And after, at the door when she’d looked at him with deeply wounded eyes, the intensity of hurt in them caused Cash to feel a sharp pain in his gut.
It was then he realised that his plan had not been his most stellar.
He turned off the motorway and navigated the winding roads of Devon, heading for the coast.
He knew he was going to have to do something else he’d never done and he had no earthly idea how. And he was furious that he’d put himself in that position. And he was even more furious that he’d been the cause of her pain.
Over the distance, Cash considered his options.
However before he came to any conclusions, Penmort Castle loomed in front of them, its lit towers and turrets a daunting vision against the dark night.
Cash barely registered the vague thrill he normally felt when he saw Penmort.
He’d been there only two times as a teen, when Nicola had invited him to stay. Both times had been, despite her best efforts, unsatisfactory. He’d been there relatively often since Alistair had offered his artificial olive branch.
This time he would be entering as its owner, a goal which he’d spent a year doing all in his power to achieve.
It should have been a triumph.
Cash didn’t give it a thought.
He drove up the steep hill at the side of the castle and stopped at the arched, gated doorway set into the thick, stone wall that surrounded much of the castle.
He pulled the emergency brake, switched off the car and noted Abby’s hand was already on her door handle.
In an effort to forestall her, his own hand went to the area above her knee. But at his touch, she instantly jerked away. Whether this was anger, hurt or revulsion, he didn’t know.
He also didn’t care.
“Abby,” he called as she continued her efforts to exit the car, partially opening the door.
They had only moments before their arrival would be discovered. He had to get this done now. He had no time to waste.
Swiftly, he leaned across her, his fingers curling around the door handle, and he slammed it closed.
Her head turned to look at him. He could see her face dimly lit in the outside lights of the gate.
She didn’t look angry, hurt or revolted.
She looked blank.
Fucking hell, he thought.
He lifted his hand to her neck and held her there.
“Abby –” he started softly.
“Yes?” she asked, her voice as expressionless as her face and Cash wondered how long it would take to achieve his new goal of winning Abby back.
As usual, he didn’t delay.
“James talked to me this afternoon,” Cash told her.
She stayed silent but he felt her body grow stiff.
“In future,” he went on quietly, “if you have something to say to me, you contact me yourself. Is that understood?”
Her body stayed stiff but she gave a short nod. Her neck tugged against his hand, trying to pull away and he gave her a gentle squeeze indicating he wasn’t done.
She went still.
“You made me very angry today,” he said, trying to keep his voice gentle and she sat silent, eyes on him. “Tonight, instead of simply being angry at you, I took that anger out on you.” He paused and gave her neck another squeeze. “It won’t happen again.”
She remained silent, her eyes on his and he waited for some sign she understood but he didn’t get it.
Instead, all of a sudden her eyes moved to the side.
Then, surprising him, she leaned in, her hand coming to rest lightly on his shoulder and she pressed her lips against his.
He thought for a moment this was an act of forgiveness but before relief could fully form, mouth still on his, she whispered, “We’re being watched.”
Then her head tilted, she pressed closer, her fingers curled into his shoulder, and she opened her mouth under his, the tip of her tongue touching his lips.
He knew it was an act, a show for whatever audience they had.
And he didn’t care about that either.
He accepted her invitation and the opportunity it offered, opening his own mouth and drawing her tongue inside. One arm went around her to haul her soft body closer, his other hand fisted in the curls of her hair at her back, gently tugging down to manoeuvre her mouth so his would have better access.
Then he deepened the kiss and, gratifyingly, her hand moved from his shoulder, sliding up his neck and into his hair as her body yielded to his.
He knew then he had her.
Pressing his advantage, he kissed her until he heard that low, sexy noise she made in the back of her throat. A noise he discovered on Sunday that corresponded with a rush of heat between her legs.
And when he knew he could still reach her, his mouth broke from hers, slid down to her neck and Cash breathed in her perfume.
