They’d dropped the subject before it turned into a proper row. But it was only a matter of time before it reared its ugly head again. Laura adored Gabe, but it did sometimes get tiring, always having to be the boring grown-up in the family.
Down the hill from the tombola, Tatiana Flint-Hamilton was chatting up villagers waiting in line at the coconut shy. She’d swept down from the house earlier, making sure that everyone knew she’d been staying at Furlings – staking her claim – and looking more beautiful than ever in a demure, pale buttermilk shift dress, with her long blonde hair tied up with a whimsical blue ribbon. It was a far cry from the raunchy, barely-there outfits with sky-high stilettos she was known for in her tabloid days. But, of course, a lot had changed since then.
She wants people to like her so badly, thought Laura, pityingly. This time two years ago, she had it all. And now look at her, a guest at her own house.
Unlike Gabe, Laura Baxter felt sorry for Tati. She didn’t blame her for fighting her father’s will. If I grew up in a house like Furlings, I’d fight like hell to keep it too, she thought, glancing over her shoulder at the Queen Anne mansion perched serenely at the top of the hill.
The house looked more gorgeous than ever today, dazzling in the May sunshine with its sash windows dripping in wisteria and its lawns criss-crossed by box hedges and winding gravel paths, dotted with elaborate topiary. How awful to think of it being lived in by strangers! And how hard for Tati to have to stay there now as a guest, even before her hated cousins had arrived. Secretly Laura was rather rooting for Tati to turf the interlopers out, although that was highly unlikely. The bylaw that Tatiana was hoping to invoke was properly ancient. As for convincing the naysayers in the village that she was suitable lady of the manor material? With her history, that was going to be a tall order. It would certainly take a lot more than a Julie Andrews dress and a hair ribbon.
‘It’s impossible,’ Tatiana complained good-naturedly to the woman standing next to her at the coconut shy. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t this hard when I was a girl. Are you sure it’s not rigged?’
‘Pretty sure,’ the woman laughed.
‘I reckon they’ve glued them onto the stands.’
‘Nonsense.’
A wildly attractive Latin-looking man whom Tati dimly recognized appeared at her elbow. ‘You just need the right technique.’
In chinos and a blue linen shirt that matched his eyes and perfectly offset his olive skin, the man was easily the best-looking specimen Tati had seen since her return to Fittlescombe. With the Cranleys due to arrive in a week, she would soon be kicked out of Furlings and have to find herself more modest accommodation in the village while she put together her legal case against her disinheritance. The prospect of months spent living in some dismal local hovel had been filling Tati’s heart with gloom for weeks now. As had the idea of begging for a job as a lowly teacher at the village primary school.
The real kicker in Rory’s will, the part that no one in the village even knew about yet, were the conditions the old man had placed on Tatiana’s trust fund. Not content with robbing her of Furlings, he’d effectively taken steps to cut her off from all family money unless she, as he put it, ‘got her life in order.’
With this in mind, the old man had stipulated that if Tati agreed to take a teaching job at St Hilda’s Primary School in the village, he would authorize the trust to release a ‘modest’ monthly stipend. Even then, the money would only ever be released to her in the form of regular income payments. At no point would Tatiana receive a large lump sum of money.
For Tati, this had been the final twist of the knife. She recalled the scene in her godfather’s London office as if it were yesterday.
‘You’re telling me I’m penniless?’ She’d glared at Edmund Ruck accusingly.
‘Hardly,’ London’s most eminent solicitor responded evenly. ‘You have the equivalent of a modest trust fund for the time being. As long as your life remains stable, the monthly payments will go up considerably every year. Any capital remaining at the end of your life will pass to your children.’
‘It’s a fucking pittance!’ spat Tatiana.
‘It’s more than most people earn in a lifetime, Tati.’
‘I don’t care what “most people” earn. I am not “most people”.’ Tati’s arrogance hid her fear and profound shock. ‘And I won’t get any money coming in at all till I’m thirty-five. Thirty-fucking-five! I might as well be dead.’
Edmund Ruck suppressed a wry smile. He’d known Tatiana all her life and was fond of her, but he understood why Rory had declined to trust her with the family fortune, still less with the magical historic seat at Furlings. Even so, leaving the estate to a distant cousin he’d never met had been a surprising move on the old man’s part. The will had raised Edmund Ruck’s eyebrows, so he could hardly expect it not to raise his goddaughter’s.