Page 10 of Wild About You

It was Callum:Congratulations on getting through the first couple of days. Hope we’re not putting you off.

I tapped back a ‘smiley face’ and ‘strong emoji’. Then I realised I had a large smile plastered across my face. But I wasnotgoing to get my hopes up about Callum and his twinkly eyes.

CHAPTER 5

‘Does Jamie have a son?’ I whispered to Fi the next day, as we were striding our way through the back corridors of Stonemore. The house was open to the public, so we were banned from the grand rooms, which were currently being monitored by cheery stewards in navy blue sweatshirts monogrammed in yellow.

‘What?’ She frowned. ‘No. Why did you think that?’

‘He mentioned someone called Hugo in his email.’ I didn’t mention my late-night power-googling had yielded nothing for Jamie apart from a picture taken a decade or so ago when he was graduating from university (Cambridge, obviously). And the Earl of Roxdale’s Wikipedia page had mainly focused on an ancestor who’d been a particularly brutal warrior in the wars against the Scots. When I looked for a Hugo Mullholland, all that my searches had produced were a LinkedIn entry for a hedge fund manager and an Ancestry entry for someone who’d died in 1626.

‘Ha! Close, but no cigar,’ said Fi. ‘You’ll see. Here we are.’

I’d been expecting the earl’s apartment to be lavish, a mirror of the grand reception rooms below, with their oil paintings, cold-eyed portraits, gilding and grand furnishings. But we were standing in a corridor with a threadbare green carpet, by a front door with a brass ‘1’ on it, like a normal flat. Fi knocked sharply and there was a flurry of fierce barking.

‘I thought you said there weren’t any demons hereabouts,’ I said to Fi. ‘It sounds like a hellhound.’ She grinned in response.

I heard the pounding of feet on floorboards then the door opened a crack and Jamie’s face appeared. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Sorry, he’s an enthusiastic watchdog.’

A small but stocky white and tan beagle launched himself at me and crashed against my legs. Despite the impact, I still had enough presence of mind to brace myself and offer my hand to a wet nose.

I glanced at Jamie’s face. I might have been imagining it, but his hard, cold gaze seemed to have softened.

‘Anna, can I formally introduce you to Hugo? Sorry, he’ll want to sniff your face. He won’t rest until he’s done it. He won’t lick you, don’t worry.’

‘Right.’ I bent down and looked into Hugo’s enormous dark eyes. ‘Hello, sweet boy,’ I squeaked to him, stroking his chest. His coat was so soft. Hugo delicately sniffed my hair line, eyebrows and mouth, then booped me on the nose with his own snout.

‘Ooh.’ I put my hand to the patch of damp he’d left behind. ‘Is that good? Do I pass?’

‘With him, at least,’ said Jamie. ‘But he’s not the best judge of character.’ He turned abruptly away.

I glanced at Fi and gave her a ‘what did I do wrong?’ look but she just smiled encouragingly.

We followed Jamie through a short hallway and then into a room which made me exclaim out loud. I remembered how Callum had told me many of the rooms at the back of the house were dust-sheeted; this apartment was at the front of the house on the second floor. Floor to ceiling windows looked out over the carriage drive, and the view beyond of the deer park, bisected by the long drive that led to the road. The walls and ceiling were decorated with Neo-Classical plasterwork in pale blue and white – it looked like an oversized Wedgwood plate. But as I looked around, I saw that the one vast room had been zoned into different areas: a couple of leather sofas covered with throws and the oldest TV I’d ever seen; an office area with shelves and a desk; a dining table with chairs and a bowl of fruit. I glimpsed a small kitchen through another doorway. All of it was bathed in glorious light. The most extraordinary studio flat I’d ever seen.

Fi was talking to Jamie about budgets, their faces grim, so I went to one of the enormous windows. Below, a coach was pulling up. Its doors opened and dozens of people spilled out, all of them looking upwards, snapping away with their cameras and phones. I suddenly had a flash of what it mightfeel like to live here; people constantly trying to consume little bits of Stonemore. Fi had told me they had found someone trying to chip a bit of cornicing off one of the rooms, claiming they wanted it as a souvenir. What must it be like, to look down on those eager, enquiring faces, day after day? I supposed being lord of the manor was compensation enough.

Lost in my thoughts, I hadn’t noticed that Fi had gone.

‘Hello?’

I swung round to find my new boss standing directly behind me, and was so surprised that I instinctively stepped back hard against the sash window.

‘Watch out!’ In an instant Jamie had grabbed hold of my shoulders and pulled me away from the glass. I stumbled (of course) and landed hard against him, the sudden proximity tripling my heartbeat and setting off a range of conflicting thoughts includingplease noandhe smells delicious. Luckily, he didn’t see my face for more than a second, because he released me as though I was on fire and turned away.

‘Apologies for startling you,’ he said, facing away from me. ‘I didn’t want you to fall against the glass. It’s original, and not exactly tough.’

I caught my breath. ‘I suppose plunging to my death in my first week here wouldn’t be a good look,’ I said, struggling to regain some composure. I was properly flustered. If only I had managed to complete my ‘ice queen’ mind map.

He turned back to me, a slight flush on his face, hands in his pockets, and just for a moment he reminded me of aschoolboy; there was a strange, uncomfortable look on his face, as though he was lost for words. Then in an instant his face turned back to its normal expression: cold, complacent inscrutability. Any vulnerability vanished.

I had a sinking feeling this meeting was going to be difficult.

‘Shall we sit down over here?’ he said, going over to the dining-room table and pulling out a chair for me with elaborate good manners. Then his expression changed sharply. ‘Sit,’ he barked.

I sat down, just about stifling the ‘bloody hell’ that rose to my lips.

‘I was speaking to Hugo,’ Jamie said. ‘He looked like he was about to come and start pestering you.’

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