Alice arrived at the construction site first thing the following morning and was relieved to see that Jack had arranged for security to block the end of the rural lane leading to the Roost. A guard checked the identification of anyone who wanted to get through, which meant the construction zone was blessedly free of distractions, photographers, and onlookers.
A fresh autumn breeze greeted her as she stepped from her car into a glorious morning. Acorn caps crunched underfoot and her boots sliced through the long grass, still damp with dew. Everything had a rich, peaty smell. Was this what the settlers would have experienced three hundred years ago? The rustle of autumn leaves and the soft, damp give of the earth beneath herfeet would have been the same. So too the chirping of birds in the sycamore trees and the musky-sweet scent of the field grass going dormant.
The Roost was halfway dismantled. Without its roof or second story, it looked naked and exposed. The stone chimney remained untouched, sticking up from the ground floor and encased in scaffolding from the ground to its top. Taking the chimney down stone by stone would be their first task today.
Jack looked cautious as he approached. “Any more trouble last night?”
He didn’t even need to mention Sebastian’s name. “No trouble,” she said easily. “Why are you dressed like that?” Instead of chinos and a golf shirt, he wore jeans, work boots, and a pair of heavy-duty gloves.
“I’m going to help take the chimney apart,” he said. “Nothing needs my attention at the golf course and this seems like more fun.”
She eyed the scaffolding. A couple of workers wearing hard hats and goggles scrambled up the widely spaced bars, hand over hand, on their journey to the top of the chimney. Hammers and chisels dangled from their work belts, and it looked like a dangerous job. For someone like Jack, maybe even deadly.
“Are you sure?” she asked. “Chiseling the stones out of the mortar might cause a cut and then—”
He stopped her worries with a kiss. “I’ve been living with hemophilia all my life,” he said. “I’m always careful, but I can’t live my life wrapped in cotton and watching from the sidelines.”
Jack gave her another quick kiss before putting on a hard hat and heading up the scaffolding. A cherry picker with a platform basket was positioned beside the top of the chimney to collect the stones.
The tapping of chisels and mallets filled the air. She shaded her eyes to watch Jack as he climbed to the top of the chimney.The flash of his white smile in his tanned face showed his delight as he jawboned with the other workers. Was he paying full attention? His skin glistened with sweat as he wiggled a metal shim beneath a stone, rocking it free of the mortar. A fellow worker lifted the rock free and passed it over to a man standing in the basket of the cherry picker. Bits of mortar rained down, pinging on the rungs of the scaffolding.
She couldn’t look. Jack might want to risk his neck playing macho man, but standing mutely down here while he did it was torture.
Her cell phone vibrated, and Sebastian’s name appeared on the screen. Accepting his call would be as reckless as Jack risking a catastrophic accident by dismantling the chimney, but she couldn’t help herself and accepted the call.
“Yeah, Seb, what is it?”
She had to cover her other ear against the construction noise to hear him. “The security guards won’t let me through,” he said. “I’m trapped at the end of the drive. There are reporters here, and none of us can get through.”
“That’s why Jack hired security,” she pointed out. Sebastian’s presence was going to trigger a fresh round of publicity she didn’t need.
“Can’t you let me through? I came all the way from London to see the Roost in person.”
She sighed. Back when she was in the depths of her infatuation with him, she told Sebastian all about the Roost and its layers of history. He seemed genuinely curious and asked insightful questions. He even offered his own speculation and got Margo to do some additional research.
She couldn’t deny him the opportunity to see the place he had helped her research. “Pass the phone to the guard,” she said, feeling like a pushover. All it took was a few words with the guard to grant Sebastian permission to enter the site.
Five minutes later he came strolling up the path, once again looking like a Ralph Lauren model, this time the safari version. He wore a white, open-collar shirt with its cuffs rolled up and khaki trousers, as though he was prepared to hunt a lion or pitch a tent on the African savanna.
“So that’s Reid’s Roost,” he said with a nod to the halfway-pulled-down building.
“ItwasReid’s Roost,” she replied. Without its roof, the chimney mostly dismantled, and the second floor laying in stacks of logs, the remnants of the building looked puny and sad. It was a little embarrassing to have painted such a grandiose picture of it for Sebastian when England was full of castles and manor houses far older and more impressive.
“The roof and the logs from the second story are in those tents,” she said with a nod to the two oversized canvas tents erected near the golf course.
“Give me a tour,” Sebastian wheedled, and she obliged. He was full of questions, and within minutes their old friendship was coming back to life. She spread a blanket well away from the falling bits of mortar to watch the dismantling of the chimney.
After an hour, the job was halfway complete, with only about eight more feet to go. At some point Jack spotted Sebastian and climbed down the scaffolding to approach them.
“What’shedoing here?” Jack asked, swiping a grubby forearm across his sweaty face. Sebastian came dressed like a gorgeous outdoorsman, but Jack was the real deal, with sweat and soot covering his muscled arms.
“I’m curious about the Roost,” Sebastian said.
“You scammed your way through security.”
Alice bit her lip. “Actually, I let him in.”
Instead of getting annoyed, Jack looked mildly amused. “You’re way too tender-hearted and forgiving.”
