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Chapter one
Pea
LadyMargaretPeonyAshley,who was known as Pea to almost everyone, stood alone, sunburned and barefoot near the exit of Heathrow Airport with her phone in her hand.
It was early evening in late August. She could see blue sky through the glass windows, and the airport was busy with holidaymakers. But Pea had just returned from Tanzania, and everything seemed a little cool and muted to her. She hardly noticed the people hurrying past at all. All her thoughts were turned inwards as she debated a terrible choice.
She could call her mother and ask to come home. Or…
Or she could phone the Count.
He wasn’t really a Count at all, of course. He was Leopold James Orton-Grey, the Duke of Cumbria and her older brother Edward’s closest friend.
He was Pea’s friend too, in a reluctant, resigned sort of way.
He was also imposingly tall and dark-featured with the most severe set of black eyebrows Peony had ever had the misfortune to dream about. His jaw was hard and his eyes were dark, and together they formed a murderous scowl—the expression that had given him his vampiric nickname.
But Peony had been subjected to that scowl since the age of eleven when Edward had first brought his illustriously titled friend home to Lansbury Hall on a visit from Eton. Now, eighteen years later, she told herself that the Count did not frighten her. And that his caustic bark was far worse than his bite. And, she reminded herself, Edward had several times told her he knew no better man.
Even if the evidence was somewhat…hard to spot.
But it was either the Count or her mother. So she made the call.
“Who is this?” he answered after four long rings.
Peony winced at the voice that was both deep and sharply annoyed. “It’s Pea!” she said brightly. “Peony, Edward’s sister! Hello, Count!”
Silence. A dark and forbidding silence.
“Pea.” He made her nickname sound like gravel. Like the cold clink of ancient chains in a deep dungeon. “You haven’t phoned me before.”
“That’s true! But I’ve always had your number. And, erm, well—”
“You’re in Africa,” stated the Count.
“No, not anymore, just got back!” She eyed the busy airport wryly.Literally, just got back. But she kept the smile from her voice. A smile would probably just antagonise the man. “But the thing is, I’m in rather a fix. I sublet my place in London to a friend, but I’ve had to come back unexpectedly due to, um, various reasons…”
The Count didnotneed to know about André, the free-diving instructor. And the Dutch girl Pea had found in his bed.
“So I’m back a little earlier, and my friend can’t leave my place. And anyway, I have all these rather large, half-completed canvases with me…” Pea glanced at the multiple stacked trolleys next to her with a grimace, then turned her back on them. “And I need a place to stay where I have room to work on them and finish them and I…well, I couldn’t help but remember when Ed and I came to stay at Thornley Castle a few summers ago and you had that tumbledown little cottage on the grounds attached to the orangery, and I found myself thinking, that would be theperfectlittle place, I could tuck myself away in the cottage and paint in the orangery with all that amazing natural light and you wouldn’t even know I was there, Count, I swear.”
Silence.
And then, “No.”
But then…a sigh. It was a heavy, irritable sigh.
Peony’s stomach curled, and she found herself imagining candles guttering and distant dark oak doors slamming. She worried for a moment that he would tell her to call Edward. But as much as they both loved her brother, he wasn’t the type of man you necessarily chose in a crisis. Besides, Edward’s estate, Lansbury, was still occupied by their mother, while Edward chose to spend his days in his London penthouse—and his nights who knew where.
No, it was the Count Pea’s thoughts turned to in moments of need. He might be as warm as a black rock in a storm-tossed sea, but he was also as steadfast.
“For how long?” he said at last.
Months. It would take months to finish her paintings and prepare for the exhibition.
“A week or two?”
“When?”
