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‘It’s not that I don’t care,’ Alice said, fast. ‘I do. Very much. This...what I’ve set up here, it’s important. It’s one of the best things I’ve done in my life.’
‘Then why go?’
‘It’s just...time.’ She felt awkward just saying it, letting him see that it mattered to her.
But the way Liam surveyed her across the table, she got the feeling he might just possibly understand.
And then, finally, the words he’d spoken that had been stuck in the back of her mind made their way to the front.
‘She said she wanted me to make it my home at last.’
At last.
Which made it sound as if he’d refused to make Thornwood home in the past, while Rose was alive. But why?
If she didn’t stick around, she’d never know. And, more importantly, she’d lose any power she had to make sure that Liam continued the work she’d started the way he’d promised—with a new building and plenty of financial support. She couldn’t leave until she was sure that the women she was leaving behind were safe.
She forced a smile. ‘It’s fine. I’m happy to stay—at least until everything here is settled.’
‘So you’ll move your group to whatever building I find for you?’
Nice try. ‘No. So I’ll stay and help you find the perfect place for my groups, somewhere even better than Thornwood Castle, and get them settled in. And then I’ll leave.’
‘The perfect place?’
‘Well, of course.’
Liam sighed. ‘In that case, we’d better get started. In my experience, perfection is pretty hard to come by.’
Alice didn’t smile. She knew that better than most people.
* * *
She was leaving anyway. If he’d just held out, she might have agreed to leave without the promise of a new venue for her groups. And then he could have...what, exactly? Kicked a load of needy women and children out on the streets? Or, worse, back to abusive homes?
No, he couldn’t have done that. He knew too well how it felt to have nowhere to go. Nowhere that felt safe. Nowhere to call home.
And now he had Thornwood. Which felt neither safe nor homely, but at least had the benefit of being potentially lucrative.
Once he’d turfed out the current inhabitants, of course.
Standing, he held a hand out across the table to Alice. ‘So, we have a deal?’
She took it, her grip firmer than he expected from her pale face and slender form. ‘We do.’
‘Good.’ He scanned her eyes, looking for any hint of emotion—doubt or fear or anything, but there was nothing there. Nothing at all.
He knew that expression. He’d practised it himself.
What was Alice Walters hiding? He suspected he might never know her full story, but he could guess a little of it right now. This wasn’t just a job to Alice; this was personal.
Someone, some time, had put Alice in the same position as some of these women.
The thought made him irrationally angry, and his jaw clenched tight.
‘Um, can I have my hand back now?’ Alice tilted her head to the side as she asked, obviously surveying him the same way he had her.
He wondered what she saw. Then he decided he probably didn’t want to know.
‘Of course.’ He dropped her hand and stepped back from the table. ‘In that case, I’d better get back to work—unless you need my help ushering out the last of your guests? I’m figuring the main event must be over by now.’
Alice nodded. ‘I think so. I’ll go and check everything went okay with the silent auction, say any last goodbyes, and then I can finally get out of this damn dress and off to bed.’
The dress. Just the mention of it made Liam study it again, taking in those delicate straps, seemingly made out of thin golden rope, holding up the fabric that draped across her body, before widening into a fuller skirt. Something about it hinted at the idea that it might just fall to the floor at any moment.
Liam had to admit, he liked it a lot better than the woolly cardigans she normally hid herself behind.
‘It’s a great dress,’ he told her with feeling. ‘You look gorgeous in it.’
Alice’s cheeks flushed a light pink. ‘Thank you. Rose always said I had to look the part for these things, so she had someone send a few dresses over for me to choose from. This one was my favourite—not least because it has hidden pockets. Well, it was my favourite, before I realised how uncomfortable the bra I have to wear with it is.’ Her blush turned darker as she said that, and Liam chuckled.
‘Trust me, it’s worth the discomfort.’ Grinning, Liam started back towards the ballroom via the main hall. He was finally starting to get his bearings in the labyrinthine corridors of Thornwood Castle. Soon he wouldn’t even need the sketched map he’d taken to keeping in his pocket, and glancing at only when he was sure no one was looking.
‘I’m glad you think so,’ Alice said, following him down the corridor. ‘You don’t scrub up half bad yourself, you know.’
‘Aussie surfer dude turned English aristocrat, huh?’
Alice laughed. ‘Something like that.’
‘Glad to know I can pull it off.’ Liam frowned as an unexpected noise echoed off the stone walls of the corridor they were walking down. ‘Did you hear that?’
Alice’s forehead creased too. ‘I’m not sure.’ She took another turning and suddenly they were back in the main hall again, its oversized Christmas tree looming over the staircase. From beyond the next set of doors, they could hear the dying chatter of the fundraiser, the last few guests still hanging on in there. But that wasn’t the noise that had caught Liam’s attention.
The sound rang out again and, this time, there was no doubt in Liam’s mind what he was hearing. He knew the sound of a baby crying well enough—from the age of ten upwards, it had seemed every foster home he went to had a new baby—one he was expected to help look after. ‘Did someone bring their baby with them tonight?’
Except he couldn’t see anyone nearby, and the cry had sounded very close.
As if it was in the room with them.
‘I don’t think...’ Alice trailed off as the baby cried again. Then she stepped closer to the tree, taking slow, cautious steps in her long shimmering dress, as if trying not to spook a wild animal.
Liam followed, instinctively staying quiet.
r /> The crying was constant now, and there was no denying where it was coming from.
Alice hitched up her dress and knelt down on the flagstones, reaching under the spread of the pine needles, dislodging a couple of ornaments as she did so. Then she pulled out a basket—not a bassinet or anything, Liam realised. Just a wicker basket, of the sort someone might use to store magazines or whatever.
A wicker basket with a baby lying in it.
CHAPTER SIX
‘WHOSE IS IT?’ Liam whispered, as the baby gripped hold of Alice’s finger and, just for a moment, stopped crying. She stared down into its unfocused eyes and felt her heart tighten in her chest. Gritting her teeth, she held her emotions in check. There was a reason she stayed away from babies.
And that reason meant she had to get this one back to its mum as soon as possible.
‘I have no idea,’ Alice murmured back. ‘But it’s very young. Newborn, even.’
She hadn’t spent a great deal of time around babies before she came to Thornwood. But since then she’d met children of all ages—from a day old upwards. And this baby looked smaller, younger, fresher than any of them.
Who could have left it there? Who did she know who was even pregnant? Susie Hughes had given birth the week before, and Jessica Groves wasn’t even six months yet. And neither of them would have left their child unattended under a Christmas tree, anyway.
Bracing herself, she lifted the baby out of the basket, taking care to keep the blanket tucked around it for warmth. Underneath, it was naked, except for a small cloth. Alice unwrapped it carefully, focusing on the clinical, hard facts—not the emotions coursing through her body as she held the baby close.
‘It’s a boy.’ Not that it mattered. What mattered was the roughly cut and tied umbilical cord. ‘Oh, God, Liam. I think he’s just been born. Today, I mean.’ Maybe even here at Thornwood. Alice swallowed at the thought of some desperate woman giving birth alone in a cold, dark corner of the castle, while they were all partying in the ballroom. And then leaving her son in the main hall, where he was sure to be found.
