Snowbound With The Heir

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The things Vicky had done… She didn’t want to be that person any more. The person who’d caused Tyler’s death.

But family…they always remembered who you were, even once you’d become someone new. She’d always be Vicky to Aunt Liz and Uncle Henry, even if they weren’t actually blood family. They were the closest thing she’d had for an awful lot of years now.

They walked into the bar proper, the one she’d only glimpsed through windows in the door, and suddenly Tori noticed something that was different about the place.

It was packed. Every table, chair, bar stool and window seat was occupied. Tori was certain she’d never seen so many people within the walls of the Moorside Inn ever before.

‘I guess we weren’t the only ones to get stranded, then?’ Jasper said, and Aunt Liz laughed.

‘Not by a long shot! That road out there is treacherous in the snow.’ She shot Tori a look. ‘I would have thought you would’ve remembered that, Vicky.’

There it was. That not so subtle reminder of why she’d left. Well, no. Why she’d never come back.

She couldn’t bear to look at this place without Tyler in it. Couldn’t take the pain and the grief—and most of all the pity. Pity from people who should be hating her, blaming her, and only didn’t because she was too cowardly to tell them the whole truth.

Only now it seemed she had no choice but to be there.

‘That was my fault,’ Jasper jumped in. ‘Tori—Vicky—tried to tell me to stick to the main roads, but I didn’t listen. Always thinking I know best, that’s my problem.’

He sounded so sincere, so disarmingly charming, that Tori could see Aunt Liz melting in front of her. Did he really believe that about himself? She doubted it. But he had at least taken the heat off her, which she appreciated. And it was worlds better than his first attempt at an apology outside in the snow.

‘Well, I hope you’ll know better next time,’ Aunt Liz said, as if she were letting a small child off the hook for something.

‘Definitely,’ Jasper agreed, nodding. ‘Now, I don’t suppose you have any of that steak and ale pie you’re famous for around here somewhere?’

Tori rolled her eyes. Thinking with his stomach. Why wasn’t she surprised?

‘Or perhaps we can help you get everyone here settled and sorted?’ she suggested. ‘I mean, unless you’ve changed things a lot around here I can probably still locate enough blankets and pillows for everyone.’ The Moorside only had a handful of bedrooms it hired out for guests, so people were definitely going to have to share. But if they set up a dormitory sort of arrangement in the restaurant part of the inn, there should just about be enough room for everyone. They’d done it before, Tori remembered vividly, on nights like tonight when the roads were closed by weather or accidents and people got stranded. Including, once, the national rugby team during a particularly violent storm, when their bus had broken down. If they’d all fitted in snugly, so would tonight’s guests.

‘And Jasper here can help Uncle Henry in the kitchens,’ Tori added. ‘Since he’s so concerned about the menu tonight.’

Of course, her altruistic plan also meant she could escape from close quarters with her family and her colleague, something she was sure they’d both noticed. Tori didn’t care. She needed some space—and that, she knew, was hard to come by in the community-spirited world of the Moorside Inn.

‘That would be very helpful,’ Aunt Liz said carefully. ‘Although you’re here tonight as a guest…’

Tori shook her head. She’d never be a guest at the Moorside. It was too much a part of her. ‘I want to help. And so does Jasper.’ She nudged him with her elbow until he nodded.

‘In that case, if you could set up the dormitory in the restaurant, like we did that time they closed the roads and we had the—’

‘England rugby team staying,’ Tori said along with her. ‘Absolutely.’

As she turned away to go and find blankets and pillows, she could hear Jasper talking as Aunt Liz showed him to the kitchens. ‘The England rugby team? Now, that I want to hear more about…’

Tori stepped through to the empty restaurant and breathed in the silence. Perfect.

This was going to be a very long night. She could feel it. And she needed a little personal space before she faced it.

Especially before she had to talk to Uncle Henry.

Tori’s Aunt Liz led Jasper through the mass of people gathered in the main bar, behind the bar itself, and through a door that took them along a narrow passageway and down a short set of stairs into the kitchens. Jasper took in everything as they walked, especially the dramatic paintings that lined the walls—all slashes of dark greens and browns and purples, showcasing the landscape of the moors at its most impressive.

This place felt almost a part of the landscape itself, he realised. As if it had been here as long as the rocks and rises.

He ached to know what could have driven Tori away from it. What secrets she was hiding behind those emotional battlements.

Were they as all-consuming as his own?

And another, niggling question that had been at the back of his mind for five long years, before emerging for re-examination tonight: Did she already know his secrets? She and Felix had always been friendly, far more than she had been with him. Felix had known. Had he told her?

