The Billionaire's Convenient Bride

CHAPTER TWO

Kam Faulkner is back, staying in the Captain’s Suite ‘for as long as it takes’. It? What can he possibly want? It had better be an apology because that’s all I can afford.

Agnès Prideaux’s Journal

AGNÈS SLUMPED AGAINST the door, hugging Dora to her as she shut it against anyone else who felt like wandering in and shaking up her world.

Kam Faulkner. She could hardly believe it.

Dora whined and wriggled and she set her down and sat at her desk to give her wobbly knees a moment to recover.

How many times had she dreamed of his return to Castle Creek? In her imagination it had always been a magical moment. He’d look, then do a double take as he saw that the skinny girl who’d once made a nuisance of herself trailing after him had become a desirable woman.

Okay, that was a fairy-tale fantasy straight out of a romance novel and she’d had those romantic fantasies drummed out of her long ago. Her grandfather would probably have beaten them out of her, but you didn’t damage your only asset, the prize heifer.

Marriage was for duty, to bring wealth to the family, to provide heirs.

And forget desirable.

Her hair, caught up in an elastic band, was way off the shampoo-ad standard, she was wearing overalls and she hadn’t stopped to put on make-up before her confrontation with the boiler.

She’d felt more like kicking it than sweet-talking the wretched thing but had been afraid it would give up altogether and die on her.

With all their guests hard at work in the barn, she’d felt safe enough coming straight to her office to call Jimmy.

Her heart might have leapt at the sight of Kam Faulkner as she’d realised who he was, but his summons to lunch hadn’t sounded as if he was here for a friendly catch-up-with-the-family get-together.

The idea was ridiculous. Why would he give a tuppenny damn what had happened to her or her grandmother? Why would he want to set foot in Priddy Castle ever again, unless, heaven forbid, he was looking for some sort of compensation for his mother from her grandfather’s estate?

Her mouth dried on the thought.

The fact that he’d chosen the Captain’s Suite, her grandfather’s old room, seemed somehow ominous—a statement of intent. She checked the computer for his booking and saw it was for single occupancy.

She squashed the stupid heart-lifting response, knowing full well that a romantic weekend to show a partner where he’d grown up would be much better news, because she suspected that whatever the purpose of Kam’s visit, it did not bode well for what remained of the Prideaux family.

His mother was entitled, no doubt, but she should have claimed for unfair dismissal when she was turned out of her home, lost her job, because of Agnès’s grandfather’s bigotry. Agnès’s stupidity.

Now she would have to line up behind Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, whose claim for inheritance tax was outranked only by the account for her grandfather’s funeral and the legal expenses for probate.

Dora, clearly sensing her mood, gave her a sympathetic lick.

Agnès stroked a silky ear. There was no point going to meet trouble, it would come fast enough. ‘Come on, you little monster. Let’s get you cleaned up.’ And then she would give the boiler another jiggle.

* * *

Kam Faulkner looked around at the room that had once been Sir Hugo Prideaux’s bedroom, a room his mother had cleaned every day of her working life at Priddy Castle.

A room strictly out of bounds to the likes of him. Not that he’d ever obeyed rules, never let one keep him out of somewhere he wanted to go. He’d been in here before, when Sir Hugo Prideaux had been away up to his own kind of mischief. He knew that Lady Jane hadn’t slept in here with her husband.

This part of the castle had been built in the sixteenth century and had diamond-pane windows, linen-fold panelling and an ancient four-poster bed with heavily embroidered drapes. He hoped the mattress was a little more recent.

He dropped his bag, tossed the old-fashioned room key on the dressing table and walked across to the window.

The sun, finally breaking through the mist, lit the froth of fresh, bright spring leaves of the trees in the castle woods, sparkled along the creek and off the hulls of the yachts moored in centre of the creek. His playground as a boy.

He’d known every nest, where to watch for badger cubs, wait quietly to hear a nightingale sing. He’d seen ospreys swoop for sea trout and dodged the warden to catch them himself without any fancy gear. There would have been a hefty fine if he’d been caught.