He heard her soft but heavy inhalations in his ear and he smiled against her skin.
“We’ll finish talking later,” he murmured.
She had no time to reply, there was a sharp rap on the passenger side window and Cash felt Abby’s body jolt in surprise.
“Is everything okay?” his step-cousin, Fenella, shouted and Cash saw her small face peering through the glass.
“Fuck,” he muttered right before Abby pulled away.
With no other choice (although he would have preferred to start his car, drive to Abby’s, take her back to her bed and finish what they’d started in the car, this time, with both of them finding release), Cash began to exit the car but he was intercepted by Abby’s hand on his arm.
He turned back to her and her hand came up toward his face, it hesitated then pulled back but stayed suspended and her finger circled.
“Lip gloss,” she whispered and two intensely unpleasant sensations hit him at once.
One was loss.
The other was remorse.
“Hello!” Fenella called from outside.
“Take care of it,” Cash demanded, ignoring his cousin, his brief sense of relief fading back to irritation again directed at himself.
He may still be able to reach her in one way but in another she was very far away.
“What?” Abby asked, her head turning from the direction of Fenella back to Cash.
“Take care of it,” he repeated and when she hesitated he continued with a note of warning in his tone, “Abby –”
“Oh all right,” she gave in, her voice soft but annoyed.
Cash was illogically pleased to hear her exasperation. It wasn’t a good reaction but it was a reaction and he felt that boded well.
Therefore he smiled when she leaned in, reached up, her hand resting on his cheek as her thumb wiped the gloss from his mouth.
“Who is that?” Abby whispered while her finger slid across his lips.
“My cousin,” Cash’s mouth moved under her thumb.
“Are you two okay?” Fenella yelled in the window.
Abby’s hand fell and she gave him a look he couldn’t quite decipher before her head twisted toward the window and she called, “We’re fine. Be out in two seconds!”
With nothing for it, Cash sighed his displeasure that the moment was lost before he knifed out of the car and slammed his door. He rounded the bonnet, his eyes on Abby who had extricated her lip gloss and was fixing her lips in the mirror of the sun visor.
“I was worried that you two were fighting,” Fenella announced as he arrived at Abby’s door where Fenella was standing and Cash looked at his cousin.
Fenella Fitzhugh was Nicola’s first-born daughter and she looked like her mother. Blonde, petite and pretty but, unlike her mother, it was in a sharp, pointy-faced way. She was too short for Cash’s liking and far too thin.
She was also, as had been evidenced in the last few minutes, unbelievably irritating in an obtuse, coy way.
How two people who were kissing passionately in a car could appear to Fenella to be fighting, Cash had no idea.
Instead of
commenting, he simply greeted, “Fenella,” and moved around her to open Abby’s door.
He bent in and took Abby’s elbow, guiding her out and firmly positioning her free of the door before he slammed it.
“You must be Abigail,” Fenella stated the obvious.
“Abby,” Abby replied, her soft voice warm and friendly and her hand came out to take Fenella’s as she leaned in to touch the other woman’s cheek with her own.
When Abby pulled away, Fenella exclaimed, “We’ve all been waiting with bated breath to meet you. Cash has never brought a woman to Penmort.”
Abby looked at him from under her lashes as she murmured, “Really?”
“Really!” Fenella nearly screeched and Cash winced at the shrill noise. “Mummy is in a dither. An… actual… dither,” Fenella declared.
“Um, is a dither a good thing?” Abby joked.
Fenella waved her hand in front of her face, Abby’s quip flying right by her. “Oh, Mummy’s always in a dither about something or other.”
In all of his memories of Nicola Beaumaris, Cash had never known her once to be in anything close to a “dither”.
Cash, finished with this ridiculous exchange, decided to intercede.
“Perhaps we can move this conversation out of the negative three degree weather and somewhere warmer?” he suggested drily.
“Oh yes! What was I thinking?” Fenella cried and then motioned to them to follow. “Come inside.”
