Cat’s insides lurched, her pulse quickening.She couldn’t remember the last time a man opened a door for her or protected her from the rain.He was very much a man, and very disconcerting.
She glanced up at him.“Thank you.”
He nodded, eyes forward.“It’s nothing.”
But it wasn’t nothing, at least not to her.She appreciated kindness and courtesy.She also appreciated the small gestures of chivalry as they were protective, and it had been a long time since she’d felt protected.
*
By the timeRhys turned off the main road and through the tall iron gates of Langley Park a half hour later, the rain had stopped but the clouds remained.The fields rolled out on either side of the road rimmed with hedgerows and the occasional flock of sheep.
Cat leaned forward as she caught her first glimpse of the huge country house.“It’s beautiful,” she said, drinking in the sprawling red brick house with the tall rows of windows on each of the three floors, and the chimney covered roof.“How did you end up with a holiday cottage here?”
“The Sherbourne family, which owns Langley Park, rents the cottages.I believe there are five different cottages, plus the old dairy which has become an event center, popular for weddings and parties.”
“So, you found your cottage online?”she asked, enthralled by the house in the distance.Cat knew her history, particularly English history, and she could see some traces of the Elizabethan house it had been before modernized by a Georgian façade, which could have been anytime in the 1700s.
Rhys didn’t answer right away.His focus stayed on the narrow road that wound between the trees.“I grew up here,” he said after a lengthy pause.“From the time I was three until I was seventeen.My father ran the stables for the Sherbourne family.”
“You grew uponLangley Park?”
He gave a small, noncommittal shrug.“In the stable cottage, behind the main house.”For a moment there was just silence before adding, “It was a different world back then.”
She wanted to ask more, but the silence felt weighted, and deliberate, as if he’d closed a door, and so she turned back to the window, seeing how the main house rose up with sprawling wings on either side of the main building.Smoke curled from a few chimneys.Off to the side of the house were outbuildings, brick and stone.One of those had to have been the stables, and another the stable master’s house.
“Do you know anything about the history of Langley Park?”Cat asked carefully, not wanting to be intrusive but terribly curious at the same time.To have been the stable master’s son… to have grown up in the shadow of grandeur and wealth.
“A little bit.What do you want to know?”
“I can see in the wings the original Elizabethan design, but the center of the house is Georgian.Is the inside the same?”
“There are several different entrances to Langley Park—the formal entrance there in the middle, and then the entrance that leads to the great hall, which was the original hall in the house.”
“And that hasn’t been remodeled?”
“No, it’s still quite medieval with its heavy beamed ceiling, tapestries, armor and swords and shields.”
“I would so love to see it,” she said impulsively under her breath.
“I can probably arrange a tour for you before you leave.”He glanced at her.“I just need to find out from Mrs.Booth when the tours are, and when I could sneak you in.”
“If they do tours, I could buy a ticket.”
“The tours have already sold out.December is the only time the house is open to the public.”
“It’s decorated then?”
“From top to bottom.”
“How gorgeous it must be.”
“The medieval, Elizabethan or Georgian eras?”he asked, smiling faintly at her enthusiasm.
“All of it.”
They turned down a narrow road that traveled below the huge lawn that rolled from the lower field up to the house, passing through shadowy woods before coming out on the other side onto a wider gravel road dotted with old stone cottages.
Rhys pulled in front of the second cottage, two stories with matching windows on the first and second floor.The cottage looked rather austere in winter, but Cat was charmed by the pitch of the roof and the symmetry of the front door and windows.
