Prior to her mother’s second marriage to Alex’s father, they had lived in a smart apartment m Belgravia—her mother had been a very social person, involved, as she still was, in a good many charities and a keen bridge player, but Sylvie had never really felt comfortable or at home in the elegant London flat. Before his death her father had owned a large house in one of London’s squares and Sylvie still missed the freedom that living there had given her.
To comfort herself she had created her perfect house and the perfect family to go with it, mother, father, daughter—herself, plus a sister for her to play with and a brother too, along with grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. It had been the house that she had given most of her mental energy and imagination to lovingly creating, though. A house for a family, a house that wrapped itself lovingly and protectively around you...a house with enough land for her to have a pony. A house... The house... This house..!
Ran had stopped the Land Rover. Shakily she got out, unable to take her eyes off the house, barely aware of Ran’s expression as he watched her.
Just for a second, seeing that luminous bemused expression on her face, he had been transported back in time...to a time when she had looked at him like that, a time when...
Grimly he reminded himself of what Sylvie had just said, of the terms she had just set between them. She had made it more than plain, if he had needed it underlining, which he had not, that the only reason she was here in his life was because of her job and that, given the choice, she would far rather be working alongside someone else...anyone else.
The gravel crunched beneath Sylvie’s feet as she walked slowly, as if in a dream, towards the Rectory’s front door.
Already she knew what would lie beyond it—the soft-toned walls of the hallway with its highly polished antique furniture, its glowing wooden floors, its rugs and bowls of country-garden flowers. In her mind’s eye she could see it all as she herself had created it, smell the scent of the flowers...see the contented look in the eyes of the cat who basked illegally on the rug, lying there sunning himself in a warm beam of sunshine, ignoring the fact that his place and his basket were not here but in the kitchen.
Automatically her hand reached out for the door handle and then she realised what she was doing. Self-consciously she stepped back, turning her head away so that she didn’t have to look at Ran as he stepped past her to unlock the door.
It was cruelly ironic that Ran, of all people, should own this house that so closely epitomised all that she herself had longed for in a home as a young girl.
The front door was open. Ran paused to allow her to precede him inside but, as she did so, Sylvie came to an abrupt halt. Faded, unattractive wallpaper and chipped dark brown paint assaulted her disbelieving gaze. In place of the polished mellow wooden floor she had expected was a carpet, so old and faded that it was no longer possible to even guess at its original colour, but Sylvie suspected with disgust that it must have been the same horrendous brown as the paintwork.
True, there was some furniture, old rather than antique, dusted rather than polished, but there were certainly no flowers, no perfumed scent, nor, not surprisingly, was there any cat.
‘What is it?’ Ran asked her.
Hard on the heels of the acute envy she had felt when she had first seen the exterior of the house came a pang of sadness for its inner neglect. Oh, it was clean enough, if you discounted the air possessing a sharp, almost chemical smell that made her wrinkle her nose a little, but it was a long, long way from the home she had so lovingly mentally created.
She heard Ran moving around in the hall behind her. ‘I’ll take you up to your room,’ he told her. ‘Have you got something for your headache?’
‘Yes, but they’re in my luggage which is in my hire car,’ Sylvie told him grimly.
In the excitement of seeing the house her headache had abated slightly, but now the strong smell in the hallway had made it return and with interest She could no longer deny that lying down somewhere dark and quiet had become a necessity.
‘It’s this way,’ Ran told her unnecessarily as he headed towards the stairs.
Once they might have been elegant, although now it was hard to know; the original staircase no longer existed and the monstrosity which had replaced it made Sylvie shudder in distaste.
The house had a sad, forlorn air about it, she recognised as she reached the large rectangular landing, carpeted again in the same revolting dun-brown as the hallway below.
‘Did your great-uncle live here?’ Sylvie asked him curiously.
‘No. It was let out to tenants. When my cousin inherited he moved in here, and after his death... I thought about selling it, but it’s too far off the beaten track to attract the interest of a buyer, and then once I’d made the decision to hang onto the land and farm it seemed to make sense to move into the house myself. It needs some work doing on it, of course...’
Sylvie said nothing but her expressive eyes gave her away and Ran continued coldly, ‘Well, yes, I can see that to someone such as yourself, used to only the very best that money can provide, it must be rather a comedown. I’m sorry if the only accommodation I can offer you isn’t up to your usual standards...’ Ran’s eyes darkened as he reflected on the elegance of Alex’s home and the luxury she must have enjoyed with Lloyd, but to Sylvie, who was remembering how Ran had once seen her living in the most basic and primitive conditions, when she had been part of the group of New Age travellers who had set up camp on Alex’s estate, the look he was giving her seemed to be one of taunting mockery.
‘You’re down here,’ Ran was saying as he led the way down a corridor with doors off either side of it, pushing one of them open and then standing to one side as he waited for her to enter.
The bedroom was large, with two long windows that let in the glowing evening sunlight. The old-fashioned wooden furniture, like the tables in the hallway, was spotlessly clean but lacked the warm lustre that it would once have had from being lovingly polished by several generations of female hands. The empty grate in the pretty fireplace, which she would have filled with a collection of dried flowers or covered with an embroidered firescreen, was simply that—an empty grate. The curtains and the bedding were modern and, she suspected, newly purchased for her visit. The same depressing brown carpet as downstairs covered the floor.
‘You’ve got your own bathroom,’ Ran told her as he crossed the floor to push open another door. ‘It’s old-fashioned but it works.’
As she looked into the bathroom past him, Sylvie said wryly, ‘It may be old-fashioned to you, Ran, but this type of plain white Edwardian sanitaryware is very much in vogue right now.’
‘There are wardrobes and cupboards on that wall,’ he told her unnecessarily, indicating the bank of built-in furniture. ‘I haven’t had the chance yet, but tomorrow I’ll bring up a desk from downstairs.’
‘I’ll certainly need somewhere to put my laptop,’ Sylvie agreed. ‘But I will also need to have a room somewhere, I think preferably up at the Hall itself, to work officially from. But that’s something we can discuss later.
‘Where’s your housekeeper?’ she asked him. ‘I’d like to meet her...’
‘Mrs Elliott... She’ll be here in the morning. I can introduce you then.