Christmas With The Duke

With a stiff nod of his head the Duke acknowledged Stephen’s words. Then yet more awkward silence followed as everyone waited for the Duke to speak. To acknowledge their condolences or to explain why he was here earlier than expected. Perhaps even to explain why he hadn’t visited Loughmore in years, or why it had taken him five months since his father’s death to visit.

But instead he caught everyone unawares as he moved forward and began to introduce himself to the rest of the staff.

Libby was the first in line. She blushed and smiled and thrust a plate of gingerbread Santas in the Duke’s direction. He declined her offer with a polite shake of his head.

Maggie, the head of Housekeeping, was next in line. Maggie had used to fondly scold the Duke as a teenager, for the endless mess he’d created around the castle—especially when he had friends to stay. Now she looked as though she wanted to hug him, as she had each summer when he’d arrived back from Eton. But the Duke held his hand out to her and formally they shook hands.

Forgotten by all and sundry—Sean and Libby having long neglected their promise to hold the ladder steady—Ciara had no option but to climb down on her own. Her already wobbly legs now felt truly un-coordinated. Her heart was unhelpfully lurching about her chest and the single looping question in her brain was slowly driving her to distraction—what on earth was she going to say to him when they came face to face?

When she was nervous her default setting was to joke and make light of the situation. Sometimes it worked, and defused the tension, but at other times it fell flat and she ended up looking like a complete fool. It was something she was trying to control, but it was hard to change a habit of a lifetime.

But maybe she was overthinking this. In all likelihood she was just a forgotten memory from his teenage years.

Long-buried memories accompanied each of her steps downward. Watching him cook in her gran’s tiny cottage kitchen, where his inventiveness as a chef had turned from a hobby into an all-consuming passion. Kissing him under the bridge at the far end of the lake, with the confined space, dim light and the trickle of water amplifying their laughter and chatter.

She remembered how Tom would climb to the top of the Japanese cedar in the Arboretum and dare her to join him... But even watching him forty feet off the ground had left her feeling giddy, and she would barely climb ten feet before giving up. And the way he would block out the sun when he leant over her as they’d lain in a mossy hollow they had found at the centre of Loughmore Wood, the affection shining from his eyes confounding her.

He had convinced her that the hollow had been created by a meteor. And it was there that her passion for native Irish plant species had begun. Later she would train to be a horticulturist, driven by the desire to preserve those plants and to conserve the historical importance of gardens such as Loughmore for future generations.Lying on that soft green blanket of moss, her hand in his, she had seen up close for the first time the intricate and delicate beauty of those often rare plants. Her gaze would shift from him to the breathtaking wonder of willowherb and Black Medick, and the world had been full of wonder and possibility and maybes.

But then reality would dawn and she would have to return to work. Dressed in her cleaning uniform, she would nod politely in his direction whenever they passed in the corridors of the castle, and he would do likewise in return. She’d tried to pretend to herself that she didn’t care, but deep down the easy distance he was always so capable of had made her wonder at the truth of their relationship.

Lost in thought, she clambered down the ladder—but her lack of concentration caught up with her when she was less than six feet from the bottom. Her foot moved to connect with the next step down, but she must have overreached because suddenly she was feeling nothing but open air. With a yelp, she clung desperately to the ladder. But in slow motion she felt her whole body fall backwards, and then she was flying through the air.

Her only thoughts were of the hard marble floor about to greet her and the ignominy of her situation.

Talk about making a holy show of yourself.

But instead of feeling her bones crunching against a hard surface she fell into a solid grip.

Winded, she threw her head back in confusion to come really close to those silver eyes.

‘You’re still a terrible climber, I see.’ His voice was a low rumble.

She tried to leap out of his arms, but they tightened around her. And she had to bite back the crazy temptation to say, Welcome home, Tom, you’ve been missed.

Cursing under his breath, Tom pulled the wriggling Ciara closer, trying to ignore the energy surge flooding his body at having her hip pressed against his stomach, her tumble of auburn hair softly tickling his wrist.

Other staff were starting to crowd around them, fussing over Ciara. He needed to make sure she was okay. He needed some space to think.

He shifted around and caught a horrified-looking Stephen’s eye. ‘Please bring tea to the morning room.’

He moved quickly away, Ciara still in his arms. Past the tapestries and family portraits lining the wide corridor. Not looking down. Trying to remember that he had come to Loughmore with one single purpose.

Boarding his private plane earlier that day, at the City of London airport, he had been determined to approach the next week logically. Even though he had done a double-take when he had seen Ciara’s name as he’d glanced through the names of personnel employed at Loughmore that the estate office at Bainsworth Hall had sent through, he had remained determined that he was taking the right decision in returning to Loughmore and making the announcement that had to be made.

But as he had wound his way from the outskirts of Dublin city and into County Wicklow, the Garden of Ireland, past familiar landmarks—the rolling Wicklow mountains, the hidden lakes, the silent narrow roads with towering trees and road signs for ancient monuments, the Christmas lights threaded across the narrow main street of Avoca Village, the doors of the brightly painted terraced cottages wearing Christmas wreaths—something had shifted in him.

