Looking back it was a mad idea. Why should a seventeen-year-old boy, however clever, manage to help eleven-year-old Esme when her expensive prep school had failed miserably?
But he had. That was the even crazier thing. He’d been the one to notice Esme could remember perfectly anything she was taught verbally, could talk with intelligence on most subjects and only descended into gibberish when committing to paper. Remarkably, he’d been the first to suggest dyslexia as a possibility, and tests had proved him right.
Esme found herself treading down memory lane once more and pulled herself back sharply.
‘And money is important?’ she remarked for something to say.
‘It is if you haven’t got any,’ he responded quite equably.
Esme didn’t argue. She knew he was talking from experience. His mother had died from cancer just after his finals, keeping her illness secret almost to the end. Accompanied by Jack, she had gone home to her native Ireland for a holiday and passed away there. She had left nothing but the money for her funeral. If Jack had grieved, he’d done it alone.
She watched him now, gazing through her bedroom window. It faced the back of the house and offered a view of the stable block and woods beyond. In autumn, when the trees were bare, it was just possible to see the chimney of the gamekeeper’s cottage where Jack had lived with his mother. But it was currently spring and greenery obscured it.
It was in his mind, however, as he said, ‘I understand the cottage is rented out.’
Esme’s stomach tightened a little but she kept her cool. ‘Yes, it is. You know it’s not part of the sale?’
He turned. ‘No, I didn’t. There’s no mention in the particulars.’
Esme glanced towards the folder in his hand. She’d not perused the estate agent’s details. She’d trusted her mother’s word instead.
‘I don’t really see how it could be excluded,’ he continued, ‘considering it’s in the middle of the estate.’
‘Well, it is!’ Esme snapped with a certainty she was far from feeling.
Jack shrugged, unwilling to argue, commenting instead, ‘Perhaps that’s why you’re having difficulty selling—people buy these estates for privacy.’
Esme wondered if he was going out of his way to upset. ‘Who says we’re having difficulty selling?’
‘The fact,’ he replied, ‘that the estate has been on the market over a year, perhaps… Is it a sitting tenant, the person in the cottage?’
‘Why?’ Esme had no idea what she was.
‘Just that if you’re worried about getting them to vacate,’ he relayed, ‘there are ways and means.’
‘Ways and means?’ Esme’s eyes rounded. ‘What exactly do you mean?’
‘Well, we could send a couple of heavies to persuade him to move on.’ Jack read her mind with uncanny accuracy. ‘Or, alternatively, we could offer him a generous sum to help with relocation. Personally, I prefer the latter method. Slightly more civilised,’ he finished, tongue very firmly in cheek.
He’d wrongfooted her again and Esme felt herself regressing further and further to the girl called Midge whom he’d teased so sweetly she’d ended up adoring him.
Only it didn’t feel sweet any more, just patronising, maybe even a little cruel.
‘The cottage isn’t for sale.’ She repeated what she’d first stated.
He was unimpressed. ‘Let’s see what your mother says, assuming I’m interested.’
‘You’re going to talk to my mother?’ She didn’t conceal her surprise.
He raised a brow in return. ‘Is there any reason I shouldn’t?’
Was he kidding? Esme could think of at least one but didn’t want to voice it aloud.
His eyes narrowed, scrutinising her expression. ‘Unless you think it inadvisable?’
‘Well—’ she pulled a face ‘—you didn’t…um…part on the best of terms.’
‘No, we didn’t, did we?’ He actually smiled at the recollection. ‘What was it she said, now?’
Esme remembered, but she wasn’t about to help him out.
Not that she needed to, as he ran on, ‘Ah, yes, having a degree from Oxford didn’t make the cook’s son any more eligible as a suitor to her daughters.’
Esme cringed at the memory, even though almost a decade had passed. She had sat at the long dining table, reduced to shocked silence by her mother’s careless cruelty and watched the colour come and go in Jack’s face, before pride had made him lash out.
She’d never before or since seen her mother so dumb-struck. But no one else had ever called her a dimwitted, mean-spirited, stuck-up cow.
Considering the anger that had made Jack Doyle’s mouth a tight white line and the temper that had flashed in stormy grey eyes, it had been a fairly restrained response. The slamming of doors behind him had conveyed better his temper.
Her mother had sat red-faced at the head of the table while her sister Arabella had appeared from the adjoining room, sniggering with amusement.
It had been more than Esme could bear.
A decade on, she shut her eyes, expelling the scene from her mind before the camera could roll further.
‘Still, there were consolations,’ he added under his breath.
But loud enough for Esme to hear, to open her eyes again and meet his, to see the soft amusement in them.
She held his gaze for just a moment, then looked away, unable to stop her cheeks from flushing. He probably took it for remembered pleasure rather than the deep embarrassment it was.
A night with the wrong sister. Consolation prize of sorts. His behaviour understandable enough, but hers? Too desperate for words.
She buried the memory once more and took refuge in being brusque and businesslike. ‘Talk to my mother if you choose… That’s all the rooms except the attics and kitchens. Do you wish to see those?’
‘Not particularly,’ he responded. ‘I have the attic dimensions and I probably know the kitchen layout better than you do yourself, young Miss Esme.’
He pretended to touch his forelock. It seemed like humour but Esme wasn’t fooled. There was bitterness behind it, too. And why not?
But Esme refused to go on the defensive and muttered in agreement, ‘Probably,’ before walking ahead of him out onto the galleried landing and down the once magnificent staircase, now creaking with age.
She started to walk towards the front door but his voice halted her. ‘Wouldn’t it be easier to go through the kitchens to view the outbuildings?’
‘You want to see those?’ Esme frowned darkly. Surely he knew the layout of the rear yard, too.
‘The state of them,’ he confirmed. ‘The stables weren’t in great shape the last time I saw them.’
It could have been an innocent comment.
Perhaps only she remembered exact details of where and how.
But it made her both angry and embarrassed; she turned away before he could observe either emotion.
Her heels clicked on the marble floor as she stalked ahead, a tall, willowy creature with an erect back, and Jack followed,