Chapter 8 Jasper
Jasper
There was a reason I didn’t want people swarming in my privacy. People were only worth what you could use them for—something I’d learned early on in my life.
The girl shouldn’t have been here. It would ruin everything. As soon as the press heard about this, the brief, temporary calm would be over.
Why had I let Sowerby talk me into doing something with this conservatory? Why had I challenged this girl? And why had she accepted? And why, for god’s sake, could I not keep my focus on these proposals?
It had been barely a week since she’d arrived, but somehow during all of my business meetings, my mind continued to drift to Eliza Arnold and me in the garden and her dubbing Sowerby “Evil Alfred.” I was oddly intrigued by how reserved she pretended to be.
Typically, it was the other way around, with people pretending to be humorous or outgoing when they weren’t.
I made her nervous—something I didn’t hate.
She should be nervous around me. I was still surprised she hadn’t left the manor yet.
She was foolish and stubborn, but I doubted she’d make it another week here.
I liked when she pushed back—I hated when people pushed back, but with her, I was so unsure of whether she’d cower or snap, I found it…interesting.
It was even a bit addicting.
I found myself constantly thinking of other ways to bring a conversation up with her before I stopped myself.
I’d spent too much time in isolation, and I was bored, that was all.
I knew not to trust anyone, but still, sometimes I had to remind myself why it was important to keep everyone away.
It had been a long time since I’d needed a reminder and one was due, that was all.
I had no interest in starting anything with this woman, or anyone else for that matter.
I had cultivated a tight circle of people who I could predict enough to keep in my life.
The fact of the matter was, Sowerby was probably the only soul on this earth I would ever trust again, and I was fine with that.
I wanted nothing more than control—over my legacy, over my family’s ruined name, over everything.
I would never be blindsided again. Everything in my world was carried out with cold precision and she would be no exception.
People couldn’t be trusted. Give them a little bit of yourself and they would plow over you, leaving every part of you torn up in their wake.
Now, I did the taking. No one had cared about me before, besides Sowerby, and no one would care about me later.
People only wanted me because of what I’d made myself; they wanted a piece of my money and power.
They didn’t care what I’d done or what kind of fucking human I was—they just wanted to use me like a fucking tool.
Fuck ’em all, every single last one of them.
At least Eliza was clear about what she wanted from me. I appreciated that in a person. Perhaps that’s why she ended up staying here; our paths were meant to cross. But as she so quickly reminded me, in three months, she would be gone from Blackwood Manor too.
All the better. I hated strangers lurking about. I’d already caught her wandering the halls at three thirty in the morning the first week she was here; she said she couldn’t sleep and wanted to check something in the conservatory but got lost on her way back.
Walking her back to her room had felt oddly like a date.
I imagined that was how it went—it’s something I wasn’t actually very familiar with.
I intentionally dated—and I use that term quite loosely—vapid, gold-digging women for a reason.
They didn’t want a connection with me just as I didn’t want one with them.
They wanted my money, and I wanted their presence at an event, and, on occasion, I wanted their body, nothing more—never more.
It was purely transactional, the only kind of relationships I allowed.
I didn’t like that I kept thinking about Eliza Arnold.
She felt unpredictable. I wasn’t an impulsive person, and it seemed, in the few times this woman had been in my presence, I didn’t think the way I normally did.
There was a tightness to her, like all her corners and edges had been sharpened with experience and were ready to cut you in this polite, superior way that she carried herself. It had slipped through too.
Still, this manor had been filled with nothing but darkness for decades, and Eliza Arnold, the pretty, anguished botanist, had already brought a bit of light into its murky corners.
Katya, my ornery chef, had already raved about her, and she hated everybody.
Maybe the woman staying here for three months wouldn’t be quite as awful as I had originally thought.
Or maybe it would destroy everything, all the privacy and calm I’d worked so hard to achieve.
Another impulsive decision pressed in on me until I couldn’t deny it.
“Lidia,” I said into my cell phone, leaning away from my desk.
