He gives my thigh a little rub. “Gosh, it’s fine, Jay. I have plenty of shirts. And I think you should probably call me Lucien. Dr Avery feels a little formal now that we’ve spent the night together, don’t you think?”

  Heat rises up my neck at the image of him stretched out asleep and those fucking nipple piercings. A set of ancient binoculars is propped on the bench next to him, and I nod my head towards it, keen to change the subject. “I’d assume you were spying on the neighbours, but as you don’t have any, what are you looking at?”

  “That pair of lovers up there,” he replies, pointing. “Milvus milvus. Red kites. We’ve had red kites nesting on the estate for hundreds of years. This land is as much theirs as it is mine.”

  He hands me the binoculars, and I scan the pale-blue sky until I spot them circling high above.

  “They used to be a dying breed, but we’ve been part of a programme to increase their numbers in the UK. At one point, there were only three pairs left in the country—two pairs in Wales and a pair here. They are easily identifiable because of their forked tails. This particular husband and wife have been around for about fifteen years.”

  We track the graceful birds for a while, swapping the binoculars between us.

  “So what do you do here all day, apart from watching birds and avoiding chopping wood?”

  I’m rewarded with the shy smile again, and my stomach does a small flip.

  “Oh, you know, the usual. Host gala balls, receive ladies for tea in the drawing room, alter the cut of my britches with my valet, terrorise the under footman. Swive the stable boy.”

  I don’t know what swive means, but I can hazard a guess. “Very funny, Lucien. I’m a poor lad from a council estate in Wolverhampton. I haven’t got a clue what someone like you does to run a place like this.”

  He sighs. “Nor did I until about eighteen months ago. I was just another weary junior doctor, with an ICU consultant job lined up at St George’s.”

  He puts down the binoculars. “You’ve read up on me, I take it?”

  I nod, slightly embarrassed. Wikipedia was very informative.

  “Then you’ll know that I’m the spare, not the heir. None of this was supposed to happen. But when it did, I took the job at Allenmouth and came back. I work at the hospital three days a week, and the rest of the time, I’m here, going through business with the estate manager. I’m gradually becoming better at being lord of the manor.”

  I’d wondered why he only worked part-time, and now I know. “Do our work colleagues know about this?”

  He shrugs. “I don’t think so, although it’s not a deliberate secret. I can’t believe even Dr Leitner would have been so…so cruel had he known. I’ve had the occasional older patient from this side of town give my name badge a strange look, but then, as you know, propofol is awfully good at rapidly closing down an undesirable line of conversation.”

  I grin at him. Propofol is the first-choice anaesthetic drug we administer to send patients to sleep. It’s extremely powerful and works very quickly. Michael Jackson can vouch for that. Or maybe not. Lucien carries on.

  “And Avery is a fairly unremarkable surname, so they wouldn’t necessarily assume I was ‘Duchamps-Avery’.” Giving me a slightly apologetic look, he adds, “And I’m not exactly forthcoming with personal information at work. On balance, I’d rather you kept it to yourself.”

  I smile at him. “Even if they wondered, everyone would likely be too scared to ask you outright anyway.”

  He regards me slightly mischievously. Another flip of my stomach. “Are you scared of me, Jay?”

  “God, yes! But perhaps not for the same reasons as everyone else.”

  I feel myself blushing and stand quickly, hefting the solid axe in my hand. “Why don’t you sell up? You know, if you can’t manage it all?”

  Harrumphing, he replies, “Gosh! I’m not sure the fifteen earls who’ve gone before me would be very happy with that horrifying suggestion.” He cups his ear with his hand. “In fact, listen! I can hear them all turning in their graves now.”

  “Yeah, but it’s not as if you’re going to be carrying on with the family line, are you? Seeing as you are batting for the other side and all that?”

  His reply surprises me. “It’s on my to-do list actually,” he informs me. “The thirteenth earl managed it somehow, and he reportedly wore make-up and ball gowns and insisted the staff always addressed him as Lady Louisa.”

  I laugh. He’s funny when he chooses. “What was his real name?”

  “Lucien. As our American cousins are fond of saying, go figure.”

