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‘I don’t think so.’ Rhys didn’t get that involved with his father’s gin and liqueur making, but he knew enough to know that it all revolved around delicate timing once a batch was started.
Martha frowned for a second then her brow cleared as she hurried from behind the counter towards one of the shelves. She held up a bottle and grinned at him. ‘Will concentrate do? It’s pancake day next week so we’ve got extra stock in.’
Disaster averted, Rhys loaded the shopping in the boot of his Range Rover with the distinctive Juniper Meadows logos on the door and bonnet and headed away from the village on the short drive to the entrance gates of the estate. His phone rang again as he turned onto the sweeping drive and he pressed the button on his steering wheel with a grin. ‘I’ll be five minutes, Dad, calm down!’
‘Oh, darling. You managed to speak to your father, then?’ His mother’s voice filled the car.
‘Yes, yes. It’s all sorted. I’ll just nip to the stable yard and then I’ll be home with your stuff.’
‘You’re a good boy.’ Rhys grinned. Whether he was three or thirty, he would always be his mother’s good boy. ‘I was starting to think I’d have to drive into town,’ his mother continued. ‘And you know how much I hate that supermarket car park. Plus I’ve got a new aromatherapist to interview for the spa in an hour and I didn’t want to cancel her.’ Together with Stevie, Rowena ran the hotel and spa that now occupied their former ancestral home of Stourton Hall in the heart of the estate’s parkland.
‘Get her to do a practical demonstration on you, Ma, you sound like you need it! Don’t worry about Dad, that’s all in hand and I’ll unpack the shopping and put everything away when I get back to the farmhouse.’
‘Oh, what a good idea. Are you sure you won’t join us for supper tonight?’
‘No, thank you!’ Gatecrashing his parents’ romantic evening dinner was not his idea of a good time. ‘There’s a new series on Netflix I’ve been meaning to catch up on.’
His mother sighed. ‘I don’t like to think of you all on your own, not on a special day like today.’
‘It’s only a special day for retailers, Ma. Besides, it’s your fault I’m still single. You and Dad set such a high bar when it comes to love, I can’t just settle for anyone.’
‘If you never set foot off the estate, how are you ever going to meet someone, though? Even the fates need a bit of help to do their job!’
The fates. Rhys did roll his eyes at that one. ‘Love you, Ma. I’ve got to go, bye!’
3
He hung up without waiting for a reply because he couldn’t face another one of his mother’s long laments about his single status. It was easy for her; from everything they’d told him it had been love at first sight for his parents and they were still head over heels for each other thirty-odd years later. Fates indeed. Where did she come up with such rubbish? He adored both his parents, but it was something of a mystery to all of them how the child of two such free spirits had grown up with a determined, some might say ruthless, sense of duty to his family and the estate. Then again, as the second-born male of his generation, even if there was only a matter of minutes separating his father, Zap, from his twin brother, Ziggy, his dad had never really understood what it meant to be the heir.
Though his father, his uncle, and their sister, Stevie, had been at pains to raise both Rhys and Stevie’s daughter, Hope, without any expectations that they should stick around at Juniper Meadows if their hopes and dreams had taken them elsewhere, they’d both chosen to tie their futures to their ancestral home. If he didn’t step up, then who else was going to do it? Abdicating his responsibilities in the selfish way his grandfather had done would only pass the burden on to someone else.
Growing up, it hadn’t felt like such a big deal. If he stayed single as Ziggy had until very recently, then the title would pass through Hope to any children she might have. Unfortunately, when their family title had been created by Henry VIII, women had been viewed as little more than commodities, especially those of the aristocracy. Useful for building alliances with other families and for breeding the next generation, but that was about it. Like many others, the barony could only be passed through the male line. But since Ben had come home to them, Rhys had found himself thinking much more about the future. He loved his cousin enough to recognise that while he was sure Ben could step up if needed to, the weight of running the estate would surely snuff out the precious flame of his artistic talent. Plus, with Ben back on the scene, Hope, or at least any children she might have one day, had been pushed another step further from the title. Hope had never said anything to imply she felt any resentment about the situation, but then again Rhys hadn’t asked her about it. There’d been so much turmoil in the family lately, maybe it would be better to let everything settle down for a bit. Or maybe Rhys was looking for an excuse to continue to avoid raising something he’d always felt guilty about.
