Emma Richmond - One Bride Required!

Except she didn’t know it was to be him. He’d asked the executor of his aunt’s will to write to her, to make the arrangements without mentioning his name. And he shouldn’t have done that. But if she’d known who she was really coming to see she wouldn’t have come—might not have come. And perhaps that would have been best. You couldn’t go back, re-create the past, no matter how much you might want to. Too late now.

The car door finally opened, and a woman slowly emerged.

Phoenix Langrish.

A woman who made the world stand still.

At eighteen, she had been beautiful. At twenty-eight she was stunning. And she did something to his heart that no other woman had ever been capable of. Not because she was beautiful, because beauty only temporarily stirred the senses. This was something more.

Delicate and feminine, with long dark hair held back in a clip that was inadequate to the task, wide brown eyes and a mouth that was made to smile.

Unaware of being watched, she closed the car door and dropped the notebook she was carrying. Bending to pick it up, she dropped her bag, and as she straightened the small camera she was carrying around her neck caught on the door handle. Still clumsy. Still so very lovable.

She gave a husky little laugh, closed her eyes, took a deep breath, untangled the camera, and turned.

Never had a smile been wiped away so quickly, he thought, as she glared at him in shock. She was rooted to the spot, and her eyes widened until they could widen no more. She didn’t speak, just stood there, looking at him.

‘Hello, Phoenix,’ he greeted her quietly, and his voice was husky. As husky as it had been all those years before.

‘No,’ she whispered. Turning abruptly away, she trod in a rut, staggered, and caught the wing mirror for support. It came off in her hand.

She stared at it, just stared, as though she didn’t know what it was, and then she shuddered, tried to pull herself together. She reached for the car door; he reached it first.

‘Don’t leave.’

Her breathing unnatural, she looked at him. ‘You...I...’

‘Yes. I didn’t tell you it would be me meeting you because I didn’t think you would come. And I wanted you to.’

She didn’t answer. Perhaps she couldn’t. Just continued to stare at him.

As he stared at her. As he had all those years before in a crowded hotel foyer. Ten years had changed nothing. Even in an ill-fitting suit that looked as though it might have belonged to someone with a larger build she set his senses on fire. She’d had a wild freedom then, an exuberance for life. Awkward, enthusiastic, and totally without guile. Now she looked frightened, caged.

‘I find I don’t know what to say to you,’ he said quietly.

‘Goodbye?’ she proffered huskily.

‘No,’ he denied gently. ‘Come and see the house.’

Taking her silence for an affirmative, which he knew it wasn’t, he removed the wing mirror from her hand, opened the car door and tossed it inside.

‘No,’ she argued hoarsely. ‘I...’

‘Please?’ Holding her arm, feeling the shivers that ran through her, the electric tension that he controlled rather better than she did, he led her round to the front of the house. Aware of every little breath she took, every little move she made, he asked, ‘What do you think of it?’

She didn’t answer, merely stared unseeingly at the house in front of them.

Turning his head, he slowly examined her exquisite profile, and, resisting the almost overwhelming impulse to touch that thick dark hair, he murmured, ‘Is it worth restoring, do you think?’

‘I don’t know.’

Unable to take his eyes off her, he put one hand over hers, and she jumped nervously. ‘I am sorry, Phoenix.’

Finally turning her head, she looked at him, and it was as if a shutter came down over her eyes, hiding her thoughts, her feelings from him. ‘Are you?’

‘Yes.’

‘For what?’

‘The deception.’

She nodded, made an obvious effort to pull herself together, and returned her attention to the house.

‘So, what do you think?’

‘I don’t know. You’d need a structural engineer to tell you that. All I can tell you is what things are.’

‘Then tell me what they are.’

‘Why?’ she demanded raggedly. ‘Why now?’

‘Because I saw an article about you, and I suddenly found that I wanted to see you again.’

She gave a bitter smile. ‘And never mind that I might not have wanted to be seen?’

‘Didn’t you?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said helplessly.

‘It would be a lucrative commission...’

‘That isn’t why you invited me.’

‘No, I was curious. Didn’t you know that curiosity was my besetting sin? And you’re even more beautiful now than you were then.’

‘Thank you,’ she said without inflexion. With an abrupt movement away from him, she announced baldly, ‘I’m going home.’

Halting her, he asked, ‘Not even a little bit curious to see what’s inside? The article said it was your passion...’

‘So were you,’ she retorted without thinking, ‘and look what that got me.’

‘A degree,’ he answered. ‘A life. It wouldn’t have worked, Phoenix. Not then.’

‘No,’ she agreed.

‘And I never meant to hurt you.’

‘I know you didn’t.’

They both stared at the house in silence.

‘The article said you were making quite a name for yourself,’ he finally murmured. ‘I’m glad.’

‘Thank you.’

Such a flat little voice, devoid of meaning, but he could feel the tension in her. Feel it in himself.

‘Shall we go in?’ Leading the way up the weed-choked path, hoping she would follow, he pushed open the heavy front door. ‘Will you at least look round? Give me your honest opinion?’

She looked suddenly helpless and distracted. ‘Don’t come with me.’

‘All right. Don’t go in the bedrooms in the east wing,’ he cautioned. ‘One of the ceilings is down and the roof is unsafe.’

Without answering, she walked quickly away to the left of the grand staircase. He wanted to follow, unobserved, wanted to see what she was doing, how she was behaving now that he was no longer beside her.

Long after she was out of sight, with only the sound of her high heels tapping on the bare boards, he remained where he was, his feelings ambivalent. He hadn’t been quite prepared for the sensations he’d experienced when she’d stepped from the car. Wasn’t entirely prepared for them now. An overwhelming feeling of belonging. But what was she like now? After her initial shock, she had given nothing away of her personality. At eighteen she had been vivacious, laughing, loving. What was she now? Never one to rush his fences, even if his feelings were urging action, he would allow her time and space to make up her own mind. If he could.

In the meantime, he thought with a rather twisted smile, he would make his own tour, maybe go and look at his very own entablature. Not that he was entirely sure what it was, only that the executor had assured him that he had one. He’d looked it up, but being told that it was the top part of an architectural order, which consisted of horizontal mouldings, hadn’t been very enlightening.

But his mind was on Phoenix as he slowly climbed the grand staircase. Remembering not to grasp the handrail, which had a tendency to wobble alarmingly, he turned left at the small landing where the staircase divided, climbed the further five steps that led to the landing proper, and which ran on either side to the front of the house, and ambled aimlessly through the warren of bedrooms and one antiquated bathroom. He took a brief look into the east wing to make sure no further damage had occurred, then found the small back staircase that went down to the rabbit warren of rooms that had once presumably housed the scullery, dairy and kitchen, and which would definitely need major remodification.