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‘There was no proof. It just seemed a rather strange coincidence.’
She was quiet for a long while, and then with what seemed to him either utter foolishness or a great deal of courage, she turned towards him again and said, ‘And you? Are you a nice man? Or are you just a little more discreet?’
He laughed softly. ‘Both. And I really do need your help with my garden. But just to set the record straight, yes, I do have a personal interest in you—I think you’re fascinating, and I’d like to get to know you better. It’s up to you what you want to do about it. Unlike Tim Godbold, I’m actually going to give you a choice.’
She snorted softly. ‘And I suppose I should be grateful.’
‘Don’t force yourself.’ He felt a prickle of irritation. He’d just spent an outrageous amount of money to rescue her from that slimy toad, and if he’d been expecting gratitude, he was obviously not going to get it.
He turned into her drive, cut the engine and looked across at her in the harsh glare of her outside light, his irritation growing. ‘Look, forget anything personal. You owe me a day in the garden. I suggest for both our sakes we get it over with as quickly as possible.’
She stiffened, drawing in a quick breath as if he’d hurt her feelings. Good. About time. She’d given his a fair old battering. ‘OK. When do you want me to look at it?’
‘Did you have a date in mind?’
‘Well—this week or next I’d earmarked for it, really.’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘Oh! But—I haven’t got a babysitter—’
‘Well, if there’s no alternative you’ll have to bring them with you. There are plenty of people kicking about at home who can entertain them if need be.’ He crossed his fingers, hoping Mrs Hodges wouldn’t have decided to go to town for the day with her daughter.
‘I don’t even know where you live,’ she said.
‘Heveling—it’s easy to find. Here—have a card.’
He pressed it into her hand, all thoughts of kissing her goodnight now flying out of the window along with his tenuous grip on his temper. He leant across instead and pushed open her door. ‘What time tomorrow?’
‘Um—nine?’
‘Fine.’
She looked at him blankly for a moment, then gave him a wary smile. ‘OK. And you’re sure it’s all right to bring the children?’
‘Sure.’
‘OK.’ She got out of the car and paused, obviously struggling with her better nature, then gave him a wry grin. ‘Thanks for tonight.’
He snorted, but chivalry prevented him from driving off until he’d seen her close the front door behind her, then he reversed carefully off her drive and went home.
At least the dog would be pleased to see him!
‘Well?’ Jenny said, studying her with avid interest. ‘Did they sell you?’
Georgia laughed wryly. ‘Did they ever. Jenny, I thought I was going to die. This awful, slimy man and Matthew started bidding for me against each other. I was so embarrassed.’
‘Oh, my goodness. Did it get all terribly personal?’
‘Just a bit. Tim Godbold was all but drooling—’
‘Tim Godbold! Not the Tim Godbold?”
Georgia groaned. ‘Probably. Don’t tell me you’ve heard of him?’
‘Well of course I have! It was all over the papers! He tried to rape that girl—a temp working in his office. Made her work late and tried it on. It all fell flat because she suddenly decided not to testify.’
Which backed up Matt’s story. She suddenly began to feel very grateful to him. ‘Anyway, Matt won, and I’m going to look at his garden tomorrow,’ she said, and glanced down at the card in her hand.
Her eyes widened, and she realised her mouth was hanging open. She snapped it shut, closed her eyes and opened them again. ‘Oh, Lord,’ she said weakly.
‘What? What is it?’
‘He lives at Heveling Hall,’ she told Jenny. ‘That must be why his name seemed familiar. Oh, blast. He lives at my favourite house in the whole world, and he wants me to tell him what to do with the garden!’
‘Well, that’s great,’ Jenny said, beaming. ‘Isn’t it?’
Georgia thought over all the horrible things she’d said to him, and what she’d since found out about Tim Godbold, and felt sick.
‘I hope so,’ she murmured. ‘I may, on the other hand, have just thrown away the opportunity of a lifetime.’
Saturday dawned bright and clear, a lovely mid-April day. She woke the children at eight, told them they were going out for the day to Matthew’s house and was greeted with howls of protest.
‘I wanted to play with Tom!’ Joe wailed. ‘We were going to play football!’
‘An’ you thaid Emily could come!’ Lucy added, bursting into tears.
