A Manor of Faking It (The Clarion Abbey Series Book 1) Page 6

  The only cure to take my mind off my problems, besides copious amounts of alcohol, was a sweaty spin class, but there were no workout studios in sight. Walking Clarion’s grounds was the next best alternative. It would allow me to take stock of how badly Stone and Dad had let it go to seed and determine where I should focus my energies first.

  The sun poked lazily through the clouds as I pulled on my father’s old Barbour jacket, donned a spare set of Wellies, and tracked down a walking stick. Speaking of Stone, I wondered when he’d grace me with his presence and if I’d need a witness when he inevitably tried to poison me like some disgruntled, medieval housewife. I thought I should probably change the locks at the very least, although I still hadn’t found the correct key for the front door.

  I set off across the weed-ridden gardens and the crumbling stone pathway to the yew woods. They had been my favorite haunt as a child. Finn, too. Next to a running stream, Dad had built the tree house, and I’d spent hours there reading books and escaping into them. I guessed I had really thought Finn would stay put in London. That was where the action was, and if I knew one thing about Finn, it was that he always liked to be in the thick of things.

  Suddenly, I heard a snort—the pig. He squealed and lunged at my unprotected belly.

  “Down, Boris! I have food. Don’t kill me,” I pleaded, grappling in my backpack for my lunch. So this was what it was like having a bully take your lunch money. I didn’t love it.

  Boris sniffed this way and that. Despite Jacob’s insistence that he was harmless, I still threw the pig an apple and some cold cuts. He wolfed them down in record time and came trotting after me like the ugliest Labrador in the world.

  “You’re not going to leave me alone now, are you?”

  Boris oinked once.

  “It’s going to be a long walk,” I told him.

  He oinked again and nosed my legs along.

  “Suit yourself.”

  He trotted behind me, stopping every few feet to sniff for worms. I couldn’t decide if it was a genius move to feed him and gain his companionship or yet another terrible decision. I decided to go with genius for now. If anyone was on the property, they’d probably think twice before attacking with my trusty, rabid pig protecting me.

  Although, the way Boris was rooting for food reminded me of the way I’d watched Miss Wannabe looking for her underwear in my apartment. I wondered if they were still together. I wondered when I’d stop wondering.

  The yew trees started at the edge of the gardens. There had once been a stone wall, but it’d crumbled enough that even Boris could mosey over it. With only my memories to guide me, I set off toward the tree house. It was May, so the red horse-chestnut trees and star-shaped elderflower trees were blooming. I loved seeing their falling scarlet petals and rescuing chestnuts from the thin layer of hoarfrost that covered everything in delicate lacework, then saving them to roast in the winter.

  Like chestnuts, most memories in the tree house were happy ones, filled with dappled sunshine and drowsy days. For a few hours a day, the light hit the stained-glass panel my father had installed in the thousand-year-old door, and I would swim in the brilliant colors. Other memories weren’t so wonderful. Others were burdened by images of him.

  Finn leaning his bike against a twisted tree and knocking on the door. Finn drawing pictures of dragons and princesses on the wooden walls. Finn talking about his dream of flying. Finn kissing me once, leaving a bittersweet taste of burned toffee on my lips. He had seemed worldly at the time, his sixteen years to my thirteen. It was my first kiss. He was my first kiss. It wouldn’t be my last, but there would only be one more in our little tragic comedy of errors.

  Once I cut ties and left with my mom, I refused to remember him again. I never even Googled him. Okay, not much. I knew he had a playboy mentality like many of the British elite, but I didn’t set a Google Alert for him or anything.

  My memories must have worked some strong magic in the yew woods. Suddenly, an apparition of his exact likeliness stood in front of me, mimicking the exact way Finn used to lean against the tree with his arms crossed, waiting.

  “I thought I’d find you here,” it said.

  I cocked my head. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt it was him, really him. The golden pulse was too strong to be only a vision, but I asked, just in case.

