Heart of the Cotswolds: England Read online

  Jane had hoped to slip in, pack, and slip away again.

  The first two stages happened easily. The party had migrated out onto the front lawn, leaving the manor itself quiet and peaceful. It had been odd packing her clothes with Aaron in the room but, she rationalized, he’d already seen her bra and panties in far more compromising circumstances than being moved from drawer to suitcase. Still, he tactfully moved to a window and stared out at the grounds.

  She would miss the view. There probably weren’t any rooms in the manor with a bad view, but this room looked down over the flower garden. Beyond a boundary stone wall, that she now had a little more appreciation for, sheep pastures rolled down the hill to where a lazy river meandered along the valley. On the opposite side, more of the same. Farm buildings, limestone houses, and the bigger town of Stow-on-the-Wold perched atop the next hill just a mile away. It was a grand view; her cottage’s (she couldn’t help thinking of it that way already) view was smaller, less formal, yet more welcoming.

  She packed fast. Her job, her former job, had included at least twice-monthly travel so she had it down. And her belongings were now few enough that they fit in two small suitcases and a not much larger storage unit in South Carolina. Without the job, or even the prospect of one, she’d sold her townhouse and her parents’ house. The housing market had turned and she was now very well situated, other than not having anywhere to live except an English pub and no idea of what came next.

  Running shoes, wedding shoes, and hiking shoes—not even sandals. She would have left the wedding attire behind (she certainly wouldn’t need that again), but she didn’t want to perpetrate it on the earl. Maybe she’d have a ritual burning of it later. It was too bad, she’d liked it on first sight and bought it on impulse a year ago, then never had an occasion to wear it. Now it had been on twice: once for Debbie’s wedding and once for her shameful morning-after scurry through town. Unable to relocate Aaron’s footpath back to the manor, she’d had to wear it among the dog walkers and early joggers as she’d followed the main road to reach the manor’s long driveway.

  Then as she folded it away, she remembered the way Aaron had looked at her wearing the dress. Maybe she would keep it, for a while anyway.

  Once she was packed and they’d both double-checked the room and bath, she was all for bolting. But, at the front door she’d spotted a maid and inquired about leaving a note of thanks for the earl.

  Aaron knew they were in trouble just by the sound.

  The maid had gone off quietly on soft shoes, leaving them while she went to fetch something they could use to leave a note.

  The front hall was a three-story gothic-arched monster. Had the wedding been rained out, it could have been held here at the foot of the two staircases of dark stone that swept down either side of the hall from the upper story. There would have been plenty of room to spare with only a hundred guests. Massive paintings, dark with age, adorned towering walls of stone. High windows, faced to capture the midday light, were turning subtly orange as the sun ducked away to the west.

  He offered Jane his arm for a quick turn about the room and couldn’t believe when she took it. It was as if today had never happened. As if he hadn’t been such an asshole when she’d just been trying to be nice. They were just up the grand central passage far enough that he couldn’t see who was coming down the stairs when the sound started.

  But the sharp staccato punch of high heels on stone was a sound like no other. Last night he’d cataloged the rhythm as well.

  “Incoming! Brace yourself,” was all he had time to whisper to Jane before Debbie, now Debbie Evenston, came off the bottom step and spotted them. She sauntered across the hall toward them like she owned the place.

  “What do you see in her?” Debbie’s voice was smooth and oily and tried to wrap around him like a snake.

  “Good evening, Ms. Evenston,” Aaron made a slight bow but knew better than to offer his hand this time. He could see the choice register and the fury rise.

  She turned to fire a barb at Jane, but that wasn’t going to happen.

  “I’d have thought you’d be off on your honeymoon by now,” he sidetracked her before she could launch.

  “Geoffie’s plane had a breakdown. We could have flown first class this morning, but who wants to do that, and all those flight changes. It’s fixed and we’re just going now. He keeps it just up the road, you know.”