Oh, Lord, who’d be a mother? ‘Listen, kids, it’s OK. You’ll love it. He lives at Heveling Hall.’
The noise ceased abruptly. ‘Heavenly Hall? Really?’ Joe said, eyes wide. Lucy for once was speechless.
‘Really,’ Georgia told them. ‘So come on, let’s have you up and dressed and having breakfast in ten minutes, please. I don’t want to be late.’
She left them rushing about searching for their clothes, and went downstairs. She had to check her post and pay a couple of bills. Doing that left her rather short for the month, and although she had all the kudos of the Chelsea Flower Show coming up, preparing for it was going to take a humungous amount of time and effort—and while she was worrying about that, she couldn’t be earning money on normal commissions.
And now, because Matt Fraser had bid so much for her, she felt morally obliged to give him more time than had been agreed, even though her initial reaction had been to tell him to take a flying leap and to reimburse him.
Good job she hadn’t followed up on that one! She simply didn’t have enough money in the world to pay him back for that grand gesture.
Oh, well, no doubt he could afford it.
The children came flying downstairs, laces undone, hair unbrushed, eyes wide. ‘Doeth he really live at Heavenly Hall?’ Lucy asked excitedly. ‘Really, truly?’
‘Really, truly. Here—this is his card.’
She showed the children the card Matt had given her last night, and Lucy, whose reading was not getting off to a tremendous start, waded through the words laboriously. ‘Wow,’ she whispered, awed.
‘Come on, breakfast,’ Georgia said, taking the card back and filing it in her purse. ‘We need to go.’
He was right, it was easy to find—particularly if you often took this detour in order to drool over it, Georgia thought. The children called it Heavenly Hall because when she was younger Lucy hadn’t been able to remember Heveling, and it had become their pet name for it.
Well-named, to boot. It was gorgeous, soft and mellow and beautiful, and Georgia’s hands against the steering wheel felt prickly with anticipation.
And now she was doing what she’d never thought to do, turning onto the drive with its pretty cast iron bridge, crossing the little river that bordered the road and going up the gravel sweep to the side of the house.
The children tumbled out of the car, excited and yet over-awed all at once, and Georgia followed more slowly, her eyes scanning the building hungrily.
Soft rose-pink bricks, mellow with age, soared up towards the sky, punctuated by the gleaming white of freshly painted windows. An ancient wisteria clothed the end wall nearest her, its drooping pale lilac panicles and bright green leaves in gentle contrast to the smothered wall. Old urns spilling over with ivy bracketed the steps leading to the door, and with one last glance round she called the children to her side and rang the bell.
A huge cacophony of noise erupted on the other side, and she heard a firm command and the noise subsided to a whine. Then the door swung open and Matt stood there, dressed in jeans and a freshly pressed white shirt, looking younger and sexier and more edible than a man had any right to look.
Georgia struggled for something sane to say, but it wasn’t necessary, because by this time the children had met the dog and were in raptures.
She eyed it a little worriedly. ‘It is all right, I take it?’
A hand dropped onto the dog’s shaggy grey head, just by his hip, and Matt smiled. ‘He’s a pussy-cat. His name’s Murphy. He’s an Irish wolfhound.’
‘To keep you in order—how appropriate,’ Georgia said without thinking, and he tipped back his head in the sunlight and laughed.
‘Come on in—I’m having breakfast. Join me. Have you eaten?’
‘Yes,’ she told him.
‘But we’re still hungry,’ Joe said hopefully.
‘Joe!’
‘Only a bit,’ Lucy added diplomatically, but Matt didn’t seem worried.
‘Come on, then. Don’t want the toast to get cold.’ And he led them down the hall, past doors Georgia was dying to stick her head round, and into a big, bright kitchen at the back of the house.
It was clearly a work in progress. Wires dangled here and there, the walls were patched and filled, and frankly it was a mess. Most people would have pulled out all the old cupboards and refitted it in an instant.
Georgia thought it was lovely just as it was, with its mismatched units and chipped white butler’s sink, because it had a huge table in the middle of the floor, with a pile of newspapers, toast, butter and so forth at one end and a fat ginger cat curled up on it at the other.
Georgia would have given her eye-teeth for a table like that.
For room to have a table like that, for heaven’s sake!
