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‘Josh Kern,’ said Laura, investing the name with scorn.
Patrick gave a hoarse crow of amusement. ‘Josh Kern! How could I forget that? But seriously, darling, he could make life rather awkward, couldn’t he? I wonder if it’s worth it to go ahead? Do we want to find ourselves in the middle of a war with our neighbours?’
‘I’m not being frightened off by some hulking great brute of a farmer huffing and puffing at me!’
‘I can’t imagine you being scared, even by a hulking great brute.’ Patrick laughed, then more seriously added, ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there to take him on, darling. Damn this flu; why do illnesses always come at such inconvenient times? From what you say about the cottage it’s just what we were looking for, and the price is way below what we would have expected. We should have guessed there would be snags. What did you say to Dale?’
‘That you’d have to see the cottage before we could give him a decision, so we have time to think about it. I’m glad your headache’s better, even if your throat sounds worse. Shall I come round tomorrow morning and cook you some lunch?’
‘I don’t want you to catch this, Laura. Better not come over. I’m not hungry, anyway. I’m drinking lots of fruit juice and I ate an orange just now. I’ve got plenty of eggs and cheese; I can always whip up an omelette if I do get hungry.’
Wryly, she said, ‘And your omelettes are ten times better than mine! In fact, anything you cook is ten times better.’
He laughed, but didn’t deny it. Instead he yawned, then said, ‘Sorry, darling...I’ve been sleeping on and off all day, but I still seem very tired.’
‘Then I’ll let you get back to sleep,’ she said. ‘Get well soon; I miss you.’
She put the phone down and stared out of the window at the busy York street below. Yes, it was a pity Patrick hadn’t been with her. Maybe then that man wouldn’t have talked to her, looked at her, the way he had. Her face ran with scarlet, remembering Josh Kern’s contemptuous eyes as he’d looked her up and down. She could never remember meeting anyone she disliked more; it had been like running into a stone wall. Her whole body still ached with the shock of it.
‘Who does he think he is?’ she had demanded of Mr Dale after Josh Kern had climbed back on to his tractor and driven away.
‘He knows who he is! He’s Josh Kern of Kern House, and he owns all this,’ Mr Dale had said drily, waving an arm around in a circle. ‘Four hundred acres of good farm land, half arable; last year he had a fairish crop of barley, but he runs stock, too. A good dairy herd—Friesians. He’s starting to run sheep on the hill up there too now, I gather. That’s new. His father never had sheep, never did much with that land, except a bit of rough shooting. Plenty of rabbits and some game birds up there—I’ve shot with him in the past. Not much use for anything else, that land, old Jack Kern always said; not worth clearing the gorse and heather, but upland sheep can live on very little. Josh Kern’s a canny chap; he’s done some controlled burning up there, rid the land of most of the scrub, and ploughed it up.’
Mr Dale looked respectfully and wryly after the farmer, who was disappearing into another field. ‘Aye, Josh works like a demon himself, and he gets good work out of his men—he expects his land to work, too.’
‘If you ask me, he expects too much!’ Laura muttered, still angry after the encounter with Josh Kern. ‘And he isn’t threatening me and getting away with it!’
‘Good for you, then,’ said Mr Dale, looking rather relieved. ‘I was hoping you wouldn’t let Josh scare you away.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘Has he scared many would-be buyers away?’
Mr Dale didn’t answer. He pretended not to hear her, watching the girls, who, now that all the excitement was over, had tripped, giggling and chattering, into the cottage garden.
‘Eeh...like a flock of starlings, aren’t they?’ Mr Dale said, beaming after them. ‘Well, now, Miss Grainger, shall we go inside and look round?’
Laura followed him, but she wasn’t going to let him drop the subject of Josh Kern.
‘Was it his father who sold this cottage to the present owner?’ she asked the estate agent, who looked reluctantly at her, as he unlocked the front door.
‘Jack Kern didn’t sell it to her, he gave it,’ he said at last, rolling an expressive eye, and Laura’s brows shot up.
‘Gave it?’
‘Oh, aye,’ he said, waving her past him into the cottage. The models surged in after her and spread out around the ground floor of the cottage like spilt marbles, running from room to room, shouting to each other.
Mr Dale gestured around them. ‘The current owner had this porch hallway built on to the front of the cottage. The front door used to open right on to the parlour—that was how they built them a couple of hundred years ago. Through here, miss. There were two little rooms downstairs which have been knocked into one big one.’
Laura walked into the sunlit room and looked with pleasure at the rough stone walls, the arched fireplace with a blue slate hearth, the polished floorboards on which lay a few scattered blue and white rugs. There was a minimum of furniture—dark blue velvet curtains, a couch upholstered in matching material, piled with white and blue cushions, an armchair by the fire, covered in the same velvet, a writing desk, and a couple of bookcases on either side of the fire.