  Just keep talking, Debbie. That’s what you’re good at.

  “They are holding the yacht for us. We’ll catch up with it at Portofino. It’s the Immaculate. Two-hundred-and-sixty-feet long. Though I assume you don’t know her.”

  “I rarely travel on something so small.” He typically deployed off littoral combat ships in the four-hundred-foot range, destroyers over five hundred, or carriers up in the thousand-foot-plus category. Aaron managed to keep his face straight.

  Jane didn’t. Her snort of laughter at her sister’s expense probably didn’t earn her many points. Jane knew his was ex-military, but Debbie didn’t.

  Unable to leave it alone, he continued. “Of course the Immaculate was formerly the Elite Voyager III. After she was pirated, they changed the name and shifted her up from the Caribbean for resale.” He hadn’t been part of that takedown, but Delta had studied the bloody results of sending in a standard boarding team against armed Colombian drug pirates.

  Debbie’s face blanched white though she covered quickly. He watched her gear up to take one more slice at Jane, glance over at him, then think better of it. She turned on her heel and stalked away without another word.

  “I don’t think she likes me very much,” he whispered to Jane. “She isn’t even offering me a departing ass wiggle like last night.”

  Jane laughed again, loudly enough that Debbie slammed the front door only moments later. “Perhaps not. But I’m finding that I like you more and more, Mr. Mason.”

  Jane couldn’t believe her reprieve or the unexpected source of it. Aaron had handled Debbie with all the aplomb of a corporate CEO. Yes, she could get to like him very much. There’d be hell to pay later but, whatever the price, it would be completely worth it.

  Moments later the maid reappeared and they were whisked into the Earl of Evenston’s office.

  “You’re leaving us so soon?” He was on his feet in a moment and coming around the desk.

  “I thought it best,” Jane couldn’t remember if she’d been in this room on last night’s mid-wedding tour.

  It was a fine space without being a grand one. No extra walls had been knocked out to make the room more expansive. It held a large oaken desk, a small circle of red leather chairs around the inevitable large fireplace, and a large window offering an intimate view of the flower garden that she had overlooked from her room above. Dark wood floors and stone predominated, though large bookcases invited her to select a volume and curl up in one of the chairs by the fireplace.

  “Your office is very cozy.”

  “Thank you. That was my intent. It reminds me that what is important is being comfortable, not wrapped up in excess.”

  Jane kept any thought about the excesses of a twenty-six-bedroom manor to herself.

  His laugh boomed out easily, telling her that she wished her emotions were less obvious.

  “Sit for a moment, please,” he waved them into chairs.

  Aaron offered a microscopic shrug to go with flow, so the three of them settled together about the unlit fireplace.

  “I’m actually a simple man in many ways, though you may not believe it. Very successful, I grant, but I am not my youngest son.”

  “That’s a blessing,” then Jane slapped a hand over her mouth, but the earl’s look of chagrin granted her the point. Then his easy smile broke out and his blue-gray eyes were filled with amusement.

  Aaron’s cross between a snort and a chuckle made her feel only a little better for her indiscretion.

  “Were my eldest son not happily engaged to a doctor, I could recommend him to your acquaintan
ce, but I see that I’m too late for that already. You have found your stonemason.”

  “My stonemason?” Jane was unsure of quite what that meant. “We only met last night…your lordship.” What was the right thing to call an earl? “He was kind enough to help me through a…difficult evening. I apologize for the misdirection.”

  “Lord is correct. But please call me Conrad.”

  Earl Conrad? Not a chance. He was too imposing a figure for first names.

  “So, young man,” he turned his attention to Aaron. “What possible reason can you provide me that I should trust an American apprentice stonemason with the attentions of this fine woman?”

  Jane tried not to blush at the compliment. As far as she could recall, she barely knew the earl and hadn’t exactly been presenting her best side for most of that time.

  “Because, sir, I will defend her against anyone wishing her harm. Anyone.”