Lucy rushed straight for the cat and mauled it, and the cat, to its eternal credit, did nothing in retaliation, but simply began to purr ecstatically.
‘Coffee?’ Matt said, brandishing the pot, and a fragrant aroma of real, fresh coffee wafted towards her. She nearly drooled.
‘Thanks. I never get round to making real coffee,’ she confessed.
‘I only do at the weekends, but something has to be sacred.’
He smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners, and she began to relax. Maybe she’d imagined his bad temper last night.
But she hadn’t. He settled the children down on chairs with toast and homemade jam, and handed Georgia her coffee, holding onto the mug as she took it.
She looked up at him and met his eyes, thoughtful and tinged with what looked like regret.
‘About last night—I’m sorry things got off to a bad start. Can we try again?’
Relief flooded her—though whether relief at having another chance at a restoration project to die for, or at having another chance with Matt, she wasn’t sure.
She didn’t dare analyse it. She simply smiled. ‘That sounds good,’ she murmured, and with a wink he released the coffee and turned away, just in time to see the ginger cat licking a huge lump of butter off the edge of Lucy’s toast.
‘Scally, you wicked cat,’ he scolded, and scooped the cat off the table. It yowled in protest, but he put it out of the back door and shut it again firmly. ‘He’s such a thief. Let me get you more toast,’ he said, taking the licked piece out of Lucy’s hand and slinging it in the bin.
‘I didn’t mind,’ Lucy said, slightly wide-eyed. ‘I like Thcally.’
‘And I’m sure he likes you—especially when you let him share your breakfast—but he’s too fat. He’s supposed to be outside catching mice, not in here stealing butter.’
Georgia stifled a smile and watched Matt dealing with the children. He seemed a natural with them, and she wondered if he had any of his own—perhaps living with an ex-wife?
The thought gave her a strange pang of something she didn’t care to analyse. It was much too soon in their relationship to have pangs of anything!
A woman bustled in and was greeted with enthusiasm by the dog, tail and tongue lashing furiously. ‘Oh, Murphy, stop it,’ she said affectionately, scrubbing her spitty arm on her skirt. ‘Right, Matthew, what did you want me to do?’
‘Entertain the troops. I think food should do the trick for a minute, but then I’ll leave it up to you. Georgia, this is Mrs Hodges. She’s my housekeeper. Mrs Hodges, this is Mrs Beckett, and these are her children Joe and Lucy.’
Georgia looked at the pleasant-faced, maternal woman greeting her children with a smile, and felt relieved. She looked as if she could cope easily with two youngsters for a couple of hours, and that meant she could go and get on with what she was here for—namely that gorgeous garden.
‘Shall we take our coffee and wander round? Then I can tell you what I know as we go.’
‘Sure.’ She stood up, scooping up her mug, and followed him.
He didn’t go outside, to her surprise, but led her out into the hall, and up a graceful, curving staircase to the upper floor. What on earth is he doing? she thought with a little flutter of panic.
He reached a door, stretching his hand out for the knob, and she thought again of that Fate Worse Than Death. Oh, my God, he’s going to take me into his bedroom and seduce me while his housekeeper looks after my children! she thought with a hysterical giggle bubbling in the back of her throat.
Then he threw open the door and led her into the remains of an elegant drawing room, shabby now and tired but once glorious, and paused in front of a great mullioned window overlooking the garden.
‘That’s the problem,’ he said thoughtfully.
Georgia marshalled her hysterical and somewhat crazy brain, and peered down into—nothing.
A walled garden, almost square, with an area of flat and tatty grass interrupted by molehills and thistles, and around the edges the straggling remains of a rose garden almost totally submerged in weeds.
‘That,’ he said deadpan, ‘is a formal parterre.’
She lost it. The giggle fought its way up, battling all the way, and erupted in a shower of sound that echoed round the room and left her feeling silly.
Until she saw his smile. ‘You see my problem? You see why I needed you? Especially when I found out that the restoration of historic gardens was your forte.’
Georgia looked again, and in her mind’s eye she could see the outline of an old knot garden, neat little hedges arranged in complicated and stylised knots with spaces filled with scented herbs. Designed to be viewed from above, the intricate and lovely garden had been long stripped out and destroyed.
