CHAPTER TWO
‘WHAT?NO!’
Matteo didn’t tell lies. His life was founded on truth since he knew the pain of lies by omission. No sugar coating. His word was his bond.
He was known for two things in both his personal life and in business. His ruthlessness and his honesty.
He looked at the woman now gripping the old oak door as if it were the only thing holding her up. Her fingers slender and pale, biting into the dark wood. She stood there in a long, soft white dress as if she’d stepped from another time. Like a woman from a pre-Raphaelite era painting, an artist’s muse burst from the canvas. With red hair in a thick ponytail over her shoulder. Tendrils loose and curling round her heart-shaped face. Her pale skin dotted with faint freckles he remembered as darker from running in the sunshine over a long-ago summer.
But she wasn’t a child any longer. On any objective assessment, she’d grown into an exquisite woman. The heat of admiration curled a seductive journey deep inside.
A woman he should not be suffering errant attraction to. One he was about to evict...
Not evict. Politely ask to leave, with handsome compensation for doing so. And once she was gone, this would represent his sweetest victory. The adopted and disdained Bainbridge inheriting the jewel in the family crown. Its most coveted possession, Easton Hall. A dream he’d had since his nineteenth birthday when he’d finally cut the false cord that had tied him to this family that wasn’t his by blood. The family that had all but abandoned their adopted child in favour of their natural-born one.
He knew those who considered themselves the ‘true’ Bainbridges wouldn’t like it, and he was prepared for the fight. They were crooked to the core, if his quiet investigations into their charity interests were anything to go by, and had far more to lose than he did. In fact, they were unable to match him in any way. Still, there’d already been murmurings at the reading of the will. Unhappiness that he’d been appointed executor when he wasn’t a real Bainbridge, and others claimed to be more qualified. Wanting a part of the vast property riches here when they weren’t entitled to any of it. Threats of challenging the will.
They could all go to hell.
He’d vowed then that if there was any way he could take this place for his own, he’d ensure none of that cursed family ever graced its halls again. The house would be lost to them for ever.
His victory was almost complete, but for the woman standing in front of him, mouth gaping like a hooked fish.
‘Are you going to let me in?’ he asked.
They needed to discuss the predicament in which they found themselves. The estate was crumbling. Mae had talked of her worries about it and keeping up with the specialist work this home required to bring it back to its former glory. Especially being asset rich and cash poor, as were so many of those whose money and history were as old as the dirt upon which their homes stood. Mae had refused his help when alive. After her death he’d tried to send out a structural engineer to assess the state of the property, but the man hadn’t even been able to set foot in the house. Reportedly being chased away by a terrifying woman and a threat, which seemed fanciful.
‘Easton Hall is my home.’
She tore off her glasses and looked up at him with her beautiful green eyes. He’d been struck by them even as a twelve-year-old. Reminding him of the freshest new growth of spring. Of the moss at the edge of the stream that ran through the property.
So many of his memories of her had been frozen in that time, of someone small and pretty. A young if sometimes annoying little friend for a child starved of friendship and family, relegated to boarding school. Other boys’ families occasionally took him in for school holidays, feeling sorry for him because he had a sick sister. What none of them realised, and what he’d concluded over those long years of her treatment, was that his family had wished he’d been the one to fall ill. The adopted one, instead of the beloved natural child...
The only glimmer of joy had been staying with Mae here, in this old ramshackle house. In that hazy summer where there were few rules, and two children were allowed to run wild in an imaginary world fighting dragons, catching frogs. It was as if the two of them had finally become the children they hadn’t previously been allowed to be, when surrounded by grown-up problems like illness and death.
But there was no point to those reminiscences. He hadn’t got to where he was, well past his first billion with an impressive property portfolio of boutique hotels and retreats for those who wanted intimacy, luxury and privacy, by having any form of sentiment. Business was the language he spoke, and he was unparalleled in his sphere.
That was his world.
‘I’m sure this must come as a shock. I’m sorry for your loss.’
