Penmort Castle (11 page)

It was
abundantly clear that Abigail Butler may sell her time and her
presence but she most certainly never sold her body.

He sat on the
bed in the crook of her lap, half-hoping to wake her, half-glad he
didn’t.

He bent low and
kissed the skin of her exposed shoulder. Then he lifted his hand
and slid the hair from her neck and he kissed her there.

She twisted her
head in sleep, not to dislodge his touch but to deepen it.

He smiled
against her skin.

He got to his
feet, pulled the covers over her shoulder and left the room.

He didn’t give
a fuck if that very day any of his clients’ entire multinational
conglomerates were stolen out from under them.

Cash would not
be late home that night.

Mrs. Truman

Abby sat at the
big battered farm table in her grandmother’s huge kitchen. The Aga
stove, aided by a merry fire burning in the stone hearth of the
fireplace, warmed the space so thoroughly, even the huge chunks of
slate that formed the floor felt heated.

She was
drinking coffee with Pete and listening to him tell her about
plumbing, electricity, new boilers, chimney pots and so on down to
re-plastering and paint, all of which her house needed to be put
back to rights.

“That’s just
what I see, love, but I’d get someone in to do a survey,” Pete
advised, before draining his mug. His eyes came back to her as he
put down his cup. “I know someone if you want me to set it up.”

Abby nodded. “I
can’t do this anymore Pete. Every week it’s something new. I need
to know what I’m up against.”

He grinned at
her with approval. “Smart girl.”

She smiled back
and grabbed his mug. “Another cuppa?”

“Supposed to be
bringin’ the boys up in your bathroom one, so make it three,” Pete
answered.

Abby stood and
went to the kettle.

She’d decided
on the way home from Cash’s that now the deed was irrevocably done,
she was setting the plans in motion to get her life back in
order.

She was not
going to delay.

When her
arrangement with Cash was over, she was going to begin anew and she
was going to hit the ground running.

Over a year
ago, Jenny had negotiated a good deal on the sale of Abby and Ben’s
home. Selling her furniture, her car and their other belongings
allowed Abby to pay off her mountain of debt and left her with
enough to rest comfortably as she started her new life in England
(or so she thought).

Abby had
decided to take a month or two off before starting work. In
hindsight, of course, this was not the most sterling idea. She
already knew her grandmother’s home needed attention. Gram was a
packrat, she kept everything. Abby had visions of spending her days
sorting and tidying, maybe slapping some new coats of paint here
and there, making Gram’s home her own.

However, a week
after she’d moved in it had rained, as it had a way of doing in
England, rather heavily outside.

Unfortunately,
it had rained rather heavily
inside
too.

Abby had spent
the night rushing around with pots, pans and bowls to place under
the drips.

She’d spent the
next day listening to Pete tell her she needed a new roof and that
the leaks had been around awhile, there was water damage. Gram,
who’d spend most of her time on the first floor, probably didn’t
know it (or didn’t want to).

After paying
the taxes, Gram’s inheritance didn’t come with a boatload of money.
The roof and repair of the water damage dug deep into Abby’s
reserves but she had no choice and even if it was expensive, it
certainly didn’t bankrupt her.

She had time to
make it up and get her life rolling.

At least that
was what she thought.

Deep into
December, about a month after she’d moved in, England was gripped
by an arctic cold snap. Gram’s home was also gripped by it. The
house was huge, big rooms, tall ceilings, wide stairways and lots
of open space in the halls. The boilers were in overdrive and older
than Mrs. Truman. Abby kept the fires in the rooms blazing with
wood and coal and still could barely keep out the chill.

Unfortunately,
some of the rooms had chimneys that needed work and Abby learned
the hard way she should have had them looked at before she built
fires in their grates.

Pete came after
the smoke cleared (literally), telling her not only did she need
her chimneys serviced, she needed new windows and insulation for
her insulation had been installed during the Boer War (this was not
Pete’s estimate, it was Abby’s).

She lived in a
conservation area so she couldn’t buy cheap but effective windows.
She had to buy expensive timber framed ones.