Jasper had to admit to himself that it seemed unlikely. But Tori was good at keeping secrets, that much was obvious. If she did know about Felix, Jasper was sure she was very capable of keeping it from everyone—including him.

‘Henry?’ Liz called out as they entered the kitchens. ‘Brought you some help.’

A large, grey-haired man, broad at the shoulder and his head almost grazing the lower of the ceiling beams, ducked out from a side room that, from what Jasper could see, appeared to be full of freezers and fridges. He was wiping his hands on a clean tea towel.

‘Help? Think I’m too old and slow to do this on my own?’ He smiled as he said it, though, so Jasper was almost sure it was a joke.

‘Not me.’ Liz jerked her red curls in Jasper’s direction. ‘He arrived with Vicky. She thought he might be able to give you a hand down here.’

Henry stilled, the tea towel taut between his hands, his white knuckles giving away his reaction to Liz’s news even though his expression didn’t change. ‘Vicky’s here?’ The words were barely more than a whisper.

‘We, uh, got caught up in a road closure on the moors,’ Jasper explained. ‘A crash behind us and a chance of the snow bringing down rocks on the valley ahead.’

‘I know the place.’ Henry’s words were clipped. ‘Police direct you here with all the others, did they?’

‘That’s right.’

Henry sighed. ‘Too much to think she’d come back of her own accord, I suppose. So, what are you, then? Fiancé? Boyfriend?’

‘Colleague,’ Jasper corrected him quickly. He could just imagine Tori’s face if he let her family believe there was anything more between them.

However much he might enjoy remembering the night when there was.

‘Humph.’ Henry sounded faintly disbelieving. Oh, well, that was Tori’s problem. He’d told the truth. She hadn’t told him anything.

‘So, what can I do around here? Tori’s setting up beds somewhere, I guess.’

‘Tori, is it?’ Henry asked. ‘Well. You can help me pack up these ploughman’s boxes for our unexpected guests. Each one gets one of each of the things set out on the table. Should be simple enough.’ The words ‘even for you’ were unspoken, but Jasper couldn’t help but hear them anyway. He got the feeling that, arriving in Tori’s company, there was nothing he could have done to make a good impression on her uncle.

But that wasn’t going to stop him trying, all the same. After all, how else was he going to uncover some of those secrets Tori was still hiding? If there was even a chance she knew his—and even if she didn’t yet, she would soon if his father got his way—he wanted to know some of hers too. That was only fair, right?

‘I’m sure I can,’ he said with a grin, and picked up the first of the plastic boxes and started work.

Each ploughman’s box got a hunk of bread, some cheese, a thick slice of ham, a small pot of chutney, an apple and some celery.

‘I’ve got a giant pot of soup heating too,’ Henry explained. ‘We can take that up and dish it out in cups, to help people warm through. It’s not much, but—’

‘It’s more than any of us would have got stuck out on the roads in this snow,’ Jasper interrupted. ‘And I’m sure they’ll all be as grateful as I am for it.’ Even if he still lusted after the steak and ale pie Tori had promised was the best in the county. Maybe he could come back another time and try it. In better weather.

‘Humph,’ Henry said again, but this time he sounded more mollified. ‘So. If you’re Vicky’s “colleague” what sort of work have the two of you been up to?’

He was in tricky waters here, Jasper realised suddenly. If Tori hadn’t been home for who knew who long—maybe since she first showed up at Flaxstone—then her aunt and uncle probably didn’t know she was working for the earl. Or that she had stayed so close to home. How much would she forgive him for giving away?

‘We were visiting a property that our…boss is looking to invest in, up at the north of the moors.’ That was neutral enough, wasn’t it? ‘Tori didn’t mention that she had family so close though, or I’d have suggested we stop by without the snow forcing us on you.’

Henry barked a laugh at that. ‘Which is exactly why she wouldn’t tell you, I’d wager.’

‘She does like to keep her cards very close to her chest.’ Jasper watched Henry carefully, looking for the right way in, to get the man to tell him something, anything,that would explain the strange feeling that had settled over the place since they’d arrived.

There was so much to this story that he didn’t know. And Jasper hated not being in full possession of all the facts, always had. Especially since everything had gone down with Juliet, and he’d discovered that everyone else in his world had known a lot of truths about her that he, as her boyfriend, also should have known—but hadn’t. How could he possibly make good decisions if he didn’t know what he was basing them on? Telling Juliet he loved her, for instance, had been a spectacularly bad one.

Especially since it had turned out she had been in love with his friend Fred, and everyone else had known it. At nineteen, it had seemed the worst thing that could possibly happen to a guy.

But right now, he wasn’t thinking about the past. He was trying to decide how far he could push Tori to tell him her story. To let him in.