He tried to sound conciliatory, because he needed to work with her. And in some ways, he did feel some sympathy. She’d lived with Mae since before her teens. Being Mae’s carer for the past twelve months meant she’d likely have expected to inherit the whole estate herself...
‘She needs to be looked after, Matteo. Promise me you will.’
Mae’s request during their last conversation. A promise he’d made with no thought, because it had sounded important to her and who was he to deny an old woman some sense of peace? Only now he realised the impact what he’d agreed to might have on his ultimate plan for this place.
Louisa narrowed her gaze. ‘It’s your loss too. Yet you weren’t at the funeral.’
Matteo stared right back, ignoring her disapprobation. He wasn’t a coward. Though his mobile phone weighed heavy in his trouser pocket. The unanswered messages from his sister, Felicity, saying she wanted to talk, taunted him. He ignored the sensation. He’d been occupied with a deal for a new property in Bali, that was all. She knew he was busy.
‘I was in South East Asia on business. Once I found out, I couldn’t make it back in time.’
Mae would have understood. She always did. Wrote him letters, which his assistant opened and scanned, sending them to him via email. A card each birthday... He and Mae would talk on the phone, about Easton Hall, about taking care of her interests. Talked a little about Louisa and her talents as a children’s book illustrator too. How Louisa had come to be like the daughter Mae had never had. Then their last call, which he’d realised only after her death had been her goodbye to him. One full of warmth, where she’d told him how proud she was of him. And she’d made him make the promise he was now beginning to regret.
‘She needs to be looked after.’
Still Mae had left its execution to his own judgement. He could do more to carry out her wishes, here, now, than he could ever have done when she was alive, given she was so stubborn and headstrong. As much as it had frustrated him, he’d admired her for that. Taking on Easton Hall after her husband had died, almost unheard of when the natural course would have been for Great-Uncle Gerald to have left the home to his nearest male Bainbridge relative, rather than his young wife...
Now, Matteo studied the young woman standing inside the home that he would soon add to his property portfolio. A woman who looked soft and innocent, and in need of the protection he’d promised. All he knew of the world was that it was cold, hard, and unforgiving. How would Louisa navigate that now Mae was gone?
‘Felicity came,’ Louisa said.
Those words tore him from his introspection. Felicity hadn’t ever met Mae. Why had she even been at the funeral?
‘I’m glad she could make it.’ He tried to sound charitable. The words ground out of him, as if forced.
Louisa cocked her head, inspecting him in some way. For what, he wasn’t sure, though it gave him a sort of prickling feeling at the back of his neck, almost as if she was judging him.
‘She seems well.’
Everyone in the family knew of the tragedy of Flick, as they all called her. The child whose birth had been seen as a kind of miracle, till she’d become cursed by a childhood leukaemia diagnosis. Then her remission and apparent cure seemed like another miracle.
‘I understand she is.’
‘She’s your sister. Don’t you know?’
He could sense the judgement that infused every word. Louisa didn’t have siblings, so how could she possibly understand? He and his sister didn’t talk about it, when they talked. Her past forgotten. She’d reached out to him about five years earlier on his birthday and that was how it had been between them since. Texting. Calling on the celebrations. Birthdays, Easter, Christmas. That had always been enough.
‘We both travel for work. There’s not much time to talk.’ Louisa seemed to be good at picking at his old wounds. Time to shut the conversation down. ‘Unlike now. I have all day to speak with you and keeping me out here isn’t going to help. There are things we need to discuss.’
Louisa hesitated for a moment, worrying on her pink bottom lip with her teeth. ‘I was told I’d have a home for ever.’
He might have cared once, when he’d been capable of it. But that child with the capacity to love and care was gone. Ground out of him by constant disappointment. Love didn’t matter. Caring didn’t matter. People shouldn’t be disposable, yet he’d learned that he was. Twice. His birth mother, whoever she was, abandoning him on a hospital doorstep. Then the family who’d adopted him, who hadn’t wanted him either. Not when they finally had a child of their own blood...
Blood always won out, in this family at least.