‘It’s a bit stark, to my taste,’ Mr Dale apologised.
Laura gave him a quick look and didn’t tell him that it was exactly to her own taste. ‘Has it always been like this? Or did the present owner...what did you say her name was?’
‘Forest,’ he said. ‘Mrs Joanna Forest. Yes, she tells me she had the cottage modernised when she moved in twenty years ago. It had been a bit of a mess—it was a farm cottage since it was built, used by the head cowman. No money had ever been spent on it before. First thing she did was strip off all the old wallpaper, and then the plaster, laid the actual stone walls bare, the way they are now. Did it all herself, she said. Quite a job for a woman.’ His face was wryly knowing. ‘But then she didn’t have anything much else to do.’
‘She didn’t have a job?’ Laura was fascinated. She felt she would like Mrs Forest, judging by her taste. She wondered how old the woman was, and what she looked like? Why had she decided to sell the cottage?
‘Depends what you mean by a job,’ Mr Dale said, winking at her. ‘She was...let’s say...a friend...of old Jack Kern, Josh’s father, who died a year ago.’
‘Oh,’ Laura said, eyes widening. ‘Oh, I see.’ So that was why Josh Kern didn’t like her?
Lowering his voice, Mr Dale said, ‘Aye, I’m not one to gossip, but it’s common talk around here—you’d hear the tale in any pub for miles. Everyone knew what was going on. He visited her here every evening, they say. Never slept up at the farmhouse, if you get my meaning. What his wife thought of that, nobody ever found out. Nell Kern’s the grim and silent type...’
‘His wife was still living with him?’
‘Oh, aye. Nell’s still there now, running the house for Josh. There’s just the two of them living there now. A wonderful housekeeper, Nell—people swear by her cooking, too—but that marriage never worked. Not that she’s bad-looking. Even now she’s what I’d call a handsome woman. In fact, when we were young, Nell Bevan could have taken her pick of men around here. I didn’t have the brass to make her an offer, but I had my eye on her, I tell you! Jack Kern was thought a very lucky man to get her. What went wrong nobody’s sure, but...well, who knows what goes on inside a marriage? They just weren’t happy together, it seems.’
The other girls surged into the room. ‘Oh, the kitchen’s lovely, Laura—come and see!’ They caught her hands and pulled her after them.
‘My wife was taken by it too when she came round with me,’ said Mr Dale, following. ‘She likes to have a peer at places I’m selling. Very interested in houses is my Doris. And the kitchen was her favourite room in this house.’
Laura loved it, too. Like the sitting-room it had been stripped back to the stone walls, and the fittings were all of golden, polished pine which shone in the sunlight. It was surprisingly spacious and was obviously intended for use as a dining-room, too, judging by the large pine table and chairs set out by a long window at one end.
But even while she looked around, smiling, part of her mind was busy with what Mr Dale had told her about the family background, which explained Josh Kern’s hostility. No wonder he had resented his father’s gift of this cottage to the woman who had usurped his mother’s place.
‘Now upstairs,’ said the girls and stampeded off with Laura and Mr Dale in the rear.
‘I suppose there’s no doubt that the cottage does belong to this Mrs Forest?’ Laura asked him and he shook his head.
‘No, don’t you worry about that...you won’t have any legal problems.’
Laura gave him an uncertain look. ‘You’re sure about that?’
‘Certain. Don’t worry. Josh was just trying to scare you off; take no notice of his threats. He can’t legally deny you access to this place, and he knows it. I promise you, Mrs Forest’s title has been tested in court; there are no problems.’
He might be telling her the strict truth, but Laura still had doubts about the wisdom of going ahead with buying the cottage.
He saw her expression and grimaced. ‘Look, frankly, miss, it did look as if there might be a problem with it because when he gave the cottage to her old Jack Kern didn’t do it through his lawyer, daft old beezer. I suppose he didn’t want any talk. Not that he had a chance in hell of stopping talk! Not around here. Breath of life to them, a juicy scandal. Anyway, Jack just wrote her a letter—very private letter, too, a love letter—saying he was giving her this cottage so that she could either live here, or sell the cottage, to provide for her future.’
Laura frowned. ‘Just a letter? But surely that isn’t a legally binding document?’
‘Aye, it was, the way he phrased it. It was like a codicil to his will, you see. The lawyer had that, but Jack’s letter was dated later than the will, so it was a legal codicil, and Jack had left a sealed letter with his lawyer which said the same thing. Well, when Jack died, Josh Kern challenged her right to the place. She stayed on here until the court found in her favour, because she was afraid that, if she left, Josh Kern would take possession and she would never get it back. The court decided in her favour, and then she moved out and asked me to sell the place for her.’
