“You’ll have to buy the recording.”
She glared at him. “You’re serious about this?”
“Yes, Claudia. I’m deadly serious. Now sit back and enjoy the ride.” He flicked the car radio on and the sound of classical Christmas carols filled the space. She doubted a man like Stavros with a heart chipped from the ice core of the earth had chosen to play something so beautifully festive. He probably hadn’t even realized that Christmas carols were on the radio. He just wanted to drown out her objections to this stupid plan.
Claudia settled back in her seat and shut her eyes, letting the music wash over her and relax her.
This was a stupid idea but no doubt it wasn’t fully formed. She’d go to Barnwell for a few days. Once he had calmed down, she’d talk some sense into him. And then she’d get the hell out of there before she could make an even bigger fool of herself than she had three years earlier.
*
It was dusk by the time his car reached the estate. The sun was setting low in the sky and the air was thick with the magic of the countryside. Despite the anger she felt towards her captor, Claudia sat up straighter in the seat and peered out of her window, craning to catch any of the landmarks that might seem familiar.
It had been a long time since she’d been to his home. In fact, she’d come only once, right after her father’s funeral. Stavros had brought her home to stay for a few nights, while the arrangements were put in place for her ongoing care.
The little orphan he’d been lumbered with the duty of caring of – a duty he so clearly hadn’t wanted.
At fifteen, she’d been on the brink of womanhood and spending days in proximity to this man, even in her grief-addled state, had woken something inside of her. He’d imprinted on her mind, and she’d begun to dream about him.
She’d wanted him even then, though she hadn’t known what the feelings were that had been coursing through her hormonally charged body. She’d known only that he made her heart flip and flop and her pulse race, that she felt warm when she was near him.
A hedge of blackberries grew wild on one side. She remembered walking all the way down to it and picking the berries in the midday sun. They’d been warm and gooey and had dribbled down her chin as she’d eaten them. Her fingers had been stained for days. In fact, even after she’d returned to boarding school, she’d borne faint traces of the purple juice, a reminder of Barnwell and the changes that had begun to take place in her body and mind.
He pressed a button above the visor and slowed the car down at the same time. A large, wrought-iron gate began to open inwards, and though she didn’t hear it, she imagined it groaning like a bad film adaptation of Dracula.
It was a magical time of day to arrive somewhere like Barnwell. The air was almost golden and it cast shadows and light on the rolling lawns that passed on either side of the gravel drive. He moved the car into the estate and, she couldn’t help herself, Claudia spun in her seat to watch the gates begin to close. She watched until they’d slammed shut.
And tried not to get all dramatic about the fact she was literally under his lock and key. She knew from experience it wasn’t easy to leave the estate without his permission.
It was one of the things Stavros had told her back when Christopher had died and the press had begun to follow her, looking for a photo of the poor, grieving orphan.
“You can relax here, asteráki. No one can enter the estate without my knowledge. We have alarms on the perimeter, cameras watching the entrances. You are safe.”
Only the dangers had come from within.
Had come from him, and her, and how she felt for him.
The car moved onwards, around the large curve of the drive, so that to the left she could see the formal garden with its elaborately planted patterns. Even at this time of year it was beautiful, the ferns in between each garden bed growing tall and proud, reminding her of ten Christmas trees standing guard over the place.
To her right was one of the gate houses, and the gardens behind it grew more wild and free, a tangle of trees that had reminded fifteen-year-old Claudia La Roche of an enchanted woodland.
And then, there was the house. She leaned forward unconsciously as they approached, her eyes sweeping over the stone mansion, with its ancient windows and chimneys. It was both impossibly grand and homely at the same time, a testament to the restorations that Stavros’s grandmother had undertaken. Wisteria grew wild over this side, though at the moment it was just the skeletal evidence of what warmth would bring – a nest of dry, wooded veins that scrambled over the stone side of the house. He brought the car to a stop on the gravel and they both sat there for a moment, the silence dropping heavier than the night.
“Marta has prepared dinner,” he said stiffly, then pushed his car door open.
Claudia watched as he sprung from the vehicle and moved towards the house, without a backwards glance at the car or her. She stayed where she was, not as a form of protest, but because she was glued to the seat.
Standing like this, walking to the house, she could only stare. She’d seen him six months earlier, it wasn’t as though she’d been deprived of the sight of him. But it had been their usual twenty-minute cocktail for her birthday – a ritual he observed each year, marking the progress of her aging by presenting her with some kind of gift or other, undoubtedly hand-selected by one of his assistants.
But somehow, watching him stride towards his country estate, wearing jeans and a pullover rather than the suits she usually saw him in, she could only stare.
And feel something like danger and warning slick her insides with a dark, desirous heat.
He was the embodiment of power. She pressed her hand to the door but stayed where she was, a sinking feeling wrapping around her.
How the hell was she going to get through even a day of this? Let alone two weeks?
She pushed the car open, and her shoes made a crunching sound as they landed on the gravel. It was colder here at Barnwell than in London, and her leather jacket offered little protection to the mid-winter’s evening. She wrapped her arms over her chest and jogged towards the side entrance.