AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Madelyn’s father bought an estate called Abberley, an expensive purchase intended for restoration and a profitable resale,’ Richard told Jack. ‘When he died I suppose Lansing was going to hand over the papers along with the Dersington estate documents, but then Madelyn told him to pay off all the debts and loans. He must have suddenly realised that, with Aylmer dead, no one else knew anything about that land. Instead of explaining to her about the plans for Abberley he cleared everything on that property using all the liquid assets and kept quiet, protected from your agents’ scrutiny by the trust on the Beaupierre lands. He was in the process of creating a duplicate set of ledgers for the period with no references to Abberley at all—and that property had its deeds altered to make him the owner. Between the two separate estates he must have thought that no one would realise where the money had been used.’
‘And I suppose he had made the purchase as Aylmer’s agent so his name was on many of the records of sale and very little forgery was needed,’ Jack said. ‘Madelyn, we will have to involve your trustees in this now. There will be a full audit—goodness knows how much he has defrauded the estate out of over the years.’
They waited while the soup was served and the footmen had left them alone again.
‘We will have to send for the magistrate in the morning,’ she said with a sigh. ‘What a horrible mess. It will cause talk, but we cannot let him loose to prey on someone else. But the Abberley estate is mine to do with as I wish and we can raise a new mortgage on it, restore it and sell it on, just as my father intended.’
‘Unless Mr Aylmer was very much mistaken you will get a very good return, enough to restore your finances to a healthy state.’
The soup was followed by a fricassee of chicken with peas and a raised pie and the three of them, by unspoken consent, turned the conversation from finance to Richard’s tales of India.
When the footmen brought in fruit and dishes of almond custard he excused himself. ‘I am for my bed—my head is spinning with figures. I’ll make sure Mr Lansing is secure and has been fed—you’ll not want to be troubled with him tonight.’
‘I like Turner,’ Jack said when they were alone. ‘But I am glad you did not marry him.’
‘So am I. Whatever it was between us is no longer there. I felt it at the masquerade. Liking, yes. Love, no. That faded away over time.’
‘Ours will not,’ Jack said. He stood up, took a tray from the sideboard and loaded it with grapes and two glasses of sweet wine. ‘Shall we have our dessert in your garden under the stars? It should be warm enough in the shelter of the walls.’
The enclosed space had caught and held the heat of the day and the night-scented tobacco plants and the lilies were flooding the garden with their perfume. Jack set the tray down on one of the turf seats by the fountain and glanced around, up at the unlit windows in the high walls. ‘Are we overlooked?’
‘No. Those two wings are unoccupied, that side has no windows and our own chambers are over the Great Hall. If they are dark, then the staff must have tidied them and left. Why?’
‘I have a strong desire to see you naked in the starlight and to make love to you on this seat here.’
‘The one you fell asleep on that first day we met? The day I summoned my knight in shining armour and he came to rescue me from my imprisonment?’ The gown was easy to unfasten and it slipped from her shoulders, caught at the tight wrists then fell to the ground, a dark pool on the pale stone of the path around the fountain. Under it she was quite naked.
‘The day you stole my heart and enchanted me, although I did not realise it then.’ Jack dragged his shirt over his head and tossed it onto a lavender bush. ‘I was too blinded by pride and anger to see the treasure I had been offered.’ He held her gaze as he stripped, an antique statue in the garden, a creature of shadows and strong, beautiful lines.
‘All the bad things that happened—my father’s refusal to let me marry Richard, his obsession with this castle above his feelings for family, your father’s behaviour and the loss of your lands—all of them have come together to give us this, our happiness.’
‘I was not a believer in destiny before, my love, my wise lady of the white towers, but you have made me one.’
Madelyn laid down on the cool turf and held out her arms to him, her lover, her husband, and he came down over her, sheltering her with his body and bent to take her lips.
* * *
A while later he raised himself on one elbow and looked up as an owl hooted, drifting above them, then down to see a dark moth settle on the white-blonde spill of Madelyn’s hair.
‘I did not believe in magic either, but you have spun it here. I was afraid of love, afraid of its power to wound, but you have given me the courage to love.’
‘We have both found that,’ she whispered, pulling him down to lie against her breast once more. ‘It was our
destiny.’
* * *