And when he had come to the brow of Broom Hill and Loughmore Castle had appeared below him in the valley he had pulled his rental car to the side of the road and climbed out. Standing on the edge of a ditch, in the fading light of a winter afternoon, he had buttoned his coat against the sharp breeze carried all the way in from the distant Irish Sea with bittersweet memories confounding him.

Loughmore Castle hadn’t changed. It still sat proudly in the valley, its medieval tower standing pencil-sharp against the blue winter sky, the Victorian addition flanking it to the west, the Georgian courtyard to the rear. To the front of the castle sat Loughmore Lake, where Tom had learnt to sail and had had his first experimental kiss in the shadows of the boat house, with Hatta Coleridge-Hall.

To this day, his mother still dropped not so subtle hints that Hatta would make a good duchess.

It hadn’t been until Ciara, though, that he had understood what a kiss should really be.

To the rear of the castle, beyond the walled garden and orchards, lay Loughmore Wood. The place where he and Ciara used to escape to, to talk and poke fun at each other at first and then, over the long weeks of that final summer together, to make love.

Standing there on the edge of that ditch, with the icy breeze whistling around him, he had winced at all those wonderful and sad and painful memories and he had known more than ever that he had come to the right decision on the future of Loughmore. It was time he put the ghosts of his past in Loughmore behind him for once and for all.

And as he had driven through the imposing limestone arched entrance to the estate, and along the three-quarter-mile entrance avenue past the wide open fields, where deer were sheltering under oak and chestnut trees, he had been pulled back to his excitement as a child, when he had travelled to Loughmore each summer, relishing the freedom he’d got there, away from the ever-present sense of failure that had marked his schooldays.

His younger sisters, Kitty and Fran, had brought friends for company, and on occasions, to satisfy his parents’ insistence that he ‘socialise and network’, Tom had too, but in truth he had wanted nothing more but to immerse himself in castle life. He had driven tractors, helped bring in the hay and milked the cows. He had spent hours with Jack Casey, the Yard Manager at Loughmore’s stables, learning about horses, and even more hours in the kitchen with Jack’s wife Mary, at first devouring her home baking and then, to his own surprise, cooking and baking himself under her guidance.

She had grown nervous about his visits, politely asking what his father would say, but he had charmed his way around her resistance. In time he had learned of his father’s attitude to his passion for cooking but back then it had been his secret.

And then, one summer, Jack and Mary’s granddaughter Ciara Harris had blown into the estate—like a turbo-charged breath of fresh air. Funny, outspoken, often unknowingly irreverent, she had questioned everything. And for the first time he had seen that his life could be different...

A fire was lit in the morning room, where table lamps cast faint shadows over the pale pink embossed wallpaper. Before the fire on a Persian rug was a footstool, still bearing the business and scientific journals and periodicals his father had insisted were to be ordered for all three of the estate’s main properties—Bainsworth Hall, the two-thousand-acre main seat of the family in Sussex, Loughmore Castle, and Glencorr, the family hunting lodge in Scotland.

He lowered Ciara on to the sofa in front of the fire and stood back. Too late he remembered the time he had found her in here cleaning, and had dragged her giggling in protest to the sofa and kissed her until they were both breathless, hot with the intoxicating frustration of unfulfilled desire.

He shook away the memory and tried to focus on the woman before him—not the girl he had once known ‘Are you injured in any way?’

Immediately she stood and moved away from him, stepping behind the arm of the sofa as though that would shield her from him. She folded her arms and gave a wry shrug. ‘Just my pride.’

For long moments they regarded each other, the crack and hiss of burning wood the only sound in the room.

Ciara tucked a lock of her long red hair behind her ear and rubbed her cheek. She rolled back on one heel. as though fighting the urge to move even further away. She regarded him warily and then, in a low voice, asked, ‘How have you been?’

She’d always used to do this to him. Disarm him with the simplest of questions that left him floundering for an answer. How did you sum up twelve years?

‘Good. And you?’

She tilted her head, the deep auburn tones of her hair shining in the light of a nearby Tiffany lamp and answered, ‘Yeah, good too.’

A discreet knock sounded on the door to the room. Stephen entered, carrying a tray bearing a silver tea service and china cups. Storm bounded into the room behind him and jumped up on Ciara, his paws clawing at the denim of her black jeans.

He called to Storm, but the terrier ignored him as Ciara bent over and patted him, murmuring, ‘Hello, cutie.’

Stephen placed the tea service on a side table, along with some delicate triangular sandwiches and some mince pies, before awkwardly considering Ciara. Then, clearing his throat to gain her attention, because she was still chatting with Storm, he said, ‘If you are feeling better, Ciara, there is tea ready in the staff kitchen.’

Ciara straightened. Glanced in Tom’s direction and then went to leave with Stephen.

Tom gritted his teeth. ‘Stay and have tea here.’

Stephen did a poor job at hiding his surprise at Tom’s words but, gathering up Tom’s overcoat, simply asked, ‘Would you like me to take your dog away, sir?’

‘He’s called Storm—and, no, he can stay here with me.’