Their partnership worked well. She was a generous employer, content to leave the administrative side of the business completely to him, and he took a pride in the neat lists of schedules and work plans he kept locked away in his desk, carefully monitoring the progress of each contract, checking that all flowed smoothly.
Initially he had been almost desperately in love with her, but he soon learned that it was pointless. She was the only woman he knew who seemed to be able to live her life without a man in it. In all the years he had worked with her he had never known whether she had a lover and, if so, who. On balance he rather doubted it, which seemed incredible, given her startlingly good looks and the fact that she had a fifteen-year-old daughter. Proof positive, surely, that once there must have been a man. And that she must have been extremely young…
He wasn’t sure of her exact age, she looked younger than she was. What had happened to Lucy’s father? Had he been married perhaps? Had they quarrelled? Had he perhaps been a boy as young as she must have been? Was it Lucy’s conception and birth that had soured her against men? None of them were questions he would have dared to ask her, and over the years his love had faded to admiration tinged with a wistful yearning that things might have been different.
Left by herself, Jenna walked towards the house. Sharp knives of tension speared her stomach. Those who knew her would have been stunned had they known how she was feeling. Jenna never betrayed any emotion, any weakness and yet here she was, dreading setting one foot inside the house she had come so far to see and yet knowing that she must.
The Hall was rectangular and dark. Someone had painted over the elegant Georgian plasterwork in a revolting shade of brown, so that even the light pouring in through the high windows did nothing to alleviate the gloom. Dust and the smell of damp permeated the air. A double staircase curved up to the first floor, the stairs elegant and shallow. All Jenna’s inborn sense of colour and fitness rebelled at what had been done to this once-gracious room.
Two sets of double doors led off the hall with another two single doors further towards the back of it. This main entrance was in the new wing of the house and, as she knew from the sketch plan she had, contained a large drawing-room, the library, a di
ning-room, and another room which was described as a ‘back parlour’.
Although badly scratched, the mahogany of the double doors into the drawing-room seemed firm and dry; the brass handles and locks decorating them were probably the originals, Jenna reflected, marvelling at the workmanship that meant they opened outwards easily despite their weight without so much as a squeak.
The drawing-room was at the far end of the new wing, and, from the smell of damp pervading it, had probably suffered the most neglect. A leaking downspout, or a hole in the roof, Jenna decided knowledgeably, studying the betraying mould-stains discolouring the faded silk wallpaper at the far end of the room.
Over the years, the original Adam design had been mutilated as only the Victorians and Edwardians had known how, but she could see how the room once must have looked and how it could look again. Against her will, Jenna found as she walked through the dusty neglected rooms that she was slowly falling in love with the house, the one thing she had made no calculation for at all. Against all reason, its neglect called out to her, making her ache to restore it to what it had once been. Moving from room to room she forgot why she had originally come here, and knew only a powerful feeling that the house had to be hers. It went against all logic and reason, but it was strong enough to blot out everything else, even Lucy, waiting for her at the Mathers’, even the fact that originally she had wanted the house simply because it had once belonged to the Deverils, everything. She had heard of love at first sight, but had never envisaged herself falling so deeply in love with a house that the thought of not owning it caused actual physical pain.
Not even the open evidence of damp and the knowledge that it would need a fortune spending on it could put her off. Already she could imagine how it would look; how it would come to life under her expert care and love.
On the first floor, a galleried landing overlooked the main hall with four doors leading off it. Jenna had already noticed several paintings hanging on the walls—the house was being sold complete with contents—but this was the first one that had caused her to spare it more than a passing glance. The portrait was of a man, dressed in clothes of the late Georgian era. His dark hair was worn unpowdered, curling close to his skull, and the painter had somehow managed to capture on canvas the sitter’s aura of intense masculinity. A cynical rakehell character, Jenna suspected moving closer to the portrait.
The words ‘James Deveril, aged 32, 1817’ were painted on the frame, and it seemed to Jenna as she studied him that the dark blue eyes watched her, coolly mocking her.
As far as she knew most of the Deverils had been fair-haired Saxon types whereas this man was dark, his hair as jet black as a gypsy’s, his skin tanned as though he had spent some time in hotter climates than Yorkshire’s.