‘She moved away out of the area?’ asked Laura, walking into the main bedroom at the front of the cottage.
‘She’s living in Salisbury with a widowed sister.’ Mr Dale looked around with more approval. ‘Now this is my favourite room—very pretty.’
Laura looked at the cream wallpaper sprigged with pink, the curtains in pale pink wool, the frilled pink lampshades on the small bedside tables on each side of the double bed, which had a cream coverlet. The deep-piled carpet was cream, too. It was a very soothing, ultra-feminine room.
‘When will she move her furniture out?’ asked Laura, as Mr Dale showed her the en suite bathroom leading out of the bedroom.
‘She’s taken what she wanted, all her personal things—letters, photographs, ornaments. But she didn’t want the furniture. I’m to sell it in auction, unless whoever buys the cottage wants it. I got the feeling she wanted to shut the door on it all, forget her years here.’
Suddenly Laura was moved, her green eyes filling with sympathy. ‘She may regret that later.’
‘She may, that’s what I told her,’ he said in his gruff voice, his weathered face blank. ‘But she didn’t change her mind.’
Laura looked around her, sighing. ‘Well, if I do eventually buy it, I’d like the furniture—and I’d always let her have it back if she did change her mind later. It seems terribly sad to turn her back on twenty years of her life!’
‘That’s very kind of you, miss. So, what do you think, then? Going to buy it?’
‘I like it, Mr Dale,’ Laura cautiously said, ‘but you’ll appreciate that my fiancé must see it before we make a decision. As soon as he is well enough we’ll come back to look at it again. I’ll ring you within the week, I expect.’
He nodded, not surprised. ‘Aye, well, remember I’ll be showing other clients around it in the meantime, and it is a bargain, especially fully furnished. Don’t wait too long, Miss Grainger.’
She nodded. ‘I’ll be in touch as soon as my fiancé is better.’ Then she had called the models, who had come trooping out from other rooms.
‘Back in the car, girls; we’ll have to hurry to get back to York in time for your second session!’
‘Bye bye, Mr Dale,’ the girls chirped, waving scarlet-tipped fingers at him, and he had grinned back at them appreciatively.
‘Nice to meet you, girls.’ Then he shook Laura’s hand in his bone-scrunching way, nodding at her. ‘I’ll hope to hear from you soon, then, Miss Grainger, and don’t you fret about Josh Kern. His bark is worse than his bite.’
She hoped so. His bark was quite bad enough. A thought occurred to her and she asked, ‘By the way, did he say he had offered to buy the cottage?’
‘No, he made an offer, and she refused it.’
‘Why? Was it too low?’
‘No, he offered a good enough price.’ Mr Dale paused, frowning. ‘I forgot to tell you, with all the harassment we got from Josh...there is a covenant on the cottage, to the effect that whoever buys it must not resell to Josh Kern while Mrs Forest is alive.’
Startled, Laura stared. ‘That can’t be legally binding, surely?’
‘If you don’t sign the covenant, she won’t sell, and if you do sign the covenant it’s legally binding,’ said Mr Dale with one of his shrewd grimaces.
Laura had forgotten to tell Patrick about that. She must remember to tell him tomorrow when she rang. It might make a difference to his decision; such a binding agreement might be a problem later if they wanted to sell and couldn’t find a buyer.
They might then wish they could sell to Josh Kern, although Laura was already feeling very sympathetic towards Mrs Forest’s desire to keep him out of the property. It would give her a lot of pleasure to do anything that annoyed Josh Kern.
She only hoped she wouldn’t see much of him, if she and Patrick did decide to buy Fern Cottage. She bit her lower lip. Why pretend she wasn’t sure? She wanted the place. She had loved it on sight, and when she’d seen the beautifully restored interior she had wanted it badly. If someone else bought it before Patrick could see it she was going to be very disappointed.
In fact, it was exactly a week before she and Patrick drove out along the Castle Howard road again, and Mr Dale had been too busy, he said, to come with them, so he had given them the key to the cottage and left them to view the place alone.
‘Lucky he was busy. I much prefer to view a house without having an agent hovering about trying to push us into a quick decision,’ Patrick said cheerfully as they turned on to the rough track which led to the cottage.
Laura was driving, but her concentration wasn’t quite as fixed as usual. She kept looking across the fields on either side, her body tense, half expecting Josh Kern to appear at any moment. She had a shrewd idea why Mr Dale had been too busy to come out here again. She felt the same: she would rather not face Josh Kern again, even with Patrick there. In fact, having Patrick there somehow made it more nerve-racking, because Josh Kern didn’t look as if he would use violence against a woman. His face had been contemptuous and hostile, but she hadn’t actually been afraid of him. But Patrick was a man, and she sensed that Josh Kern’s rules would be very different with another man.