These days he could afford the rods and the licence to fish legally but doubted there would be the same fun in it.

He turned back to the room, but it wasn’t the impressive four-poster he was seeing. It was Agnès Prideaux’s face as she’d recognised him. Something in those grey eyes before the shutters had come down and she’d been back in control and asking, oh, so politely after his mother.

That moment when she had seemed to lose her balance and he’d reached out and caught her arm. For a fraction of a second he’d had the feeling that all he had to do was draw her close, complete the circle, and his world would come right.

Imagination, he knew. If there had been anything it had been uncertainty, embarrassment, fear, because she knew his return could mean nothing good. Nothing good for her, anyway.

And there was absolutely nothing wrong with his world.

His phone pinged, a text from his PA demanding his attention, and he left the past to give his full attention to the present.

The future would wait until his lunch date with Agnès Prideaux.

* * *

Agnès washed and dried Dora, but when she took the dog back to her grandmother’s room she was asleep in her armchair.

Agnès gently rubbed behind Dora’s ear. ‘It looks like it’s just you, me and the boiler, sweetie.’

Dora gave a happy little yap as if she couldn’t think of anything she’d like better, and the boiler, having had time to think about it, finally juddered into life.

She sagged with relief as the tension left her. The chances were that it would behave for a few days, but she urgently needed a heating system that didn’t lurch from one crisis to another.

She needed a long-term solution and there was only one option left.

Showered, changed into the silk shirt and dark trouser suit she wore as her work uniform, Agnès stopped at Reception to let Suzanna know that they had hot water, at least for today.

‘That’s a relief,’ she said, and meant it. Suzanna lived in and it wasn’t only her job but her home that depended on the viability of the castle. She wasn’t alone in that.

There were other staff who might not find work easily if she lost the castle, herself among them. And there was her grandmother. She had become increasingly frail and there was no money for care-home fees.

‘Jamie is on top of your lunch. You won’t be embarrassed in front of your friend,’ Suzanna said, a question mark in the word ‘friend’.

‘He’s... Kam’s mother used to work at the castle.’

‘Oh, right. So he’s back to take a look at his old home...? Are you okay, Agnès?’

No, she was not okay. She was far from okay, but she said, ‘I need some air after being stuck down in the boiler room.’ Space to come to terms with what she had to do.

‘Not a problem. Someone has to walk through the woods and check on the progress of the bluebells and it’s not going to be me.’

Dora was at the door before Suzanna—who would do anything rather than step out of her high heels, pull on a pair of boots and walk a muddy path—handed her the pair of wellingtons kept behind the desk.

Once upon a time, back in the days when gardeners came in dozens and were paid a pittance, the castle gardens had been open to the public by request only. If you wanted to visit Lady Anne Prideaux’s rose garden, you had to write and make an appointment.

Her great-grandfather had gone a little further, opening to the public on half a dozen days in the year when for a small sum—all in aid of charity—the castle servants would serve you with a cream tea in the Orangery.

It was what a gentleman did.

Her grandfather had needed hard cash and by then there wasn’t a duke, marquis or earl who wasn’t opening up his stately home to the public to help pay for the upkeep of their ancestral piles.

He’d opened up the gardens to the public for five days a week in the summer. It was, however, special flowers—the snowdrops, bluebells, azaleas—that drew the crowds in the spring. And then, in summer, Lady Anne’s rose garden, planted in the early nineteenth century with roses brought back by a plant-hunting cousin from Persia, filled the air with scent and drew the crowds.

In the early days her grandmother had offered cream teas in the garden in good weather, in the Orangery in the colder, wetter months. Darjeeling, Orange Pekoe and Earl Grey, served in bone china. Scones, baked in the castle kitchen by the under cook, served with jams made from fruit grown in the kitchen garden.

Some people had come just for the tea.

Now they took in B & B guests, and lunches and afternoon tea in the Orangery were self-service from a counter. More practical, maybe, and no one walked off with the plastic spoons, but no one came just for the tea, either.

Aware that it would be colder under the trees, Agnès grabbed a jacket and scarf and paused at the door to breath in the fresh, damp air of an April morning.

