Carole Mortimer - Tall, Dark & Scandalous

‘And you aren’t?’ Her eyes were wide with accusation.

‘Not particularly, no,’ Jordan muttered as he pushed himself away from the pillar to lean heavily on his cane and walk towards the main salon at the front of the house.

Stephanie trailed slowly along behind him, her eyes bright with pleasure as she came to stand on the threshold of the room, looking at the beautiful gold and cream decor and delicate Regency furniture. ‘Has Lucan never thought of opening this up to the public?’

‘Definitely not.’ Jordan almost laughed at the thought of the expression of disgust that would appear on his eldest brother’s face if anyone dared to suggest he should open the doors of Mulberry Hall to all and sundry. ‘I don’t recommend that you suggest it to him, either—unless you want to feel the icy blast of his complete disapproval.’

‘But it seems such a waste.’ Stephanie frowned. ‘The building itself must be very old.’

‘Early Elizabethan, I believe.’

Stephanie crossed the room to lightly touch the beautiful ornate gold frame about the huge mirror above the white fireplace. ‘Did Lucan buy it completely furnished like this?’ There were ornaments and lamps on the surfaces of the many side tables, and a large dresser along one wall, as well as a beautiful Ormolu clock on top of the fireplace.

Jordan gave an uninterested shrug. ‘As far as I’m aware some of this furniture has been here for a couple of hundred years at least.’

‘I wonder what happened to the family that lived here?’ Stephanie murmured. ‘It must have been someone titled, don’t you think?’

Jordan nodded. ‘The Dukes of Stourbridge.’

Stephanie sighed. ‘It’s such a pity that so many of the old titles have either become extinct or fallen into disuse.’

‘Yes, a pity,’ Jordan drawled dryly.

‘Do you suppose Lucan intends to live here once he’s married? It was just a thought,’ she defended as Jordan gave a shout of laughter. ‘You say that he doesn’t intend opening it to the public, but he must intend doing something with it, surely?’

‘Sorry, I was just trying to imagine Lucan married,’ Jordan gasped, his shoulders still shaking slightly. ‘No, I just can’t see it, I’m afraid.’

Stephanie couldn’t imagine the cold and self-contained man she had met the previous week madly in love and married, either. ‘I wonder why he bothered to buy it, then?’

‘I never try to second-guess Lucan, and I’d advise you not to bother trying, either,’ Jordan suggested as he turned away. ‘Do you want to see the pool at the back of the house now?’ he offered, when he saw Stephanie hadn’t moved from in front of the fireplace.

‘Philistine,’ she accused him good-naturedly as she followed him back out into the incredible marble hallway.

Stephanie had visited several country estates in the past that had been open to the public, but never an empty one that looked quite so much as if someone still lived there. There were paintings on all the walls, ornaments and antique mirrors everywhere, and there was even a silver tray on the stand in the hallway that looked as if it were waiting for visiting cards to be placed upon it. In fact the whole house had the look of expecting the master of the house—the Duke of Stourbridge—to walk through the front doorway at any moment.

‘Lucan has a caretaker for the grounds, and his wife keeps the inside of the house free of dust,’ Jordan explained when Stephanie said as much to him.

‘Even so, it seems a shame that no one actually lives here…’ Stephanie looked about her wistfully.

‘It’s really not the sort of place you could ever call home, now, is it?’ Jordan scorned. ‘That you would ever really want to call home,’ he added.

Stephanie stood at the bottom of the wide and sweeping staircase that led up the gallery above, wondering how many beautiful women had stood poised at the top of that staircase, in gowns from the Elizabethan period to now, to be admired by the men they loved as they floated down those stairs and into their waiting arms. Dozens of them, probably. And now Mulberry Hall stood empty, apart from the caretaker and his wife who obviously lived somewhere else on the estate, when it should have been full of love and the laughter of children.

‘I suppose not,’ she agreed slowly, before following him.

Jordan had nothing more to add to that particular conversation. Had no intention of telling the already over-curious Stephanie McKinley that Lucan hadn’t bought Mulberry Hall at all, that he was in fact the current and fifteenth Duke of Stourbridge. Which consequently made him Lord Jordan St Claire and his twin brother Lord Gideon St Claire—a little known fact that his using the professional name of Simpson had helped keep from the public in general.

The three brothers had spent their early childhood growing up at Mulberry Hall. Until their Scottish mother had discovered that their father, the fourteenth Duke of Stourbridge, had been keeping a mistress in the village. After the separation Molly had decided to move back to her native Edinburgh, and had taken her three sons with her.

Obviously the three boys had come back to Mulberry Hall on visits to their father, but they had all much preferred the rambling untidiness of their home in Edinburgh to the stiff formality of life at Mulberry Hall. Besides which, none of the three brothers had ever really forgiven their father for his unfaithfulness to their gentle and beautiful mother.

As a consequence, when the three boys had reached an age where they could choose to visit or not, they had all chosen not to come anywhere near Mulberry Hall or their father again. That aversion to the place hadn’t changed in the least when their father had died eight years ago and Lucan had inherited the title.

They had all had their own lives by then. Lucan in the cut-throat world of business, Jordan in acting and Gideon in law. None of them had needed or wanted the restrictions of life at Mulberry Hall. Although it had so far proved an invaluable bolt-hole for Jordan after he had felt the need to leave the States in an effort to elude the press that still hounded his every move months after the accident…

‘You wouldn’t even realise this was here from the front of the house.’ Stephanie stood at the edge of the full-length pool to look admiringly at the surrounding statuary and greenery that made up the low and heated pool room built onto the back of Mulberry Hall.

‘I think that was the idea.’ Jordan made no effort to hide his sarcasm.

She shot him an impatient glance as she slipped off her jacket in the heat of the room. ‘It’s really warm in here, and the water looks very inviting; are you sure you won’t change your mind about going for a swim?’

He quirked a wicked brow at her. ‘I might consider it if you intend skinny-dipping.’

‘Stop changing the subject, Jordan.’ Stephanie rounded on him. ‘You have the ideal facility here for gently exercising your leg, and yet you refuse to use it.’

‘Because I don’t want to exercise my leg—gently or otherwise,’ Jordan stated firmly.

‘Why not?’

‘And you accuse me of being stubborn!’ His eyes glittered deeply gold.

‘That’s because you are!’

‘And you really think that your constant nagging on the subject is going to make me change my mind?’ Jordan said.

Stephanie gasped. ‘I do not nag!’

‘Yes. You. Do.’ The two of them were now standing almost nose to nose as Jordan glared down at Stephanie and she raised her chin in challenge. ‘Oh, to hell with this!’ He threw his cane down onto one of the loungers that surrounded the pool, then pulled Stephanie hard against his body before bending his head and savagely claiming her mouth with his.