Page 58 of Happily Ever After
‘Templewood Hall is mine,’ Lady Tanith said, with dignity.
The firefighter scratched a stubbled chin. ‘Right, love,’ he said, and the fact that this unwarranted mateyness went unchallenged only went to show me how shocked Lady Tanith really was. ‘You’re going to want to talk to your insurance company.’
‘How and where did it start?’ Lady Tanith turned the basilisk stare on me again. ‘Thatis the matter of most concern at present.’
‘Best guess right now, in the roof. Looks like candles left alight.’ Scratch, scratch. ‘Course, we won’t know until we do a proper examination, but that’s what we think. Someone left a naked flame up in the attic, rafters caught and it went through the roof space. Good job you had the alarms fitted, but you should really have had a sprinkler system, place that size.’
He wandered off to berate his inferiors, and I looked at Lady Tanith. Something in my eyes must have told her that I knew, because she suddenly went very white.
‘Come on.’ Jay drew me gently aside to let another firefighter pass. ‘Let’s go and sit on the icehouse for a moment. Everyone has a lot to process just now.’
As we walked away, I heard Hugo say, ‘Dad?’ again, still faintly.
Lady Tanith didn’t seem to be able to reply just yet.
Jay and I sat on the humped grass of the icehouse roof, looking out at the activity surrounding Templewood Hall. Tyre marks scored his carefully mown lawns, the bushes and flowers in the bed that concealed the fountain workings had been trodden down where the hoses had attached to the water supply. All the undergrowth that surrounded the house had either been burned to stubs or broken and battered by the weight of water poured into the building, and pools and puddles of it still stood on the earth.
‘What a mess,’ I said.
Jay squeezed me around the shoulders. ‘It’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘By next summer you’ll never know there was a fire. All the perennials will come back, the grass will recover and the annuals would have died off anyway, come the first frost.’
‘I actually meant the house.’
‘Oh. Yes. Of course you did. Yes. That’s – that’s a bit of a mess too. Sorry. I was just being a gardener there for a minute.’
I smiled. ‘Is that your default then? All about the plants?’
I got another squeeze and a sideways smile. ‘Not always. I can diversify.’ He fiddled with one of his hearing aids. ‘Into surprising areas too. You wait and see.’
The warm flush came up again, welcome in this early morning chill. ‘I shall look forward to it,’ I said.
We stared on. A lump of stone that had been jutting precariously from the side of the west wing fell into the scorched ruins with a sound like resignation.
‘Hugo likes dresses,’ I said, eventually, when we had wrung all the visual potential out of the scene.
‘I gathered,’ Jay said, dryly. ‘And you’re not quite as keen, I take it.’
‘It wasn’t just that.’ I kept my eyes on the rubble-strewn lawn in front of us. ‘Not really.’
‘No. Plus, here’s me swanning in with my charisma and charm.’
‘And that.’ A pause. ‘Do you think I’ll make a good gardener?’
‘I think you will make an excellent gardener.’ Another momentary pressure around my shoulders. ‘You will be fine.’
‘All those hours I spent cataloguing the library.’ I sighed. ‘What a waste of time.’
We sat for a while longer, and then we were joined by Hugo and The Master. Lady Tanith we could see in the distance, berating the fire brigade and directing those of the locals foolish enough to come for a look at what was left of the house. She’d got them humping any saved furniture and goods off towards the village. Poor Jasper was going to come back from wherever he was to find his house full of smoke-scented Regency tables, and his mother.
‘Well,’ Hugo said, carefully spreading his brother’s coat out underneath him and sitting down beside us. ‘Today is turning out to be most surprising.’
He looked at me, sitting with Jay’s arm around me, resting myself comfortably in the crook of his arm, and smiled.
‘What are you going to do, though?’ I asked.
‘Well,’ Hugo said again, ‘it turns out that the house burning to the ground may be the best thing that’s ever happened to me.’
‘OK,’ Jay said slowly. ‘We might need a bit more detail on that one.’
