The tycoon returns...

...with a convenient proposal!

Since Kam Faulkner’s mother unjustly lost her job at Priddy Castle after his stolen moment with the owner’s granddaughter, Agnès Prideaux, Kam has dreamed of revenge. Years later, billionaire Kam is back to buy the castle—but finds Agnès has inherited the crumbling estate! A convenient marriage could solve both their problems, but their rekindling attraction is anything but convenient... Could this be Kam’s second chance with his first love?

LIZ FIELDING was born with itchy feet. She made it to Zambia before her twenty-first birthday and, gathering her own special hero and a couple of children on the way, lived in Botswana, Kenya and Bahrain—with pauses for sightseeing pretty much everywhere in between. She now lives in the west of England, close to the Regency grandeur of Bath and the ancient mystery of Stonehenge, and these days leaves her pen to do the travelling. For news of upcoming books visit Liz’s website: lizfielding.com.

Also by Liz Fielding

SOS: Convenient Husband RequiredMistletoe and the Lost StilettoTempted by TroubleFlirting with ItalianThe Last Woman He’d Ever DateAnything but Vanilla…For His Eyes OnlyVettori’s Damsel in DistressThe Sheikh’s Convenient PrincessHer Pregnancy Bombshell

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

The Billionaire’s Convenient Bride

Liz Fielding

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-09089-6

THE BILLIONAIRE’S CONVENIENT BRIDE

© 2019 Liz Fielding

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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Version: 2020-03-02

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For my dearest daughter, Amy. My rock.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Extract

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

Two cancellations for weekend craft class. Main boiler playing up. Rained all night. Need more buckets.

Agnès Prideaux’s Journal

KAM FAULKNER LEANED forward against the steering wheel, peering through the rain blanketing the creek to catch his first glimpse of Priddy Castle.

Just over a decade ago, he’d been an angry teenager looking back out of the window of the van containing all their possessions. Angry, afraid and desperately hoping for some signal, a last-minute reprieve, until the very last moment when the island had cut off the view of the only home he’d ever known.

Cutting off the last view of the girl who had caused all the trouble.

He’d sworn then, as the ferry had docked on the far bank and his mother had forced a reassuring smile, a brave Don’t worry, we’ll manage, that he’d be back and he’d make her pay. He’d make them all pay.

It had been raining then. Not this soft stuff, little more than mist that clung to the windscreen, blurring the view. It had been drenching rain that had soaked their clothes as they’d stowed their home into a rented van.

It had run off Agnès Prideaux’s long dark hair, down her face, her soaked T-shirt clinging to her as she stood on the quayside, watching the ferry leave. Saying nothing, not even a shouted sorry even though the loss of his mother’s job, the loss of his home was all her fault.

The ferry cleared the island and his throat dried as he caught his first glimpse of his destination.

Castle was too grand a name for it.

Priddy wasn’t one of those great grey fortresses built by the Normans. It had started life as little more than a stone watchtower thrown up to guard the entrance to the river and the once important trading port upstream from raiders, would-be invaders, its fortunes ebbing and waning like the tidal river it guarded.

It had been regularly abandoned, only remembered when new dangers threatened until an enterprising man, left in possession after some forgotten crisis, had decided to stay. He’d built himself a gentleman’s residence alongside the tower, which became a decorative irrelevance until the eighteenth century when the risk of invasion from France gave it a renewed purpose.

The only invasion had been from smugglers carrying brandy and silk.

They slipped into the creek without challenge because Sir Arthur Draycott, baronet and magistrate, whose duty it was to guard the coast and hang smugglers, was in cahoots with Henri Prideaux, the most infamous smuggler in that part of the coast.

Not that Sir Arthur had lived to enjoy his ill-gotten gains. But his daughter had married the smuggler and Henri Prideaux had become king of the castle, his own title bought from equally corrupt politicians he’d done business with.

There was nothing to guard now and, with the last baronet gambling away what remained of the fortune, Priddy Castle had become little more than an upmarket B & B.

He had wondered if it would look smaller than his imagination remembered but, looming out of the mist, the rain-darkened grey tower retained every bit of its threatening presence.

Chains clanked as the old pontoon ferry reached the slipway and the ramp was lowered. He forced himself to relax and joined the vehicles heading along the quay, past the row of old fishermen’s cottages tucked in beneath the protection of the castle.

The fishermen had shaken off the shackles of the Prideaux estate when the railway had arrived on the far side of the creek, opening up the lucrative London market for their catch.