  *

  I chop the wood for a while, and he stacks it neatly under a shelter at the edge of the courtyard. He doesn’t talk much, but I don’t mind. I’m surrounded by folk all day at work, and I grew up in a small house with three noisy sisters, so I’m always happy to have a bit of peace and quiet. After an hour or so, we break for a cup of tea, and he leads me into the house. He removes his wellies, and taking his lead, I slip out of my trainers. The only difference is that I’m wearing white towelling socks and his long slim feet are bare. His painted toenails match his lips perfectly.

  I’m not sure what I was expecting as we enter the house—sweeping marble stairways, staff dressed in tailcoats, and Lucien ringing a silver bell to summon them before afternoon tea served in china cups. But he leads me through an ordinary solid back door and then along a fairly dark corridor, which opens out into a vast farmhouse kitchen, equipped with a dark-blue Aga at one end and a squashy, flowery sofa nestling at the other. A huge oak refectory table runs down the middle. Lining the walls are a hotchpotch of china plates, a couple of hunting watercolours, and dangling kitchen utensils. It’s warm and homely. He fills a battered tin kettle with water and places it on the Aga.

  “Do you have staff in the house, Lucien?” I’m quite self-conscious as I enquire, but in my defence, my mother is a huge fan of Downton Abbey. I’m still half expecting Carson, the head butler, to suddenly materialise. Lucien could probably do with a Carson in his life.

  He shakes his head. “No, not since…no. I don’t actually live in the main house these days. I use this kitchen and a service flat through those doors there.”

  I nod knowledgeably as if I fully understand the concept of a service flat.

  As he reaches for the mugs, he carries on. “Before the…before…” He stops and swallows, then starts again. “We used to all live in the main house; I grew up in it. It was always full of people—my…my… parents were very sociable.”

  Voice breaking, he turns away from me, playing with the pearls around his neck, and I pretend to be busy with something on my phone while he composes himself again.

  “You’re the first person who’s been in here for at least a year,” he blurts. “Apart from my cousin, Freddie, who visits sometimes. I don’t even invite Will, the estate manager, in—we meet at his office in one of the outbuildings. I haven’t been inside the main house for nearly that long either. Nobody has, except for a cleaning company who go in every month. I should take a look at it, or Will should. I’m just finding it very hard. I can’t explain it. I struggle to…to… I think…I don’t like to…to let people in.”

  I realise he doesn’t only mean into the house; he means into his life. Into his heart. He holds the mug out to me awkwardly with a trembling hand, tea threatening to spill over the rim. I take it from him.

  “So you’re the first, Jay. The first person I’ve let in. I don’t know why.”

  “Well, clearly, after our intimate night together, it was the obvious next step!” I joke, and the shy smile puts in a brief appearance. “You could give me a tour now if you like? So you don’t have to do it alone the first time? You can’t put it off forever. You might have rats, or a big leak, or an escaped prisoner squatting in the east wing!”

  Not for a moment did I think he’d say yes, but cradling his tea in one hand and fingering the pearls with the other, he beckons me over. We walk through what he referred to as the service flat. It’s a little down at heel and very dark—narrow corridors, with sombre wood panelling. A section of the panelling has plastic sheeting stretched across it.

  “Gosh, sorry about the mess,” he says, indicating it. “There was a rotten section there, where I had some water escape last year. I haven’t got around to having it repaired yet.” He gives me a regretful look. “As I said, I don’t feel up to having people in.”

  I take a peek under a corner of the sheeting. “It’s not too bad under here, Lucien. Just needs the rotten bit of wood taking out and a new section put in. And then you’ll have to sand and paint or varnish the whole lot, otherwise it will look mismatched.”

  Prodding the soft rotten bit, I then tap my fingers further along until the wood feels hard again. “I could do that with you; it’s probably not even a day’s work.”

  “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

  I gaze at him for a moment as he leans against the door frame, one hip cocked, drinking in his pale patrician features and elegant form. And the delicate negligee obviously. DIY and Lucien don’t really go together.

  “My dad’s a builder, Luce. I worked for him for years on and off, spent all my med school holidays working for him. This bit of carpentry is pretty straightforward.”