“Cancel my upcoming business in London; I’ll be staying at Blackwood Manor until after the holidays.
If they’d like my business, arrange for them to come here.
There’s a project at the manor that I need to make certain is completely finished in twelve weeks.
” I hung up the phone with a tap and dropped it onto the desk.
“I don’t like her being here,” Sowerby said as he walked into my office, as if he’d been reading my thoughts. “It’s one thing to have the men working outside, but it’s an entirely different thing to have her inside.”
“I hardly notice any of them. Evil Alfred, good to see you. Where have you been all morning? I missed you at coffee. You’ll be pleased to learn I’ve just canceled my plans for London,” I said and immediately tracked his bloodshot eyes.
Aside from the occasional construction noises, I’d almost forgotten the men were still working on completing the addition.
I paid them well to be as invisible as they could be, even though my men watched them so closely they knew what color their shit was.
The older man stopped in the middle of his stride from the door.
“I already told you, don’t call me that.
You what? You’re staying at Blackwood for the holidays?
” His deep-set wrinkles softened temporarily around his wise eyes.
He moved to sit in one of the two leather chairs in front of my desk, all the while, deep in thought. “Because of the girl?”
I could feel his knowing, familiar eyes dissecting me with curiosity.
“Yes, I suppose I ought to be here to oversee the project myself instead of dumping her off on you, since I am the one who made the arrangement,” I replied nonchalantly. “What is your gripe with the woman now? Has she been playing her music too loud again?”
I didn’t tell him, but seeing the crotchety old man get so riled up by her unbothersome presence had been surprisingly entertaining.
Sowerby straightened up again into his curmudgeonly old self.
“I can’t say I’m not pleased to hear that you will be staying at Blackwood longer.
” There was a twinkle in his eye that belied his bored voice, something only I would recognize from years and years of knowing him.
“But if you truly wish to know why I missed coffee this morning, then I implore you to ask the chaos demon herself. She’s a timid, frightened thing, but I daresay the woman’s spell has been cast upon more than just you and the rest of the staff, as she somehow managed to talk me into crawling to the bottom of the old koi pond like a friggin’ kelpie to help her with the installation of a new pump.
You should see what she’s done to the black velvet vines and the way she has trimmed the fiddle leaf fig,” he harrumphed.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think she lied about working at the gardens altogether. ”
“You were in the koi pond? On the cement?” Laughter boiled out of me. She truly was a sorceress if she had managed to get Sowerby to do that type of physical labor. “You, my friend, are far too old to be crawling about anywhere. Next time, have her tell me and I’ll get someone younger to do it.”
“I beg your pardon! I am not too old. Why you are set upon thinking I am some wrinkled-up old bag that does nothing but waste away in this manor is beyond me.” He rolled his eyes indignantly.
“And by the way, I am absolutely insulted by your recent deposit. I’ve told you to stay out of my accounts.
I don’t want your money,” he grumbled as his bushy gray eyebrows furrowed together conspiratorially.
I felt the corners of my eyes crease. “You are a wrinkled-up old bag who wastes their life away in this manor. I’ve given you a small fortune in the hopes that you’ll wise up and finally leave this hellhole.
Your dues have been paid.” As I said the last sentence, I flinched slightly.
It was a phrase I knew would rile up the old coot, and it had slipped out before I was able stop it.
He stood up from his chair with a withering scowl that made me sink into my seat like a lad in trouble.
Sowerby was not the kind of man to be messed with.
He hadn’t always been a butler—in moments like these it was apparent.
He was one of the few people who still had the ability to spark any amount of fear in my system.
He had earned every crease and wrinkle he wore.
He and I didn’t talk about the past for a reason.
We were both different people now and had tried to put our mistakes behind us.
His bloodshot blue eyes pinned me to the chair, daring me to utter another disrespectful syllable. My jaw tightened, biting a bit of my cheek as it did.
I cleared my throat. “Why don’t I go and see if there’s anything I can help Ms. Arnold with before dinner?” I felt the man’s eyes attempting to pierce through the back of my head as I scurried out of my office.