They hadn’t cared about him, until he’d become successful. Finally claiming him as a Bainbridge when he craved to rub their noses in the certainty that he wanted nothing to do with them. Would have changed his name to eschew the family completely, had he known who he really was. But all his searches had been fruitless. Not even genealogy DNA testing, his last hope of finding his birth family, had turned up a relative. It had only given hints at his heritage. Italian. Which accounted for his colouring and his name. It gave him nothing more.
He was truly alone.
‘You’ll be looked after,’ Matteo said. He’d promised Mae, and he delivered on his promises. Louisa would see reason. He’d ensure that she was well compensated, with a bank account so fat and full she could do whatever she dreamed. Travel the world, buy a home of her own, drape herself in jewels. He’d learned over the years that was what people wanted.
His riches.
She might look innocent and guileless, but she’d be no different.
No one he’d met ever was.
Louisa could barely catch her breath, as the heavy weight of dread crushed her chest. She hardly believed a word Matty said. He had to be wrong.
Yet why would he lie?
No, it would be okay. It had to be okay.
Still, a voice inside Louisa’s head shouted a warning that if she let him in, she’d lose the only home she’d ever really had. The only place she felt safe. She was torn between being polite and listening to that voice.
The same voice that had whispered once that she wasn’t really sick. That it was her mother making her ill, hurting her whilst claiming it was love. The voice that had told her she needed to get someone to listen because no doctor, no matter how clever they were with all their medicines and needles and procedures, could make her well.
That voice had saved her life.
But this was Matty.
She looked up at him, towering above her. Broad. Strong.
Handsome...
No. Why was she thinking like this? He’d come to take away...everything. Then he raised an eyebrow, his lip quirked. And in a flash, he wasn’t Matty at all. He was the man that boy had grown into. Matteo Bainbridge. Carrying an arrogance and assertion that seemed to hold her in some kind of thrall. An almost cool disdain for everything around him. Something about it made her tingle all over, though she didn’t like to think too hard why that was.
Mae had always taught her to be polite. To be a good hostess, even though her great-aunt had stopped entertaining years ago. But one thing Louisa was certain of: had Matteo arrived on Mae’s doorstep whilst she was alive, she would have welcomed him in with open arms.
Louisa felt obliged to do the same.
She forced herself to prise her fingers away from their death grip on the door. Stand back a little, although she wanted to slam the ancient wood firmly in his face because that door had protected the home from any number of invaders in the past.
Still, if he really did own the home, she needed to hear what he had to say.
‘Okay, come in.’
None of that sounded like a good hostess, at all. Still, Matteo’s lips curled into a smile that looked every bit the frog prince she’d just drawn, and kind of gloating as well.
‘Thank you.’
She gestured him inside as he seemed to sweep in exactly as if he owned the place. Which, if she believed him, he did. He cast an appraising eye over the threadbare Axminster, looking around him as if searching for what was wrong, rather than focussing on what was right.
‘Follow me to the kitchen.’
He didn’t follow, of course he didn’t. A man who looked as if he ruled the world wouldn’t follow anyone. He moved into lockstep beside her, but it seemed almost uncomfortable. As though he had to adjust his pace, slow it to fit hers.
‘Where’s Mrs Fancutt?’ he asked. ‘I’d like to speak with her about chasing away my structural engineer.’
Louisa missed a step, falling behind Matteo’s long, powerful stride. Hurried to catch up. She didn’t want Mrs Fancutt getting into trouble. She was Easton Hall’s long-term housekeeper. If Matteo was telling the truth and the home was really his, the woman deserved to be kept on in the role.
‘She did no such thing.’
She rather had, with a little help from Louisa, but Matteo didn’t need to know that.
‘Comments about setting the dogs on him and talk of muskets sound familiar?’
Maybe it did but she’d never admit it. The heat rose to Louisa’s cheeks. She hoped he wouldn’t notice.
‘Mrs Fancutt owns two Pomeranians who aren’t in the least bit threatening...’ At least that was the truth, though the man who’d arrived claiming to need to inspect the house didn’t know that. ‘And it was an invitation to see the armoury, where there might be a tiny bit of damp around a window frame. Your structural engineer seems to lack any kind of fortitude. Heaven help him if he came across a decent bit of dry rot. He’d be overcome.’
