Page 3 of 2 Books in One Bundle
Louisa wasn’t sure why she sounded so breathless, as if she’d run a mile. It was a normal kind of question, wasn’t it? Although she had no real practice at small talk, since her contact with strangers was restricted to telling tourists about the history of Easton Hall and its surrounds, which was a well-practised script.
His mouth thinned. Eyes narrowed. That look could slice you clean through, leaving you eviscerated. Then he shrugged, but it was somehow stiff. Almost an attempt to be dismissive when she suspected there was an enmity running seams deep.
‘I’ve no idea. I haven’t seen them in years.’
Mae had mentioned some family estrangement, so she didn’t press. Especially not to ask about his sister, not right at this moment. She’d gathered even as a child that Felicity was a tender point for him. She’d been envious of the idea of a sibling back then, when she was a lonely only child. Matty had said, almost like a challenge, that he had a sister and she was sick. Louisa had known all about sick people, so she’d left well alone. Even then, she’d wanted the fantasy of a perfect summer rather than being haunted by the spectre of illness and death.
She suspected they both had.
Matty didn’t ask about her family in return, but she didn’t think that rude. The last time she’d glimpsed him was through streams of tears at her father’s funeral, eighteen months after that summer at Mae’s. He’d stood there, almost fourteen, sombre in a dark suit looking so grown up to her almost-eight-year-old self. She hadn’t cared about anything that day because her world had ended.
‘What are you doing here?’
It wasn’t as if this were a social visit. All economy and business, he didn’t even offer her condolences when she’d spent over half her life with Mae. She wasn’t sure she liked it, missing the smiling sunshiny boy she’d glimpsed all those years ago. But then, she’d changed a great deal too. She wondered what he thought of her.
Whether he thought of her at all.
‘Had your solicitor passed on any of my solicitor’s letters, you would have known.’
His mouth was a thin, stern line. He looked as if he rarely smiled, no laugh lines round his eyes. The consummate businessman he’d reportedly become.
In response, she pasted on her brightest smile, because she’d come to believe life was too short and tenuous not to try and fill it with a little happiness.
‘Well, now you’re here you can tell me. Would you like to come in for a cup of tea?’
‘I could just as well be inviting you inside, Louisa.’
How...odd. His voice was so cold. What had happened to him to strip him of any warmth? She was caught by the inappropriate desire to reach out, to touch. To see if he felt as cold as he looked. The prickle of something entirely unpleasant began to march down her spine. A warning.
‘What do you mean?’
His mouth quirked into the pretence of a smile. His lips curling at the edges in a way that should seem happy, yet it didn’t touch his eyes. They remained cold and hard as those river stones in the stream running through the estate.
‘Since I’m now owner of Easton Hall.’
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 themfor ever.
His victory was almost complete, but for the woman standing in front of him, mouth gaping like a hooked fish.