Artists, attracted by the light, and the cheap cost of living, had been drawn to the area until, around the turn of the century and it had become a well-known colony.

It had all been a bit ramshackle and scruffy when he’d left but today there were tubs of spring flowers, vivid against the freshly whitewashed walls, and an upmarket deli was doing brisk business serving the yachting fraternity that had grown up in the safety of the creek.

Even the old chandler’s store, where he’d once conducted a lively back-door trade in the sea trout he’d poached from the creek, had been given a make-over.

The number of fishing boats heading out to sea might have dwindled to a handful, but tourism and the marina had filled the gap. The town of Castle Creek, with its pastel-painted cottages rising on the opposite bank in theatrical stages, had become a desirable place to have a holiday cottage. A place to bring your children for the summer. A place to build sandcastles on the beach, mess about in boats, build happy memories if you were among the privileged few.

Kam took the lane leading up to the castle, slowing as he rounded a bend, and then pulled over in front of the cottage that had once been his home.

Tied to his mother’s job at the castle, the cottage had been neglected by a careless owner, but the windows had shone, the garden had been neat and cared for.

He’d seen photographs, but the reality shocked him. Roof tiles had slipped, there was a cracked pane stuffed with cardboard to keep out the weather. It was in the shelter of the hill, but paintwork needed constant attention this close to the sea. As for the garden. He would have to fight his way through the rank weeds to reach the front door.

If it was no use to the estate, why hadn’t they sold it? Or done it up to let as a holiday rental. Things were bad now, but they hadn’t always been.

After a moment to compose himself, he carried on up the hill.

On the sheltered, landward-side of the tower, the original house had been extended by successive generations until it had become a rambling muddle of styles, but as he swept through the gates it was the rose bricks of the Tudor frontage that appeared though the soft filter of the mist.

It looked better than he’d expected after seeing the cottage.

The gravel drive was weed-free and raked and while the drifts of naturalised daffodils that would have lit up the long curve of the drive early in spring had died back, there were early tulips glowing pink through a haze of forget-me-nots in huge tubs by the heavy oak front door.

They did a good job of distracting the eye but, this close, the stains on the brickwork where the sagging gutter had overflowed during the heavy overnight rain were obvious.

There was an arrow pointing to the designated parking area where half a dozen cars were neatly lined up. He ignored it and parked near the front door. He grabbed his bag and, ignoring the damp mist that clung to his face, stood back to get a better look at the roof.

It wasn’t only the guttering that needed urgent attention.

* * *

‘Please, Jimmy...’ Agnès Prideaux was beyond pride. She was begging. ‘I did the jiggly thing that you showed me to get it going but it just juddered a bit. It needs your magic touch.’

‘What that boiler needs is a one-way ticket to the scrapyard.’

‘It’s top of my list,’ she assured him.

Along with patching up the roof, fixing the gutters and half a dozen other problems that her grandfather had ignored for years and then, having invested all the estate’s disposable assets in a bank offering a high interest rate that anyone could see was a disaster waiting to happen, had drunk one bottle of brandy too many and died, leaving her to deal with the mess.

‘If you could just pop over in your lunch hour and do your thing, I’ll treat you to the chef’s special in the conservatory.’

This was happening so regularly that she didn’t need to mention the cash-in-hand payment that would come out of her own purse.

Jimmy sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Agnès, but the boss has laid down the law. The castle is off-limits until your account is paid.’

‘But—’

This morning had been a disaster. Without the boiler there would be no hot water for the guests after a long hard day creating their masterpieces.

‘Even in my own time,’ he added, before she could plead.

What?

‘Can he do that?’ she demanded as her struggle to maintain a swan-like calm while paddling frantically to keep ahead of her creditors, already stretched to breaking point, finally snapped. ‘The miserable old goat knows he’ll be paid as soon as the lawyers stop faffing around and settle the probate.’

She’d not only snapped but, far worse, she was lying. She was that desperate.

Probate had been granted a week ago but between her grandfather’s lack of judgement and a looming inheritance tax bill, she was about to descend into negative equity in a big way. Her only chance of keeping the castle was to convince the bank that it was a viable business, but if the boiler wasn’t fixed the comments on the review sites would ensure that there would be no more guests to feed the maintenance bills and the bank that liked to say yes would be saying not a chance...

‘Can I speak to him?’ she asked.

Another voice said, ‘The miserable old goat has you on speaker phone, Miss Prideaux, and to answer your question, yes, if Jimmy wants to keep his job, he can.’