Rainwater was dripping from guttering that needed replacing, but the sun had finally burned off the mist, a blackbird was singing in an oak tree and the sky was a clear pale blue. It was one of those perfect moments that needed savouring and Agnès closed her eyes and lifted her face to the light.

‘Don’t you have more important things to do than walk your grandmother’s dog?’

Kam’s caustic remark didn’t faze her. He might have grown, become a man, but his footsteps were an echo through time. She’d heard him coming across the polished oak floor and steeled herself not to react as he came to a halt beside her.

The scent was new, though.

As a boy, Kam had been all about grass and newly caught fish in the summer, bonfires, sawn wood and wet dog in the winter. This Kam was a man, the scent still masculine but more sophisticated. Leather, good soap and something unfamiliar that stirred the butterflies back into life, sending a frisson of awareness across her skin.

She gave herself a mental shake. It was all memory, it wasn’t real...

‘I’m going to check the bluebell woods,’ she said, briskly. ‘Why don’t you join me?’

‘It’s a bit early if you’re hoping for a rush of visitors to pay for a new boiler.’

‘It would take more than a rush,’ she said. ‘It would take an invasion.’

She risked a glance at him but he was looking out over the woods, his jaw set, his mouth a straight line. Whatever he was remembering it wasn’t a recollection that brought him joy.

If that was how he felt, there was no point in putting it off until lunch. He might as well know the situation right now so that he could leave.

She cleared her throat and he turned to look at her. ‘You wanted to say something?’

‘Only that if you’ve come hoping to claim compensation from the estate for your mother, Kam, I’m afraid you’re out of luck.’

His face remained stony, only the barest tightening of jaw muscles suggesting that she’d hit a nerve.

‘We’ll talk about why I’m here over lunch, Agnès.’

Then he looked at her and the butterflies stilled as she felt all his pent-up anger coming at her in waves. She didn’t flinch. Years of living with her grandfather’s temper had taught her to stand her ground and she was simply being honest with him.

‘Why wait?’ Whatever was on his mind would be easier said in the quiet of the woods than over dull food in the Orangery. ‘If you come with me now you could at least avoid a mediocre lunch. You might even spot a badger.’

Something flickered in those dark eyes as he glanced away towards the woods. But then his head snapped round so that he was looking straight ahead.

‘I have to meet someone.’

Who? Where?

‘Maybe later,’ she said, as Dora tugged impatiently at the lead. ‘If you’re staying that long.’

‘I’m staying,’ he said, turning to look down at her, eyes dark as pitch, his expression unreadable. ‘I’m back for good.’

Before she could answer, could begin to think what that might mean, he stepped down onto the drive. There was a dark blue sports car parked casually alongside the front door that hadn’t been there earlier and could only be his but he strode past it and headed down the drive.

Agnès stared after him, remembering the jaunty walk, the cheeky smile of the boy she’d grown up with, the teenage Kam. There was nothing of that in Kam Faulkner’s expression or in his determined stride, straight back and broad shoulders.

She wasn’t sure she liked the man who’d returned but swallowed down a sense of loss. He owed her no smile. The debt was all on one side, but she’d have to wait to find out what he wanted from her.

Money?

His car must have cost telephone numbers and the way he’d ignored the guest car park and left it at the door, as if he owned the place, spoke volumes. He’d booked the most expensive suite in the hotel, her grandfather’s old room, and the clothes he was wearing hadn’t come from a chain store.

This wasn’t a man looking for a few thousand pounds for his mother.

Maybe it was simply about returning to the scene of his banishment to show them all that the boy her grandfather had branded a half-Arab bastard had done more than survive. A lot more.

And she was glad. Truly.

That he was back for good, though, disturbed her.

Was he planning to buy one of those expensive places with river frontage, a boathouse, fishing rights? Rub all their noses in his success?

Everyone knew what had happened back then—you couldn’t keep gossip like that quiet in a small town.

Would people remember, stop what they were saying when she went into the post office?

Did he still play the guitar?