Maybe it was just the residual instinct to push at those walls of hers, that instinct that had plagued him since they were both barely more than teenagers. Or maybe it was something more—the sadness in her eyes that he’d only really noticed since his return. Or the way she bristled whenever he said anything at all…

Whatever it was, he needed to solve the puzzle of Tori Edwards. And here was her uncle, holding the key.

But all Henry said was, ‘She has her reasons. Heaven knows the girl has never talked when she doesn’t want to. She’d always run away instead, even as a child. Hide in the strangest of places, until…well, until someone found her. Now, are you done with those boxes?’

Jasper nodded, his mind occupied with Henry’s words. And the certainty that he’d been about to say a name there, when he was talking about who usually found her. What had stopped him?

Or rather, who?

‘Let’s carry these up, then.’ Henry hoisted the first, heavy tray of ploughman’s lunch into his arms, and Jasper followed suit with the second. ‘We’ll come back for the soup.’

‘If my arms can take it,’ Jasper muttered, staggering a little on the stairs. But he knew he’d do whatever Henry told him to, really.

He’d do whatever it took to unravel the mystery of Tori Edwards.

The advantage of being on home turf was that Tori knew all the best hiding places. Add in the associated chaos of having far too many people crammed into the building, all needing something all the time, and keeping busy enough to avoid any difficult discussions with Aunt Liz and Uncle Henry, or questions she didn’t want to answer from Jasper, was almost too easy.

Henry had sought her out as she’d laid down bedding in the restaurant. He’d watched her from the doorway for a moment or two, she suspected, before she’d turned around and spotted him. Then, he’d thrown his arms around her and held her tight, whispering into her hair that it was good to have her home.

He’d smelled of spicy vegetable soup and the Moorside kitchens, and the scent was so familiar she could almost believe that she’d never gone away at all. Then he’d stepped away and headed back to the bar without another word, and suddenly she felt every inch of the gulf between her and her family all over again.

A gulf created by her own secrets, and their shared loss.

It had been eight years. Eight years since Tyler died, eight years since she left. Was it time to tell them the truth about why? Tori knew in her heart she wouldn’t. Too many painful memories for them all. The best outcome she could hope for if she did tell them about the last few months of Tyler’s life was that she’d end up tarnishing their memories of him, as well as giving them more reasons to be angry with her. Nobody won anything that way.

Better to keep all those secrets inside, where they couldn’t hurt anyone but her.

At least, with so many people crowded in eating their soup and ploughman’s, there was no need for a sit-down family meal and all the awkwardness that would follow—as much as Tori would have loved one of Henry’s home-cooked meals. She smiled at the sight of Jasper handing out soup from behind the bar, for all the world like one of the college students Liz and Henry used to hire to help out over the summer, before Tyler and then Tori were old enough to take their place.

There were about nine groups of people staying at the Moorside, she counted, watching over the bar. Mostly families of three or four, although there was one multigenerational set of seven, too. A couple of couples, and two sole business people—and Jasper and Tori.

She hoped they had enough beds.

As one of the children in the family nearest to her started yawning, then nodding off into her apple slices, Tori crouched down next to them and asked if they’d like to be taken through to get settled in one of the bedrooms. The largest guest room at the front of the inn would just about fit them all, she decided, and it made sense for those with younger kids to have the actual bedrooms.

The parents smiled gratefully and, clearing their dishes to the bar, followed her up the rickety stairs to the guest rooms.

Tori made a point of not looking down the narrow corridor that led to the family rooms as they passed. For all she knew, Liz and Henry might have converted her tiny single room—and Tyler’s slightly larger room, for that matter—into more guest accommodation, or even an office for Liz to do paperwork in. She’d never know, because she wasn’t going to ask and she definitely wasn’t going to go and look.

Too many memories down that corridor.

By the time she made it back downstairs, Liz had already shown most of the other guests to rooms upstairs, or to the makeshift dormitory in the restaurant. Jasper was wiping down the bar, and Henry was pouring himself a pint.

Tori’s heart contracted at the familiar sight of her aunt and uncle going about their evening, as if nothing had changed in the last eight years. Or even the last day, as the inn had been invaded by stranded travellers. Even Jasper seemed strangely at home in a place she could never even have imagined seeing him before today.

‘Well, I’d better go grab a bedroll in the restaurant before they’re all gone,’ Tori said, as cheerfully as she could. It was late, they were all tired. Surely no one would call her out on wanting to avoid Awkward Question and Family time right now, would they?

But Liz, glancing up from wiping down tables, gave her an odd look. ‘I’ve kept your old room free for you and Jasper,’ she said. ‘I know it’s not big, but it’ll be more private than sleeping with the hordes in the restaurant.’