  Bloody hell, did I just call him Luce? Apparently, I did. And my balls are still intact.

  The sweeping staircases, marble pillars, fancy cornicing, and crystal chandeliers of my fertile imagination are on display in all their glory as we wander through the myriad of rooms. It reminds me of my mum’s beloved period dramas, starring Colin Firth or Maggie Smith. These rooms would provide a perfect backdrop. Minus the butlers and footmen and whatever other underlings were once required to keep somewhere as grand as this shipshape.

  “You could fit my parents’ entire bloody house into here,” I say incredulously as we enter what is evidently a library. All the furniture is covered in dust sheets, but the walls are lined with books from floor to ceiling, and they have those ladder things on wheels that sweep along the shelves. Under one dust sheet is the outline of a grand piano, or an oversized butternut squash, but my money is on the piano.

  “So what’s the proper term for a country pile like this, then, Luce? A manor? A stately home? A palace?”

  I try the ‘Luce’ again on purpose, but he doesn’t bite. In fact, he hasn’t said much at all as we’ve wandered around his ancestral home, but he seems less trembly in this room. He’s stopped fiddling with the pearls and has even pulled out a couple of books from the shelves and flicked through them. Returning one to a shelf, he looks up at me, smiling.

  “My father used to say the definition of a stately home is when you can reach speeds over 60 mph on the driveway, which was obviously a red rag to a bull for me and my brother. When we were younger, we shared a beaten-up old Volkswagen Golf. Oliver once got it up to seventy-eight on the flat stretch before the lake. Draw your own conclusions.”

  It’s the first time he’s mentioned his brother. Wikipedia informed me that the difference in their ages was less than two years. His voice didn’t waver either when he related this tale. I think he likes this room, he’s comfortable in it, and even with the dust sheets it has a cosier feel than the other grand reception rooms. I have a fleeting mental image of the two of us ensconced side by side on the giant sofa in front of a roaring fire, surrounded by all these books. Crazy, I’m not sure he even likes me that much. I just don’t think he wants to be alone.

  We head off up that grand sweeping staircase. The first door opens onto a vast bedroom, dominated by a hefty oak four-poster, also mostly covered in dust sheets. From lying in the bed, one could take in the entire parkland as it falls away as far as the eye can see. I imagine waking with Lucien in this bed, looking out over the lush green lawns, with him wrapped in my arms. Christ, I need to pull myself together. I’ve never even kissed a bloke, and now I’m dreaming about cohabiting with a rather peculiar one.

  He joins me at the enormous sash window.

  “So, where does your front garden finish then?” I tease as we gaze over what seems to be miles and miles of immaculately mown grass. He smiles in gentle acknowledgement at my humour.

  “You can’t see the end of my garden from this window. Beyond the park is a woodland, where one of the tenants runs a clay pigeon shoot, and then the village cricket pitch is through those trees over here.”

  He points to a patch of woodland in the distance. “And beyond that is the village of Rossingley. Most of the smaller cottages in the village are tied to the estate too. And the pub. And…um…the tenant farm over there. And the…um…other two farms in that direction.”

  Putting a hand lightly at the small of my back, he turns me so I’m facing easterly. “This is the back garden. All of that farmland over in this direction. Arable mostly, but there is some livestock. A lot of the fields are rented out to other farms. Er…oh, and those four cottages on the far hill are mine too.”

  I burst out laughing. I can’t help it. I’ve walked into a parallel universe, leaving the hospital and my little town house far behind. Or maybe not a parallel universe; perhaps I’ve just stepped back in time, back to the feudal system. Downton Abbey is positively slummy in comparison.

  “Wikipedia says that you are one of the richest landowners in the UK,” I state, turning to look at him. “I’m starting to believe it’s true.”

  He shrugs and moves away from the window. “Probably. I’ve some land and commercial property in London too. And the house in Mayfair, of course.”

  “Oh, yeah, of course. Who doesn’t have a house in Mayfair these days?”

