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.

Mrs Peterson’s mouth flickered into something that might almost, almost be considered a smile. If she squinted. The almost smile was gone so quickly that Heather wasn’t entirely sure she hadn’t imagined it.

‘Daisy. Come and say hello to Miss Reid.’

Over at the window, looking out over the very steps Heather had climbed to get into the castle, sat Daisy. She must take after her mother, Heather decided, given the pale mousy hair, braided into thin plaits that hung over her thinner shoulders. There was nothing about Daisy that spoke of the broad-shouldered confidence the Bryce men seemed to be born with.

Then she turned away from the window to face Heather and pierced her with sharp, intelligent amber eyes that were all her Uncle Cal.

‘Nannies don’t wear baggy jumpers,’ she said, looking Heather up and down. ‘Or trainers.’

‘Well, this one does,’ Heather said cheerfully.

These kids had better get used to her wardrobe, since she hadn’t brought anything smart in her small rucksack. In fact, she hadn’t brought much of anything. A single change of clothing, her phone charger, that sort of thing. She hadn’t been planning on staying, after all. She’d have to find out if Cal’s generous employment deal included an advance for suitable work wear.

‘I’ll leave you to it, then, Miss Reid,’ Mrs Peterson said, as if she were saying, I hope the lions don’t eat you, but they probably will.

‘Heather, please,’ she tried one last time, but Mrs Peterson ignored her.

‘Dinner is at six in the dining hall,’ she added, closing the door behind her.

Heather looked at the children. The children looked at Heather, clearly waiting for her to break first.

They’d broken eight different nannies, Heather remembered uncomfortably. But they wouldn’t break her. Because Heather knew something that they didn’t.

They were family. Or they would be once this baby was born. And if Heather had learned one thing from her taunting, scandal-ridden childhood, it was this: you never ran out on family.

‘Right,’ she said, clapping her hands together à la Mary Poppins. ‘Mrs Peterson has shown me all around the inside of the castle—how about you two show me around outside?’

Daisy and Ryan exchanged a look that Heather couldn’t read.

‘Outside?’ Daisy asked suspiciously, as if there had to be a catch somewhere.

‘Yep. I saw some great-looking woodland on my way in—I bet that’s fun to explore.’ She shot a sideways look at Daisy, who was trying to communicate something to her brother using only her eyebrows. ‘Plus, I understand that the castle moat has some very unusual ducks in it.’

Ryan stifled a snigger at that, while Daisy glared at him so hard that Heather thought lasers might shoot out of her eyes.

‘Come on! It’s summer. You two should be outside, enjoying the glorious sunshine.’ Heather glanced out of the window. ‘But grab your wellies on the way, yeah?’

They were in Scotland, after all.

* * *

The dining hall at Lengroth Castle was large, cold, prone to damp and currently mostly empty.

From the head of the oversized table Cal stared down at the vacant seats arranged around him. Alone, it was almost too easy for him to remember them occupied by Ross, or their parents. Even society’s brightest and best, in the castle’s heyday, before his father’s rages had taken greater hold and entertaining had become just too risky.

Right now, though, all that was missing was his niece, his nephew and his new nanny.

‘Dinner will be cold,’ Mrs Peterson said, speaking volumes with her tone.

With just those four innocent words, Cal knew exactly what she was really asking.

Who is this Miss Reid? Why is she here? Do you really expect me to believe that the local agency sent her, with an accent like that? And, most importantly, What has she done with the children?

‘I’m sure they’ll be here soon,’ Cal said, as mildly as he could. ‘Miss Reid seems like a very responsible person.’ Apart from sleeping with strange, married earls she met in London bars. ‘And her references are impeccable.’

She was practically family, after all. And if Cal’s parents had taught him anything about family it was that they knew where the bodies were buried, so you had to keep them close.

‘Hmm...’ Mrs Peterson said, speaking volumes once more with just one noise.

