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He laughed and scrubbed his hand around the back of his neck. ‘Sort of. His left leg was swelling a bit yesterday—that was why they paged me. They thought he might be getting compartment syndrome, but nothing came of it, and I popped in before I went home last night and I went in again early this morning and it seems to have settled. He’s OK—well, orthopaedic-wise, anyway, for the moment. The head injury’s still a bit of a worry and he might need further surgery later on his legs and pelvis if he makes it, but at least that’s looking increasingly likely, thank goodness.’
‘So will you have to go back over the weekend?’ she asked, wondering whether he would abandon her to the mercy of his mother and the dowagers, or take her back to Audley with him, but he was shaking his head.
‘No, I hope not. This leg is the only critical issue I can see that might involve me, so I might take a quick run back tomorrow to check him, but the team are pretty good and he was looking stable when I left.’
He turned his head and she caught the flash of teeth as he smiled. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t abandon you. I’ll leave you with Will, if I have to dash off. He’ll look after you.’
‘I’ll look forward to meeting him. He sounds interesting. ’
‘He is, but I hope you’re tough. He’s got a wicked sense of humour and he’s a bit of a tease, and I don’t suppose for a moment he’ll be subtle. Stand by to be quizzed.’
‘I’m sure I’ll cope,’ she said drily. ‘I manage the boys on the ward.’
That made him laugh, and as they turned off the road and rattled over a cattle grid, he threw her a grin. ‘Ready for this?’
‘As I’ll ever be,’ she said, although she wasn’t really sure. Not now she knew a little more about them and the scale of the estate. It was sounding grander by the minute. ‘What do I call your mother?’ she asked as an afterthought.
‘Jane—and my father’s Tony.’
Or Lord Ashenden. Or should it be Sir Tony? Sir Anthony? She had no idea. Was he a lord? An earl? A baron? A marquis?
The titles were confusing, the whole aristocratic hierarchy a mystery to her, and she resolved to find out more about it. Not that it would be necessary to know, after this weekend, of course, because it would never affect her again. She reminded herself of that as they pulled up in what looked like the courtyard of an old stable block and he cut the engine. So far, so good, she thought, looking around in the gloom. It didn’t look too outrageously grand—except of course this was the back. The front was probably altogether different.
By the time she’d fumbled with the catch on her seat belt, the door was open and he was helping her out. ‘Watch where you walk, it can be a bit uneven on the cobbles and you don’t want to fall off your stilts and wring your ankle.’
‘What about our cases?’
‘I’ll get them later, unless you want anything from yours now?’ he said, and when she shook her head, he ushered her towards a well-lit doorway with a firm, steadying hand on her back.
‘We’ll see if Will and Sally are still here—they’ve got the east wing,’ he said, and she just about stopped her jaw dropping. The east wing? Good grief! Well, she’d known it was big, but for some reason it was only just starting to sink in how big, and she realised her whole house would probably fit into one of the stables!
‘Shop!’ he yelled, banging on the door, and it swung in to reveal a younger version of him, slightly taller, identical ice-blue eyes mocking as he scanned his brother’s face.
‘You’re cutting it a bit fine, aren’t you?’
‘Yeah, well, some of us have to go to work. And it’s not as if you’re in there already.’
‘I have been. I came back to check the dog and ring you. Ma was starting to panic. Hi, you must be Libby,’ he said, turning the full force of his charm on her. ‘Come on in. I’m Will,’ he said, and shook her hand firmly. He was looking intrigued and curious and welcoming all at once, and she smiled back, relishing the strength of his grip and utterly charmed by his smile and frank, assessing eyes—eyes just like his brother’s.
‘Hello, Will. It’s good to meet you. Andrew’s just been telling me a bit about you.’
‘It’ll all be lies,’ he said with a grin. ‘So—how come my brother’s failed to mention you? Is he keeping you a deep, dark secret from Ma?’
She chuckled. ‘I couldn’t possibly comment,’ she said lightly, and he laughed.
‘You don’t need to. Discreet isn’t the word—getting information out of him is like getting blood out of a stone,’ he said with a grin, and then stepped aside to let a great, shaggy grey dog through. ‘This is Lara. Are you all right with dogs?’
‘I’m fine with dogs. Hello, Lara. Aren’t you gorgeous?’
‘No, she’s a pain,’ Will said affectionately as the lurcher thrashed her long, skinny tail against his leg and slurped Libby’s hand. ‘She’s a terrible thief, so I’ve cleverly trained her to steal my father’s newspapers every morning, but the downside is if we leave anything on the worktop, she eats it.’
