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Estelle and Henry made their way back to the ground floor of the manor, through wood-panelled corridors lined with ancient oil paintings.
Inside their office, her brother went straight to a coffee machine that sat on a table near the window. ‘Let me make you a cappuccino. Double shot?’
Estelle gave him a resigned nod. She wasn’t going to change the way she drank her coffee just to prove James wrong.
Henry turned the machine on. ‘While I make this, why don’t you grab the contract? We can look for a loophole.’
Pushing herself away from the door, she went to her desk. Where Henry’s workspace was minimalist in the extreme, with only a framed photo of his girlfriend, Libby, a laptop, pad of paper and pen on the top, hers looked like it housed the aftermath of a fight between a stationery cupboard and a gift shop. Moving empty mugs and ornaments off piles of paper, she searched for the contract she’d signed.
‘I just don’t understand any of it,’ Henry continued, taking a bottle of milk from a small fridge. ‘He’s a broker, not an event organiser. How on earth did he get the job? And why?’
Estelle shrugged, picking up a stress ball in the shape of an angry Friesian cow and squeezing. ‘He told me he was the CEO. Could he have bought the company?’
Her brother ran a hand over his head, scratching at the tight curls. ‘God knows.’ He glanced at her. ‘Don’t you have a digital copy you can check?’
She huffed. ‘Yes, I do. I’m all over the place right now.’ Sitting at her desk, she moved a foot-tall wooden letter ‘E’ out of the way and flipped her laptop open. ‘I’ll send it to you now.’
Henry frothed the milk, then poured it into her mug. ‘What about the members of the team at Excelsior that are still there? Could you work with them and ignore him?’
‘How can I ignore someone that big and cocky?’ Estelle grumbled as she searched through her emails. ‘You spent the best part of seventeen years trying and failing. And anyway, there’s no-one left.’
‘Huh?’
‘The only member of staff there, apart from Beelzebub, was some young dude named Max, who seems to hate his boss almost as much as we do.’
‘What?’
‘And didn’t you hear what I just told our folks? They’re getting kicked out of their offices at the end of the day because they haven’t paid their rent.’
‘Jesus Christ!’ Henry rubbed at the lines on his forehead as if trying to remove them, then carried her cappuccino over. Estelle tossed a notepad to the floor to create room, and he placed it down. There was a perfect pattern of a leaf created in the foam.
‘Thanks, little brother.’
He squeezed her shoulder. ‘Anytime, big sister. And don’t worry. I’m a contract whizz. I’ll find a way out of this.’
Estelle slammed the door of her Land Rover Defender shut behind her and breathed in the smell of hay and horse shit, a smile spreading across her face.
Home.
The knot of tension in her stomach eased a little as she gazed at the livery stables. This was her world, and James Hunter-Savage had no claim on it.
At the sound of loud barking she dropped to her knees. A small, fluffy black dog dashed forward and barrelled into her arms, his tail a wagging blur.
‘Who’s my Chester-chops? Who’s a good little doggie? You miss me?’ she cooed as the dog attempted to lick every part of her he could reach.
An English Setter trotted around the corner to join Chester in saying hello.
‘And Joy-dog. You missed me too?’
Joy barked.
‘Well, I missed you more, my gorgeous girl,’ Estelle replied, scratching behind Joy’s ears. ‘Shall we go and find Molly?’
The dogs bounded off and Estelle followed, pulling her irritating skirt up to mid-thigh so she could walk at an almost normal pace.
At the far end of one of the stable blocks was an office. Photos of horses were stuck to the dusty wooden walls, along with rosettes, a calendar from Horse & Hound Magazine, and handwritten names and numbers for the vet, feed suppliers, and livery clients.
The room was dirty but serviceable, and as familiar to Estelle as the manor where she’d grown up. It used to feel like she lived here, but slowly, over the last ten years, when she became more heavily involved with running the estate, she’d ceded day-to-day management of the livery to Molly.
