Chapter Twenty-eight
‘Now, isn’t this all terribly exciting?’
‘Very.’ Lara answered Fiona through gritted teeth while Tessa bustled around her like a seamstress from a bygone age. She’d never had a made-to-measure outfit of any kind and it felt weird trying one on.
The three of them were in the Penhaligons’ apartment, with Lara in her leggings and T-shirt. Henry had been banished to the estate office with the head gardener and the doors were locked.
‘Can’t have anyone walking in,’ Fiona had declared, turning the key in the lock. ‘Not while you’re trying the costume for size.’
‘Would you mind keeping still just for a few moments longer?’ Tessa said, holding out the almost-finished costume. It was stunning and only needed some final adjustments.
‘Sorry, it’s me. I’m distracting her,’ Fiona said. ‘Honestly, I ought to be too old for dressing up, but I feel quite giddy with excitement. The children keep asking me to send photos, but I’ve told them they have to wait until the ball.’
So the dynasty would turn up for the ball, then, Lara thought.
She didn’t think Fiona could ever be giddy with excitement but she did start to laugh before Tessa gave her a glare that wiped the temporary mirth off her face. It was a brief moment of levity since Flynn had told her about Molly the night before.
‘Fiona, it would help if you didn’t keep distracting Lara,’ Tessa said.
‘Why don’t I go and make us all some refreshments?’ Fiona still sounded more gleeful than guilty.
‘And I’ll stop fidgeting,’ Lara added, slipping the costume over her head.
The final fitting should have been exciting. Lara had been looking forward to dressing up and to the ball. She’d imagined the look on Flynn’s face when he saw her Lady of Shalott outfit, an updated take on the medieval costume she’d spotted in a photo of one of the previous guests at the ball.
She had no choice but to continue to focus on the Twelfth Night Ball, seeing as she was one of the chief organisers, but now the thought of attending it herself, dressed in her finery and making merry, was about as appealing as being thrown in the dungeon.
Now she was rueing the day she’d ever chosen such a doomed character as a lovelorn woman pining for one of the Knights of the Round Table.
With some umming and inaudible mutterings, Tessa finished her pinning, then marked a few things in a notebook and rose to her feet.
‘OK. You can breathe again now,’ she said, and called in the direction of the kitchen, ‘You can come back in now, Fiona!’
Fiona walked in carrying a tray with a china tea set and a plate of mince pies.
Lara drank the tea but declined the mince pie. Mince pies were way too festive to suit her mood right now. Talk turned to Christmas plans, but Lara was itching to get away.
‘How are the plans for the staff Christmas lunch going?’ Fiona asked.
‘Um. Good. It’s all in hand.’
‘How many people do you think will be going?’
‘Eight or nine. Not quite sure yet.’
There was a knock at the door and Henry called, ‘Am I allowed in yet?’
‘What’s the password?’ Fiona joked, before unlocking the door.
‘It’s F.L.Y.N.N. He’s with me now,’ Henry said.
‘In that case, you can come in.’
Lara almost dropped her cup. If it had been her decision, the door would have remained locked.
‘Flynn gave me a lift back in his truck,’ Henry said, entering the room with a beaming smile.
Flynn lingered in the doorway, unwilling to cross the threshold.
‘Thank you, Flynn,’ Fiona said.
‘No problem.’
He caught sight of Lara and Tessa and nodded a polite greeting. Tessa seemed frozen to the sofa, teacup in hand, her eyes out on stalks. Even in his work combats and Ravendale hoodie, Flynn could have that effect on people.
‘Tessa’s been fitting Lara for her Twelfth Night costume,’ Fiona said.
‘I already told him we might not gain admittance to the boudoir,’ Henry said with a chortle.
‘It is not a “boudoir”, Henry,’ Fiona said icily, ‘it’s a salon. Two quite different things.’
‘I stand corrected,’ Henry said, with a twinkle in his eye. ‘I bet you looked lovely,’ he directed to Lara. ‘Don’t you think, Flynn?’