  “Finn?”

  “Do you know anyone else with such an amazing head of hair?” he asked, lifting an eyebrow.

  I covered up my shock with a laugh. “One never knows in these woods.”

  “So you still believe in magic.” Finn said it as a statement.

  “Only the jaded wouldn’t, but you’d know all about that.” I looked him up and down. “Are you really here?”

  Boris chose that moment to catch up. He sniffed and snorted, making Finn stand at attention and jump in front of me. “Get in the tree house, Poppy,” he said urgently.

  I laughed and petted the pig, promising him many more treats to come, speaking into his suddenly adorably floppy ears.

  “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of Boris.”

  “That mongrel is yours? When’s the feast?”

  Boris snorted indignantly.

  “Hey! Boris doesn’t appreciate that sort of talk. He’s a pet, not produce.”

  “You’ve been living in America too long.”

  I gave Boris one last good scratch. “Maybe, but I’m here now.”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Finn said. He shifted his weight. It was slight, but I saw it. He was nervous.

  “Do you remember when we used to pretend to escape to Narnia together?” he asked off-hand.

  Instead of answering, I crossed my arms. “Why are you doing this? What do you want?”

  Finn cleared his throat. “Because I want to be around you.”

  His voice sounded sincere. Why did it have to sound so sincere? I hated when he morphed into the Finn who cared, the Finn who was almost irresistible. His voice reached places I hadn’t known still existed, ones that had been locked down ten years ago. It was deep and dark, an abyss of inky oil. I shouldn’t have wanted that darkness opening me up again. Finn’s voice shouldn’t get to be the key that did it.

  He touched the tree behind the house. “Here was the lamp post.” Pointing, he walked to a tree a bit farther away. “And that wicked looking thing was the White Witch.”

  Finn went to another tree, tracing the bark with his fingers. I knew a note was carved there, but I didn’t respond. That seemed like too much of an opening, and I wasn’t ready to be on friendly terms with Finn. Not yet.

  The forest spoke in our silence. Squirrels slunk out of their holes, skinny and weak from their winter fast. Jays swooped and chattered, racing them to fattening buds of spring. Before I let the forest work its real magic, before Finn could sweep me back into his mysterious charm, I pushed past him, accidentally inhaling his intoxicating scent. He smelled fresh and clean, like earthy loam and something else, something a little wild.

  Damn him.

  “If you didn’t notice on your way in, I have a ton of work to do. Excuse me,” I said, walking back to the tree house.

  Finn followed, unwilling or unable to speak. He silently picked up a trash bag and a hoe and set to weeding alongside me. Ivy had grown all over the tree house, wreaking havoc on the carefully hand-sawed logs. I ripped them off and brushed away the delicate roots clinging to the wood.

  We worked like that for a little while, lost in the repetition and sweat. It was impossible not to be aware of his every movement, especially when he knelt on one knee and pulled his shirt over his head. He stretched once and went back to work.

  His body was so close, so warm and deliciously hard. I hated how he did this to me. The draw I felt to him was easy to understand, but it didn’t make it any easier to swallow. I hated the way his charm and beauty made my stomach clench and the deeper parts of me forget how much I hated him. It would be an epic mistake, one worthy of history books, to fo
rget what Finlay Damford was capable of doing.

  I jammed my fingers into the warm soil, putting all my anger and confusion into mercilessly ripping weeds from the ground. Why had he insisted on growing up so dashing? Why did he have to have the perfect swoop in his hair and those piercing blue eyes? Had I done something wrong in another life? Was this karma? I especially hated how it impressed me the way people looked at Finn with respect, or that he commanded such respect with his perfect suit and tie and quiet air of reserve.

  I finally noticed that Finn had stopped working and stood staring at me.

  “No one is asking you to stay and help, Finn. You’re free to go do…well, whatever it is you do all day long without a job.”

  “I had a job.”

