Jumping in Puddles (7 page)

“Master is fine.”

She laughed. “So you do have a sense of humor.”

“I wasn’t joking.”

“But I was about the whip.”

“Arrgh. That was the sound of my heart breaking.”

He walked faster, and she had to hurry to keep up. “Oh all right then. There’s always a first time. If you stand still and stick something out, I’ll try to wrap the whip around it.”

“I hope you’re thinking of a cigarette, and doesn’t the whip usually snap it in half? Anyway, I don’t smoke.”

“I don’t mind trying with a body part if you don’t.”

His laugh escaped. She was funny, and despite himself he felt brighter. She hadn’t solved anything and wasn’t likely to unless he could persuade her into bed, but she amused him.

When they reached the front of the house, she stopped at the foot of the steps, leaned on his griffin, stroked it under the chin, and sighed as she looked up. “You are so lucky.”

“Lucky?” He gaped at her.

“That I’m here to help.”

Her mouth curved up, and it was impossible not to smile back, though if she knew what he wanted to do to her, she wouldn’t be smiling.

She tucked her hands in the pockets of her shorts. “Keep your mind open to all possibilities. Can you do that? A completely open mind?”

Jago nodded. He was open to the possibility of showing her his bed, inviting her to inspect it, demonstrating how comfortable it was with two people, but no whip.

“Show me the whole house, top to bottom, cellars too and out buildings. Closets, bathrooms, secret passageways, dungeons, oubliettes, wine cellars, ruins, corners where the ghosts lurk, places where you chain up dragons.”

“What?”

She grinned. “Just testing. Tell me what needs to be done and what the obstacles are to doing it.”

I need to fuck you, and the only obstacle is you saying no
. Jago dragged his mind out of the gutter. “I can do that without showing you anything. One word. Short and simple. Cash. If I had the money, I could do everything.”

She halted on the top step and stared at him. “Okay, imagine you had the cash and the house was renovated. Would you want to live here on your own?”

Jago opened the front door and gestured for her to go in. “Interesting question.”

“Got an interesting answer?”

He closed the door behind her and headed for the stairs. “The house is too big for me.”

“Even if some desperate woman took pity on you and you ended up with several children, four dogs, a pony, and a pet elephant?”

He stifled his laugh. “Yes, even then. Maybe my brother and his wife-to-be will want to live here. Even if they did, there’d still be a lot of rooms unused.”

“Why renovate them if they’re not to be used?”

“Because…the building deserves it. It’s been left to decay, and I feel…responsible.”
God, I hate that fucking word.

“It’s not your fault,” she said in a gentle voice.

“So what? It makes no difference whose fault it is. This is what I’ve been left with.” He flung out his arms. “This is my life. I can’t walk away.”

“No one’s blaming you. We all do the best we can and—”

“How much did Henry tell you?”

“That the place had been run down by your father, and that you hadn’t spoken to him in years. That’s all. Oh and that four people lodge here at the moment, and they’re supposed to be helping with the renovations, but mostly you do it on your own. I wouldn’t let him tell me any more. I wanted to see for myself.”

He sucked in his cheeks.

“What about converting more sections of the house into apartments? Using the rent from one to pay for the work on another?”

“Don’t you think I’ve thought of that? Apart from the small detail that I have no money to do it, it’s not pleasant for people living here if work is constantly going on around them.”

“Then sell to someone who can do all the work at once.”

Jago slammed to a stop halfway and swiveled round. “Do you work for Preston?”

She furrowed her brow. “Who’s he?”

Her innocent look didn’t mean a thing.

“A property developer who wants to buy this place.” Jago continued to the top floor.

“I don’t work for a property developer.”

“I don’t want to sell,” he muttered. He did and he didn’t. It had become a personal battle between him and the house.

“You might have to. If all this becomes too much to handle, there might be no other option. Why don’t you sell but have it put in the contract that you keep a suite of rooms for yourself and maybe one for your brother?”

Something Preston suggested, and Jago still wondered if she worked for him.