She swallowed. ‘Mr Bridges—’

‘Priddy Castle business is always welcome,’ he said, cutting off her apology before she could even think how to recover the situation, ‘but our terms are one month. We’ll be happy to oblige just as soon as the outstanding account is settled.’

She held the phone to her ear for a long moment, but the connection had been cut. She’d been left hanging in space with nowhere to go.

‘Problem?’

Agnès jumped at the unexpected sound and swung round on her chair.

The guests were all supposed to be safely out of earshot in the barn creating collages but the man leaning against the doorframe didn’t look as if he spent his weekends messing about with scraps from the attic. At all. What was clear was that he’d been there long enough to have heard every word of her embarrassing conversation with the heating engineer.

She took a breath and did her best to arrange her face into a welcoming smile. ‘Can I help you?’

‘I have a reservation,’ he said, ‘but there’s no one at the reception desk.’

‘I’m so sorry. Suzanna must have been called away.’

‘A complaint about the lack of hot water, perhaps?’

She felt the hot flush rush to her cheeks but rose to her feet, indicating with a gesture that he should lead the way. ‘Are you here for the class?’ she asked, reminding herself not to judge by appearances. He might want to tap into his creativity. ‘It’s already started but—’

‘I haven’t come here to upcycle rubbish into art.’

He hadn’t used his fingers to make quote marks but the way he’d said ‘art’ he might as well have done. He had, however, paraphrased the poster pinned up on the wall behind her that listed the craft weekends she’d organised to bring in guests during the winter months.

His tone did suggest that he had something on his mind and her heart sank. Was this another of her grandfather’s debts come to haunt them?

She cleared her throat to ask, since there was no use putting off bad news, but he beat her to the question.

‘You don’t recognise me, Agnès?’

Distracted by the crisis with the boiler, eyes gritty from scouring the accounts in a rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul attempt to find money for the outstanding plumbing bill—not to mention the eye-avoiding embarrassment—she hadn’t given him much more than a glance. Total good hostess fail.

But then he said her name and a flicker of butterflies stirred beneath her waist.

He waited for her brain to catch up with what she had heard, what she was seeing.

A fuzz of the misty rain that had blanketed the creek since dawn clung to a familiar mop of unruly dark hair, olive skin...

The close cut beard was new but as she met the steady gaze of dark eyes, the years fell away, she was in her teens and in the desperate, painful throes of first love...

‘Kam?’ Agnès breathed the name, reached out to touch his jacket, as if to reassure herself that he was real. Curled back her fingers before they came into contact with the damp leather.

His beautiful boyish face had been battered into manhood, his shoulders had widened and the growth spurt that came later to boys had taken him past six feet. He seemed twice the size of the youth who’d been banished from the castle by her grandfather. Larger, tougher.

‘Kam Faulkner,’ she said.

‘There,’ he said, the corner of his mouth pulling up in the nearly smile that had stolen her heart the first time she’d seen him and, she discovered, still had the power to make it leap. ‘That wasn’t so difficult.’

Difficult enough. She’d been holding her breath and his name had been little more than a whisper.

‘No...’

She was still holding it. Her chest hurt and she was feeling giddy...

If she hadn’t been so distracted by the leaking roof, the dodgy boiler, the fact that the castle was on the knife-edge of financial disaster, she would have known him despite the beard, the fact that his nose had been broken and a scar now ruined the symmetry of his brows.

Breathe...

‘Breathe,’ he said, catching her elbow as she grabbed for the back of her chair.

Easier said than done when the warmth of his palm, the touch of his fingers was sending shock waves through her body.

‘Yes...sorry... I didn’t expect... I wasn’t thinking...’ She made an effort to pull herself together. She should remove her arm. Touching was... ‘It’s been a long time,’ she said, not wanting to think about what touching him had done.

A long time but eyes never changed. She had dreamed about those eyes. Dreamed about his hand taking hers. Wanting so much. Seeing that same want echoed back at her even as he stepped back, turned and walked away.

With an effort of will she removed her elbow from his hand and straightened, but as he took a step back she had to stop herself from reaching out, grabbing a handful of jacket to keep him close.

It was ridiculous. It had been years ago. She had been a teenager with a crush. But in all those years, the hideous school proms with a ‘suitable’ date, the marriage market debutant parties, no one had ever come close to that moment when he’d reached out a hand...

She swallowed, mouth dry, unable to think of anything appropriate to say.

How unexpected.

