The Art of Inheriting Secrets(11)

That sore spot in my chest ached again. “I thought my mother was from a small, awful place. Industrial. She didn’t like to talk about her life in England, and I—” I sighed. “I thought it was because she’d run away from some grimy place.” I shook my head. “I can’t believe she never said a word about this.”

“You should come talk to my dad. There were some things that happened here, back when everyone left, but I don’t know all of it. He was around then.”

“How old is he?”

His mouth turned down, and again he touched the hair on his chin. “Sixty-seven?”

My mother had been sixty-six when she died. “I wonder if they knew each other.”

He gave a soft chuckle. “Of course they did. Have you seen the size of the town?”

“Good point. But they would have been in—different circles, right?”

“Of course, but remember, our grandmothers were great friends.”

“Were they?”

“Yes. They were girls together in India.”

A vast well of sadness came over me. “I don’t even know her name.”

He only looked at me with his great dark eyes, his mouth sober. It was somehow comforting.

From the corner of my eye, I caught some movement, which raised the hair on my neck until I whirled to see a cat sitting on a stair about halfway down. He was a big, very furry black and white, with one torn ear.

“Hullo there,” Samir said. “Shouldn’t you be chasing mice?”

The cat only stared down at us with big gold eyes. “My mother painted a cat like him into all of her paintings,” I said, and the words came out on a rough note.

His hand touched my shoulder kindly. “There’s a whole troop of them. Barn cats.”

“I think this one would call himself a house cat.”

The cat didn’t seem at all afraid. His big fluffy tail flicked up and down, up and down. Suddenly winded, I leaned on the newel post, which was carved to a height well over my head. “Maybe we should save the rest of the exploration for another day. I need to get somewhere warm and prop my leg up.”

“Absolutely.” He offered his arm. For a minute, I hesitated, feeling elderly and foolish in my doddering almost-forty-ness. But his ease gave me ease, and I stepped up to take his elbow. We made our way back the way we’d come, speaking little.

“Overwhelming, is it?” he asked.

“Yes.”

We were in the kitchen and could see Tony and Rebecca standing by the truck. Samir paused. “Be careful with those two.”

“What do you mean?”

He paused. “Just beware. Not everyone is happy about your arrival.”

I gave a short laugh. “By ‘not everyone’ you mean no one.”

“Mostly.” He gave a rueful little grin. “May as well know it.”

“Thanks.”

He faced me, hand spread across his chest. His eyes glittered. “I, however, am as trustworthy as a Boy Scout, as loyal as a dove.”

Was he flirting with me? He stood ever so slightly closer than he might have. Close enough I could smell the rain in his hair and realized how very broad shouldered he was.

I bowed, hands together in prayer. “Thank you, young sir.”

“Not so young,” he said, and I looked up in surprise, but he was already ambling out.

Silly, but it lifted my spirits. It had been ages since anyone flirted with me at all, much less a man with eyes like a night sea.

Hearing myself, I rolled my eyes. He was much too young for me, and that was slightly embarrassing in itself. There was also the fact that I had a fiancé back home.

On the stoop, he waited. “Let me give you my mobile. If you fancy trying a tour another day, you can ring me.”

It was entirely businesslike. I typed the password into my smartphone and opened my contacts list. Matter-of-factly, he typed his name and number in, then handed it back.

“Thanks,” I said, but he was already heading for the truck, moving in that loose-limbed way some tall men have, as if there were no actual bones, only muscles and grace.

Jet lag was about to make a fool of me. Time for a nap.

The rain began again in earnest in the late afternoon. Exhausted and emotional, I ate in my room for a second evening, curled up by the fire in a blanket, sipping tea and pulling up everything I could find on the internet about the estate. Wikipedia had a solid entry, much to my surprise.

The photo was one from an earlier era, on a sunny day. The house shone bright gold against a bucolic sky, with poplars leafed out around it.

Rosemere Priory dates back to the eleventh century, when it was a monastery and famous medicinal garden. When the monasteries were dissolved by Henry VIII, the land was awarded to Thomas Shaw, and the title of Earl of Rosemere was created. The earl built a grand Elizabethan house on the site, which still stands. The holdings, with orchards, farmland, a lake, and a river, were extremely well positioned, and the family thrived for over a hundred years, when the estate was lost to Parliamentarians in the civil war.

After the war, Lady Clarise Shaw, a great beauty who was rumored to be a mistress of Charles II, petitioned the king for the restoration of the estate. The king agreed, provided she married a man of his choosing, and she countered with the caveat that the estate could always pass to a woman if there was no immediate male issue. It has stayed in the family ever since, for four hundred years, until it was mysteriously abandoned in the 1970s.