Tilly Bagshawe - The Inheritance - Racy, pacy and very funny!

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London, SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Harper 2014

Copyright © Tilly Bagshawe 2014

Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2014

Tilly Bagshawe asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007472512

Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007481385

Version: 2018-02-16

For Sarah and Kris Glynn

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Map

Prologue

Part One: The Usurpers

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Part Two: The Reckoning

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Tilly Bagshawe

Keep Reading – The Show

About the Publisher

Dawn broke late over the Swell Valley. The May sun rose sleepily into a cloudless sky, streaking it first red, then pink, then a gorgeous, deep, burnished orange, like melted rose gold. Bathed in this magical light, Furlings House shimmered above the village of Fittlescombe, tranquil and magnificent. The family seat of the Flint-Hamiltons for over three hundred years, Furlings was frequently referred to as the most beautiful estate in Sussex, if not the whole of England. Certainly it lived up to that accolade this morning, a study in Georgian splendour, with nothing to puncture the peace of its rolling parkland and idyllic views except the occasional whinny of a pony in the top fields, or plaintive bleat of a lost lamb somewhere on the Downs.

‘You fucker!’

A loudly slamming door sent a slumbering heron soaring into the air above the river.

‘You lying, shallow lowlife! Go to hell!’

Each word was screamed at deafening volume. It was a woman’s voice, delivered in a cut-glass accent, and it was followed seconds later by the woman herself, crunching over the gravel. She was striking for two reasons. The first was that she was young, blonde and stunningly beautiful. And the second was that she was stark naked (unless one counted the pair of Wellington boots she’d slipped on as she exited the kitchen; or the heavy, cast-iron frying pan she was brandishing menacingly above her head, like a Zulu warrior with a machete).

‘For God’s sake, Tatiana, calm down. You’ll wake up half the village.’

Her intended victim, a much older man with dishevelled salt-and-pepper hair, was half running, half limping towards his car. Barefoot, he’d only managed to partially dress himself before the Amazon had beaten him out of doors. In an unbuttoned evening shirt, with his suit trousers slipping repeatedly towards his knees, he cut a pathetic, cowering figure. Only the keenest of political observers would have recognized him as Sir Malcom Turnbull, Secretary of State for Trade & Industry, married father of three and tireless champion of family values.

‘You think I give a flying fuck about the village?’ the girl hissed at him like a snake. ‘I’m Tatiana Flint-Hamilton. I own this village. Besides, why shouldn’t people know what a lying, cheating scumbag you really are?’

Sir Malcom had only just managed to scramble into his Porsche when Tatiana caught up with him. Lifting the frying pan high above her head, she brought it down with a deafening thwack on the car’s roof, leaving a dent the size of a small meteor strike and missing the minister’s skull by inches.

‘Jesus Christ. ’ Shaking, Sir Malcom rammed the key in the ignition and turned it, but the bloody thing was jammed. ‘Have you lost your mind?’ he stammered. ‘You knew I had a wife.’

‘Yes. And you told me you were going to leave her! At least twenty times.’

‘My dear girl, I will. But it’s not that simple. Henrietta’s terribly fragile at the moment. And Nick’s got his GCSEs this summer …’

‘Spare me.’ Tatiana Flint-Hamilton lifted the pan again, like a shot-putter about to let rip.

‘No! Please. Perhaps after the next election …’ Sir Malcom spluttered.

‘The next election?’ Tatiana laughed out loud. ‘That’s years away. What about the money?’

‘Money?’

‘The money I need to fight for my inheritance. The money you promised me, along with using your influence in the High Court. That was all bullshit too, wasn’t it? You treacherous snake!’

Wham! The pan struck again.

Wham! And again.

At last the Porsche’s engine roared into life and the panicked minister sped away. Thank God it was still early and Furlings was so remote. Just imagine if I’d taken her to the London flat. The paparazzi would have seen us for sure. Sir Malcom Turnbull shuddered at what might have been.

Tatiana Flint-Hamilton was an incredibly beautiful, sexy girl, but the tabloids were right when they referred to her as a ‘wild child’.

Forget ‘tigress’. The young lady was a velociraptor.

The minister wasn’t a religious man but as he drove away he prayed fervently that he never saw Tatiana Flint-Hamilton again.

Tatiana stood and watched as the battered Porsche disappeared into the distance.

Like my future. Like my house. All of it’s disappearing , she thought morosely. But she quickly pulled herself together.

What a bloody cliché to drive a red sports car in your fifties, anyway?

Tosser.

A cool dawn breeze made her shiver. Tatiana looked down at her own nakedness, and the frying pan hanging limply from her hand, and laughed. All of a sudden a pair of knickers, or even a dressing gown, had a certain appeal. Come to think of it, so did a bacon sandwich. The combination of sex and rage had made her ravenous.