How wonderful to see him after all this time.

How disturbing to still feel the same knee-weakening desire...

That he’d reached out now meant nothing. It had been an automatic response when he’d thought she was going to fall. Nothing in his expression, in his manner suggested that this was a happy homecoming, that he was here to catch up with old friends. To catch up with her.

His smile had been fleeting, ironic rather than warm, his voice cool. And why wouldn’t it be? She was the reason he and his mother had been banished from the castle, from their home. Which begged the question—why had he come back?

‘How is your mother?’ she asked, when the silence had stretched to breaking point. Desperately falling back on the conventional. Sounding like her grandmother talking to the youth who worked in the garden.

‘It’s a little late to be asking about my mother’s health,’ he said, giving her nothing back. Nothing to work with.

‘She’s—?’ She left the question unasked. ‘Grandfather...’ Kam’s face darkened. ‘He died last year.’

‘I heard.’

He didn’t say he was sorry and his face was shadowed in the windowless little room. Unreadable. Not like the last time she’d seen him.

She’d raced to the quay desperate to tell him how sorry she was, to tell him that she’d begged her grandfather to change his mind, but she had been too late.

She’d tried to shout his name as his mother drove the van onto the ferry. The raw anger in the look he’d given her had dried the words in her mouth and she’d just stood there, a painful lump in her throat, helpless, hopeless, too miserable even to cry.

He’d learned to hide his feelings, but he had not forgotten.

Reminding herself that she was running a hotel, that he was a guest, she gathered a breath and dug deep for her professional smile.

‘Well, it’s lovely to see you after all this time. I hope you’ll enjoy your stay.’

‘I know I will. With or without hot water.’

There was a certainty in his reply, a suggestion that it had not been a passing fancy to stay at the castle.

‘It will be sorted by this evening,’ she said, with more confidence than she felt. ‘Suzanna should be back at her desk by now. Would you like coffee? Tea? A sandwich,’ she added a little desperately, when he didn’t reply.

‘Bacon?’ he suggested, his mouth twisting in a parody of a smile as he reminded her of all the times she’d brought him her breakfast bacon in a sandwich. ‘You offered the heating engineer lunch.’

She swallowed. He wanted lunch? With her? She didn’t believe it for a minute and banished the butterflies.

‘Jimmy is a lot more than a heating engineer, he’s a boiler whisperer and I was asking him to surrender his lunch hour.’ Clearly he’d heard every word and there was no point in pretending. ‘Of course, if you know anything about boiler maintenance...?’

‘I’ll pay for my own lunch but reserve a table for two in the Orangery, Agnès, and I’ll tell you exactly what I know.’

There was no upward inflection, no warmth to suggest this would be a cosy catch-up with an old friend but then Kam had never been cosy. He’d been a dangerous lad; she’d adored him on sight. As a three-year-old she couldn’t do more than watch as he’d climbed trees where he could barely reach the branches.

She’d followed him relentlessly as a five-year-old, trying to copy him, wanting to catch fish and swim in the river, spend the night out in the hides he’d built to watch owls and badgers. Wanting to be a boy like him. Taking no notice when he told her to clear off.

At six she’d cracked it with the bacon sandwich.

By the time she was fourteen she didn’t want to be a boy but knew that if she went all girly on him he wouldn’t want her around. But when she’d come home from school for the summer just before she’d turned sixteen, it hadn’t just been her. The tension had been palpable. She’d expected him to be waiting for her that evening in the hide, but he hadn’t been there, hadn’t come. He’d looked and his eyes had said yes, but he’d kept his distance and she’d thought that because of who he was, who she was, she had to make the first move...

She’d got it so wrong. Even now, the thought of what had happened brought a hot flush to her cheek.

He had been dangerous then and he was dangerous now, to her peace of mind if nothing else. Every cell in her body warned her that he wasn’t here on some sentimental pilgrimage. To relive his boyhood memories, the good ones before everything had gone splat. Whatever he wanted, she was pretty sure it wasn’t a trip down memory lane.

Before she could make an excuse, tell him that she had meetings, Suzanna arrived at his shoulder and, making an apologetic face from behind his back, said, ‘Mr Faulkner? I’m so sorry I wasn’t in Reception when you arrived.’ As he half turned to see who was talking to him, Agnès spotted the small bedraggled dog she was holding at arm’s length to keep the mud from her uniform. ‘I’m afraid Dora has been down by the lake.’

Down by the lake and rolling in duck poo from the smell.