“Because the integrity of the building would be lost. It wouldn’t be Sharwood Hall anymore but just a converted country house. It’s been in my family for four hundred years. I don’t want to be the one who loses it.”

“But is it feasible to keep it as a home? Fantastic house that it is, it’s anachronistic to want to live here in the way your ancestors used to, unless you’re a billionaire.”

“I don’t have to be a billionaire,” he snapped.

“But there’s no income. What sustained these houses in the past was the income from land, but the land’s all gone, and nothing has taken its place. Even if by some miracle you managed to find the money to restore every part of it, how will you run it?”

“I hope you’re not going to suggest I open an out-of-Africa experience, an adventure playground or an amusement park.”

“Taking my cue from the way you’re sneering, no, though an adventure playground would pull in parents with kids. But you already have a possible source of income with the grounds. Henry says your parents occasionally let the public in. Why not do it on a regular basis? Why not consider opening some rooms to the public and sharing the others with lodgers, businesses, or charities?”

Jago spun round to face her. “You make it sound easy. It’s not. This is my home.”

“It’s your prison,” she said.

He swallowed hard.

As they moved from room to room on the top floor and Jago pointed out the broken molding, cracked plaster, rotten floorboards, and a whole catalog of problems that never seemed to get any shorter, it began to sink deeper into his head that he was trying to climb Everest without ropes or oxygen. He’d been blinded by the challenge of it, obligation and obsession becoming confused, and was still plodding on when he needed to stop and think about whether even achieving the summit was worth it. She was right. What was the ultimate plan? He’d been so busy negotiating obstacles he hadn’t looked beyond.

He took Ellie into the turret room, and she gasped. “This is gorgeous.”

She spun round with her arms outstretched, and as her hair shone in the sunlight the breath caught in his throat. She was gorgeous and smart and—
oh God, I want her.

“An artist would love to work in here. Or a princess with a spinning wheel or a girl with very long hair and a good-looking guy down on the ground she fancied.” She looked out of the window and gave an exaggerated sigh. “No one out there today.”

She chuckled, and Jago couldn’t remember when he’d been that happy and carefree.

“There was a leak in here yesterday.” He looked up at the ceiling. A mushroom-shaped yellow stain circled the light fitting.

“Was that why you were on the roof? Fixing the tiles?”

“Ah, it was you skulking in the garden.”

“I never skulk. I was singing and dancing. I love the rain.”

“I hate it.”

“I could make you love it.”

She stared straight at him, and Jago’s stomach clenched.

Chapter Five

As Ellie stared at Jago, her heart galloped out of control. She needed to step back, and she could feel herself readying to step forward. This guy had been hurt too much. She’d make his pain worse.
But I could at least make him happy now. And myself as well.

One small step. Ellie lifted her heel, and he turned away. Disappointment clawed at her chest.

“While there are still holes in the roof, I’ll never love the rain,” he mumbled.

“We’ll see,” she whispered.

On the next floor down, he showed her the long gallery, faded rectangles revealing where paintings had once hung. The bedroom he was about to paint had cans and brushes waiting in the middle of the floor.

“Those rooms are occupied by my lodgers.” He gestured down the hall. “The rest I have to get ready for wedding guests. I have no idea how.”

The list of work was repetitive: plasterwork, skirting boards, architrave, painting, papering, floor repairs. She didn’t see anywhere obvious to look for the Kewen. He was either hiding it, or he didn’t know he had it. Ellie erred toward the latter; otherwise wouldn’t he have sold it? So why had just the ring surfaced? She could simply tell him she’d bought it and ask if there was more, but since she intended to steal the rest, she’d be the prime suspect. Would that matter if she was back in Faerieland? Her head buzzed.

“What’s in there?” She pointed to two closed doors.

“Things I’ve saved to go back into the rooms once they’re finished.”

“Can I see?”

Jago unlocked the first, motioned her in, and switched on the light. The curtains were drawn.

“Wow.”

The room was packed with artifacts: chairs, tables, wardrobes, and an enormous four-poster bed covered with bubble-wrapped packages.

“One of my ancestors spent a fortune while he was doing the Grand Tour in the nineteenth century.”