At the time
Abby had found a job. She was working. She liked her job and the
people there but her pay was a fraction of what it used to be.
Since she didn’t have a mortgage (although her gas and electric
bills were staggering), she thought this would be okay and she
could live the standard of life she was used to.

Also,
considering she had a goodly amount of money in the bank and not
knowing what would soon befall her, she’d sold her Gram’s old
estate car and bought herself a brand new, sporty BMW 118, not
going over the top (she thought) but it suited her and Ben would
have loved it.

This had
dwindled her reserves further.

To pay for the
chimneys, insulation and windows, she’d taken out a loan.

Then in a
shocking turn of events, she and four of her colleagues had been
made redundant. To their credit, her employers were nearly (but not
quite) as upset as Abby and promised if things improved they’d call
her (so far, obviously, they hadn’t).

Out of work and
nearly out of money, Abby soldiered on.

She spent her
days alternately working at high-paid but short-lived contracts or
clearing out her Grandmother’s piles of magazines and newspapers,
the plethora of books and knick knacks and a kitchen full of
equipment that was broken, rusty or hadn’t been needed since
cavemen were starting fires by striking together flint rocks.

Then one
bathroom groaned to a halt, which Abby ignored (and shouldn’t
have), then another one did (ditto the ignoring bit).

Then the window
men found the damp, the fixing of which led to her second loan. And
the insulation men found the dry rot, the fixing of which led to
Abby being broke.

Kieran and
Jenny had offered help on numerous occasions but Abby refused.

They’d done
enough.

There were no
jobs in sight, contracts were growing thin on the ground and Abby’s
desperation was increasing.

It was the
evening after the day Abby sold one of her brooches, a gold and
pearl antique one that belonged to her great-grandmother that Jenny
went to the party.

Jenny knew
about the brooch, knew that Abby hated selling it and then she
overheard James and Cash talking. She heard James’s suggestion of a
discreet escort to deflect attention off some business Cash was
involved with regarding his uncle (business Jenny didn’t hear) and
further protect him against his uncle’s increasingly frustrating
efforts to throw Cash in front of one of his three
stepdaughters.

And Jenny came
up with her idea. Then she talked Abby into it. Then Kieran.

That morning,
showering in Cash’s bathroom and attempting to ignore the fact that
Cash’s naked body had been in the same space but hours before (and
also trying not to think about how much she liked his shower, it
was
lush
), Abby thought instead about what her family would
think of what she was doing.

The answer she
came up with was not much. They wouldn’t like it, not one bit.

Then again, she
couldn’t imagine Gram or her mother for that matter ever allowing
anything to happen to the house or allowing it to go out of the
family.

Desperate
times, desperate measures.

She couldn’t
think about what they’d think. She’d learned the hard way after Ben
died and she tried to hold on to what they had that she had to live
in the here and now, keep herself fed and keep her legacy safe.

The bell in the
door clattered taking her out of her thoughts just as the kettle
flipped off.

“Can you see to
the drinks, Pete?” Abby asked as she headed out of the kitchen.

“Sure thing,
love,” Pete replied.

Abby walked
through the house, pulled open her huge front door and on the stoop
stood Mrs. Truman with her three spaniels on leads.

Abby tried not
to groan.

Instead, she
greeted, “Mrs. Truman.”

“Well?” Mrs.
Truman snapped.

“Well what?”
Abby asked.

“Well, what was
it like?” Mrs. Truman snapped again.

“What was
what
like?” Abby queried, confused and hiding
impatience.

“Your date!”
Mrs. Truman shrieked then shoved her way in, bringing her dogs with
her, something that Zee would not like at all. “Making an old woman
stand out in the cold,” she muttered. “What’s with young people
these days?” Mrs. Truman went on to grouse, bending down to detach
the leashes from her canines who scattered to the four winds upon
release.

“Mrs. Truman,
my cat –” Abby started.

“Pah! Your cat
can take care of himself. Little Georgie learned
that
the
hard
way,” she announced as she unbuttoned the big,
fabric-coated buttons of her granny coat. “I need tea,” she
declared.