‘I’ll take her while you show Mr Faulkner to his room,’ Agnès said, tucking the dog firmly under her arm, glad of an excuse to escape, catch her breath.

‘Would you like coffee, Mr Faulkner?’ Suzanna asked.

‘No. Thank you,’ he replied, his voice noticeably warmer as he spoke to the receptionist, but he still hadn’t moved, hadn’t taken his eyes off her. ‘One o’clock, Agnès,’ he repeated.

Kam and his mother had been treated shamefully by her grandfather and he clearly had things he needed to get off his chest. Telling him that she was sorry would be meaningless but maybe hearing him out would help him draw a line under the past so that he, at least, could move on.

It would be painful, humiliating, but he deserved that courtesy from her.

‘One o’clock,’ she agreed. ‘Suzanna, will you call Jamie and let him know? Mr Faulkner is a special guest,’ she added, knowing that the chef would ensure that he offered them something a little more interesting than the basic fare. ‘I’m sure Grandma will want to catch up with your news if you can spare the time, Kam,’ she added, as if this were a perfectly normal social event, ‘but if you’ll excuse me, I need to give this little monster a bath.’

‘It looks like the same dog,’ he said, ‘but it can’t be Daisy.’

He remembered the name of her grandmother’s dog? That should have reassured her but, on the contrary, it felt ominous.

‘Daisy crossed the rainbow bridge years ago,’ she managed, through a throat that felt as if it were stuffed with straw. ‘This is Dora. Her granddaughter,’ she added, very conscious of Suzanna’s interest. ‘They have the same colouring, but she’s smaller. The runt of the litter.’ Desperate to escape his intense gaze, she turned to Suzanna. ‘Where have you put Mr Faulkner, Suzanna?’

‘He’s booked into the Captain’s Suite.’

‘Oh.’

The suite had been named for the smuggler, Henri Prideaux. According to the legend on the castle website, he’d fallen in love with the daughter of Sir Arthur Draycott, baronet and local magistrate, charged by the Crown with the task of guarding the creek from those illegally running brandy and silk into the country. Sir Arthur, far from doing his duty, had been using his position to make a fortune as their accomplice.

Henri, so it was said, having fallen in love with Elizabeth, had given up his life of crime to marry her and settle down in Castle Creek.

It was the story she was using to sell the castle as a wedding venue. Take your vows in the pretty chapel where Henri and Elizabeth were wed, then seal your love in the four-poster bed where they created the Prideaux dynasty. She’d had a couple of enquiries, but if she didn’t get the boiler sorted her big plans would be going nowhere.

‘Well, you’ll be comfortable,’ she assured him, even while thinking that the Captain’s Suite was an odd choice for a man on his own, assuming he was on his own.

Why was he here?

She made an effort to look no more than professionally interested but the corner of his mouth lifted in an ironic smile and she felt her cheeks grow hot.

She needed to focus...

The B & B, the wedding business, were her last chance to save the castle and the good news was that Kamal Faulkner had taken their most expensive room. Hooray! If her conscience was prodding her to offer it to him as her guest, she refused to listen.

If he wanted to indulge himself by sleeping in the Tudor four-poster, alone or with a partner, he would have to pay the going rate because she couldn’t afford the gesture.

‘How long are you staying, Kam?’

‘As long as it takes.’

What?

Not her business. Her only interest was that he would be spending several days in their most expensive room. Whatever he might want from her, they would have extra money coming in.

Double hooray...

‘Right... Well, if you need anything, Suzanna is here and will be happy to help.’

‘What I want, Suzanna cannot give me, Agnès, but that will keep until lunch.’

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.

The rose-patterned wallpaper in what had been his mother’s room was peeling from the wall, there was a puddle of water rotting the floorboards where a window no longer fitted and everywhere there were mouse droppings.

It would all have to be ripped out, taken back to the bare bones. Or maybe he should just leave it and offer it to Agnès and her grandmother. They’d need somewhere to go, there would be a vacancy for a housekeeper and Agnès would need a job...

They would be the ones begging him to fix the roof, the windows. Priddy pride brought low, he thought. Although it had been pretty low when she was offering the heating engineer lunch to come and fix her boiler and no doubt a bung his boss would know nothing about.

There was a fly buzzing in the window. The wood was swollen; he had to bang on the frame with the heel of his hand to open it so that it could escape. Outside the air was fresh and he leaned on the sill to breathe in the scent of the woods. He could hear the birds, identifying their calls with ease, and in the distance the faint clang of rope against mast out on the creek.

