Autumn Leaves at Mill Grange by Jenny Kane (best free e reader .TXT) 📕

back lane, avoiding the dig site, and therefore taking twice as long to get into Bodmin and the boutique café Shaun’d suggested they go to, Sophie tried to work out why she’d told her father that the date was with Shaun. He’d been delighted. ‘A nice solid young man with prospects,’ had been his response. He hadn’t batted an eyelid about the age difference. But then, she thought, Shaun didn’t look like he was in his forties, and her father was very unlikely to know he had a girlfriend. If he had, there was no way he’d have loaned her his precious car, so she didn’t have to take her Mini, and risk being spotted. ‘We don’t want tongues to wag, do we, darling?’ had been his response, delivered with a little wink.

Taking extra care as she drove out of the long driveway, onto the narrow road that looped the estate, Sophie swallowed the nagging conscience that prickled at the back of her neck. She hadn’t lied to her father, but she hadn’t been entirely honest either. She thought of him now, reading his banned papers, taking a moment to himself every day. Maybe that was how to survive being Lord of a remote manor.

‘You can’t think about that now.’ She spoke into the mirror as she checked the road behind her. ‘Now you need to impress Shaun. Perhaps living at Guron wouldn’t be so bad if Shaun lived here too. We could turn the manor into a tourist attraction, and have people come to visit the church site.’

We could have what they have at Mill Grange. Sophie pressed the accelerator. Shaun would be waiting for her.

*

Shaun felt guilty even though he had no reason to. Phil was fully briefed as to his mission, and although he wasn’t there to chaperone his late afternoon cuppa with Sophie, he was expecting a full briefing of the conversation in the pub later.

Heading through the empty café to a table for two in the far corner, ordering a large Americano, Shaun hoped he’d be able to stick to his plan.

*

Arriving in a puff of expensive perfume, Sophie appeared stunningly different from the woman he’d seen on site. Shaun found himself smiling a bit too widely at her, before an uncomfortable thought hit him. She doesn’t think this is a date, does she? This is just a coffee shop for goodness’ sake. Memories of Ajay’s theory about Sophie fancying him suddenly reared up in his mind.

As Sophie joined him, she shot Shaun a simmering smile.

You idiot, of course she thinks it’s a date. You’re in a café in Bodmin, hidden away from everyone we know. And I asked her to keep it secret. Damn.

Feeling a total idiot, and trying to gauge how badly Thea might react to Sophie’s assumption when he spoke to her later, Shaun wondered if there was a kind way to burst Sophie’s bubble.

As she gushed over the cake menu, Shaun listened with growing awkwardness as she enthusiastically thanked him for giving her the chance to chase her dream of becoming an archaeologist.

When she reached a hand across the table and laid it over his, Shaun made a play of flapping out a paper napkin, so he didn’t offend her by yanking his hand away, before grabbing his chance to get a word in edgeways.

‘Sophie, you’ve been great on the dig.’ She battered her eyelashes, making Shaun wish he hadn’t decided to open with a compliment. ‘And Phil and I, not to mention the rest of the team, are grateful you managed to persuade Lady Hammett to grant us an extension, but—’

Sophie dived back into the conversation, basking in the warmth of Shaun’s flattery. ‘You’re welcome. It was hearing about Mill Grange that swung it according to my father. Apparently, although she’d rather die than admit it, Mother is keen on having people admire her home in the same way.’

‘Oh.’ Shaun was prevented from saying more by the arrival of the waiter. But as he ordered a thought came to him. ‘How did you know about Mill Grange?’

‘I looked it up online.’ She fluttered her eyelashes demurely. ‘Ajay and Andy mentioned it.’

‘Oh, right.’ Shaun couldn’t recall anything about Mill Grange being opened to the general public being on the website Tina had organised, but he supposed the AA could have mentioned the open event they’d attended before Sam took over the manor. ‘Anyway, as you know, we need to get the excavation here finished so we can get to Upwich.’

Sophie nodded, the move making her blonde hair sway across her chest in a way that was incredibly provocative. Shaun was sure it was deliberate.

‘I can see why you’d want the television coverage, although…’ Sophie ran a fingertip around the top of her glass ‘… the Mill Grange site isn’t as important as ours, is it?’

Feeling instantly defensive and increasingly wary of Sophie’s body language, Shaun fell back on his television presenter’s stock answer: ‘All sites have their own level of importance.’

‘Of course, but…’ Sophie gave him a slow smile ‘…you can’t really want to dash back to Somerset, when Cornwall has so much on offer.’

*

‘I tell you, Thea, I drank my coffee so fast I burnt my mouth!’

Thea sat at her office desk gripping her phone, torn between gratitude at her boyfriend’s honesty about the café he’d fled from, and anger that he’d been so blind to Sophie’s advances in the first place.

‘And what’s worse,’ Shaun mumbled, ‘I never got to ask Sophie about what I took her there for in the first place. Phil is not going to be impressed.’

‘And what was that?’ Thea sat very still. She could feel her pulse thudding in her neck. ‘Why couldn’t you have just taken her to one side at the house? Why go out at all?’

‘Well, I…’ Shaun found himself blustering. ‘It’s just, we – Phil and I – think that her mother might be behind the acts of sabotage we’re experiencing.’

‘Seriously?’

‘The evidence seems to fit.’ Shaun wiped perspiration