Sophie Pembroke - Pregnant On The Earl's Doorstep

There was the affair his mother had been having with the family lawyer for most of Cal’s life. The endless parade of barmaids and local girls he’d seen letting themselves out of the castle kitchens in the mornings. The bruises on Ross’s face and arms after a shouting match with their big bear of a father—red-faced and fuming so much of the time.

Hell, there was even the legend of the Lengroth ghost, which was currently causing him issues in ways the woman couldn’t possibly have imagined a hundred years ago when she’d died. The story went that a century earlier one of the local village girls had got pregnant and claimed the father was the Earl. Shunned by the local village people, and with her reputation ruined, she’d come to the castle to ask for his help. The Earl had denied her and sent her away, and she’d fallen down the castle steps and died—although some still whispered to this day that she’d been pushed.

Cal wished he didn’t know the truth about that one, if he was honest. His ancestors were enough of a disappointment to him already.

But not Ross. Ross had married the beautiful and lovely Janey and had two beautiful and lovely children. Ross had bucked the family trend.

Cal couldn’t even look at the battlements of Lengroth Castle without remembering all the awfulness that had happened inside it. But Ross had moved the family in—made the castle a home, even if it was still stone-walled and imposing. Ross had found a way to overcome their genetic disposition towards scandal and bad behaviour.

At least so Cal had believed, until he’d returned home to take over the reins after Ross’s death.

Now he was starting to think that Ross had just been better than all of them at hiding his true self.

Cal had thought that the world of business was hard—building up and running a company with a multiple seven-figure turnover took time, energy and commitment. He’d thought he understood about responsibility and challenges.

But that had been before he’d had to deal with the gambling debts, the lies and promises Ross had left behind him.

And before he’d had to hire a nanny for two grieving and uncontrollable children.

He eyed the latest one—the ninth in six weeks—as Mrs Peterson showed her in. In addition to being a full forty minutes late, she looked a little casual for a job interview, dressed in a flowery sundress and sandals—with a jumper on top because this was summer in Scotland, after all. Her copper-coloured hair flowed loose in waves over her shoulders, and she carried a rucksack on her back, as if she were a gap year student going travelling. Which she might be, he supposed. She looked young enough.

She also had a rubber duck tucked under her arm, but Cal decided he wasn’t even going to ask about that.

The bottom line was that desperate guardians couldn’t be choosers, and the agency must be running out of nannies to send him by now.

Mrs Peterson was also looking unimpressed with her. She , Cal noticed, was wearing her best suit and heels—the way she always did when there was a potential new member of staff on-site or an important visitor of some sort. She must have got more wear out of it in the last six weeks than in the decade beforehand. But Cal knew she’d have her fluffy slipper boots back on the moment she made it back to the kitchen. The stone floors of Castle Lengroth were hard on the feet.

He turned his attention back to the nanny. Part of him wanted to dismiss her out of hand, but another, larger part, knew that he needed her. He wasn’t capable of being the parental figure his niece and nephew so desperately required. He just wasn’t father material—he’d always known that.

Which meant he needed someone who would stick it out and look after Daisy and Ryan for the next six weeks—and he’d got the impression from his most recent call to the agency that this was his last shot.

Which meant he had to be persuasive. And he had to follow the plan he and Mrs Peterson had cooked up the night before.

1. Offer her more than she can get anywhere else

2. Make it completely conditional on her finishing the six weeks

3. Don’t mention the ghost

Easy.

‘Okay, Miss...’ he consulted the notes from his call with the agency ‘...Thomas. Here’s the deal. My niece and nephew need a reliable, effective and capable nanny for the next six weeks of the school holidays, until they leave for boarding school in England. Your agency says that you’re up to the job, and I have to believe them. So I’m going to make you an offer you won’t get anywhere else. If you stick out six weeks here at Castle Lengroth, and get the children prepared physically, mentally and emotionally for boarding school, I’ll pay you for a full year’s work at your agency base rate. But if you quit before the six weeks are up you get nothing.’

The redheaded nanny opened her mouth, then closed it again. Then she said, ‘I think there’s been some sort of misunderstanding—’

Cal cut her off before she could get any further. That was another thing he and Mrs Peterson had agreed on—not giving her too much time to overthink things. He knew that the agency nannies talked to each other—they probably had their own message group on social media or something—so she almost certainly already knew the situation here.

The last nanny had quit before she’d even made it into the castle, when ten-year-old Daisy had thrown a bucket of soapy water over her from the nursery window above the front steps. Cal wasn’t risking losing this one before she even met the devil children.

‘I know what you must have heard from your predecessors, Miss Thomas,’ he said, smiling as charmingly as he could, given what was on the line here. ‘I can’t imagine it’s many families that go through eight nannies before they find the right one. But I have an excellent feeling about you,’ he lied.

‘Eight nannies?’ she echoed faintly, and Cal cursed himself for mentioning it. It sounded so much worse spelt out like that.

‘The children have been through a lot since their parents died nearly two months ago,’ he said, defensively. ‘It’s natural that they’re acting out a bit. And, in fairness, seven of the eight said it wasn’t the children that drove them away, it was the ghost.’

Dammit. I wasn’t supposed to mention the ghost.

In the doorway, Cal saw Mrs Peterson throw up her hands in despair and turn to leave, closing the door behind her. Obviously she knew a lost cause when she saw one.

But the new nanny didn’t even seem to register his mention of a supposed supernatural being haunting the castle. Probably because she was a sensible person who didn’t believe in ghosts and was going to accept his offer. He hoped.

‘Eight nannies in less than two months?’ she said incredulously.

Then her pale face turned somehow even whiter. Cal resisted the impulse to check over his shoulder for the ghost.

‘Wait, their parents...? The Earl of Lengroth, Ross Bryce, and his wife...?’

‘Yes. My brother, Ross, and my sister-in-law, Janey,’ Cal confirmed, confused.

She sank into the chair opposite him without being invited to do so. Since she looked as if she might fall over otherwise, Cal didn’t object. He probably should have asked her to sit before he’d hit her with the terms of the job, actually.

‘They died? When?’

She placed the rubber duck on the desk absently. Really— who brought a rubber duck to a job interview?

‘Almost two months ago,’ Cal repeated, since the information clearly wasn’t going in.

She couldn’t be a local girl if she didn’t know that already, although he’d guessed that from her accent anyway. It had been a mere blip of a mention in the national news—a blink-and-you’d-miss-it piece. But locally it had dominated the newspapers for weeks.