Suddenly the huge, wooden door of the castle crashed open.

‘Sorry we’re late!’

Heather’s English tones rang through the castle corridors, probably reaching them a good thirty seconds after she spoke, due to the distance from the door to the dining room. Clearly she had some lungs on her.

‘Where’s the damn...? I mean, Daisy, where’s the dining room?’

The last was quieter, but sound carried well in the castle. Something Cal had had reason to curse plenty of times in his life.

‘I think they’re here,’ Cal said redundantly, and Mrs Peterson gave him a look that suggested that, given their joint ability to state the obvious, he and Miss Reid deserved each other.

‘I’m so sorry!’ Heather gasped as she and the children barrelled through the big double doors at one end of the dining hall. Not the end nearest to the front door, Cal noticed, which meant that Ryan had been playing his usual trick of trying to get the new nanny disorientated and lost.

He blinked as he took in the full impact of their appearance. Behind him Mrs Peterson made a faint noise of either astonishment, disgust, or both.

Mud was dripping from Heather’s nose. And her hair. And her sodden jumper. The skirt of her sundress was caked in mud, and there were twigs in her cascading copper hair.

Daisy and Ryan were suspiciously clean by comparison.

Cal surveyed his niece and nephew, both of whom appeared to be working hard at maintaining an air of innocence. Then he met Heather’s gaze and saw there a determination and steeliness that surprised him with its depth.

It’s going to take more than a fall in the river to scare this one off, kids.

At least, that was what he assumed had happened. It was what they’d done to nanny number three, anyway. There was a stretch where the bridge didn’t quite reach the far bank—not since the river had swelled and burst its banks the winter before. It was simple enough to jump to safety via the stepping stones on the other side, but only if you knew to look for them. If you weren’t paying proper attention when you reached the end of the bridge—say if an evil child was distracting you by dangling from a tree, or something—it was easy to miss the fact that the bridge basically gave way to a river of mud.

‘Miss Reid, perhaps you would like to freshen up before dinner?’ Mrs Peterson said, as if Heather had merely a smudge of dust on her nose or something.

Ryan snorted. Daisy, as ever, remained implacable. The girl was definitely her mother’s daughter, Cal decided. Janey must have known what Ross was really like—what was going on behind her back. But he’d never seen a glimpse of it in her calm, serene expression.

Heather gave a grateful smile. ‘I won’t be long. Children, why don’t you come with me? We can all change for dinner.’

‘But we’re not muddy,’ Ryan protested.

They hadn’t eaten since lunch, what with the impromptu nature ramble Heather had taken them on, so Cal assumed the boy must be starving. He knew he was.

‘The great outdoors is full of all sorts of germs, though,’ Heather said airily. ‘You definitely need to wash before you eat. Maybe even have a bath...’

There was a wicked twinkle in her eye. One Cal approved of mightily.

‘But our dinner will get cold,’ Daisy said, perfectly reasonably.

Heather pulled an expression of regretful sorrow Cal was almost sure was fake.

‘I know—I’m so sorry. So clumsy of me to slip in the mud on the bridge. If only I’d known that the bridge ended short of the riverbank I wouldn’t have spent so long flailing around in the mud, waiting for you two to come down from the trees and help me up. And then we wouldn’t have been late for dinner.’

She flashed a quick smile at Cal and Mrs Peterson.

‘All my fault, you see. But the children and I really must clean ourselves up before dinner. Please, don’t wait for us, though.’

She ushered the children out of the dining room, Ryan still grumbling as they went. Cal watched them go, smiling. This might all work out a lot better than even he had planned.

‘I make that one to Miss Reid and nil to Daisy and Ryan,’ Mrs Peterson murmured softly.

Cal glanced up to see that the older woman had a small smile on her face. One he didn’t think he’d seen since he’d returned for Ross’s funeral.

‘I think you’re right,’ he replied. ‘Now, do you think we can reheat dinner?’

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