Lara wanted to sink through the cushions of the sofa.
‘I’m sure she did,’ Flynn managed without catching Lara’s eye. He was as tense as a coiled spring in his obvious urgency to escape.
‘We were just talking about the staff Christmas dinner,’ Fiona said. ‘Are you going to be joining the rest of the team?’
‘Er. I – um – I’m not sure yet.’
‘I thought that as you were so far from your family, you might enjoy it,’ Fiona said.
‘Flynn might have other options, my dear,’ Henry said, perhaps sensing Flynn’s discomfort. ‘Now, am I allowed to have a cup of that tea before it’s stewed? It’s parky out there.’
‘Of course. Flynn, would you like a coffee? I can make one.’
‘No, thanks. I really must get back to work. I’m meeting the builders about a quote for relocating the fire systems from the dungeon in the New Year.’
‘I won’t keep you from that,’ Fiona said. ‘It’s long overdue.’
Flynn beat a hasty retreat. Lara wanted to make her own exit but also leave enough time for Flynn to be out of the way first.
‘Isn’t he wonderful?’ Fiona said dreamily after he’d gone. ‘One of our better decisions.’
‘I’d say so,’ Tessa chirped up. ‘I was quite discombobulated. I’d love to see him in his full highwayman costume.’
Henry sniggered. ‘When he first turned up at the castle, we thought the ghost of Sir Roger – a long-gone ancestor who’d vanished on the moors – had materialised. He made a dramatic entrance in the middle of our Halloween dinner, dripping wet in his motorcycle leathers.’
Lara would never forget Flynn’s arrival at Halloween either, not long after the other guests had been hearing about Sir Roger’s disappearance.
Tessa fanned herself with her hand. ‘Oh my, I’d like to have seen that.’
‘I have to be going too!’ Lara clattered her cup rather too hard in the saucer. She found it impossible to deal with the Flynn Appreciation Society any longer. Any moment now, Tessa would set up a Facebook fan page and be making TikTok videos about him.
‘Oh, of course. We’re keeping you from your work.’
‘Not at all. I’m very grateful for the costume. I’m sure it will be amazing and thank you for the tea. But I have to meet a party of Japanese tour operators for lunch and persuade them to include Ravendale on their Lakeland tour itineraries.’
‘Gosh. I’d almost forgotten about that. I’ll be down in time for lunch too,’ Fiona said, ‘once I’ve smartened myself up.’
Lara left, once again avoiding the lift in case Flynn was called to rescue her from it. She didn’t need rescuing – never had and never would, but it was hard not to feel the weight of disappointed hopes as she trudged down the staircase to the ground floor.
It was embarrassing to mope over a man she’d only known for such a short amount of time, even though she understood his reasons for cooling things with her.
‘Lara.’
She jumped. Flynn peeled himself off the wall outside the exit to the courtyard and shoved his phone in his pocket.
‘I wish you wouldn’t keep doing that,’ she said.
‘Sorry, I was waiting for you.’
She also wished he wouldn’t do that. ‘I thought you were busy.’
‘I guess we both are but I had to talk to you. I feel so bad that it’s my complicated life – my relationships – that have made things so difficult for us.’
Lara was about to tell him that she didn’t want to cool thing but then reminded herself that ‘complicated’ was the exact opposite of what she’d been looking for. In fact, she hadn’t been looking for anything: Flynn had roared into her life.
‘You – you have too much to deal with at the moment,’ she said mechanically, before adding, in an attempt to lighten the mood, ‘It’s not as if we’d started anything serious, is it?’
‘Anything serious …’ he echoed her words, a deep frown etched between his brows.
‘We’ve only known each other a few weeks. We hadn’t even gone public, which is a good thing.’ Apart from with Jazz, she thought, and how she regretted that now.
‘No. I suppose that’s something to be grateful for,’ he murmured.
She was trying to convince him she was fine – and herself – and probably doing a terrible job of both. ‘Flynn, it’s not ideal but it’s not the end of the world.’