He could have been fifteen again. Foraging for mushrooms at dawn, his dog at his side. Catching a sea trout or two if the warden was safely out of the way to drop off at the chandler’s on his way to school. At dusk he’d be lying in wait by a badger’s sett, or watching foxes slinking through the undergrowth hunting for small mammals. He’d built a hide so that he could watch a pair of owls floating silently to and from their nest as they fed their young, Agnès holding her breath at his side.

He’d caught fish for a young osprey he’d found with a broken wing and even when it was healed and she’d found a mate, had young to feed, she still came to his whistle, sure of a reward.

He’d had that freedom snatched away from him to be replaced by the concrete confines of a city tower block.

He took a step back from the window but as he reached for the catch a movement on the path through the woods caught his attention.

Agnès with that ridiculous dachshund.

She stopped for a moment to take a photograph with her phone, the dog dancing around her. She was looking down, untangling the lead from her legs and then, as if sensing him there, she looked up, lifting her hand to shade her eyes from a low shaft of sunlight that sliced through the trees and lit her face.

How many times had he seen her do that? Make exactly that gesture, looking up at his window, hoping he’d be there, desperate for company, for freedom from the miserable atmosphere in the castle.

A little girl racing through the woods, calling his name, hair flying, all legs and arms, her eyes and mouth too big for her face. Tripping over tree roots, grazing her knees, having to be taken home to have them cleaned up by his mother.

A nuisance, a liability, a responsibility.

But she’d stopped falling over, started to bring food with her. Sandwiches, pie, cake.

She’d been lonely and he’d always been hungry so he’d tolerated her presence. More than tolerated—he’d made her his accomplice. He might have suspected, but the fish warden wouldn’t dare stop Sir Hugo Prideaux’s granddaughter to check her pink backpack for poached fish, not if he valued his job.

He’d taught her to swim, but only because she’d followed him into the river and he would have got the blame if she’d drowned. She could climb trees, knew to keep quiet in a hide; he’d even trained Ozzie to come to her.

He’d treated her like a boy. She was never girly, didn’t care about getting dirty, tearing her clothes. But then one summer she’d come home from school and everything was different. She still came to the woods but her hair was no longer an untidy tangle; it was a dark skein of silk that he wanted to touch. And under the baggy T-shirts and jeans there was no hiding the fact that she was a girl.

He was older, but she was suddenly the grown-up and he felt awkward around her. Worse than awkward. Looking at her mouth made him feel weird, then interested, and he didn’t know what to do.

His mother noticed—she noticed everything—and warned him to keep his distance. Agnès was growing up and Sir Hugo wouldn’t want his granddaughter being touched by the likes of him.

Except she didn’t stay away. He closed his fist at the memory of the river water running off her skin, gleaming pale in the moonlight. His hand running over the sleek softness...

For a moment their eyes met across the distance. Was she remembering that moment? That one forbidden touch?

For a moment it was as if they were frozen in that look but then, as Dora barked, setting up a flurry of collared doves, she turned away and melted into the shade. And he was the one holding his breath. Responding to the memory like a green boy.

He’d wanted to look her in the face as he took everything from her, but he should have left it to his lawyer. It wasn’t too late. This could wait. He could cancel the appointment with the architect he’d asked to meet him here and be gone before she returned from her walk.

He shut the window and, phone in his hand, took one last glance around the room, the patch of damp beneath the window, the darker rectangles on the walls where he’d stuck up posters...

He found the number but then hesitated.

There were things he wanted to see, plans he needed to make, and he still wanted to look Agnès Prideaux in the eye when he told her that he would have her castle, one way or another. But he wouldn’t be indulging a need for pay-back by offering her the cottage.

He’d thought he had what had happened slotted away tidily in the part of his brain labelled ‘The Past’. This was now, and he was the one in control.

He should have remembered that the first casualty in any campaign was the plan. He’d planned to be cold, clinical, detached. Instead he’d been swamped by the rush of memories of a time when they had been friends, allies, accomplices; of that first explosion of sexual awareness.

Agnès might not have a title but while she stayed here people would always think of her, treat her, as a lady. She might look worn down by the financial struggle she faced, broke, but that was the gentry for you.

He paid his bills on time, but until he gave the estate a new purpose, new meaning, to the locals she would still be Miss Prideaux, while he would be the boy whose father had disappeared one day, without a word, leaving his mother to scrub the floors at Priddy Castle.

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