“Alden!” Alice said brightly, pushing a white metal chair at him. “Just the man I wanted to see. Now, I promised you I’d find a woman for you, and I’ve done it.”
Perhaps he was out of his mind.
Panic swamped him at the thought of a woman expecting him to be romantic. To court her. Hell, even the thought of dinner with a woman made his palms sweat. He gulped down the lemonade, thrust the glass onto the table, and said hurriedly, “No time to chat. Must dash. Have to be at Bestwood first thing in the morning, and I have to pack.”
“But—you haven’t heard anything about the woman I found for you,” Alice said, a frown on her brow.
“Later,” he said loudly over his shoulder, bolting for the nearest door.
“I’ll send her down to Bestwood Hall to meet you,” Alice called after him. “She’d probably like to help—”
The slam of the library door thankfully cut off the rest of her comments. Alden hurried up the stairs to the small room at the back of the castle that had traditionally been his when he was in residence.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he said aloud, thrusting various pieces of clothing into a couple of suitcases.“You’re a grown man. It’s just stupid that the thought of meeting women puts you in such a panic. Gunner’s right—you need to just get a grip, go to a bar, and start talking to the nearest woman.”
A little shudder ran through him at that thought. He swept through the room, dumping books, photos of family, and his collection of antique astronomical equipment into his two bags, all the while lecturing himself on the futility of being such an idiot. The lecture did little good—he’d been over it all so many times before—but the familiarity of it provided an odd sort of comfort, at least enough that his heart was no longer racing, nor were his hands shaking by the time he got his bags loaded into the Mini Cooper that he’d bought from a former university roommate.
“You’re not leaving now, are you?” Elliott asked a few minutes later when Alden ran him to earth in the room that Elliott used as his office. He was seated at a laptop, and was no doubt writing away on his latest book. “I thought you were leaving in the morning. Surely you can stay to dinner.”
“It’s better if I’m off now. It’ll take me almost eight hours to drive to Bestwood, and if I get in late tonight, I’ll be ready to start the renovations first thing in the morning.”
Elliott rose from his desk and came around it, embracing Alden in a bear hug. “You don’t have to date this woman, you know.”
“What woman?” Alden asked, a spike of panic shooting through him. Dear god, had Alice brought the woman to Ainslie Castle during the time he’d been packing?
“Alice’s old college friend. The one she thought would be perfect for you. I know the last thing in theworld you want to do right now is think about dating, but I’d appreciate it if you were polite to her when she shows up at your eyesore.”
Alden made a face. “That’s what I need, a woman hanging around expecting me to entertain her when I will have loads of work ahead of me. Couldn’t Alice—”
“No. Trust me, this is the best way. If you don’t like her—and love Alice as I do, I have to admit that she’s not necessarily the great matchmaker she thinks she is—then you can simply cry off by telling the woman you have work to do. Just show her around the house—that’s all I ask. You can do that for us, can’t you?”
“I suppose,” Alden replied, aware he sounded ungracious. “It’s not that I have anything against your wife. It’s just...”
Elliott gave him another hug, then clapped a hand on his shoulder, and walked out to the back drive with him. “I know. It’s not easy for you. Just don’t try so hard to be a scintillating conversationalist.”
Alden laughed. “I’d settle for being able to talk without my tongue twisting around itself.”
“You’re a smart man. You have the Ainslie charm, when you let people see it. Stop worrying so much about what others think and just be yourself.”
“I try, El,” he said, his shoulders slumping in defeat. “But it just doesn’t come to me the way it does to the rest of you.”
“Think of it as a game,” Elliott said, stopping at the door to the car. “And, Alden?”
Alden opened the door and tossed in a small backpack. “Yes?”
Elliott smiled. “Stay out of trouble, all right? I’m tied up with this book, and the baby coming in a few months,and I really don’t want to have to rescue you like I did Gunner.”
“I have absolutely no intention in getting myself locked into the bowels of Bestwood Hall,” Alden replied with much dignity.
“See that you don’t.”
Alden waved as he fired up the car, and, with a little spray of gravel that had Elliott shouting abuse, zoomed down the drive and off to his new life. Despite the threat of Alice’s friend hanging over his head like a particularly depressing cloud, his spirits rose at the thought of what lay ahead of him.
“Bestwood,” he said aloud, enjoying the way the word sounded. “Bestwood Hall. Not a manor, not an abbey, but a hall. Why, hello, how do you do? This? Yes, that’s Bestwood Hall. I own it. I am the master of Bestwood Hall. Heh. That sounds like a Victorian melodrama:The Mystery of Bestwood Hall.The Ghost of Bestwood Hall. Big Bouncing Baby Bustles of Bestwood Hall.”
He amused himself for a while with titles; then his mind drifted over the work that was before him. Buying the house wasn’t difficult—he’d heard about it from Toby, one of his many former university roommates, who was now a solicitor dealing with complex wills and estates.
“You’re looking for a house, right?” Toby had said some three months earlier, when Alden had run out of funds and been forced to take a job working under the table for a less-than-scrupulous builder. “Something you can fix up and sell for a profit?”