Libby laughed and rubbed the dog’s head. ‘Oh, darling, are you a naughty girl?’ she murmured, and Lara slurped her again with her tongue.
‘You’d better believe it,’ Andrew said drily, then sighed. ‘Come on, then, I suppose we ought to go and get this over with. Where’s Sally?’
‘In the kitchen trying to stop Ma interfering with the caterers. Come on, let’s go and find them and then the birthday girl can make her grand entrance.’
Leaving the mournful Lara on the other side of a door, Will ushered them down a corridor into what was obviously the main part of the house, and then Andrew took her coat, putting it on a hook beside his as they went through into a huge and beautifully equipped kitchen and a scene of organised pandemonium.
‘Andrew, darling! At last—I thought you were going to make some weak excuse about work like you usually do!’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he teased. He bent his head and kissed his mother’s cheek, hugging her gently, and then turned and drew Libby forward.
‘Mum, this is Libby Tate. Libby, my mother, Jane.’
Lady Ashenden was elegant, beautifully groomed and she looked a little flustered. Her dark hair was threaded with silver, swept up into a smooth pleat—unlike Libby’s own which was twisted up and skewered more or less in place with faux-ivory pins—and she realised that Andrew and Will both had her eyes.
Piercing eyes, searching, which turned on her and seemed, to Libby’s relief, to like what they saw, because she embraced her warmly and kissed her cheeks. ‘Libby, welcome to Ashenden. This is Sally, my daughter-in-law. ’
Sally was small, obviously pregnant and had the same friendly openness as Will. She buzzed Libby’s cheek and grinned. ‘Hi, there. Welcome to the madhouse. I’ll look forward to catching up with you later, but in the meantime, Jane, isn’t it time we went up?’
‘I’m sure it is. They don’t need us in here fussing and you’ve done enough, darling. Let’s leave them to it, I’m sure they can cope without us.’
And Jane turned away from her, missing the eyerolling and laughter that passed between her and Will, and the intimate smile which followed as Will drew the pregnant woman up against his side and hugged her tenderly. They were obviously very much in love, Libby thought, and felt a wash of restless longing. If only there was someone in her life who felt like that about her, but even if there was, there would be no guarantee they’d have Will and Sally’s happy ending.
The question-mark hanging over her future loomed again, but there wasn’t time to dwell on it, and as they left the kitchen and walked along a magnificent curved hallway with tall, elegant windows overlooking the floodlit front of the house, she was brought firmly back to the here and now as the scale of the house began to register.
Amy hadn’t been exaggerating, Libby thought. It really was a stately home—a vast, magnificent, Palladian country house, the centre part built in a crescent around a carriage-sweep at the front of the house, and as they reached the entrance hall, bracketed by broad, sweeping stairs that led up towards an ornate domed ceiling soaring far above them, Jane led them across a rug that would no doubt have been priceless if it hadn’t been worn thin by the passage of generations, and through an open doorway.
As soon as they entered the drawing room—jaw-dropping in its proportions and dripping with antiques and old masters—they were swept into a round of introductions and fleeting, meaningless conversations. They lost Sally and Will somewhere along the way, and then Andrew grabbed two glasses of champagne from a passing waiter, steered her into a quiet corner and gave her a rueful smile.
‘Sorry, it’s a bit full on if you’re not used to it.’
Full on? She was utterly out of her depth! ‘I thought it was just dinner?’ she murmured, and he laughed.
‘It is dinner, but there’s nothing just about it. Dinner will be about forty people, and tomorrow will be a couple of hundred, I expect. Possibly more. And she’ll know every last one of them and the names of all their children and dogs and horses—she’s a legend.’
‘And she wants to see you married.’
‘Mmm. All ready to take over this crumbling old heap of dry rot.’
‘Are you whingeing about the ancestral home again, bro’?’ Will murmured from behind them, and he gave a soft snort and turned to him.
‘Would I? Thankfully they’re both looking well, so I don’t have to worry about it for donkey’s years. Have you got a drink?’
‘No, but I’ll have champagne, if you’re offering, and I expect Sally’ll have some elderflower cordial. Don’t worry about Libby, I’ll entertain her while you’re gone.’
Libby met Will’s twinkling eyes as Andrew walked away to get the drinks. ‘So, tell me about this crumbling old heap of dry rot. Does he really hate it?’ she said to him, and he chuckled.