‘You seem to know a great deal about the conversation.’ Matteo’s voice was smooth and cool as silk.
If he blamed her, then so be it. ‘Why wouldn’t I? I have a vested interest in avoiding trespassers on the property.’
‘He wasn’t a trespasser, he had my permission.’
‘Well, he didn’t have mine.’
‘What are you going to do? Set the unthreatening Pomeranians onto me?’
‘Sadly, Mrs Fancutt is on a day off. I’m sure she’ll be sorry to have missed you. I’ll say hello to her for you. Give Binky and Bess a pat.’
Yet after today, would she have a place here at all? She breathed through a wave of grief that overtook her. The yawning ache that simply opened inside. She’d lost her father, and it had been as if the world had broken apart. Staying in pieces for years. Now she’d lost Mae and, in many ways, it was the same, the corresponding loss of all that was safe and secure. Her world tilting on its axis yet again because those she loved always left her...
‘Perhaps I should be making you the tea?’ he asked.
That jolted her from her inertia. He was trying to take over already. Take the home that had been hers for twelve years. Louisa straightened her spine.
‘I’m fine.’ She’d just needed a moment. That was all. She kept walking but, out of the corner of her eye, thought she could see Matteo glancing her way. As if waiting for her to crumble. That wouldn’t happen. She might bend, but she wouldn’t break.
The kitchens sat quiet and empty given it was a day off for the staff here. She loved the space with its exposed brickwork, worn stone floor and huge stove. She’d thought the room magical when she’d first arrived in the home, food always available whenever she was hungry, because her mother had never fed her enough.
‘There are things you’re allergic to which make you ill.’
Louisa had come to learn, after those years of pain and deprivation, that she was allergic to nothing. It was yet another lie her mother had told in the pretence of love. Making sure to keep her thin and weak, so that she’d appear as sick as her mother claimed her to be.
Louisa didn’t know why all these memories were assailing her now. She’d put her past behind her, begun making a future. She didn’t want to think about her childhood and that hunger, deprivation and pain. Instead, she placed her glasses on the counter and put on the electric kettle to boil. Made the tea in her favourite yellow teapot, poured two cups. All the while a sensation prickled between her shoulder blades. She tried to ignore it but knew Matteo was watching.
‘You said we needed to talk?’ she asked, carrying the tea to the table before sitting down. He took a cup, black. No sugar. Looking at her as though she were a bug under glass, and he were conducting an inspection.
An uncomfortable sensation.
Matteo lifted the tea and took a sip, the sunny yellow cup dwarfed in his hands.
‘I’m surprised you know so little about Mae’s will.’
It sounded like the bite of criticism. Her mother had been an expert in its delivery. She ignored the sting. That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.
‘When I came to live with Mae, she promised I’d have a home for life. After she died, my solicitor confirmed that I never had to leave Easton Hall. It might be a surprise to you, but I trusted Mae and believed her.’
Matteo looked round the kitchen as if taking stock, his golden-brown eyes cataloguing something he already owned. What did he see? The heart of the home as she did, or that everything was a little worn? The stove in need of restoration. A tap, drip-drip-dripping into the sink.
Then he fixed that assessing gaze on her.
‘Apart from inheriting Easton Hall and its contents, I’ve been appointed executor of Mae’s estate. After some money left to charity, you’ve inherited the remainder. Her personal effects. Jewellery.’
‘What about a place to live?’
His perfect lips thinned a fraction. A tiny muscle in his stubble-covered jaw clenched. Matteo placed his hands on the table, clasped them together. The cuffs of his shirt a gleaming white against his golden skin.
‘That’s what we need to discuss. Mae’s will grants you a right to reside in Easton Hall for as long as you want, until it stops being your principal place of residence...’
A bright spike of relief skewered her. She shut her eyes against the tears that once again threatened. She could stay here. She didn’t have to leave. Louisa hadn’t known how tightly she’d held herself. How little she’d breathed since she first saw Matty on the doorstep. Her shoulders dropped as she let out a slow exhale. It was as though she began to wilt as some of the tension bled from her.
