‘Woah,’ Sally breathed as Ben’s car pulled up in what had clearly once been the stable yard. She knew Askett Hall was grand but she had had no idea it was this grand, a huge Georgian stately home incorporating the older Tudor Hall and Norman Keep set in what felt like miles and miles of formal gardens and parkland.
It was as impressive as the Palais d’Artega, and that belonged to royalty.
It was so easy to forget day-to-day that Ben was an earl. When he spoke about work, he meant the company he’d founded. He didn’t use his title, and if his car was expensive and sleek, his clothes not just designer but tailored, he displayed them with little ostentation. But as she stepped out of the car and realised everything she saw belonged to him, the chasm between her life in Polhallow and Ben’s was suddenly stark.
How would Alice fit in here?
Sally swallowed. Her fears weren’t just for Alice; they were for her. Because things were good between her and Ben, really good. Ben had slotted so quickly and easily into their lives, spending two or three days a week in Polhallow and developing a close bond with Alice. There were times—walking on the beach, decorating the tree, watching Alice open her stocking, relaxing with a glass of wine once Alice was in bed—that she felt like they were finding their way to being a real family. To being friends.
And she should be happy with that. It was more than she had ever thought possible. But she wanted more. Her body still reacted to him like she was a love-struck teen. She was aware of him at all times, would find herself fixating on his strong wrists, on his throat, his mouth…
But his life wasn’t in Polhallow, his house there a temporary stopgap. He belonged here and she was beginning to understand just why his mother had played the cruel trick she had. Sally was as out of place in Ben’s world as she had been at the embassy ball.
Her sense of displacement widened as she followed Ben through the kitchens—yes, plural, she marvelled—and up a back staircase to the family apartments. Much of the house was open to the public but the family wing was big enough to fit her flat a hundred times over with space to spare. His brother and two sisters all had their own suites and his mother had only recently moved out of her spacious apartment into the Dower House.
‘I’ve put Alice in the nursery,’ Ben explained as he opened a door on the fourth floor. ‘Which means you’ve been allocated the nanny’s old rooms, as I thought you would want to be next to her, but if they’re not suitable…’
‘They’re more than fine,’ she assured him and they were, the bedroom cheerfully decorated in a warm yellow, the en suite perfectly appointed and the small sitting room equipped with a comfy-looking sofa. ‘They’re great.’
She was far more comfortable up here in staff rooms than she would be in one of the grand high-ceilinged suites. Another reminder this could never be her world.
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