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He had a key and he opened the door to a spacious hall, with a flag-stone entrance, myriad rooms spreading in various directions and a short staircase that led up to the top.
The smell was musty, the smell of a house that hadn’t been inhabited for a while. There were signs of disrepair. Maude could spot each and every one from a mile off because she had a keen eye for those details.
But the musty smell, the flaky paint and the saggy floorboards were all minor technicalities that faded away, because everything else was just so charming.
The dimensions were perfect and she forgot all about Mateo as she embarked on a journey of discovery, looking into all the rooms.
They were cosy rooms with high ceilings, bay windows where a person could sit and gaze out at the tangle of greenery behind, with the creak of ancient floorboards in need of restoration...
There were six bedrooms, three of which were on the ground floor and looped in a horseshoe shape, circling a small, private courtyard with its own gurgling fountain and rose bushes running amok. The other three bedrooms were up the flight of stairs and overlooked the fields at the back. Each room had its own veranda.
Maude’s imagination went wild. There was so much to do.
‘This is nuts,’ she said, tour finished, as he pushed open the door from the kitchen that led out to the patchwork-quilt garden at the back.
‘What is?’
‘This!’She waved her arms around helplessly and sneaked a look outside at the overgrown orchard and the open space.
‘Sorry?’
‘You can’t just go and buy a house you know I’d like to win me over.’
‘Ah...so what you’re saying is that you like the place...’
‘You know I do! It’s...it’s wonderful. Lots of work to do. Definite signs of damp here and there that need taking care of, and that staircase has seen better days.’
‘Want to have a look around outside?’
‘Mateo, it’s not going to work!’ She folded her arms and made herself look at him with firm resolution. ‘If this is about trying to get me to marry you by seducing me with the perfect cottage, then it just can’t work.’
‘Because of the love angle...’ His heart constricted. He was so used to winning yet so powerless to win this one important thing. He banked down the sour taste of impotence.
‘Don’t.’
‘Well.’ He leant into her and there was a smile in his voice. ‘As it happens, this cottage isn’t for you, my darling.’
‘It’s not?’
‘It’s for me.’
He took his time showing her round the parts of the cottage she had yet to explore, and the grounds, which were considerably more extensive than they’d appeared.
He had thrown her. He could feel her all at sea and on edge after what he had said.
Did she think that he would sit around passively, waiting for her to take the lead and tell him how she saw things panning out?
She had dropped a bombshell, and he marvelled that she had then seen fit to withdraw from the fray in the expectation that he would play along with that.
She was having his baby! It was a thought that filled his head every second of every minute of every day, and each thought fired him up with a protective longing he had never known existed in him.
Mateo didn’t doubt her for a single second that he was the father. Why would he? For starters, he could uncomfortably remember those occasions when taking precautions had not seemed as urgent as it should have; when sheer, blind lust had overridden everything else, including caution.
She also wasn’t the sort to fabricate anything because, as she had told him in no uncertain terms, she wanted nothing from him.
Except the one thing he could give no one.
But why couldn’t she see everything else that he brought to the table? Not just financial security, but a willingness to put his life on hold for ever for the sake of their child?
