Newborn Under The Christmas Tree

She just hoped that he gave her—and Heather, and Penelope, and all the others—a chance too.

* * *

Grabbing his bag from the back seat, Liam pressed the button to lock the car and turned to face Thornwood Castle in the flesh for the first time in twenty-five years.

‘Yeah, still imposing as all hell,’ he murmured, eyeing the arrow slits.

As far as he’d been able to tell from the notes his assistant had put together on the castle, it had never really been built for battle. In fact, it was constructed about two hundred years too late for the medieval sieges and warfare it looked like it was built to withstand. It was more or less a folly—one of those weird English quirks of history. Some ancestor of his—by blood if not name or marriage—had got it into his head that he wanted to live in a medieval castle, even if it was the seventeen-hundreds. So he’d designed one and had it built. And then that castle had been passed down through generations of family members until it reached him, in the twenty-first century, when all those arrow slits and murder holes were even less necessary than ever.

Well, hopefully. He hadn’t been back to Britain in a couple of years. Who knew what might have changed...?

Normally, Liam would happily mock the folly as typical aristocratic ridiculous behaviour. But as his assistant, Daisy, had pointed out to him drily as she’d handed him his plane tickets, building follies and vanity projects was basically what he did for a living these days. And he supposed she had a point. How was designing and building a hotel in the shape of a lily out in the Middle East any different to a medieval castle in the seventeen-hundreds?

Except he didn’t keep the buildings he designed, or force them on future generations. He did an outstanding job, basked in the praise, got paid and moved on.

Much simpler.

As he jogged up the stone steps to the imposing front door, Liam tried to find that desert warmth again inside himself, and the glow of a good job well done. He was renowned these days, and in great demand as an architect. He’d built structures others couldn’t conceive of, ones that every other architect he knew said was impossible.

There was no reason at all that he should still feel this intimidated by a fake English castle.

Straightening his shoulders, he reached out for the door handle—only to have it disappear inwards as the door opened by itself.

No, not by itself.

Liam blinked into the shadows of the entrance hall and made out one, two, three—five women standing there, blinking back at him.

For a moment he wondered if this was his staff—all lining up to meet him, as the new master. Even if he couldn’t inherit the title that would have been his father’s, if he’d lived long enough, he had the estate now.

Then he realised that the women were all wearing jeans and woolly jumpers—and that, somehow, inside the castle felt even colder than outside.

‘You must be Liam!’ the woman holding the door said, beaming. ‘I mean, Mr Howlett.’

‘Jenkins,’ he corrected her automatically. ‘Liam Jenkins. I use my mother’s name.’ No need to explain that he’d never been offered his father’s.

From the colour that flooded her cheeks, the woman knew that. ‘Of course. I’m so sorry. Mr Jenkins.’

She looked so distraught at the slip-up, Liam shrugged, falling back into his usual pattern of making others feel comfortable. ‘Call me Liam.’

‘Liam. Right. Thank you.’ The pink started to fade, which was a shame. Without it, she looked pale and cautious, her honey-blonde hair made dull by the grey light and shadows of the castle. But for that brief moment she’d looked...alive. Vibrant, in a way Liam hadn’t expected to find at Thornwood.

Which still told him nothing about who she was or why she was in his castle. ‘And you are...?’

‘Oh! I’m Alice Walters. Your great-aunt hired me to, well, to make Thornwood Castle useful again.’

‘Useful?’ Liam frowned. ‘It’s a medieval castle in the twenty-first century. How useful can it really be?’ Interesting, he could understand. Profitable, even more so. He’d half expected to find a guided tour in progress when he arrived—all the people who’d been kept out for so long coming to gawk at everything Rose had left behind. Nothing compared to what he had planned for the place. He had so many ideas for what to do to Thornwood—things he knew Great-Aunt Rose never would have even considered—to make the place into a proper tourist attraction. One he didn’t have to visit, but still paid him handsomely.

He’d considered all sorts of options since he’d first got the phone call telling him that Thornwood Castle was his.

He just hadn’t considered useful, beyond his own financial purposes.

‘Rose wanted to make sure that the castle fulfilled its traditional role in the community,’ Alice said vaguely. ‘She hired me to make that happen.’

‘Its traditional role?’ He was starting to sound like a bad echo. But really, Alice’s explanations weren’t explaining anything at all.