Fenella led the way and Cash and Abby trailed, Cash’s fingers curling idly around hers, his thoughts on Abby as well as what that night would bring.
Outside of Nicola, who would give Abby a genuine warm welcome, Cash couldn’t begin to guess how his uncle, and Nicola’s two remaining daughters, Suzanne and Honor, would behave.
His thoughts were not positive.
He was taken out of them when he felt Abby’s step slow and his head turned to her.
She was looking up, her lips parted, her face registering wonder.
Cash’s gaze followed hers and he noted they’d entered the gate, climbed the steep path and up the steps into the common, turned left and were headed straight toward the castle.
Brilliant beams of light were shining from the ground up toward Penmort illuminating it brightly against the night sky.
The castle was a rambling “L” built around the side of a tor. It had thin bands of terraced gardens containing meandering paths running along its outer edge. It had a jagged roofline, some of its towers and turrets rising five imposing stories from the ground. There was another level built below into the face of the tor. It had a jutting rectangular entrance at the bend of the “L” and was built of a mellow red-brown stone.
The land had been occupied, and fortified, since the time of William the Conqueror when the sea, long since receded, had reached to the bottom of the tor. The castle that stood now was built during the Jacobean era, over four hundred years before. The entirety of its interior décor had been painstakingly, with no expense spared, refinished during the reign of Victoria.
Since the property was granted to its first Beaumaris master, Henry, by Richard, the Lionheart generations of men, men whose blood flowed in Cash’s veins, had built and rebuilt the manor and then fortified, defended and possessed it for over eight hundred years.
“It’s beautiful,” Abby whispered, her voice filled with awe.
He looked down at Abby and then up at his ancestral home.
She was correct. It was beautiful.
He took her hand and tucked it in the bend of his arm, effectively pulling her body closer to his side as he led her forward.
Moments later, with the smell of Abby’s musky, floral perfume in his nostrils, the feel of her against his side, Cash stepped through the enormous door and over the threshold of Penmort for the first time its owner, not only by birthright, but as the victor of a bloodless battle.
As his and Abby’s feet hit the stone floor of the entrance lobby, it wasn’t only Cash who felt the floor slant beneath him.
Abby swayed, her body twisting so her front was pressed into his side, her other hand coming around to clutch his shirt at his stomach.
In front of them, halfway up the short flight of stone steps, Cash saw Fenella’s frame pitch awkwardly and she threw her arms out to steady herself.
For a moment they all seemed suspended.
When the sensation ended, Fenella whirled toward them and cried, “What was that? Are we having an earthquake?”
Cash looked down to Abby and saw her face was pale. She was still grasping his shirt in her fist, her other hand gripping his bicep tightly.
“Are you okay?” Cash asked Abby.
Her head tipped back to look at him, her hazel eyes wide and frightened as she whispered, “Did you feel that?”
“I felt it,” Cash answered, pulling Abby closer to his body, his head turned to Fenella and he asked, “Has that happened before?”
“No!” Fenella cried and pressed her hand against her stomach. “That was weird.”
“Cash!” Nicola’s voice greeted from straight ahead and Cash lifted his eyes his aunt.
Arriving in the entrance lobby was Nicola Beaumaris and her youngest daughter, Honor.
Nicola was nearly sixty years old but she looked ten years younger. Tonight, as usual, her blonde hair was pulled back into an elegant bun at her nape, her clothing was understated yet stylish and her bearing was graceful but friendly.
Honor was the only one of Nicola’s daughters that Cash could remotely endure. She was not rail-thin like her sisters but curvy to the point of being plump. When she wasn’t being silent, sullen or superior, she could be quite clever and, on rare occasions, displayed a sense of humour.
“Did you feel that?” Fenella asked when her mother and sister entered the hall.
“Feel what?” Honor returned.
“I don’t know what,” Fenella replied, “it felt like an earthquake.”
Nicola came to a dead halt one step down and stared at her oldest daughter. “An earthquake?”