‘No, I was only wondering …’
She let him founder and finish his phrase.
‘I – you’re right, it’s not the end of the world. I don’t want to drag you into my mess.’
‘It’s not a mess. It’s – a shock, but, actually, I think it’s pretty amazing. And you should …’ Only now did she feel emotion clog her voice. ‘I think you should make the most of every moment. Like I said, I’m here, as a friend, to help if you ever need it or just to talk. If you want to.’
The stables clock struck twelve.
‘I have to go. The Japanese delegation will be here any moment and I want to greet them at the front door.’
Abandoning Flynn, she hurried off to the banqueting hall without a glance behind.
It was impossible to prevent bitter memories from resurfacing.
Was it being with the Penhaligons and hearing their comments about their children, who would turn up for special occasions and, eventually, take up their inheritance?
Lovely as Fiona and Henry were, they existed in a different universe. Like Rob.
‘The estate needs an heir. It’s a bore, but it’s down to me to continue the family line.’ Rob had actually said that to her.
You could never be sure whether Rob was in earnest. He liked to throw out one-liners, often just for effect or to be witty or shocking. Even if you knew him very well, as Lara had thought she did, it was occasionally hard to tell when he meant what he said.
However, no matter how often he might joke about providing an heir for the estate, and how ‘bored’ he affected to be on this topic, Lara had always known he was deadly serious.
And the fact that he said it several times while they were actually in bed together, having had amazing sex, did make her wonder if he meant she was the one he wanted to continue the family line with.
She’d been crushed with humiliation when she’d learned the truth: that Rob had probably never even considered ‘carrying on the family line’ with her.
‘You said you loved me. Did you ever really mean that?’ She had asked him when he ended it.
‘Of course I did. I still do, and you’ll always be special to me, but with Tabby and I, it’s on a different level. We’ve been around each other for so long. We’re like an old pair of slippers.’
He had laughed. Lara hadn’t.
‘An old pair of slippers.’ She would never have described Rob’s fiancée as that.
Tabitha struck her as the type of woman who wouldn’t be seen dead in slippers.
She was more a spike-heeled pair of patent Louboutins that had only touched a pavement to move from a chauffeur-driven car to a five-star restaurant.
Lara was the pair of slippers: well-used, well-worn, but never meant to be seen in public and now consigned to the bin. And she felt foolish now, for making such a leap, but still angry with him for leading her to believe they had a future.
‘I mean, you must have realised that you and I were never going to be a long-term thing. You’re a realist and you must have known the score.’
She’d always been a plaything to be discarded once he found a suitable person to carry on the dynasty – and an ordinary peasant like herself was never going to be it.
She never told him her ‘news’ because, a few days after their conversation, she realised she wasn’t pregnant after all.
She’d lost the baby. It didn’t matter that the miscarriage had been very early – only a few weeks: she was still devastated.
She’d gone home and in the depths of despair and told her mother what had happened.
Her mother, naturally horrified, and angry with Rob, had blamed him for causing Lara so much worry and stress that she’d miscarried.
Lara would never know, but the shock couldn’t have helped, and when she returned to work, she resigned.
She was thirty-four. She did want a family one day. It was just that ‘one day’ now seemed further in the distance than it ever had – and she had begun to fear that the one day would never come, not with a partner she loved.
She’d only known Flynn for six weeks but she’d started to believe that they might have a future too. Was it just her? Was she someone who jumped to conclusions or misjudged situations? She’d never wanted to be the cliché and yet now she felt she had been – twice.
Flynn had done the running. Flynn had wanted them to get together despite her misgivings, but he hadn’t forced her.
She’d made the decision, and she genuinely believed that he had had no idea about Molly.
She understood that it was a huge shock to him and firmly believed that he needed to put his new family first and take time to come to terms with this huge change in his life.
So, why did all these rational explanations fail to lessen her feelings of disappointment that clung to her like freezing fog?
Then again, she thought, conscious of the now-imperfect chalice nestled in its blue satin case, maybe she was just plain unlucky.