  Jane’s ears were ringing, as if she’d just been struck like some brass church bell. She couldn’t have heard that right.

  Everything shifted into slow motion as she turned to face him.

  Aaron’s dark gaze remained on the earl for a long moment, and then slowly turned to meet hers.

  He had slouched in the chair, his right leg extended out as if to ease it.

  His fingers were interlaced over his flat stomach.

  Completely at ease. As if they were all just telling stories and he wasn’t trained as one of the most lethal warriors in any military.

  When he looked at her, he wasn’t Aaron Mason the stonemason. He was Sergeant Aaron Mason of Delta Force and the SAS, and he had just promised that he would defend her no matter what. To the death? The way he’d said it, that was clearly what he’d meant. From any lesser man it would be a boast or a throw-away line. But from him it was one of the most dangerous threats a man could make.

  How could he just say such a thing?

  About her?

  He nodded once, solidly, as if he could read her question. As if confirming that, for her, he was willing to—

  She really wished she was the sort of woman who fainted. The moment would be so much easier if that were the case.

  Aaron had been trained to protect the innocent.

  That both was and wasn’t Jane Tully. She hadn’t been trained for his world, though it was clear that she’d found ways to survive hard times of her own. Still, there were hard truths he would face again if necessary in order to protect her.

  He supposed he should be shocked by what he’d just said.

  Jane clearly was. If she didn’t start breathing again in the next twenty seconds, he’d have to remind her so that she didn’t pass out.

  But Aaron wasn’t shocked. He’d spoken simple truth. And on consideration, it wasn’t just his training that had made him speak. He would defend Jane against all comers because she was that special and the world needed as many people like her as it could get.

  The earl didn’t look surprised either, instead he looked thoughtful.

  “I’m inclined to believe you, young man.”

  “You should, sir.”

  He heard Jane take a shuddering breath, then another. In his peripheral vision he could see that her color was slowly returning.

  “Is she in need of such protection?”

  “In a proper world, we’ll never need to answer that question, sir.”

  If the earl thought he could somehow see into Aaron’s soul by staring, he was welcome to try. Aaron had faced down too many drill instructors, officers, and just plain rude buggers to be bothered by the earl’s assessment.

  “I think I could get to like you, Mr. Mason.”

  “He’s—”

  He glanced over at Jane just as she bit off her sentence. He’d rather leave his past behind and thankfully she appeared to understand that.

  “I find he’s very likeable,” Jane covered.

  When she didn’t add anything, it was Aaron’s turn to be surprised.

  Not “Despite…” or “Except for…”

  After how much of an asshole he’d been this morning, he didn’t even know why she was speaking to him, much less calling him likeable.

  Likeability had never really been high on his list of personal achievements. In Delta and the SAS, trustworthy was by far the key trait. You could be a goddamn son of a bitch but, if you always had someone’s back covered, you were in good. Close buddies he hadn’t fought battles with? He couldn’t think of a one. Friends from high school, who he had a couple beers with when home on leave, were wrapped up in lives that he understood as little as they understood his. Now, a permanent civilian, he wished he’d listened harder to what they had to say.

  In the last twenty-four hours he’d lied to Jane about being whole, twice kissed the crap out of her when she was blind drunk, given her a rude brush-off this morning, and was only waiting to see what he’d do to her next with his clumsiness.

  A soldier can’t afford mistakes.

  Maybe he’d finally found a single good thing about no longer being a soldier. Mistakes were no longer likely to cost him his life, only his self-respect.

  The earl looked away first but there was something in his smile that told Aaron that he’d somehow lost this round as well.

  “Are you all packed?” The earl returned his attention to Jane.

  “Two suitcases,” she managed, still sounding breathless. “In the hall. Aaron offered to help me carry them to the inn. The pub. I’ve taken a room at The Queen’s Guard.”

  “Carry them? Neither of you has a vehicle?”

