bed a few feet away.

  When the fire finally started to take, he sat next to her on the bed, leaning against the headboard.

  ‘Here, get under the covers.’ He lifted the blankets over her and he smiled when she returned the favour for him. They both sat in silence for a moment. He was hoping she would lie down and go to sleep, but sitting in bed together, deliberately not looking at each other and suddenly finding nothing to say was beyond awkward. He stared at a giant red tapestry that depicted some kind of fight with a dragon. He had to keep his eyes away from Milly but she clearly had no intention of going to sleep any time soon.

  ‘Do you want to tell me why the skeleton freaked you out so much?’

  She looked up at him and smiled, sadly. ‘My mum died when I was five. It was just me and her, my dad had walked out before I was even one. She said goodnight to me on Friday night and when I went in to wake her on Saturday morning she was dead, though I don’t think my little five-year-old brain had worked that part out. I lay with her, hoping she would wake up, but she never did. I was trapped in the house, couldn’t find the keys. Silly thing had left the phone in the shed, she was always doing that. Our house was quite remote, the only person that ever came near it was the postman. It took four days for someone to find us.’

  ‘You were trapped in a house with a corpse for four days?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Christ. I’m so, so sorry, what a horrible thing for you to go through.’ He wrapped his arm round her shoulders, pulling her against him before he realised how inappropriate it was for him to do that. But Milly leaned into him, obviously needing the comfort.

  ‘It was. She went grey and green. She smelt funny too.’

  His stomach twisted.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ It was inadequate, he knew that, but what else could he say?

  She forced a smile onto her face. ‘It’s OK, it was the subject of many a nightmare but it was a very long time ago. My aunt Belinda raised me after that, she’s the most marvellous woman.’

  Cameron noted the subject change but let her take the conversation in whatever direction she needed.

  ‘She had such an interest in history, the ancient world more than British history, which is my forte. Her house was filled with pictures and artefacts or replicas from Ancient Greece and Egypt. She used to be an archaeologist and she took me with her on a good many digs. I guess that’s where I got my passion for history too. Anyway …’ She shook her head, obviously realising she had gone off on a tangent.

  He pulled her tighter against him, offering comfort in the only way he could.

  He watched her; her blonde hair splayed out over her shoulder, with the candyfloss pink tips that looked both silly and unbelievably sexy at the same time. He felt her body rise and fall with each little breath.

  He had to leave, he couldn’t stay here like this. But he didn’t want to leave her if she needed him. After a while he chanced a look down at her face, but her eyes were closed, her mouth open slightly. She looked so at peace. He tried to relax and not think about the warmth of her body next to his or her sweet scent.

  Heat filled the room and he found his eyes closing. Within minutes he was fast asleep.

  * * *

  Milly woke the next morning and looked up at Cameron, who was still sleeping. After the nightmares that chased her for the first part of the night, she had slept like a baby since Cameron had joined her. His bare chest was velvety smooth and warm and had provided the perfect pillow for the rest of the night. Both his arms were wrapped around her, holding her tight and there was something very wonderful and very right about waking up with this man, whom she barely knew yet felt so comfortable with. She stretched sleepily, wondering if she should go back to sleep for a while, because right then there was nowhere else she wanted to be.

  She suddenly wriggl
ed from his arms and sat up. He stirred but didn’t wake.

  What the hell was she doing? She had spent the night in bed with a client! She had cuddled up to him like he was a friend or boyfriend. She would be fired on the spot if Castle Heritage found out, reputation was so important to them. What was she thinking? There was a chemistry between them, she couldn’t deny that and she knew she was falling for him but she couldn’t let anything happen. He was a paying client and she had to remember that, but more than that she couldn’t go through the devastating pain of having her heart broken again.

  He rolled over towards her, his features soft in sleep. She had seen a very sweet side to him since she arrived. Maybe he would be different to the men that had hurt her in the past.

  What was it he had said the day before when he spoke about his ex-wife? That there was lots written about him in the papers and most of it wasn’t good.

  A thought occurred to her. As a good historian, she had done extensive research into every project she had considered taking on before making a decision. If she was going to give him a chance, after her work here at the castle was done, if she was to give up her ban on men, then she needed to research him, too.

  She slid out of bed and pulled on a hoody to protect herself from the cool of the early morning. She pulled her laptop out of her bag and sat down in a chair.

  She watched him carefully as she waited for the computer to fire up, touching her star bracelet as she hoped she wouldn’t find anything bad. Finally it sprung to life and there was Wi-Fi here which was obviously a good thing.

  She googled ‘Cameron Heartstone’ and there wasn’t a lot about him. But when she googled ‘Phoenix Blaze’ the search engine returned millions of results. A lot of it was about his books, reviews and interviews he had given. He worked hard at his stories and had so much passion for what he did. There were articles about his mum dying four years ago and also about his dad dying and leaving him an unnamed castle last year. The press really could get hold of any information. But what stood out were the stories of him with different women. Charming, sweet, attentive, seductive were all words used by the women he had bedded to describe their brief relationship with him and she could vouch for all those qualities. They also said he was magnificent in bed. Several women had sold their stories to the papers and Milly’s heart bled for Cameron, that he had been betrayed first by his wife and then by these women. She clicked on Google Images and the screen filled with photo after photo of Cameron with hundreds of different women at glamorous parties and events. All of them were blonde and tanned with large boobs. He obviously had a type and although she wasn’t tanned and didn’t have big boobs, she still felt she fit into it to some extent. If she let anything happen between them, she would be one of many, a face in the crowd and someone he would forget soon after he’d had her in his bed.