“Thank goodness they had bubble wrap then.”

He shot her an incredulous look and then cracked a smile when he realized she was joking.

“There’s a lot of stuff. Did he ship back everything he came across?” she asked.

“Probably. He was certainly an eclectic collector. Some of the items are attributed to Pompeii, and I don’t know whether they’re actual relics or copies. Either way, they’re antiques.”

Oh God, had the Kewen already been sold and the money spent? The ring all that was left? Ellie swallowed. That couldn’t be true; otherwise, pieces would have turned up before now. Unless they’d been looking in the wrong place all these years, and the Kewen had been taken abroad. It said in the book it couldn’t travel over water, but Ellie wasn’t sure the book told the truth.

Was it in this room? She looked under sheets at paintings and furniture, and ran her gaze over tapestries hanging on the walls. When she bent with her butt toward Jago, she heard him give a quiet groan, and she smiled.

“This fat guy on the gray horse is a bit hideous,” she said.

“My grandfather.”

“Oops.” Ellie inspected the painting and the one next to it more closely, and then glanced back at him and frowned. Where was the resemblance?

“What?” he snapped.

“Nothing. Have you had to sell much?”

“Bits and pieces. Nothing desperately important. I repurchased some items my father sold, though not everything I’d wanted.”

Maybe his father had sold some of the Kewen and whoever bought it had put it in a bank vault and then died. There were so many possibilities that her head ached. Certainty that it was somewhere here began to fade.

“Is your intention to make the house look as it once did?” she asked.

“If I don’t have enough interesting artifacts on display, no one will pay to look round, and the only way I can see to make this place viable is restoring it, dressing the rooms, and charging people to tour while I live in a small corner.”

“Is there anything here you’d considering selling?” She glanced around.

“Almost everything has a price.”

“Even you?”

He frowned. “I don’t think I’d fetch much.”

“No local slave market?”

Jago gaped at her, and she laughed.

“Some women would like a title. In the old days you’d have wooed a rich heiress and solved all your problems.”

“Are you a rich heiress?”

“Neither rich nor an heiress.” She looked around. “Maybe you should make a list of everything, put the items in order of importance to keep, and sell off a few things.”

“I’m still not going to be able to raise enough capital. No point in repairing the house if there’s nothing left to show inside it.”

“What about jewelry? Did your mother leave anything?” Her heart rate increased.

“Some.”

She licked her lips. “Unless it has sentimental value, you should consider selling it, especially if it’s old.”

“You’re probably right.”

Ellie had to press the point. “Have you sold any?”

“Nothing that belonged to me.”

The ring hadn’t belonged to him, but was he aware of that?

“I know quite a lot about jewelry. I could take a look and give you a valuation.”

“Right.”

She’d hoped for more than “right.”

Jago locked the rooms again, and they went down to the ground floor.

“I hope you’re not keeping anything
very
valuable up there. It’s an invitation to thieves to put everything together like that. Do you have a burglar alarm?”

“Can’t afford one, but I rarely leave the house. There’s always someone around, and now if anything goes missing, yours will be the name I give the police.”

He might be smiling, but he didn’t trust her.
Can’t be stealing when it doesn’t belong to you
. That wasn’t the way the police would view it, though she had to find it first.

Jago unlocked a door at the end of a corridor, reached in to switch on the light, and illuminated steep concrete steps leading down.

“Torture chamber?” she asked.

“You wanted to see where we used to chain the dragons.”

The look on his face sent sparks swirling in her belly.

“It’s next to where the ghost lives,” he said.

“Bit of an oxymoron.”

He laughed. “True.”

Jago led her through a maze of musty arched rooms, past line after line of empty wine racks. The cellar was dark and creepy, but she’d have to come down on her own and search more thoroughly. Judging by the way she’d responded to the rose-gold ring, she’d assumed if any piece of the Kewen was near, she’d have some sort of reaction. Tingling, going hot, fainting, though that didn’t happen now when she held the ring, so she couldn’t be certain it would happen again. Plus how near did she have to be to the Kewen to feel it? Assuming she could.