If there was any justice in the world then Hope would’ve been the one to inherit because she was better at seeing the bigger picture and getting the right people in rather than trying to do it all herself. Rhys was working on being less of an overbearing arse – one of the many painful – and painfully accurate – accusations Amelia had thrown at him in the dying days of their relationship, but he was definitely still a work in progress in that area. Hope had more patience and was much better suited to the people management side of things. She had an easy way about her, much like Ziggy, and for a long time Rhys had been happy to let her take on all the stuff about the estate he hated while he looked after the farm.
Knowing he couldn’t keep letting Hope take most of the strain, Rhys had stepped up and taken on the additional responsibility of the campsite, but it had proven incompatible with running the farm. Animals didn’t stick to nice, coordinated schedules. They didn’t care if he had new visitors to check in, or if the drains in the showers were blocked. He couldn’t ask the cows to wait to be milked or stick a sign up on a broken fence line asking the sheep not to stray past it until it could be repaired. When they’d had to close the campsite as a precaution during last summer’s troubles, it had been almost a relief. He was letting the side down; had been letting the rest of the family down in the process even if they were too bloody nice to mention it. That was why he’d decided to advertise for a manager for the camping business. Someone with the right knowledge and skills who could not only take over the day-to-day running, but drive things forward and maximise the potential.
As he parked in front of the distillery and climbed out, Rhys wondered if perhaps he should do the same for his personal life. But how to go about advertising for the position of future baron’s wife? It wasn’t the kind of thing he could stick in a dating app profile because the kind of women who would be attracted to the idea were probably the least suited to it. Besides, he didn’t have time to go out on one, never mind dozens of dates. Maybe he needed the fates to intervene, after all. He shook his head at the thought and popped open the boot to retrieve his father’s emergency lemons.
‘Hello, stranger!’
Rhys turned around and almost dropped the box he was holding as he was engulfed in a waft of perfume and an unexpected hug. He couldn’t step back, trapped as he was against the rear of the Range Rover, so he had to wait for the woman to release him. ‘Oh, Lydia, hi. What are you doing here?’
Lydia Caster-Hardwicke lived over the border in Oxfordshire on an estate that put Juniper Meadows to shame. The Caster-Hardwickes weren’t family friends as such, but they’d always included them in invitations to parties, Christmas drinks and the like and his parents had been too polite to refuse. Thankfully they lived far enough away that the enforced socialising was limited to once or twice a year. Lydia’s older brother, Hugo, was also an heir, but to a much grander title, his father being an earl.
Rhys and he should’ve probably been friends given their similar stations in life, but Hugo had always had too much of a sense of his own importance and had made clear his disgust that both Rhys and Hope had gone to the local comprehensive school rather than to public school. Rhys’s father, uncles and aunt had all been packed off to boarding school at their grandfather’s insistence and had hated every moment of it. There was no way Zap had been prepared to put Rhys through that, and he’d been happy to remain home and scribble through his homework sitting next to Hope at the large kitchen table around which much of their lives played out.
Though not a snob like her brother, Lydia was the very essence of a country lady in her Barbour jacket and Hunter wellington boots, long hair held back from her face with a sensible headband. ‘I popped over to see Jason,’ Lydia replied with a wide smile that showed every one of her perfect white teeth as she gestured towards one of the artisan workshops that were the lifeblood of The Old Stable Yard. ‘I snapped the girth on Moonlight’s saddle, and it needed repairing.’
‘Isn’t it a bit out of your way to come, just for that?’ Jason was good, but was he drive-an-hour-each-way good?
‘Oh, I didn’t come here only to see Jason.’ She reached out to smooth the collar on his shirt, a proprietorial gesture that made Rhys instinctively uncomfortable. That discomfort was only compounded by her next words. ‘I came here to see you.’
He tried to take a step back but bumped up against the Range Rover again. ‘Why would you want to see me?’
‘Because I think we could be good together.’ She said it so matter-of-factly.
‘I, umm, I’m flattered, I guess, but err…’