  “Wow. I’m impressed.”

  Finn scowled. “And what do you call posting photos, exactly? A bloody job? Because here we call it an abomination.”

  “I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be profitable than popular in an old, dying order that still forces young girls to ‘come out’ to society or face the prospect of never marrying well, which is, apparently, appalling,” I replied. “Wait—how do you even know what I do?” I snapped my fingers. “You’ve been checking up on me. Should I get a restraining order, my stalker friend?”

  Finn refused to look embarrassed. “Of course, I looked you up.”

  “I’m flattered,” I said. He didn’t need to know my hopes and dreams, or what those silly little photographs were helping fund. “And what happened to your job? How do you British say it? Did you become redundant due to incompetence?”

  He flinched. I saw it. So I was on the right track.

  “Never mind that. I don’t want to fight with you, Poppy. I have something else in mind.”

  “I’m not sleeping with you.”

  Finn moved closer. “I’m not asking you to.”

  I sighed, clapping my hands to brush off the dirt. “What do you want, Finn? I am now responsible for all of Clarion Abbey, and it’s going to be a hell of a time to keep it from going under.”

  “I know. That’s why I want to offer my help.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “And how’s that?”

  With a devilish smile, Finn took my breath away in the space of a sentence.

  Chapter Nine

  Finn

  Poppy stood there, mouth open.

  “Did you hear me?”

  She half-nodded, turning her head to the right, to the left. “I—no. What?”

  “Would you do me the immense honor of being my girlfriend for the next six months?”

  For a few heartbeats, I wondered if she could see right through me, could see that part of me wanted this for real and I would do everything my charming bastard self could do to make her mine.

  I was a good fucking actor, but maybe she knew the more real, more primal part of me, the boy before all the fuckups. The old Poppy had known him, and I hoped the new Poppy still remembered some of him. She knew my apologies were filled with untruths, like the carving on the tree.

  Sorry.

  We hadn’t known it when I gouged it in the bark at the age of twelve, but I had many more things to apologize for in the following years. It had been my first big lie.

  She was my one Achilles heel, my one weakness, and my one ticket out of the misery my father inflicted on me.

  And yet…merely standing in front of her was making me burn. I watched her shamelessly, not quite willing to let her out of my sight now that she was back in it. Stone always insisted she was half-fey from her mother’s side, and now I wondered. This spell she wove around me was otherworldly and altogether delirious.

  “What do you say, Lady Perrinton?”

  I flashed her my perfected half-grin, which had graced enough magazine covers and newspaper front pages to insulate a house for winter.

  She scowled. Okay, so perhaps she was immune.

  It reminded me so much of the young Poppy, the playful Poppy when we told her she couldn’t join in on our adventures. She never cried or stamped her foot and whined. She got even.

  Poppy always was a stubborn little thing. We tricked her into hiding in an old corner of the library while we escaped to whatever stupid idea we had that passed for fun. That day, it had been medieval knights on a holy crusade. She kept an eye on us, watching out the window and sneaking after us, her own toy sword in hand.

  We reached a crumbling, ancient Norman fort and commenced our battle. When I was about to win the war and crown myself king of the old world and the new, Poppy jumped me from behind, walloping me with the flat end of the wooden play sword. She knocked me completely off balance and I stumbled while she proclaimed herself queen of all.

  All the boys stood slack-jawed, ready to overrun her, when I whooped and hollered and kissed her muddy little boots to proclaim her queen indeed. She’d earned it, that sly little trickster. All her subjects bowed before her as she paraded us around for the rest of the day to do her bidding.

  The grown-up Poppy, the beautiful woman standing in front of me, all glow and adventure gone, was shaking her head, ready to reject me. The weight of her estate hung on her shoulders like an albatross. She didn’t have time for silly games.

  My grip on the situation felt like it was loosened to the point of no return. I grasped quickly for it before I lost her. The gaping ache in my chest grew.

