‘But—?’
She shrugged. ‘My pride got in the way,’ she said, hating the little catch in her voice. ‘And now my kids have nowhere to go for Christmas. And convincing a landlord to give me a house before I can get another job is going to be tricky, and that’s not going to happen any time soon if the response to my CV continues to be as resoundingly successful as it’s being at the moment, and anyway the letting agents aren’t going to be able to find us anything this close to Christmas. I could kill David for cutting off the maintenance,’ she added under her breath, a little catch in her voice.
‘Go ahead—I’ll be a character witness for you in court,’ Kate growled, then she leant back, folded her arms and chewed her lip thoughtfully. ‘I wonder…?’
‘What?’
‘You could have Jake’s house,’ she said softly. ‘My boss. I would say stay here, but I’ve got my parents and my sister coming for Christmas Day and I can hardly fit us all in as it is, but there’s tons of room at Jake’s. He’s away until the middle of January. He always goes away at Christmas for a month—he shuts the office, gives everyone three weeks off on full pay and leaves the country before the office party, and I have the keys to keep an eye on it. And it’s just sitting there, the most fabulous house, and it’s just made for Christmas.’
‘Won’t he mind?’
‘What, Jake? No. He wouldn’t give a damn. You won’t do it any harm, after all, will you? It’s hundreds of years old and it’s survived. What harm can you do it?’
What harm? She felt rising panic just thinking about it. ‘I couldn’t—’
‘Don’t be daft. Where else are you going to go? Besides, with the weather so cold it’ll be much better for the house to have the heating on full and the fire lit. He’ll be grateful when he finds out, and besides, Jake’s generous to a fault. He’d want you to have it. Truly.’
Amelia hesitated. Kate seemed so convinced he wouldn’t mind. ‘You’d better ring him, then,’ she said in the end. ‘But tell him I’ll give him money for rent just as soon as I can—’
Kate shook her head. ‘No. I can’t. I don’t have the number, but I know he’d say yes,’ she said, and Amelia’s heart sank.
‘Well, then, we can’t stay there. Not without asking—’
‘Millie, really. It’ll be all right. He’d die before he’d let you be homeless over Christmas and there’s no way he’d take money off you. Believe me, he’d want you to have the house.’
Still she hesitated, searching Kate’s face for any sign of uncertainty, but if she felt any, Kate was keeping it to herself, and besides, Amelia was so out of options she couldn’t afford the luxury of scruples, and in the end she gave in.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Absolutely. There won’t be any food there, his housekeeper will have emptied the fridge, but I’ve got some basics I can let you have and bread and stuff, and there’s bound to be something in the freezer and the cupboards to tide you over until you can replace it. We’ll go over there the minute we’ve had lunch and settle you in. It’ll be great—fantastic! You’ll love it.’
‘Love what?’ Kitty asked, sidling up with chocolate all round her mouth and a doubtful expression on her face.
‘My boss’s house. He’s gone away, and he’s going to let you borrow it.’
‘Let?’ Millie said softly under her breath, but Kate just flashed her a smile and shrugged.
‘Well, he would if he knew…OK, lunch first, and then let’s go!’
It was, as Kate had said, the most fabulous house.
A beautiful old Tudor manor house, it had been in its time a farm and then a small hotel and country club, she explained, and then Jake had bought it and moved his offices out here into the Berkshire countryside. He lived in the house, and there was an office suite housing Jake’s centre of operations in the former country club buildings on the far side of the old walled kitchen garden. There was a swimming pool, a sauna and steam room and a squash court over there, Kate told her as they pulled up outside on the broad gravel sweep, and all the facilities were available to the staff and their families.
Further evidence of his apparent generosity.
But it was the house which drew Amelia—old mellow red brick, with a beautiful Dutch gabled porch set in the centre, and as Kate opened the huge, heavy oak door that bore the scars of countless generations and ushered them into the great entrance hall, even the children fell silent.
‘Wow,’ Edward said after a long, breathless moment.
Wow, indeed. Amelia stared around her, dumbstruck. There was a beautiful, ancient oak staircase on her left, and across the wide hall which ran from side to side were several lovely old doors which must lead to the principal rooms.
She ran her hand over the top of the newel post, once heavily carved, the carving now almost worn away by the passage of generations of hands. She could feel them all, stretching back four hundred years, the young, the old, the children who’d been born and grown old and died here, sheltered and protected by this beautiful, magnificent old house, and ridiculous though it was, as the front door closed behind them, she felt as if the house was gathering them up into its heart.
‘Come on, I’ll give you a quick tour,’ Kate said, going down the corridor to the left, and they all trooped after her, the children still in a state of awe. The carpet under her feet must be a good inch thick, she thought numbly. Just how rich was this guy?
As Kate opened the door in front of her and they went into a vast and beautifully furnished sitting room with a huge bay window at the side overlooking what must surely be acres of parkland, she got her answer, and she felt her jaw drop.
Very rich. Fabulously, spectacularly rich, without a shadow of a doubt.
And yet he was gone, abandoning this beautiful house in which he lived alone to spend Christmas on a ski slope.
She felt tears prick her eyes, strangely sorry for a man she’d never met, who’d furnished his house with such love and attention to detail, and yet didn’t apparently want to stay in it at the time of year when it must surely be at its most welcoming.
‘Why?’ she asked, turning to Kate in confusion. ‘Why does he go?’
Kate shrugged. ‘Nobody really knows. Or nobody talks about it. There aren’t very many people who’ve worked for him that long. I’ve been his PA for a little over three years, since he moved the business here from London, and he doesn’t talk about himself.’
‘How sad.’
‘Sad? No. Not Jake. He’s not sad. He’s crazy, he has some pretty wacky ideas and they nearly always work, and he’s an amazingly thoughtful boss, but he’s intensely private. Nobody knows anything about him, really, although he always makes a point of asking about Megan, for instance. But I don’t think he’s sad. I think he’s just a loner and he likes to ski. Come and see the rest.’
They went back down the hall, along the squishy pile carpet that absorbed all the sound of their feet, past all the lovely old doors while Kate opened them one by one and showed them the rooms in turn.
A dining room with a huge table and oakpanelled walls; another sitting room, much smaller than the first, with a plasma TV in the corner, book-lined walls, battered leather sofas and all the evidence that this was his very personal retreat. There was a study at the front of the house which they didn’t enter; and then finally the room Kate called the breakfast room—huge again, but with the same informality as the little sitting room, with foot-wide oak boards on the floor and a great big old refectory table covered in the scars of generations and just made for family living.
And