“I’m kind of –”
Abby began again but Mrs. Truman had her coat off with a nimbleness
of someone at least three hundred and forty-two years younger and
threw it over the antique, oak, mirrored coat stand in Abby’s
vestibule.

Abby heard her
old lady shoes squelch on the tiled floors as Mrs. Truman headed
toward the kitchen.

With no other
choice, Abby closed her front door and followed but she did so
after heaving a deep sigh.

By the time
she’d made it to the kitchen Mrs. Truman was opening and closing
cupboards, reaching high on her tiptoes to do so as she was about
four foot tall and Pete was carrying three full coffee mugs with a
packet of biscuits tucked under his arm.

Abby gave him a
“save me” look but he was rushing toward the door however he had
the decency to look sheepish about it.

“Did you see
the papers, Peter?” Mrs. Truman called, finding herself one of
Abby’s grandmother’s delicate and irreplaceable (thus never used)
china teacups with saucer and the box of tea.

Pete, his
escape foiled, turned to the older lady.

“The papers?”
he asked.

Mrs. Truman
jerked a thumb at Abby and said, “Our girl here out on a date with
an international playboy.”

Abby didn’t
know when she became Mrs. Truman’s girl and for a moment she
considered it more terrifying than what her life had become.

“Is that so?”
Pete asked, already knowing about her date because he had, indeed,
seen the papers.

“They look good
together,” Mrs. Truman grumbled, dropping a teabag in the teacup
and sounding like she didn’t believe her own words. “Though he’s
way too tall,” she said this last as if Cash could and should do
something about his height.

“I’ve got to
take these to the boys, if you’ll excuse me,” Pete said and started
to head out, giving Abby an apologetic look.

“Yes, Abigail’s
having work done
again,
” Mrs. Truman poured water into her
tea, “banging, knocking, banging, blah, blah, blah. It’s enough to
kill an old woman.”

Because it made
her a very bad person, Abby tried to stop herself from thinking
that might be a wish come true but she couldn’t quite do it.

“I’ll just be
heading up,” Pete said.

Mrs. Truman
waved him on his way at the same time she spooned three sugars (a
fact Abby found unbelievable, there was
nothing
sweet about
Mrs. Truman) into her tea. “Go, go, go. Abigail’s got some talking
to do and it’s not for men’s ears.”

Abby rolled her
eyes to the ceiling. As she did this Pete disappeared.

When she
mentally came back into the room, Mrs. Truman was helping herself
to some biscuits.

“I’ve just made
a decision,” she proclaimed and Abby braced.

“What’s that?”
Abby asked, not wanting to know and going to the kettle to make
herself another cup of coffee.

“I’m having you
and your new man over for dinner with those two friends of yours.
The Australians,” Mrs. Truman told her as she teetered to the table
balancing her cup and saucer which held four biscuits and Abby
sucked in breath in horror at the very idea of Cash, Jenny and
Kieran sitting down at any table much less Mrs. Truman’s table.

“That’s very
nice of you but it isn’t necessary, Mrs. Truman,” Abby replied.

“I
know
it isn’t necessary. If it was
necessary
I wouldn’t do it.”
Then she contradicted herself. “But someone has to size this fellow
up and with your grandmother out of the picture that someone is
me
.”

Abby
desperately tried a different tactic. “Cash is a pretty busy guy,
he’s –”

“Pah!” Mrs.
Truman burst out and Abby waited for her to say more but apparently
she felt that summed up her argument.

In another
demonstration of just how bad her luck could get, at that very
moment Abby’s mobile, lying on the table in front of Mrs. Truman,
sounded.

Abby, all the
way across the kitchen and with her hands full, couldn’t get to it
as fast as the heretofore-unknown agile Mrs. Truman could.

She snatched it
off the table, studied it briefly and then slid it open as Abby
dropped the spoon and coffee and hurried across the room.

“Mrs. Truman –”
she said as the older woman put the phone to her ear.