Alison Fraser - The Mother And The Millionaire

There he lingered. The room was bare but Esme wondered if he remembered how it was the night he’d barged in, looking for Arabella. Esme had sat at the window end of the long table, Rosalind Scott-Hamilton at the other. No Arabella. She’d left their mother to act as go-between, a task the older woman had seemed to relish. Esme had burned with humiliation on his behalf.

She was brought back sharply to the present as he finally turned to face her, his expression neutral. ‘I’d like to look round upstairs.’

Esme shrugged her permission. She knew she should be trying to sell the house and its good points but she couldn’t bring herself to do it—not to him, anyway.

Jack started to climb the stairs and she followed automatically. When he paused at the landing window where the stairs forked into two, Esme ventured, ‘Was it always an ambition—to come back and buy this place?’

Of course, it was a silly thing to ask. He was hardly likely to confess such cupidity.

His lips twisted slightly. ‘I see your reading taste hasn’t altered.’

Esme looked blank at this non sequitur. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Jane Eyre?’ He raised a quizzical brow. ‘Or was it Wuthering Heights? The one where the uncouth stable boy returns a rich man to wreak havoc on the family.’

‘Wuthering Heights,’ she responded, although she suspected he knew the answer.

He nodded to the view outside, stone terraces and cultivated lawns leading down to disused tennis courts, the maze and a small lake beyond. ‘Not exactly Heathcliff territory, is it? Don’t think I’ll hear Cathy calling for me out there.’

He was laughing at her. What else?

Esme knew how to wipe the smile from his face and did so, saying, ‘Don’t you mean Arabella?’

‘Arabella?’ His mouth thinned slightly. ‘As the Great Love of my life, you mean?’

She hadn’t expected him to be so upfront about it. Nor had she expected it to still hurt—his preference for her big sister. But it did.

Then he added, ‘Well, sorry to disappoint but I’ve moved on from there. I’ve had at least two or three Great Loves since then,’ he informed her, very much tongue-in-cheek.

Esme answered in kind, ‘How wonderful for you—and them, of course,’ hiding her real feelings behind sarcasm.

What else could she do? Tell him what a pig of a time she’d been having while he was living the life of Reilly? It wouldn’t be true, anyway. She and Harry were happy enough.

Jack was taken aback for a moment—this new Esme really had grown claws—but found himself amused despite the fact.

‘I’ll take that as a vote of confidence,’ he said as she began leading the way to the first-floor gallery.

‘I wouldn’t,’ Esme muttered under her breath but loud enough for him to hear.

Jack chose to ignore the comment but, wanting to set the record straight, continued, ‘Anyway, it’s more a coincidence, us buying this place.’

Us? Esme picked that up and pondered over it. Us as in his business, or us as in significant other?

‘We need a base near London. Sussex is well-placed for the Continent and Highfield is one of three possibilities the location agency came up with,’ he relayed as she showed him the first of the twelve upstairs rooms. ‘Unfortunately our first choice was sold off before we were in a position to move on it and the other place has no permission for business use, so that leaves Highfield.’

He made it sound as if he might settle for the house. Her beloved home. One of the finest Georgian manors in the area.

‘Never mind,’ she rallied, striding in and out of bedrooms like a demented estate agent, ‘it has at least one point in its favour.’

‘Which is?’ Jack followed in her wake and, leaning against a door jamb, forced her to come to rest.

‘Well, you could always claim it’s your family seat,’ Esme volunteered recklessly, resentfully. ‘Impress your other nouveau riche friends.’

She knew she’d gone too far even before she said it. She just didn’t care.

She wanted to pierce that seamless confidence. Hurt him as he’d hurt her, however unknowingly. Because suddenly it seemed worse that he didn’t know, had never known, hadn’t the first idea of the tears she’d cried for him, the pain she’d endured.

For a moment Jack didn’t react at all. The truth was he wasn’t sure how to. It was as if the family terrier, cute and loveable, had suddenly turned into a teeth-baring Rottweiler, guarding her territory.

Only it wasn’t hers for much longer, whether he bought it or someone else did. He’d gathered that much from the location agent. And, yes, though it held some appeal—the idea that Rosalind Scott-Hamilton would eventually discover it was the cook’s son who had bought her stately pile—it wasn’t part of some grand master plan. He would pass on it if it proved unsuitable.

‘You may have something there,’ he replied in dry tones. ‘Crest of arms on the door and my portrait above the mantelpiece—what do you think?’

Esme thought he was laughing at her again.

‘I’ll give you the commission if you like,’ he added.

‘Me?’

‘You were something of an artist, as I recall.’

‘That was in the past.’

‘But you went to art college?’

That had been Esme’s intention but reality had intruded.

‘No, I did other things,’ she dismissed.

Jack waited for her to expand on that statement but she remained tight-lipped. He guessed she’d probably gone down the finishing school-debutante route that her sister her taken. Was that what had changed her?

‘Do you want to see the other rooms?’ she asked offhandedly.

It drew the response, ‘Do you want to sell the house?’