  “You want to be seen and taken seriously, right?” I asked.

  “Well, yes—”

  “And you need money and contacts of ‘pale, stale men’ to succeed, correct?”

  “Yes, of course—”

  “I need to prove to my father I am serious about cleaning up my image. So, Lady Perrinton, I offer my pale, stale self as your noble knight in shining armor.” I gave a formal bow. “If you so desire to consummate this relationship in the traditional way, I would not object, but a simple ‘yes’ should suffice.” I lifted my head to peer up at her reaction. It was magnificent. Her jaw ticked, her eyebrows zoomed downward, and the soft freckles across the tip of her nose became darker as she clenched her teeth. She was holding back and it was glorious to watch. I knew she wouldn’t hold it for long.

  “I’m not going to pretend to marry you!” she shouted.

  I grinned. “Of course not. We’re not that outdated. Father needs to see I’m in a committed relationship.”

  Poppy shook her head, as if she couldn’t quite wrap her head around this. “For how long?”

  “Until he believes me.”

  “That could take years!”

  “It won’t,” I promised.

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve never brought a girl home. The pure shock of me presenting you to him on Saturday might do the trick. If not, it’s possible the shock could kill him instead, freeing both of us from this problem.”

  “Finn, that’s horrible! How could you say that?”

  “You know as well as I do, Seedling, that I have no honor.”

  “Don’t call me—wait, did you say this Saturday?”

  “Yes.”

  Her nostrils flared. “I have stuff going on too, you know. A life, a social calendar—stuff.”

  I laughed. “Doubtful, since I know every social event worth going to and there’s nothing but the usual group in London.”

  She was so stubborn. I’d almost forgotten. As a kid, she once stayed up in a moss-covered tree all night when I told her the fairies came out only in the first full moon of the spring at one minute till midnight. Even after I begged her to come down when her parents sent a search party, even after she accidentally fell asleep, slipped, and broke her arm, she still insisted on staying until five minutes past midnight, just in case they’d gotten scared. I never did come clean about those fairies. Actually, I retreated further into my lie.

  “Maybe I was invited.”

  My jaw clenched, and I quickly schooled it into a grin. “Where you go, I go, my darling.”

  “Fine!” Poppy threw her hands up. “There’s nothing g
oing on. I’m a nobody here, except I somehow won the inheritance game against Stone, so people are curious about me. Happy?”

  “Deliriously. Shall I pick you up at seven?”

  Chapter Ten

  Poppy

  Finn left, sensing I needed time to process, and I did. An entire mountain of paperwork, bills, calls from debt collectors, and the pervasive sense of grief weighed down my every movement. The death duties alone were enough to make my eyes water. It wasn’t that I regretted paying Jacob his backlog, but that cash would have certainly come in handy.

  I had only three days before I needed to put on my best, fake girlfriend, googly-eyed smile. Three days to get more calm than a love child of Mother Teresa and Ghandi.

  Of course, I would do it. We both knew I wouldn’t turn down the opportunity for my pride. I was pragmatic, completely and complexly Americanized. Finn offered more than money—he offered contacts, which I would desperately need in this elitist new world.

  That meant I had three days to decide my terms. Sleeping together was off the table. Sleeping with Finn felt dangerous, like it would lead to a very slippery slope I’d never ascend again.

  Allowing Finn to help me was also an odd sensation.

  In LA, I knew all the biggest and brightest events. Here, I knew nothing except what Simone filled me in on. Here, Finn was the biggest and the brightest.

  After a little online stalking—know thy enemy—I’d found article after article about his bad behavior and just as many detailing his daring exploits in the sky, sea, and clubs of London. The villages around Wodehall loved him as much as they feared the current duke, his father.

  It was hard not to be charmed by his thick black hair and staggering smile. Warm tickles had crept up my body while he was proposing his plan to me, and I didn’t find it as odious as I should have.