Sophie Pembroke - Pregnant On The Earl's Doorstep

Minuses: that person was pregnant with Ross’s child, and was basically another scandal waiting to happen.

Cal didn’t think Heather was about to go running to the papers, seeking a pay-out for the headline Adulterous Earl Fathers Baby from the Grave or anything, but he knew better than most that appearances could be deceiving. At least this way he’d be keeping the scandal close to home, until he was sure of Heather’s character. And the baby was a Bryce—he definitely believed that much.

Another nephew or niece for him to not know how to love. After all, it wasn’t as if he’d ever been given any examples of loving parenthood, or even a loving relationship.

‘Your heart’s as cold as a Scottish winter,’ his latest ex-girlfriend had told him as she’d walked out. ‘The view might be nice, but you wouldn’t want to live there.’

She might have had a point, he had to admit. But his life wasn’t the problem here. Ross’s was. And not just because of Heather.

With a sigh, Cal pulled over the folder sitting on the corner of his desk, sending the rubber duck toppling over as he did so. The folder’s cover was blank—purposely. Cal didn’t need a reminder to know what was inside it.

Another of his big brother’s follies.

Living the lives they did, the Earls of Lengroth had never been particularly good at holding on to their money. Fortunately the estate was still reasonably lucrative—with most of it rented out to farmers or tenants in the linked village. But the castle took a lot of upkeep, which required all that money.

At least it did when there was someone sensible at the reins—usually an estate manager or the current Countess of Lengroth.

Ross, however, seemed to have believed he could do it all himself. Or maybe he’d felt he needed to, in order to keep his secrets. Because what Ross mostly seemed to have done with the estate finances was gamble it away.

Cal’s eyes fluttered closed as he tried, for an unsavoury moment, to imagine his perfect big brother at the gambling tables, throwing away his children’s inheritance. Or in a London bar, seducing Heather Reid.

The latter was alarmingly easy. With that river of copper hair, and those soft green eyes, Cal could easily imagine any man’s attention being drawn to her, even across a darkened bar.

He opened his eyes again. Not helping, Cal. Especially since he liked to think—in his better moments—that he might actually be able to resist the kind of scandalous fall from grace that seemed to afflict all the Earls of Lengroth sooner or later.

‘But I’m not the Earl,’ he muttered to himself.

He was going to do everything in his power to stop Ryan from following that same path. But first he had to finish fixing Ross’s mistakes.

He flipped open the folder, ready to start again.

Most of the basic gambling debts he’d dealt with up front, the moment he’d found them. He should have used the estate money, he knew, but that was Ryan’s, and Cal didn’t want his nephew to be saddled with money troubles from the outset. Fortunately Cal’s own property business in the States was lucrative enough that he’d had enough personal wealth to fill the hole. His accountant hadn’t been happy about it, but then neither was Cal, really.

More problematic to deal with were the times when Ross had clearly tried to use his title and minor celebrity in place of money. Or to impress, Cal supposed. He wasn’t sure what else would explain the obligation sitting on top of the pile, waiting for him to fix it. An email from a magazine editor, confirming plans made with Ross for later in the summer.

‘Why on earth would Ross have invited a reporter to come and stay at the castle?’ he wondered aloud, rubbing a hand over his eyes as if that would change the contents of the printout in front of him.

It didn’t.

Only one way to find out, Cal supposed.

He picked up the phone to try and explain to this editor that, with Ross dead, there was no way in hell he was letting a journalist anywhere near Lengroth Castle this summer.

* * *

She’d left the rubber duck in Cal’s office, Heather realised as Mrs Peterson showed her yet another identical green and grey room in the cold, dead castle. She should have brought it with her—either as a peace offering or a sign that she couldn’t be intimidated by flying bath toys.

Except she was, of course—intimidated. And not just by ducks.

Thirty-four children in a classroom were one thing. Two children alone in a castle, with a ghost and a revolving door for nannies, were something completely different.

Heather felt sick again. Didn’t this castle have any bathrooms? She wasn’t sure that Mrs Peterson had shown her one.

‘And this will be your room,’ Mrs Peterson said finally, opening the door on a grey room with a grey metal bed and a green and grey tartan bedspread. There was a chair by the window, looking out over the front of the castle all the way to the grey gates. Heather wondered if this was where Daisy had thrown the duck from.

‘Is there a bathroom?’ Heather entered the room cautiously, looking for a bathroom door and possibly a ghost, or a child waiting to jump out at her and pelt her with bath toys. She saw neither.

‘Down the hall,’ Mrs Peterson answered. ‘Lengroth Castle was built before the advent of your modern en suite bathrooms, you realise.’

Lengroth Castle had clearly been built before indoor plumbing, central heating, electricity and Wi-Fi technology, too, but Heather sincerely hoped they’d all been included in any subsequent remodelling.

‘Down the hall? Right...’

Feeling she’d taken in enough of the room, Heather dumped her rucksack beside the bed, turned to Mrs Peterson and said, ‘So, shall we go and meet the children?’ in her best Mary Poppins voice.

Mrs Peterson looked suspicious.

‘I mean, that is what I’m here for,’ Heather went on, knowing she was babbling and unable to stop herself. ‘To be a nanny, I mean.’ And definitely not the bearer of the children’s illegitimate half-sibling or anything. No, sir.

Oh, she was terrible at lying. Clearly she took after her father and not her mother there. Why had she ever thought she could pull this off?

But after a long moment Mrs Peterson stepped back, out of the doorway. ‘The nursery is this way.’

She click-clacked off down the corridor, her heels echoing off the stone walls, and stopped at the next door, a good ten metres away.

Heather steeled herself, and followed.

‘Children,’ Mrs Peterson said as she opened the nursery door, ‘this is Miss Reid, your new nanny.’ She sounded almost... fond , Heather realised. Which, given what she knew of the children so far, didn’t make much sense.

Unless they were in it together, determined to drive away any newcomers to the castle.

Heather was so engaged in a sudden daydream of Mrs Peterson dressing up in a white sheet pretending to be a ghost, while Daisy and Ryan stood behind her hurling rubber ducks at an invading army of nannies, that she almost forgot to greet the children.

‘Hello! You can call me Heather. And you two must be Daisy and Ryan!’ She was still channelling Mary Poppins, she realised. If she wasn’t careful she might burst into song at any moment.

‘She doesn’t look like the other nannies,’ Ryan said, eyeing her with suspicion.

His dark hair was curled over his forehead, so like his father’s and his uncle’s that Heather felt a pang of sympathy all over again.

Mrs Peterson looked at Heather and sighed. ‘No. No, she doesn’t.’

‘Maybe that means I’ll last longer than they did,’ Heather replied, a little archly.