‘Oh, he loves it to bits, really, but he thinks it should be mine, since I run it. The law of primogeniture offends his sense of right and wrong.’
‘And yours?’
He shrugged casually. ‘It’s just one of those things, isn’t it? If you split the estate with every generation, you end up with nothing left—and if you ask him about it, he’ll tell you we’re just caretakers, which is right. Glorified janitors. But he’s welcome to the title—and frankly he’s welcome to the house. The east wing is much nicer—I still get to enjoy the grounds, but it’s cosier than the house, and the heating bills aren’t quite as stratospheric, and I can walk to work. And whatever he’s told you, I only run the estate because I’m too lazy to do anything else!’
They were laughing as Andrew returned, a ripple of interest following him as the single girls monitored his progress. Or was it Will they were interested in? She couldn’t blame them. Both men were strikingly good-looking and she felt completely overshadowed in the glittering crowd of slender, elegant women with their bright, witty banter and designer dresses.
Until Sally came over a moment later, short and round and utterly charming, and smiled at her and gave her a hug.
‘Finally I get to meet you properly! This is such fun, I didn’t know my brother-in-law had a deep, dark secret.’
Andrew rolled his eyes. ‘Just because I don’t gossip.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Sally said, and took her by the arm mischievously. ‘So—tell all. I gather you’re colleagues. That must be tricky. What’s he like to work with, because his brother’s a nightmare—’
‘I am not!’
‘You are. You’re hopelessly disorganised.’
Will grinned. ‘That’s why I employed you.’
‘No, it’s why you married me. You were terrified I’d leg it and you wouldn’t find anyone else who could cope with your filing system.’
‘It’s a good system!’
‘It’s a collection of piles on the floor, William!’ she corrected with a grin, and Libby laughed.
‘Sounds rather like my desk,’ she said with a smile at Will, then turned back to Sally. ‘So what do you actually do? Andrew said something about being events manager.’
‘Oh, that’s just a fancy title for doing anything and everything. I’m just a dogsbody,’ she grumbled cheerfully, but Will shook his head.
‘She’s actually my PA as well, and she helps me run the charity side of things, too,’ Will said. ‘We’d be lost without her—will be lost when she has the baby, but it’s not why I married her. I married her because I struggle to boil water and she’s a darned good cook.’
And rather more than that, Libby wouldn’t mind guessing, hearing the pride in his voice and seeing the warmth in his eyes as he smiled at Sally, and yet again, she felt a twinge of envy.
If only Andrew would look at her like that—would ever, in the future, look at her like that—but he wouldn’t. Why would he? Their worlds were light-years apart. He’d only invited her here this weekend as an afterthought. He’d never noticed her before, never singled her out, never been anything but the perfect colleague. She was only here because he needed a shield, and he’d made that perfectly clear.
Not that she needed to worry. She wasn’t in the market for a relationship either at the moment, with him or with anybody else, and she’d do well to remember that fact.
CHAPTER THREE
HER thoughts were interrupted as they all filed through to the dining room, and she found herself seated at a long table between a jovial, middle-aged man who looked like a farmer, and Will.
Andrew was opposite her, and as she looked up and caught his eye he sent her a slow wink and she felt his foot slide against hers.
Playing footsie? Playing ‘let’s pretend’? Or giving her moral support?
The latter, she realised as he withdrew his foot and started talking to Sally, and she suppressed a little pang of disappointment as she turned to the man on her right with a smile. ‘Hello, I’m Libby Tate,’ she said.
‘Ah, yes, Andrew’s girl. You’re breaking hearts all round this table, I hope you realise?’ he said softly, and held out his hand. ‘Chris Turner. We’re neighbours and old friends of the family. It’s nice to meet you, Libby—very nice. I always knew he’d settle down in his own time, and it’s good to see him looking happy.’
Oh, good grief. What on earth was she supposed to say to that? Nothing, apparently. Chris just winked and sat back with a kindly smile. ‘So, tell me, what do you do?’
‘I’m a ward sister on Paediatrics. I work alongside Andrew at the Audley Memorial Hospital.’
‘Ah. A real person. That explains it all.’
She frowned in confusion, and Chris chuckled.
‘My wife Louise and I have watched the boys grow up, and we always knew they’d go their own way. Why Andrew’s taken so long I can’t imagine, but I expect he was just waiting for the right woman.’
‘Are you stirring, Turner?’ Andrew said from across the table where he’d clearly been watching and lipreading, and Chris chuckled again.
‘Of course not. Would I?’