“Yes, the room pitched and –” Fenella started.
Honor interrupted her sister, her voice weary. “Fenella, don’t be dramatic.”
“I felt it!” Fenella cried and then spun toward Cash and Abby. “You felt it too!”
“We did,” Abby’s soft voice confirmed Fenella’s story.
Fenella pointed a finger at Abby and squealed, “See!”
“Fenella, don’t point,” Nicola’s voice was gentle but firm. “And don’t tell tales.” Nicola descended the stairs to come close to them but her kind eyes were on Abby. “You must be Abigail.” At Abby’s nod, Nicola went on, “My eldest has a vivid imagination,” she explained, “she swears Penmort is haunted.”
Cash heard Abby’s indrawn breath and felt her press closer to him.
He had, of course, heard about the Famous Ghost of Penmort Castle. It was the spirit of the raven-haired beauty, supposedly named Vivianna Wainwright, who was also the spurned lover of one of Cash’s ancestors.
Legend told that Vivianna was a practicing witch and once her love was thwarted, she’d put a spell on her soul before hurling herself off the tallest tower of the castle, falling down the side of the tor to a gruesome death.
She’d done this not to kill herself but to live eternally within the castle as a malevolent phantom, wreaking vengeance by causing intermittent havoc and murdering the true loves of Penmort’s male line.
In all the castle’s history, this had allegedly happened only five times. Not generation-to-generation but, the tale dictated each time the victim had been Penmort’s master’s one, true, abiding love.
It was, Cash knew, complete rubbish.
His fingers covered Abby’s on his bicep and he murmured, “It isn’t true, darling.”
“Then what just happened?” Fenella demanded to know.
“I’m sure spooky Vivikums has better things to do than ruin Mummy’s dinner party,” Honor retorted.
Fenella’s face blanched before she whispered, “Don’t call her that. She doesn’t like it.”
“Hogwash,” Honor returned on a sharp hiss.
Nicola’s hand came out to touch Abby lightly. “Abigail, what must you think of us? Let’s take your coat and get you a drink.”
Cash escorted Abby up the steps and into the outer, took her bag and then her coat from her shoulders, motioning with his chin that Abby should follow Nicola.
He saw Nicola take Abby’s arm in her hand and guide her toward the drawing room saying, “I’m Nicola, Cash’s aunt. You’ve met Fenella, this is my youngest, Honor.”
Fenella and Honor trailed them and Cash watched as Abby cast a tremulous grin over her shoulder at Honor.
They disappeared into the drawing room and Cash took off his coat and tossed his and Abby’s belongings over a wide window seat before he traced their steps.
They were gathering in the drawing room, Alistair and Suzanne already there and when Cash entered Abby was greeting Suzanne.
Suzanne was Nicola’s middle child and the only one of the three that Cash actively detested. Far prettier than both her sisters, she knew it. She had the same sultry aura of Abby but where Abby’s was simply a part of her, Suzanne’s was a weapon she used.
And Cash had learned over the last year she used it aggressively.
As pretty and alluring as she was, she was no match for Abby’s striking beauty and casual glamour.
The minute his eyes fell on Suzanne’s face, which was turned to Abby and filled with unconcealed spite, Cash saw that Suzanne knew that too.
Cash felt his body tighten, instinctively going on guard at the malice he saw in his cousin’s eyes.
“Abigail!” Alistair boomed and Cash turned from one opponent to another.
His uncle did not look like a Beaumaris, at least not any of the former occupants of this house whose portraits hung in the gallery upstairs.
He was not tall, but of average height. He was not dark-headed with black eyes, but had light brown hair and faded blue eyes. He was not lean, straight and broad, but paunchy, slightly stooped with narrow shoulders.
And his eyes were mean.
He’d apparently decided to play the effusive host. Cash knew this because Alistair approached Abby, planted his hands on her shoulders and gave her a kiss on the cheek.