‘...or until you marry.’
Louisa snorted. Marry? Mae had always lived in hope for her and there were things that intrigued Louisa about a marriage. The physical side of a relationship, especially after she’d found those old leather-bound books in a remote part of the library here. An erotic collection of inked prints she’d once pored over. There’d been one of a woman clearly wearing a wedding dress in one of them...
A heat began to ignite in her chest, thread through her veins as Matteo brought the teacup to his perfect lips once more. Took a swig, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed.
‘What’s so funny about the idea of you marrying?’ he asked.
Getting married meant finding a man when she barely went to the village any longer. Where would she even meet anyone? And falling in love? A shudder ran through her.
She’d had first-hand experience of what was done in the name of love. The pain it wrought. Why would she ever look for that?
‘I’ll leave marriage to other people. Like you, since you sound so keen on it.’
Now Matteo snorted, then checked himself. ‘I travel too much to be tied down. Whereas you’re young. It might not sound like an attractive prospect now, but it will be.’
As if he were so ancient. ‘You’re only six years older than me.’
‘Ileft home in my teens and built my business from nothing to be one of the premier luxury hotel groups in the world, whereas you’re...’
‘What?’
He cocked his head, gaze drifting over her. Likely taking in the dress she wore, in fine white cotton with pretty pintucking and lace. One of her favourites from the number that she’d first found as a teenager in a trunk in the attic, which she’d been told were from one of the previous Bainbridge wives from the early nineteen hundreds. Her clothes were a particular hit when she took tours of the home talking about the history of the place. People thought she dressed up for the role. They didn’t realise this was what she liked to wear. And she’d never really cared that it made her stand out, before today...
‘You’re a young woman who’s devoted her life to caring for an elderly one.’
He said that as if it were a bad thing.
‘Do you understand love, Matteo?’
He reared back, sitting straighter in the chair. Eyes a little wider. Looking uncomfortable.
‘We’re talking about property. What’s love got to do with this?’
Most of what had happened to her had been kept hidden. The public had never found out about the charges against her mother, just the way the exalted Bainbridge family had wanted, because heaven forbid their perfect name be tarnished. Then her mother died of a heart attack before the press had got wind of what she’d subjected Louisa to. There was no point rehashing the truth when the lie that the last of her parents to pass away was beloved was so much more palatable.
‘Mae took me in when I was an orphan.’ Had given Louisa a home when all she’d had to look forward to was foster care, because no other Bainbridge had had any interest in her and her problems. Her father had been an only child with no relatives left to care for her. ‘Everyone else in this family was only ever interested in the family name, or what Mae might have been able to gift them. Mae gave me far more than material things. She gave me a home, a safe place to land. And I loved her for it. Why wouldn’t I care for Mae?’
The woman had sacrificed years of her later life, looking after Louisa, more a mother than her own ever had been. Had made sure she’d received the professional help she’d needed to overcome the death of her father and her mother’s abuse. Louisa would have done anything to repay her.
‘I’m sure there are many things you’d like to do now that your caring duties are over. I have a proposition for you.’
She’d had a lifetime as a child being told what was good for her, especially by men like the various doctors who’d ‘treated’ her, believing her beautiful, fragile-appearing mother when she’d said there was something terribly wrong with her only child.
For years, no one had believed Louisa. She’d become tired of her voice not being heard. It remained a struggle to speak up some days, because she was still unsure anyone listened.
‘Of course you do.’ Her voice came out too soft, too quiet. Louisa was simply pleased she could get the words out at all.
‘I want Easton Hall outright, and I’m prepared to pay well for you to relinquish your right to reside here.’
She stilled. Her heart almost missed a beat. If she agreed to that...
‘Where would I live, then?’
‘Anywhere else you want.’
A tight band wound round her chest. Crushing the air from her. She could hardly breathe again. This home was the only place in the world she’d ever felt secure. All she had. Mae had promised she’d always be safe, and Louisa had believed her when there was no one else in the world to believe. There was nowhere else to go. She couldn’t leave here.
‘You haven’t been listening. This is my home.’