He might well push Patrick into a fight, and, much as she loved him, Laura knew Patrick was no fighter and never had been; he wasn’t a coward, he just lacked aggression. He believed in negotiation, not confrontation, discussion, not argument. Patrick was a reconstructed man, wanting to live peacefully in the world, in harmony with his friends and his woman.
Laura’s mouth curled in a little smile as she looked sideways at him, and Patrick caught that glance and asked, ‘What? What are you smiling at? Tell me the joke.’
‘I was just thinking how much I love you,’ she said, leaning over to kiss him.
Just as their mouths touched, a horse leapt over a hedge right next to the car.
Laura gave a sharp cry, instinctively ducking her head. Patrick went white. Out of the corner of her eye, Laura saw the big black animal leap over the bonnet, tucking its hooves neatly under it as it sailed across in front of the windscreen. She had to admire the precision of the jump and the way the horse swung round on landing and galloped on down the lane before slowing, turning, and coming back towards the car at a slow trot.
‘Is that...?’ Patrick whispered in a dazed voice.
‘Yes,’ Laura grimly said. ‘That’s him. Josh Kern.’
‘He must be out of his mind!’ Patrick’s hands were not quite steady and he still looked pale.
‘Way out,’ she agreed, scrambling out of the car as the black horse came to a halt next to it. Laura stared angrily up at the rider, her green eyes glittering with the resentment of someone who had just had a physical shock.
‘You madman!’ she yelled at him. ‘What a crazy, dangerous thing to do!’
‘How was I to know your car was parked there?’ Josh Kern drawled, smiling with mockery in a way that told her he had known very well that their car was there before he jumped, and that, what was more, he’d recognised it from her last visit. ‘When I’m riding over my own land I don’t expect to find trespassers hiding behind every hedge,’ he added smoothly.
Very flushed, Laura snapped, ‘I’d have thought that, even if you didn’t care whether or not you killed us, you’d have minded killing your horse. Or don’t you think animals matter?’
His smile went. ‘If I’d thought for an instant that my horse might get hurt I wouldn’t have taken that jump!’ he bit out, and she believed him.
The black horse tossed its head as if in agreement with its master, shifting its feet, the hooves scraping on flint in the track, and Laura was glad there was a car between them. The horse, like the man, was a big brute.
Laura looked from the horse to its master, whose beige-jodhpur-clad thighs effortlessly controlled the animal without needing to use the reins which lay loosely in his tanned hands. Open-necked shirt, dark tweed hacking jacket, a black riding hat on his black hair, polished black leather boots knee-high, Josh Kern belonged against this background—the rolling fields, the stone walls, and elms just coming into leaf. Laura had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, and couldn’t account for it. Or was it just that he looked so much at home here, and she and Patrick didn’t?
Aware of her scrutiny, Josh Kern’s sardonic grey eyes wandered over her coolly, from her blonde head to her small, delicately shod feet.
She and Patrick were going to a wedding after lunch, that afternoon, and Laura was elegantly dressed in a cream silk suit with gold buttons—an outfit from a young British designer, in classical style, the skirt straight-fitting, with a little pleat at the back, the jacket tight-waisted, with long sleeves. In honour of the occasion, she had tied her blonde hair on top of her head in a gold bow, letting it fall in a shower of ringlets around her face.
From Josh Kern’s expression he wasn’t impressed. No doubt he, too, was thinking that she was from the city, she didn’t belong around here. She saw his mouth twist, then he lifted his stare to meet her eyes.
‘You’re the model who came last week,’ he said, pretending surprise, although she was certain he had recognised her car and that was why he had jumped his black horse right over the bonnet.
‘I’m not a model! I don’t know where you got that idea,’ she told him sharply.
He shrugged. ‘Something Dale said, I think. Yes, he said you were all models.’
‘The girls with me were all models; I’m not one!’
‘No?’ His eyes went wandering again. ‘You look like a model to me.’
She knew it wasn’t intended as flattery. Josh Kern had made his views on models very plain when she was here before. All the same, under his assessment, a little flush crept up her face, especially when his gaze lingered on her long, slender legs.
‘Very chic,’ he drawled, and she felt Patrick stiffen next to her, resenting the personal nature of the remark.
Josh Kern hadn’t so much as acknowledged Patrick’s presence yet, even by looking in his direction. No doubt, Laura thought, he found her an easier target, an idea which made her bristle from head to foot like a cat that is having its fur stroked the wrong way.
