Elizabeth Oldfield - Dark Victory

Cheska wrenched herself free. ‘I slipped because my flip-flops happen to be wet and muddy,’ she informed him frostily.

“Then take the damn things off.’ Lawson looked down at the flimsy sandals. ‘They were never designed for trekking up hill and down dale anyway.’

She scowled. Forget maturity; he was making her feel like a dim-witted three-year-old.

‘I know, but they were at the top of my suitcase and… available,’ she said, in ineffectual protest, and, barefoot now and with the flip-flops dangling from her fingers, Cheska set off again beside him over the grass. ‘Which product are you promoting this time?’ she enquired.

‘Product?’ Lawson repeated, as if he did not know what she was talking about.

She darted him a glance through the thick veil of her dark lashes. ‘It’s—it’s not a car?’

Five years ago they had met because she had appeared in a commercial which he had been directing. It was her one and only involvement in such a thing, and had come about because, at the time, she had been dating the son of a motor dealer. A millionaire motor dealer who marketed luxury cars and who had decided to boost his sales with an advertisement on television.

‘Driven by an upmarket brunette making her way home at dawn after a night of passion with her lover?’ Lawson said pithily. He shook his head. “There won’t be a car in sight, I swear. However,’ he continued, striding lithely uphill, ‘don’t be surprised if you wake up one morning next week to find a chorus-line of ten-foot-high fish fingers shimmying their way through the herb garden.’

Cheska’s march halted and she gazed at him in horror. Built around 1750, and incorporating an earlier Queen Anne house, Hatchford Manor was a striking Georgian property of elegant proportions, graceful lines and tall windows. It reeked history and, surrounded by wooded acres and lush meadows, occupied an idyllic setting. But to use it as a backdrop for some cheeky, chirpy, vaudevilletype commercial would be sacrilege.

‘ You’re kidding!’ she protested.

Lawson slid his hands into the hip pockets of his jeans, an action which contrived to pull the denim tight across his thighs. It was an action which Cheska noticed, though she wished she hadn’t.

‘Why would I kid?’ he enquired.

She started to walk again. He would kid because, for some totally unwarranted reason, he considered her to be a snob and it would amuse him to rattle her.

As though deep in contemplation, Cheska pursed her lips. ‘Y’know,’ she said, shining a defiant smile, ‘on second thoughts, dancing fish fingers sound like fun.’

‘Don’t they?’ Lawson said.

Cheska had hoped to detect a clue as to the validity of his claim, but neither his expression and nor his tone had given anything away. Yet even if he was promoting breaded fish, which had begun to seem more and more unlikely, he would do so with style. Prior to her advertising début, other commercials which he had made had been pointed out to her, and without exception they had been imaginative, well-crafted and by far a cut above the usual. Apparently he had received several awards. She had not seen anything he had directed since, but it would be surprising if his standards had dropped. Lawson Giordano had cared about his work. Cared passionately.

Though if his standards had plummeted she was not bothered, Cheska decided, as they approached the house. All she wanted was for him to do whatsoever he had come to do and leave. Soonest. A commercial should take no more than three or four days, and for that time she would make certain their paths did not cross again. She had not envisaged spending her first days home holed up in her bedroom or going off for long walks, but if that was what was necessary, so be it.

‘Where are you staying?’ Cheska enquired, wondering whether he had based himself in Tunbridge Wells, the nearest sizeable town, or had elected for the more homespun comforts of an Olde English country pub.

‘Here,’ Lawson said.

She shot him a startled glance. ‘In the manor?’ she protested.

How could she avoid him if he was staying in the same house? Cheska wondered feverishly. Spacious and roomy though Hatchford Manor was, it would be impossible. Her mind buzzed. She would get a girlfriend to invite her to stay next week. She would telephone—

‘No, in one of the oast-houses,’ he said, and pointed beyond the ivy-covered walls which enclosed the gardens at the rear of the manor to where two conical red-brick towers with white caps topped a timbered brick building.

“They’ve been newly converted.’ Cheska said, as relief at his being under a different roof flooded through her. ‘When I left two years ago the building was virtually derelict, but Rupert brought in an architect. Plans were drawn up for a pair of semidetached houses and, after endless progress reports, he wrote last month to say they were finally finished and ready for habitation.’

‘You’ve been abroad for two years?’ Lawson enquired.

‘Almost, and I was abroad for a two-year stint prior to that. In the olden days, oast-houses were where the hops used to be dried, she went on. ‘Hops are dried flowers which give a bitter taste to—’

‘Beer. You don’t need to explain, he said. I went to university in Sussex.’

Cheska cast him a surprised glance. ‘I’d realised from your English that you’d probably lived in England at some time, but I had no idea it was in this part of the country. Being a student and then returning to film in the area is quite a coincidence.’ she observed.

Lawson looked straight ahead. ‘Isn’t it?’

Even though he had studied here, for him to have become so fluent and to have lost almost all trace of an accent meant that he must have a natural flair for languages, Cheska reflected, as they walked on. But Lawson Giordano seemed to have a flair for many things—not least lovemaking. Raising her eyes, she watched a pack of black swifts streak across the sky. For years she had obliterated all thoughts of the night they had spent together, and she was not going to resurrect any memories now. ‘ What’s the oast like?’ Cheska asked.

‘There are stone walls, oak beams and thick white carpets. It comes with all mod cons and is very comfortable. Whoever rents it will be delighted, especially as I believe they’re also to be given the use of the manor’s swimming pool and tennis court.’

Her brow furrowed. ‘The oasts are to be rented out?’

‘To holidaymakers.’ Lawson swung her a mocking look. ‘The prospect of hoi polloi setting their grimy feet on her hallowed ground makes my lady shudder?’ he enquired.

Cheska’s lips thinned. He had misread her bewilderment for snooty objection. Once condemned as toffee-nosed, always condemned, she thought angrily.

‘No, but I understood that the oasts were meant to house a couple of gardeners and their families,’ she retorted.

‘Then you understood wrong.’

Cheska was silent and pensive for a moment. Had Rupert said the oasts were for gardeners or had she assumed it?

‘How did your location people discover Hatchford Manor?’ she enquired.

‘They didn’t,’ Lawson said. ‘It was offered to them.’

Cheska’s winged eyebrows soared. Her stepbrother was a scholarly individual whose consuming passion in life was moths and butterflies. As one of the world’s leading lepidopterists, Rupert Finch had identified new species and written several books on the subject. But he rarely took an interest in television, and she was astonished that he should have known of the TV companies’ requirement for locations; let alone felt inspired to submit his home and his routine to the obtrusion of a film crew.

‘Rupert sent in details?’ she asked.