Perhaps it was time for some non-English bluntness. After all, he was more Aussie than English when it came down to it—whatever Rose’s will said.

‘Look,’ he said, taking care to sound more bored than annoyed, ‘I’ll make this really easy for you. Just a simple answer to a very simple question. What the hell are you all doing in my home?’

CHAPTER TWO (#uc129c497-e302-56b1-91ee-4cdb6cb60d8f)

OKAY, THIS WAS not going as well as she’d hoped it might. Even if she hadn’t really hoped all that hard—her experiences were generally even worse than Heather’s, after all.

Behind her, she heard Penelope let out a tiny gasp at Liam’s words and realised it was time to move this conversation elsewhere, before he upset all their girls. He might sound so laid-back he was almost horizontal, but this was his house and he could still throw them all out on a moment’s notice if she didn’t do something fast.

‘Mr Jenkins, how about you come with me into the estate office? I can explain everything there.’ Plus there was a kettle. And biscuits. Maybe a nice cup of tea and a sit down would make them all friends.

‘Works for me,’ he said with a shrug.

She led him the long way round—partly to avoid any remaining flooding in the great hall, and partly to show off some of the parts of Thornwood that weren’t underwater.

‘Has it been many years since you were last at Thornwood?’ she asked politely as they skirted around the edges of the library, avoiding the combination of mismatched tables pushed together in the middle of the room with abandoned wool and knitting needles strewn across them. Everyone had dropped what they were doing the moment Liam’s car had pulled up. Understandable, given the impact he stood to have on their future. But still, Alice couldn’t help but wish they’d paused to tidy up a bit first.

‘Twenty-five,’ Liam said, raising his eyebrows at a ball of neon orange wool that had rolled off the table and into his path.

Alice swept it up as she passed, and lobbed it back on to the nearest table once he wasn’t looking. Really, for an Australian, it seemed he had the imperious English aristocrat thing down pat. The mixture of relaxed disapproval was most disconcerting.

‘That’s a long time,’ she said, knowing it sounded inane. But really, what else was she supposed to say?

Your great-aunt was alone for the last fifteen years of her life, and you couldn’t even spare an afternoon to visit?

Sure, he lived on the other side of the world. But Alice had been doing some reading up on Liam Jenkins, ever since she’d got wind of the details of the will, and she was willing to bet he’d been in London often enough over those twenty-five years. Looking at his résumé, he’d built at least a handful of buildings less than two hours’ drive away. How hard would it have been to stop in and see a lonely old lady? Or even to check on his inheritance, if he was truly that heartless.

Alice frowned. So why hadn’t he? Having met him, she could buy him not being bothered enough about Rose to visit. But he’d called Thornwood Castle his home. How could it be home if he hadn’t been there in two and a half decades? Maybe it was just a slip of the tongue. Or maybe not...

Suddenly, Alice got the feeling she was missing something in this story. It had the ring of the tales she’d heard from some of the women who stopped by the castle sometimes. Stories about slipping on the stairs, or losing their purse with the housekeeping money in it. No more believable than walking into a door and getting a black eye, but that was the point. Nobody expected those tales to be believed, not here. They didn’t need to be. Thornwood was a safe place.

But maybe Liam didn’t know that yet.

Well, if he wanted to make it his home, he’d have to learn. And hopefully he’d see the value of it, and let her continue her work.

Otherwise, there were going to be a lot of local women who didn’t have a safe place any more.

With that dismal thought, they reached the estate office. Alice reached past the suit of armour she’d named Rusty and opened the door. ‘Come on in.’

Inside, the office was as tidy as it ever got. Which, given that it was essentially a store cupboard with a desk shoehorned in and covered in a mass of paperwork and Post-it notes, wasn’t very. Thornwood had plenty of rooms—far more than one person could ever need. But when Alice had arrived at the castle three years before, she’d known that all those public spaces could be put to better use. Besides, they were all far too big—echoing and full of draughts. At least here in her little cupboard she was cosy. And hardly anyone ever came looking for her there.

‘Have a seat.’ She motioned to the rickety wooden dining chair on the near side of the desk, and squeezed past the filing cabinet to flip on the kettle. She didn’t need to look back to know he was staring dubiously at the seat—she’d done the same. Rose had said it dated back over a hundred years and hadn’t collapsed yet. Alice thought it might just be biding its time.