Taming the Rebel Tycoon. Ally Blake
was some of the best she’d ever tasted, he said, ‘Tell me a bit about yourself. Are you London born and bred?’
‘No. I was born and brought up in a small village. I only went to live in London when I started to work for Cartel Wines.’
‘So which do you prefer? Town or country?’
She smiled wistfully. ‘I quite like London but I’d much sooner live in the country.’
‘Have you any brothers or sisters?’
‘I’ve a stepsister, Didi. My mother died when I was seven and a year later my father married a widow with a daughter of almost the same age.’
‘Did you get on well?’
‘Not too well,’ Tina admitted. ‘Despite the fact that we were born in the same month and within three days of each other, we were completely different both in character and temperament.’
‘Does your stepsister still live in the country?’
Tina shook her head. ‘No. Didi left home and got a job in London when she was seventeen.’
‘What about your parents?’
‘A couple of years ago a relative left my father a hotel in Melbourne and they decided to give up their house and go to live in Australia.
‘Before they went, they asked me to keep an eye on Didi—she’d been ill and was having problems.
‘By that time I was working for Cartel Wines and renting a two-bedroomed flat, so when I found she couldn’t pay the rent for her crummy bedsit and was about to be thrown out, I persuaded her to move in with me.’
Frowning, he asked, ‘But she doesn’t still live with you?’
‘Oh, no. She moved out when she was offered a place at the Ramon Bonaventure School of Drama.’
‘She wants to be an actress?’
‘Yes. Though her mother had been very much against it, it was something Didi had always hoped to do…’
Tina stopped speaking as their lunch arrived, accompanied by various jars of homemade chutney, all with frilled muslin covers.
‘I can thoroughly recommend the mango,’ Richard told her.
‘Mmm,’ Tina agreed when she’d tried some. ‘It’s absolutely delicious.’
‘I thought you’d like it. It’s almost as good as Hannah makes.’
‘Hannah?’
‘Our old cook/housekeeper at the castle. Her family have been retainers there for donkey’s years. Though Hannah’s semiretired, she still rules the staff with a rod of iron.
‘She was born there and stayed on when she married one of the estate workers. Mullins, her son, is a general manservant who takes care of just about everything, including the cars, and her youngest granddaughter, Milly, is a maid.’
For a while they ate without speaking and, though Tina strove to appear relaxed and easy, she was aware of him—of his presence, his nearness, his every slight movement.
From beneath her thick lashes she watched him as he helped himself to more chutney and lifted his glass to drink. He had strong, well-shaped hands with lean fingers and neatly trimmed nails.
Masculine hands.
Exciting hands.
A half-remembered line from Donne started to run through her mind: ‘Licence my roving hands, and let them go—’
She snapped off the thought like snapping a dry twig and, feeling the sexual tension tightening, hurried into speech. ‘How did the castle come to have a vineyard?’
‘While my great-grandfather, who was a merchant banker, was staying in a French château in the Loire Valley, he became very interested in wine-making. When he got back to Anders, he planted vines on some south-facing slopes on the edge of the estate and set up a small winery.
‘By the time he passed away he had quite a successful little business which eventually my father took over. But when he became ill it was neglected and after his death I regret to say that it was closed down altogether.
‘I was at Oxford at the time and after I graduated, though my mother begged me to go back to live at Anders, I decided, in the end, not to.’
‘So you prefer to live in London?’
‘No, not at all. Though I’ve lived in London since I left university, it isn’t really from choice.’
‘Oh.’
‘My father died when I was eighteen and two years later my mother married again. She and my father had been very close and it was when she was alone and grief-stricken that she met Bradley Sanderson, a childless widower fifteen years older than herself.’
Seeing Tina’s slightly puzzled frown, Richard explained, ‘My mother decided that she would keep her own name. It seemed like the simplest solution—there is always meant to be an Anders in the castle. Though they had the same surname, he wasn’t a blood relation. When he was five or six he’d been adopted by JonathanAnders, a member of the Wiltshire branch of the family, whose wife was unable to have children.
‘Unfortunately Bradley and I didn’t get along. I disliked and distrusted him and he hated my guts for opposing the marriage.
‘That’s why, after leaving university, I decided it would be better all round if I lived in London. So I bought the house in Pemberley Square and just paid periodic visits to the castle, where I had my own suite of rooms.’
It must have been hard to visit a place he’d always regarded as home and confine himself to a suite of rooms, while a man he disliked intensely was, nominally at least, master there.
Impulsively, she said, ‘It couldn’t have been easy for you.’
For a moment he looked surprised, then he admitted, ‘It wasn’t. Especially when I realised Mother wasn’t very happy…
‘To give Bradley his due, he did a good job of running the estate and she was grateful. But he turned out to be a difficult man to live with and, though she never admitted as much, I think she regretted marrying him, and felt guilty that she did regret it.
‘Shortly after she had been diagnosed with a terminal illness, Bradley was found to have a heart disease which cut his life expectancy to a year or two at the most.
‘I promised Mother that if she predeceased him, I wouldn’t turn him out. But he wasn’t happy with that assurance. He wanted her to put a codicil in her will to the effect that he could continue to live at Anders until his death, and I agreed.’
‘Then your stepfather’s still living there?’
‘He was until he died of a heart attack a little while ago.’
‘So now the castle’s all yours and you intend to keep it?’
Richard’s handsome face looked oddly grim and his voice was steely as he answered, ‘Oh, yes, I intend to keep it.’
The casement clock in the corner struck a sonorous two-thirty and, his voice and manner back to normal, Richard asked, ‘About ready to move?’
Realising that at the rate they were going it would be quite late by the time they got back to London, she said, ‘Yes, I’m ready,’ and rose to her feet.
Apart from some brief embarrassment, it had been a very pleasant interlude and she had learned quite a lot about him and his family.
None of it had given her any hope that she might be lucky enough to fit into his life, but even so, knowing more about him, getting to understand him, was oddly precious to her.
While they continued their journey she mulled over what she had learned and was still thinking about it when Richard said with satisfaction, ‘Almost