Fascinated by him against her will, Jenna wondered who he was. It shouldn’t be difficult to find out—the Deveril history was well documented in the local library as she already knew.
What on earth was wrong with her? she chided herself, moving away. The moment she entered this house she had been acting in a manner totally foreign to her normal behaviour.
She walked from the Georgian wing into the old, Tudor part of the Hall. Here the rooms were small, oddly shaped, the windows mullioned and the ceilings beamed. The Georgian wing fronted the house and the original Tudor building ran at right angles to it, a good-sized courtyard was at the back of the building enclosed on two sides by the house itself and on the other two by stables and outbuildings. Now neglected and weed-covered, Jenna could already see how attractive this area could eventually be.
Beyond the house lay the grounds, which included a small park planted with specimen trees, collected by an adventuring Deveril who had had business interests in the West Indies, but the rich farmland that lay beyond the house’s immediate environs was being sold separately. Not that she would have wanted it, Jenna admitted, studying the plans at the back of her sale pamphlet, the land that went with the house afforded it plenty of privacy. She remembered as a child cycling past the lodge gates, intensely curious about what lay behind the protective ring of trees that hid the house from sight.
Today wasn’t the first time she had visited the house, though; there had been one other occasion on which she had been here. As she stepped out through the back door into the derelict yard her mouth twisted bitterly. On that occasion she had made the mistake of ringing the front doorbell, and had been sent round to the servants’ entrance for her pains. ‘Servants’ entrance’, dear God, how antiquated it all seemed now, ridiculously so; the hallmark of a family desperate to preserve the old ‘us’ and ‘them’, ‘master’ and ‘servant’ image. Then she had been totally over-awed, embarrassed and humiliated. How naïve she had been! A true product of her remote village upbringing by a spinster great-aunt.
Having finished her inspection she walked back towards her car, lost in memories of the past.
‘Nice car!’ The unexpected intrusion of the deep male voice into her thoughts unbalanced her, and she swung round tensely, colour flushing up under her skin as she found herself being studied by a pair of openly appreciative male eyes. The visual impact of coming face to face with a man so similar to the portrait of James Deveril, which she had just been studying, made her usual cool poise desert her, and she could only glance from him to her scarlet Ferrari in disorientated bewilderment.
‘Sorry if I startled you!’ His eyes crinkled in warm amusement, laughter tingeing his voice as he added, ‘You look as though you’ve seen a ghost! Have you? They do say that one of the wives of one of the Deverils walks sometimes at full moon…though no one’s ever seen her during the day.’
He had a faint accent that she couldn’t place, and angry at herself for her bemused reaction, Jenna threw him a cold look. The laughter died from his eyes immediately, and he sketched her a briefly mocking bow, drawling lightly, ‘Sorry if I spoke out of place, ma’am…’
He was dressed in jeans and a checked cotton work-shirt, his hair tousled, the open neck of his shirt revealing a deep vee of tanned flesh and the beginnings of a tangle of dark hair. Who was he? He was so like James Deveril that he must have some Deveril blood somewhere…but why not? There had been several Deverils in the past who had taken what they considered their droit de seigneur over the village girls; this man could be the descendant of one of them. He couldn’t be a legitimate member of the family; there weren’t any alive.
‘Thinking of buying it, are you?’ He nodded towards the house as he spoke, his eyes lingering on the full thrust of her breasts as she turned to unlock her car.
Seething inwardly Jenna ignored him, hoping that he would take the hint and leave her alone, but when he kept on prowling appreciatively round her car, she began to suspect he was deliberately trying to infuriate her, and she snapped shortly, ‘Look, I can see that you consider yourself something of a local Don Juan, but I’m really not interested. If I were you I’d get back to work before your employers discover that you’re missing.’
She had expected him to be disconcerted by her put-down, but instead he merely laughed, stepping away from the car as she slid in to fire the engine. The car needed servicing and was being rather temperamental. It refused to start, despite several attempts to get it going, and all-too-conscious of his amused scrutiny, Jenna willed herself not to give way to temper.
‘Here, let me.’
His arrogance left her breathless, stupefaction giving way to fury as he opened her door, turned the key in the ignition and the car fired right away.
Closing the door for her he gave her a wide, taunting smile, and said, ‘Some cars are like women; they respond best to a man’s touch.’