‘Let’s just call it a surprise,’ he said casually and switched on the stereo. He pressed a few buttons and Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire came on. ‘It’s a long ride. Lie back and enjoy the music.’
I crossed my arms huffily. Fine by me. If he imagined he was insulting me by playing country music, he could think again. I loved country music and I was proud of where I came from. Besides it would mean he would quit his belly achin’.
We drove without exchanging a single word for almost an hour. Eventually he turned off the motorway and drove down a dual carriageway for another ten minutes before we got on to quieter country lanes.
A brown road sign indicated that Chiltern House was nearby. I had heard of it. It was meant to be very beautiful. I saw a picture of it in a magazine once at the dentist’s office.
To my surprise he turned into the road that lead to Chiltern House.
‘Are we going to Chiltern House?’
‘Yup.’
I turned in my seat to face him curiously. ‘Why are we going there?’
He glanced at me briefly before turning his eyes back to the road because we had reached a gated entry manned by a man in a uniform.
The man smiled and respectfully called, ‘Morning m’Lord.’
Then the gates swung open.
Chapter 17
Tawny Maxwell
He nodded and we drove through with my brain racing in overdrive. The road climbed a hill. On either side was beautiful rolling countryside. My gaze was drawn to a herd of deer resting under a massive, old oak tree. The car came to a halt at the crest of the hill and from our vantage point, Foxgrove Hall sprawled out in the stately grandeur of a time past. I took a deep breath. Well, knock me down and steal my teeth!
‘All this belongs to you, doesn’t it?’ I breathed.
His response was a shrug.
Well, shut my mouth. There I was thinking he wanted me for my money and the man had enough to burn a wet mule. No wonder he was drinking a bottle of champagne worth thousands of pounds for no good reason. Now I understood why Robert had entrusted my entire inheritance to him.
I felt a great sense of relief: he didn’t want to marry me for my money. He genuinely wanted to help me. I gazed in wonder at the splendid building. I had never seen anything so grand in my life. It was at least five times larger than Barrington Manor.
‘How big is this place?’
‘It’s set on seven hundred and fifty acres.’
I whistled.
‘You’re wishing you hadn’t insisted on that pre-nup now, aren’t you?’ he teased with an irrepressible grin.
‘No,’ I said slowly, ‘but I am very embarrassed. Turns out you’re waaaaay richer than me. Why didn’t you correct me?’
‘I’m correcting you now,’ he murmured.
‘You live in London. So who lives here?’
He started the car. ‘Me sometimes.’
‘Jeez! What a waste!’
‘I guess I’ll use it more when I have a wife and kids.’
I felt a strange hollow feeling in my stomach. I knew he was not referring to our pretend marriage. One day, after he divorced me, he would fall in love and marry someone for real.
‘My mother lives here for certain parts of the year,’ he said.
I filled my lungs with air. ‘Is she here now?’
‘No, you’ll never catch her in England in the winter.’
As we drove closer to the house I saw just how tall and imposing the thick front columns were.
‘So you inherited all this, huh?’
‘The house has been in the family since the eighteenth century, but almost the entire west wing and its contents were destroyed in a fire in 1995. There was no money to rebuild it so it remained that way until I inherited it. I was seventeen when it became mine and I remember coming here that first time and not only the west wing was a burnt shell, but the whole place was in a terrible state of disrepair.’
He shook his head with the memory.
‘I was advised to turn it into a trust building, but I refused. It took me ten years to return it to its former glory. You are looking at the only classical Greek revival stately home in all of Buckinghamshire,’ he said with quiet pride.
‘If your father couldn’t afford to rebuild it, where did you get the money from?’ I asked curiously.
‘Well, I took a big risk. I knew there were billions to be made in the emerging property market in China, so I mortgaged everything I had and invested every penny I had. I could have lost everything.’
‘But you didn’t.’
‘No, I didn’t. You know all those images of ghost cities that are on the net?’
‘Yeah?’
‘I helped build some of them.’
I frowned. ‘How did you make money building those? Aren’t they supposed to be failures? Years later and nobody is living in them.’