‘Probably. It’s all lies, Libby. You don’t want to listen to anything he says.’
She did, though, because he was telling her all sorts of fascinating things about Andrew, and she was hanging on his every word. It emerged that far from being a farmer, Chris was a GP, the Ashendens’ family doctor, his wife the local vicar, and he told her hilarious stories of Andrew’s childhood, the humour fading at one point as he talked about Will’s illness, and how much it had affected Andrew, who’d been at medical school at the time.
‘He changed then. He used to be a bit of a wild child, but then suddenly, it was as if the joy went out of him.’
‘Because of Will?’ she asked, her voice hushed.
Chris shrugged. ‘Who knows? But he’s a good man,’ he said softly. ‘If Will hadn’t recovered so well I’m sure he would have chucked in his career to come home and help care for him if it had been necessary. It’s the sort of thing he’d do without a second thought, but he never talks about it. He just gets on with it, no matter what it costs him in terms of time and effort, and when Will recovered so well, he threw himself back into medicine and he’s been focussed on it ever since, to the exclusion of everything else. He’s a fantastically dedicated doctor—but you already know that. I’m preaching to the converted.’
‘Oh, you are. He’s amazing,’ she agreed thoughtfully. She’d seen him at work, seen how dedicated he was, and it made sense now—the close way he followed up his young patients, the passionate zeal with which he directed their treatment, the dedicated focus on his career. No wonder he didn’t have a wife and family. He simply didn’t have time.
But Chris was right, she’d seen him smile more in the last day or two than she had in all the previous months she’d known him. Was that down to her? No, surely not. He was just showing her another side of himself, a side that Chris had maybe not seen recently.
She glanced up at Andrew and caught his eye, and he winked at her, then turned back to Will. That he had a very close bond with his younger brother was blindingly obvious from the banter that was taking place between them now across the table. The teasing affection between them brought a lump to her throat and she wanted to talk to Will, to hear more from him about Andrew, and when Chris’s attention was taken by the lady on his other side, Will turned towards her and gave her a rueful grin.
‘Sorry, I’ve been neglecting you,’ he said.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said, smiling back. ‘Chris has been looking after me. You can pay me back in a minute, though, I’m struggling to work out which knife and fork I need next,’ she added in an undertone, and he laughed out loud, making Andrew frown curiously at them.
‘Frightful, isn’t it?’ he said with a playful wince. ‘Starting at the outside and working inwards is usually a good plan, but if you want to be sure, watch Andrew, not me. He’s pretty good on the old protocol, but I don’t care. Frankly I don’t have a lot of time for it. I’m much more interested in the people.’ His eyes flicked over her, the curiosity in them undisguised. ‘On the subject of which, how long have you known my brother?’ he murmured, and she felt her heart lurch a little.
Here we go, she thought, determined not to lie and hoping he wouldn’t put her in the position where she had to. ‘Six months,’ she told him, ‘since he started at the hospital.’
‘Good grief, the dark horse,’ he said slowly, shooting a glance in Andrew’s direction. ‘Still, I can see why he’d want to keep you to himself, but it’s too late now, he’s rumbled. You can save me a dance tomorrow night. Rumour has it I’m better than him.’
‘I wonder who started that rumour?’ she teased, but then confessed, ‘I wouldn’t know what he’s like. We haven’t danced together yet.’ Or anything else apart from work, come to that, she thought with another hitch in her pulse, but Will didn’t need to know that.
‘Well, here’s your chance. You can dance with us both and judge for yourself. Not that you’d be disloyal and unkind enough to tell either of us the truth,’ he said with gentle mockery. ‘So—tell me about yourself, Libby Tate. What makes you tick?’
‘Oh, there’s nothing to tell,’ she said lightly, wondering what Andrew would have told him and how much of it she was going to contradict if she said anything, but Will just smiled.
‘I’ll just bet there is,’ he said, his voice still low. ‘I think you’re probably a complex and fascinating woman, but I get the feeling he doesn’t know much about you, either. Curious.’
Suddenly she couldn’t do this—couldn’t lie to his brother, pretend they were together when they weren’t. Not like that, anyway—and not when he’d already worked it out.
‘We haven’t been going out together long,’ she admitted, for Andrew’s sake not revealing just how brief their non-relationship was, but Will just nodded and smiled slightly.
‘No. I thought not. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve got a sneaking suspicion you’re only here as a smokescreen to disguise the fact that he doesn’t have a social life—or am I mistaken?’
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