The thought slipped into her mind without warning, a melancholy minor chord rippling through the woods at night as fresh in her memory as if she were leaning out of her bedroom window to catch the sound.

Dora’s paws jiggled up and down in her eagerness to chase down the scents reaching her from the wood.

‘Patience,’ Agnès said, glancing back as she finally headed for the trees, but her disturbing visitor had vanished beyond the curve in the drive.

Where was he going? There was nowhere down the lane... Except his old home.

It had been empty for years. She’d suggested that her grandfather do it up as a holiday let to help with the running costs of the estate.

Fat chance.

Her grandfather had never listened to women and by the time he’d died there had been no money.

No money to fix the boiler, repair the roof, replace the guttering which, as the castle was listed, would have to be specially made to match the existing elaborate hoppers. No money to flip the cottage so that they could turn it into a holiday let...

She’d drawn up a five-year plan but it had ground to a halt. It was definitely time to look reality in the face and the woods had always been her favourite place to think.

Sunlight was filtering through the fresh green of the canopy but there was barely a hint of blue to lift her spirits and, as she took the path leading down to a clearing where the first bluebells would open, her footsteps beat out the word trapped, trapped, trapped...

* * *

Kam strode down the lane, oddly unsettled by his exchanges with Agnès. Her face, that last image of her, had been imprinted like a photograph on the hard drive of his memory.

In his head he’d known that she would be older, known exactly what kind of trouble she was in and yet the reality had been a shock.

In the few seconds when he’d watched her, before she’d known he was there, he’d seen the woman she had become. Her dark hair was still long and thick, tied back to keep it from her face.

Her voice was a little deeper, her shoulders wider, her neck still long.

But then she’d turned around to see who had invaded her privacy and he’d seen the dark shadows beneath eyes the exact grey of an osprey’s feather lit by sunlight, the strain of constantly flirting with the edge of disaster as she attempted to keep Priddy Castle ticking over.

The heat of embarrassment at being overheard begging.

In the millisecond of shock as she’d realised who he was, before the shutters had come down and she’d retreated behind the façade of businesswoman, he’d seen something else. A flash of some unreadable emotion as memory had flooded in.

He would have given a lot to know what she’d been thinking at that moment, but she was no longer the girl whose every thought had been telegraphed in a look. She’d grown up and learned to hide her feelings.

There had been a wish to see her suffer but, as he pushed open the gate of the house where he and his mother had had lived, it occurred to him that in taking the castle from her, he might be doing her a favour. That it would be something of a Pyrrhic victory.

Except that he would own the castle and she would be the one pushed out into the world, having to reinvent herself, make a new life.

That would be justice of a kind, he told himself as he walked around the outside of the cottage.

There were more tiles missing from the rear of the roof, cracked window panes held together with tape, a broken downpipe.

In the back garden, half buried in dead leaves and weeds, he found the stone under which he’d hidden his door key on the morning they’d left, because one day, he’d sworn, he would be back.

He turned it over, woodlice panicked and ran in every direction, a fat slug shrank from the sudden exposure to light, but the key was still there, waiting for him.

He picked it up, wiped it clean in the grass, dried it with his thumb. The lock was stiff but eventually turned and he stepped into the kitchen.

Technically, he was trespassing, but it was obvious that no one had been here in a long time.

Nothing had changed.

The kitchen hadn’t been updated since the cottage had been built when Victoria was on the throne. There were shelves lined with paper that had rotted to shreds, a stone sink that was still fitted with a pump to the well, although mains water had been connected a century ago.

What was new was the smell.

Damp, mice, rot...

Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust, dried leaves had found their way in through the gaps under the doors, dead insects lay on the windowsills.

There was the same threadbare carpet in the living room and on the stairs, only now it was damp and mouldy.

He instinctively avoided the loose stair, the places that creaked as he walked upstairs.

The old claw-footed bath, worn with age but once polished to a shine, was streaked with limescale where a tap had been left dripping until someone had had the sense to turn off the water. He knew it must have been Agnès.

The brass fittings were green with verdigris and there were dead leaves and heaven knew what else clumped in a filthy mess in the bottom.