  I receive a sharp poke in the ribs for that comment, but he says nothing as we carry on through more sumptuous bedrooms and corridors. Up and down a lot of bloody stairs. I’m beginning to understand why posh people are so skinny—this house brings a new perspective to the phrase ‘I’m just popping up to the bedroom to get an extra sweater’. I’ve lost my bearings completely; if he suddenly disappeared, I could spend days trying to find the right staircase out of here. We enter a room that is even bigger than all the others, not dissimilar in size to my old school’s sports hall, but with a fancier parquet floor and a much nicer smell.

  “The ballroom. Do you dance, Jay?”

  “Only when I’m pissed, and not the sort of dancing that goes on in here. More of a lumbering, embarrassing shuffle.”

  He raises his eyebrows. “Gosh, it sounds fabulous, darling. If I’d known that, I’d have asked you to partner me the other evening!”

  “Not when I’m that pissed, you idiot! But I’m betting fifty quid that you can dance properly.”

  He grins, a real grin that lights up his whole face. “What self-respecting earl doesn’t? Maybe I should teach you sometime.”

  “You’d have your work cut out.”

  I have a fleeting vision of me in a dinner jacket and him in his negligee, foxtrotting arm in arm around the ballroom, like on Strictly Come Dancing but without Bruno’s suggestive comments. I don’t actually own a dinner jacket, but I reckon Lucien’s got a few more of those slinky negligees tucked away.

  “Come on though, you have to admit. Being an earl, it’s sort of cool, isn’t it? I mean, I can’t imagine if I brought you home and introduced you to my mum and my nan as an earl—they’d be on the bloody ceiling. They’d be so stoked; they probably wouldn’t notice me telling them I was gay.”

  He’s looking at me curiously. “I didn’t think you were sure that you were.”

  “No, nor did I. Or rather, I didn’t know for certain.”

  “What, or who, helped you make up your mind?”

  It’s cool in these airy, uninhabited rooms, but for some reason I’m feeling very hot under the collar. “I think you probably know the answer to that, Lord Rossingley.”

  *

  The next floor is darker, the rooms more dormitory-like and utilitarian, branching off narrow, twisty corridors.

  “The old staff quarters,” Lucien explains helpfully.

  “Christ, you could have some wicked games of hide-and-seek in this place.”

  “We did.” He laughs at the memory. “Oliver and I always won against everyone else, though, because we knew where all the hidey-holes were. There are a couple of secret passages too. Once, when we were small, Oliver and I took some food and hid for about six hours, and my mother had just about everyone who worked on the estate out looking for us. My father gave us an absolute bollocking for that.”

  I’m over at one of the windows again, taking in the view of the huge lake and the tiny chapel at the far end. “This place is incredible, it really is.”

  It takes me a few seconds to realise he’s not answered or moved. Turning towards him, he has his back to me, shoulders hunched, head down. One hand is covering his face, the other grasping his pearls.

  “Oh God, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have persuaded you to do this. Don’t cry. Please, I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

  Christ, I’m a completely useless idiot. I feel absolutely wretched for initiating this trip down memory lane. Eventually, he speaks, his voice muffled into his hand.

  “I think you should probably go now, Jay. Let me take you downstairs and show you out. There is a very high probability that I’m about to fall apart, and as you have already witnessed, it isn’t particularly dignified or endearing, I’m afraid. Something I prefer to do in private.”

  His loneliness and his courage break my heart.

  I’ve probably watched too much sci-fi, but he almost has a kind of forcefield surrounding him, radiating warning signs to keep out. He’s no doubt built it up to protect himself, but it’s gradually killing him from the inside.

  “I don’t think so, mate. What sort of friend would I be if I upset you and then walked away?”

  I cross the room towards him and hover behind, unsure what to do. When he’d been upset outside the restaurant, putting my arms around him had seemed so natural that I hadn’t given it a second’s consideration. And not only because I’d been three sheets to the wind. He’d needed a hug, and I’d delivered, exactly as I used to with my sisters when they had boyfriend trouble, or Ellie, the last time she failed her exam. A normal, natural human response to another person’s distress. But this feels much harder; every cell of his body radiates ‘keep off the grass!’ loud and clear.