‘It’s an old house, which is in dire need of restoration. Mae neglected it. Given that, I have an offer for you.’
He smiled, and this time it met his eyes. That smile was glorious. Some might call it a winning smile. Matteo reached into the inner pocket of his suit jacket. Pulled out a folded white piece of paper, placed it on the tabletop and slid it over to her. She opened it. It was an official-looking document that talked about giving up her rights under Mae’s will for a sum of money. She stilled.
All those zeros at the end couldn’t be right. She’d never seen so much in her life. The offer was designed to be an amount no one could refuse...if money was what you were interested in.
‘Why do you want Easton Hall so badly? It looks like you’re offering me an extraordinary deal. Surely that’s bad business?’
Matteo’s eyes narrowed. ‘What does it matter to you if you’re going to take it?’
And there was the part where she knew he could never understand, what this place meant to her.
‘It matters to me. You’re probably a man who has homes all over the world. Why this one?’
He shrugged. Sat back in his chair. Head cocked. Eyes cool and assessing as if weighing her up again.
‘The home will be well utilised. My company, Arcadia, will turn it into a boutique retreat.’
So, not a home. She looked about the old kitchen that had fed generations of families. Thought of Mrs Fancutt, who’d been here most of her working life, managing the house, doing the cooking. Of all the people who worked to keep the house going. Generations of families had been employed here. If it became a ‘boutique retreat’...
‘Will the staff be “well utilised”?’
‘Given that they’re all older, they’ll be comfortably retired, which I’m sure they’ll enjoy.’
‘Have you asked them?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Have you asked whether they’d enjoy it? Do you know the answer to that question?’
All the times they’d sat here in the kitchen at this old table in the evenings, Mae included, and played cribbage or other card games. Betting with toothpicks as if they were made of gold. He’d never understand this wasn’t just a job to them. At the funeral, there’d been punishing grief. These people had been promised jobs, and homes for life too. On the day Mae had passed, each of them had said they wouldn’t leave here, leave Louisa. It was more than her home; it was theirs as well.
She shook her head. ‘No, this isn’t happening.’
‘What do you mean, “This isn’t happening”?’
Louisa folded up the piece of paper, which held no temptation for her at all. Slid it back across the tabletop to him.
‘Thank you for your kind offer, but I’m not leaving.’
The change in him was profound. His eyes narrowed, the colour of them turning. How warm brown could suddenly look ice cold she wasn’t sure, but he achieved it. She’d kidded herself even thinking he was the boy she’d met so long ago. The memories of that time entertaining Mae in her last months—they were a mere fantasy. This man before her had no sentiment. He was all calculation.
‘I’ll add another hundred thousand.’
The way he said it. Who could toss money around like that with no care?
She shook her head. ‘If Mae knew what you were planning, she’d turn over in her grave.’
Matteo stood, planted his hands flat on the tabletop.
‘She knew exactly who I was. Ask yourself, why didn’t she leave the home to you? A woman who spent what should be the best years of her life caring for an elderly lady. Surely you’d have expected repayment for that? It must come as a terrible shock that you weren’t made executor too. That the house was left to me. But Mae assessed my experience and my resources, and she clearly made a judgement about yours. She knew that looking after this place was beyond you, which is why I’m here. I’m doing you a favour.’
Each word shot like another poisoned arrow deep into her heart. Tainting memories of a woman Louisa had thought she’d known. Yet he didn’t understand. Matteo would take this place and tear the soul out of it. Tear apart everything she loved. She couldn’t let him.
She smoothed her trembling hands over her dress. Stood. She’d made a terrible mistake allowing him to come in here. Underestimating him. She wouldn’t again.
‘Thank you for your considered offer, but I’ve heard enough. You can leave now.’
‘That’s where you’re mistaken, Louisa.’
The way he said her name, as if he was in some way mocking her. She gritted her teeth. ‘How am I in any way mistaken?’
‘Thinking that I’m going to leave. I own the house, and I’m moving in.’ He crossed his arms. Mouth a thin, cold line. The ominous grumble of thunder rolled in the distance. ‘Today.’