‘She did no such thing.’
She rather had, with a little help from Louisa, but Matteo didn’t need to know that.
‘Comments about setting the dogs on him and talk of muskets sound familiar?’
Maybe it did but she’d never admit it. The heat rose to Louisa’s cheeks. She hoped he wouldn’t notice.
‘Mrs Fancutt owns two Pomeranians who aren’t in the least bit threatening...’ At least that was the truth, though the man who’d arrived claiming to need to inspect the house didn’t know that. ‘And it was an invitation to see the armoury, where there might be a tiny bit of damp around a window frame. Your structural engineer seems to lack any kind of fortitude. Heaven help him if he came across a decent bit of dry rot. He’d be overcome.’
‘You seem to know a great deal about the conversation.’ Matteo’s voice was smooth and cool as silk.
If he blamed her, then so be it. ‘Why wouldn’t I? I have a vested interest in avoiding trespassers on the property.’
‘He wasn’t a trespasser, he had my permission.’
‘Well, he didn’t have mine.’
‘What are you going to do? Set the unthreatening Pomeranians onto me?’
‘Sadly, Mrs Fancutt is on a day off. I’m sure she’ll be sorry to have missed you. I’ll say hello to her for you. Give Binky and Bess a pat.’
Yet after today, would she have a place here at all? She breathed through a wave of grief that overtook her. The yawning ache that simply opened inside. She’d lost her father, and it had been as if the world had broken apart. Staying in pieces for years. Now she’d lost Mae and, in many ways, it was the same, the corresponding loss of all that was safe and secure. Her world tilting on its axis yet again because those she loved always left her...
‘Perhaps I should be making you the tea?’ he asked.
That jolted her from her inertia. He was trying to take over already. Take the home that had been hers for twelve years. Louisa straightened her spine.
‘I’m fine.’ She’d just needed a moment. That was all. She kept walking but, out of the corner of her eye, thought she could see Matteo glancing her way. As if waiting for her to crumble. That wouldn’t happen. She might bend, but she wouldn’t break.
The kitchens sat quiet and empty given it was a day off for the staff here. She loved the space with its exposed brickwork, worn stone floor and huge stove. She’d thought the room magical when she’d first arrived in the home, food always available whenever she was hungry, because her mother had never fed her enough.
‘There are things you’re allergic to which make you ill.’
Louisa had come to learn, after those years of pain and deprivation, that she was allergic to nothing. It was yet another lie her mother had told in the pretence of love. Making sure to keep her thin and weak, so that she’d appear as sick as her mother claimed her to be.
Louisa didn’t know why all these memories were assailing her now. She’d put her past behind her, begun making a future. She didn’t want to think about her childhood and that hunger, deprivation and pain. Instead, she placed her glasses on the counter and put on the electric kettle to boil. Made the tea in her favourite yellow teapot, poured two cups. All the while a sensation prickled between her shoulder blades. She tried to ignore it but knew Matteo was watching.
‘You said we needed to talk?’ she asked, carrying the tea to the table before sitting down. He took a cup, black. No sugar. Looking at her as though she were a bug under glass, and he were conducting an inspection.
An uncomfortable sensation.
Matteo lifted the tea and took a sip, the sunny yellow cup dwarfed in his hands.
‘I’m surprised you know so little about Mae’s will.’
It sounded like the bite of criticism. Her mother had been an expert in its delivery. She ignored the sting. That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.
‘When I came to live with Mae, she promised I’d have a home for life. After she died, my solicitor confirmed that I never had to leave Easton Hall. It might be a surprise to you, but I trusted Mae and believed her.’
Matteo looked round the kitchen as if taking stock, his golden-brown eyes cataloguing something he already owned. What did he see? The heart of the home as she did, or that everything was a little worn? The stove in need of restoration. A tap, drip-drip-dripping into the sink.
Then he fixed that assessing gaze on her.
‘Apart from inheriting Easton Hall and its contents, I’ve been appointed executor of Mae’s estate. After some money left to charity, you’ve inherited the remainder. Her personal effects. Jewellery.’
‘What about a place to live?’
His perfect lips thinned a fraction. A tiny muscle in his stubble-covered jaw clenched. Matteo placed his hands on the table, clasped them together. The cuffs of his shirt a gleaming white against his golden skin.