She flushed. Did she want to sell the house? No. Did they have to? Yes.

‘I’m sorry.’ Somehow she gritted out the words. ‘I wasn’t sure if you were still interested.’

‘Well, I won’t be if I don’t see it all,’ he pointed out.

‘Right.’ Teeth clenched, Esme continued the guided tour.

At each room, she became increasingly conscious of how bare and decaying the whole house looked. Only her old sanctuary still had furniture. A bed, washstand, bookcase and chest of drawers were earmarked for her new home but she had been slow in arranging for the pieces to be moved.

‘Your room?’ Jack guessed, seeing the book titles on a shelf.

She nodded.

‘Are you still living here?’ he added, frowning a little.

‘No,’ she replied shortly. ‘Everything will be gone by the time the house is sold on.’

‘Where are you based now?’ It was a natural enough question.

She gave a deliberately vague, ‘Locally.’

‘Are you married?’ he added with mild curiosity.

The question made her inexplicably cross. ‘Who would I be married to?’

She recognised the oddity of her answer, even before he gave her a quizzical look.

‘Well, there was that boy,’ he replied with a slight smile, ‘from one of the neighbouring estates. You used to go riding with him. Sandy-haired. One of a few brothers?’

Esme knew who he meant but didn’t help him out. There had been no real romance with Henry Fairfax.

Instead she said, ‘Jack, you’ve been away almost ten years. Do you imagine everyone else’s life has stood still?’

‘Fair comment.’ He pulled an apologetic face. ‘But people do get frozen in time if you haven’t seen them for a while.’

Esme supposed he was right. Up until today—until just this hour—Jack Doyle had stayed in her head as her first love, a love tainted by anguish for a young man she’d idolised.

Now here he was, far too real, and bringing with him feelings of resentment that had somehow never properly surfaced till now.

‘So what is it that the new Esme does?’ he enquired with a smile.

The interest could have been genuine but Esme didn’t think so. Had he ever really noticed her with Arabella around?

‘I do people’s houses,’ she replied shortly.

‘Do?’ he echoed. ‘As in…what exactly?’

He sounded hesitant, unusual for him.

Esme glanced at him briefly. Something in his expression helped her read his mind. God, he really did think the family had fallen on hard times!

She was almost amused. Certainly amused enough to play along. ‘How do people normally do houses?’

‘You clean them?’ he said with lingering incredulity.

No, she actually decorated them, but she was enjoying his confusion too much to say so.

‘Have you a problem with that?’ she rejoined.

‘No, of course not.’ His own mother, though officially cook, had cleaned up after the Scott-Hamiltons. ‘It just isn’t something I pictured you doing.’

‘Well, that’s life,’ Esme concluded philosophically. ‘I never pictured you a big-shot wheeler-dealer businessman.’

‘Hardly that,’ he denied. ‘I design and market websites. That just happens to be where the money is now.’

It wasn’t false modesty. Esme knew that much. Even as a young man, Jack Doyle had never underplayed or overstated his achievements. He’d sailed through school and college, a straight ‘A’ student, but, being totally secure about his intellectual gifts, had felt no need to advertise them.

It was Esme’s father who had noticed and come up with the idea of him tutoring Esme. Up till then the cook’s son had done work in the stables or on the home farm or thinning out the wood. But, with his brains, surely he would be better employed doing something about Esme?

Looking back it was a mad idea. Why should a seventeen-year-old boy, however clever, manage to help eleven-year-old Esme when her expensive prep school had failed miserably?

But he had. That was the even crazier thing. He’d been the one to notice Esme could remember perfectly anything she was taught verbally, could talk with intelligence on most subjects and only descended into gibberish when committing to paper. Remarkably, he’d been the first to suggest dyslexia as a possibility, and tests had proved him right.

Esme found herself treading down memory lane once more and pulled herself back sharply.

‘And money is important?’ she remarked for something to say.

‘It is if you haven’t got any,’ he responded quite equably.

Esme didn’t argue. She knew he was talking from experience. His mother had died from cancer just after his finals, keeping her illness secret almost to the end. Accompanied by Jack, she had gone home to her native Ireland for a holiday and passed away there. She had left nothing but the money for her funeral. If Jack had grieved, he’d done it alone.

She watched him now, gazing through her bedroom window. It faced the back of the house and offered a view of the stable block and woods beyond. In autumn, when the trees were bare, it was just possible to see the chimney of the gamekeeper’s cottage where Jack had lived with his mother. But it was currently spring and greenery obscured it.

It was in his mind, however, as he said, ‘I understand the cottage is rented out.’

Esme’s stomach tightened a little but she kept her cool. ‘Yes, it is. You know it’s not part of the sale?’

He turned. ‘No, I didn’t. There’s no mention in the particulars.’

Esme glanced towards the folder in his hand. She’d not perused the estate agent’s details. She’d trusted her mother’s word instead.

‘I don’t really see how it could be excluded,’ he continued, ‘considering it’s in the middle of the estate.’

‘Well, it is!’ Esme snapped with a certainty she was far from feeling.