‘Oh, you know what I mean.’ His mother’s formerly shrill tones turned soft and wheedling. ‘You control the estate.’
Arthur laughed, a bitter snap of sound. ‘You’ll get nothing out of me, Mother. Not one more penny.’ Even if the estate finances weren’t teetering on the brink, he had nothing to give the woman who’d ruined his father’s life.
‘He’s turned you against me! Listen, Arthur, you don’t understand—’
Bloody hell, the nerve of the woman! His dad had never said a bad word against her, had done everything in his power to keep a relationship between his beloved children and the mother who’d never given two hoots for them. Arthur had shed his last tears for her after she’d failed to turn up to collect the three of them from school for a long-promised weekend. They’d been 13 at the time. Tristan and Iggy had given up after an hour and gone back to their rooms, but Arthur had stayed on the front steps convinced she’d come motoring up any second complaining about a holdup with the traffic. As each hour past he’d gone from excited, to hopeful, and eventually to worried she’d had some terrible accident. His housemaster had finally coaxed a tearful, frozen Arthur inside after putting in a call to his father who’d tracked Helena down at Ascot races. Having received an invitation to someone’s box, she’d chosen to spend the day seeing and being seen by her society friends and couldn’t understand what the fuss was all about.
With an echo of that sad boy in his heart, Arthur cut off her protestations. ‘You abandoned us without a second thought, there’s nothing left to understand. If you need money, I suggest you ask your current husband for it.’ Arthur ended the call before any more of the bitterness welling up inside him could spill out. Shaking himself like one of their Labradors emerging from the pond after a dip, Arthur shed the cold shards of disappointment threatening to seep into his heart. She was never going to change. He’d known that at 13, and now, at 27, it was time to acknowledge it.
‘What did she want?’ Tristan entered the family room bundled up in a navy padded jacket and a bright yellow scarf, a locked metal box balanced carefully across his arms.
‘Money.’
‘I hope you told her to get stuffed,’ said Iggy who’d entered on Tristan’s heels, equally well wrapped up and carrying Arthur’s coat which she thrust at him.
‘Close enough.’ Accepting his coat, he tugged it on then moved to give Tristan a hand with the box. It wasn’t heavy, but they didn’t want to risk any accidents. ‘Are we ready for this?’
‘Nope, but let’s do it anyway.’ With a shrug, Iggy pulled a white knitted cap over her dark hair then tugged on a pair of matching gloves. God, she looked so sad. Arthur bet if he looked in a mirror right then, the same haunted look in her hazel eyes would be reflected in his. ‘I’ve put your boots by the front door,’ she said, pointing to the thick woollen socks on his otherwise bare feet.
‘Cheers, Iggle-Piggle.’ The hated nickname earned him a punch on the arm, but at least it eased some of the pain tightening her face.
It also sent him jostling into Tristan, who staggered a couple of steps, trying to keep the box steady. ‘Careful! We don’t want Dad going off by accident.’
Iggy patted the metal box with one gloved hand. ‘Sorry, Dad.’ The three of them laughed at the absurdity of it, further easing the stress of what was to come.
Steadying the box between them, Arthur and Tristan followed their sister through the echoing vaulted central chamber of the great hall. Once the beating heart of Camland Castle, it now belonged mostly to the dogs whose sprawling mass of beds and pillows occupied pride of place before the enormous fireplace which Arthur—at just a shade under six-feet tall—could still walk inside without ducking. Thick, evergreen boughs decorated with sprigs of blood-red holly berries and creamy-white clumps of mistletoe covered the high mantle, scenting the air with fresh pine. A matching display filled the middle of the enormous, age-scarred circular table positioned in the exact centre of the room.
As he did every time he passed through the space, Arthur paused to admire his sister’s handiwork. Born with a green thumb, according to their great-aunt, Morgana, Iggy was never happier than when she could escape into the gardens and woodland stretching out around the castle.
Their progress halted by the front door for Arthur to stuff his feet into the dark-green wellingtons his sister had previously put out for him. Ever practical, she’d also left a large torch beside his boots, something he’d completely forgotten to think about when they’d been planning this evening. Arthur watched Iggy’s face as she pulled opened the left-hand side of the imposing oak front door. The moment the chilly December air touched her skin, her whole body seemed to lift and lighten, as though she were some kind of sprite, only able to truly thrive out of doors.
Standing to one side, she ushered Arthur and Tristan out then shooed several disappointed dogs back into the warmth of the hall. ‘No walkies for you tonight, darling, you won’t like the noise,’ she said, rubbing the silken ears of Nimrod, one of a pair of greyhounds they’d adopted from the local shelter.
Knowing they had the space to accommodate them, the shelter would often call if they were struggling to rehome any dogs. Large dogs; older ones; those at the less aesthetically pleasing end of the spectrum—Arthur and his siblings would take them in. The numbers in the pack had ebbed and flowed over the years, and those that passed on were buried together in a beautiful grove in the woods, so they could ‘rest forever in the sunshine’ as Iggy had declared when they’d first chosen it as children.
Nimrod snuffled her palm, then allowed Iggy to gently ease him back far enough to tug the heavy door closed once more. A few protesting barks followed them as they descended the steps, but Arthur knew they’d soon all be sprawled in front of the hearth in a tangle of heads and tails.
Iggy dug her own torch from her pocket and aimed it at the gravel ahead of her, giving them a point of reference to follow. They followed the path as it wound around the western wall of the castle and beyond to the faded and overgrown formal gardens where it finally gave way to the gallops still used daily to exercise the horses from the successful Bluebell Castle stud their uncle ran from the stables.
The whimsical name was drawn from the incredible floral display the woods surrounding the castle put on every spring. The little flower had become so synonymous with the Ludworth family it had even found its way onto their family crest. Thoughts of what might become of his uncle’s business haunted Arthur along with a million other worries. Lancelot’s reputation was good enough the business could survive relocating elsewhere if the worst of their nightmares came true and Arthur was forced to sell up, but it’d be a devasting loss to the members of the local community who relied upon it for employment.
The circle of torchlight stopped as Iggy paused. ‘Here?’
‘Just a bit further, and then I reckon we’ll be fine,’ Tristan replied. ‘What do you think, Arthur?’
It was hard to gauge distances in the dark, but he knew the land beneath his feet as well as the back of his own hand. They were almost to the edge of where the formal lands surrounding their home gave way to the wild escarpments of the Derbyshire hills. Their father had loved tromping over those hills and it was also a symbolic threshold. Free of all worldly responsibilities, Uther’s spirit—or whatever—could escape back to the untamed wildness of nature. ‘Here is probably as good a spot as any. We’re well away from any trees.’
‘I think it’s perfect,’ Iggy’s voice held a slight tremor, but the beam of light cast by her torch onto the ground in front of them was steady as a rock.
‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing with these things?’ Arthur asked Tristan as they bent to place the box gently on the ground.