  Aaron had a key for Trent’s work truck, but hadn’t thought to fetch it.

  The earl picked up the phone and dialed, “Bring around the bronze Cooper, would you?”

  By the time they reached the front door, a bronze-colored MINI Cooper was waiting for them. It was a four-seat convertible with the top down. A quick glance at the odometer revealed it had been driven less than twenty miles—barely enough to unload it from a car carrier and test it.

  “It’s yours for as long as you’re in the UK,” the earl waved a hand at it so negligently that Aaron wondered if he kept a small fleet of brand-new vehicles on hand for just such moments.

  “Oh, I couldn’t,” Jane was shaking her head.

  “Nonsense,” the earl lifted one of her suitcases into the backseat with surprising ease for an elderly man, though it was the smaller of the two. “Unless of course you’d rather drive the pink Ferrari?”

  Jane just shook her head. Her ponytail broke free. It looked as if she tried to shake it forward to hide behind, but it stubbornly insisted on remaining down her back, leaving her blush for all to see.

  “You don’t like pink Ferraris?” The earl’s tone was teasing.

  “It’s my sister’s.”

  “Do you think she’d miss it?”

  “Probably not,” Jane admitted. “I know she can’t drive a manual. She can barely drive an automatic.”

  “Helpless women,” the old man shook his head sadly. “Please tell me you aren’t a helpless woman.”

  That was one of the last words Aaron would ever apply to Jane Tully.

  In answer, Jane stalked up to the left-side door and yanked it open. After glaring at it for a moment, she slammed it shut and walked around to the right-hand-side driver’s door.

  It had taken Aaron weeks to get used to which side of the vehicle to use in England, something that had tickled his SAS buddies no end.

  Aaron shared a smile with the earl.

  “Stop smirking and get in. Unless you want to walk back,” Jane didn’t even look up at him as she belted in.

  Aaron lifted the other suitcase into the back, then slid into the passenger seat.

  “Taking your life into your hands, young man?” The earl asked him with a broad wink as he closed Aaron’s door and waved them off.

  It was only as they were underway down the gravel drive that he caught the earl’s double meaning: getting in a car with a driver fresh out of Ameri
ca, and doing anything he could to be with Jane Tully—even for just a little while.

  Maybe it finally was time he took his life into his own hands.

  Chapter 5

  Her first night in the pub was a revelation. Jane couldn’t remember another evening like it when the world simply slowed down. Her life had never been that way that she could recall…ever.

  She came downstairs after settling in. The evening had progressed enough that while parts of the pub were still active, others were dimly lit and full of comfortable shadows. She ended up joining Aaron, sitting by the fire, his bad leg propped up on a chair.

  In another chair sat Hal the barman, with Snoop the aging spaniel sprawled in doggy dogg heaven across his lap. Hal wore a Winnie-the-Pooh tie with the explanation that he’d recently been through Paddington Station. When Aaron pointed out it should be a Paddington Bear tie then, Hal merely shook his head in dismay at Aaron’s naivete. The two men spoke easily, with long silences while they just watched the flames.

  Bridget and a few other helpers had managed the last of the on-going service.

  A few locals sat by the fire with them, some nursing a beer. None of them were in a rush. How different from the life she’d left behind barely forty-eight hours ago, a life where there were never enough minutes in the day so she worked half the night as well.

  Exhausted past all reason, she went upstairs to her own room while the pub still buzzed with its oddly relaxed energy and late diners.

  At first she’d been relieved to be on a different floor than Aaron. Then, when she finally heard his uneven step climbing the staircase, she realized that his room was directly above hers. The old timbers creaked as he wandered back and forth through whatever his nightly ritual was.

  It was a brief one. Once across the room, a shower so brief that she couldn’t have properly wet her hair, never mind washed it. A brief silence that she suspected had to do with a towel, then a toothbrush. A few steps, then true silence.