Someone to Love Read online

  Jace remembered that Mr. Hatch had said the girl was “cleaning toilets” so he guessed she was paying for most of her tuition herself. She had ambition and spunk; he admired that. “Wise decision. So where do you meet in the meantime?” When Jace saw Mick turn away nervously, he knew they’d been meeting in his house. And why not? It had been empty for years.

  “Mick,” Jace said, “and…?”

  “Gladys.”

  “Isn’t there an empty apartment, a flat, over Mrs. Browne’s kitchen? Would you two like to live there after you’re married?”

  Mick’s eyes widened in disbelief, but Gladys’s face turned pink with delight. “Oh, yes, sir,” she said. “And you wouldn’t be needing a secretary, would you?”

  “Gladys!” Mick said. “That’s askin’ too much.”

  “Actually,” Jace said, “I do need a secretary. Maybe you two could look at that office by—”

  “The laundry,” Gladys said. “Yes, sir, I know it well.”

  When they looked at each other, Jace knew that had been her plan all along. Yes, with her around, Mick would do well for himself. “Perhaps you could make a list of what I’d need to set up an office—computer, printer, all that—and give me a price list. And let me know your salary requirements. We’ll have everything in place for you to start by the time you graduate.”

  “Oh!” Mick said. “She can start before she graduates. She can work evenin’s, if that’s all right with you, sir.”

  “Perfectly all right. Now, Mick, you better stop digging a hole there or Mr. Hatch will have your hide, and, by the way, even I know you dig with a shovel, not a rake.”

  Gladys laughed but Mick turned red.

  He left them to continue his tour of the garden. He felt that he’d just made a couple of friends and had gained a secretary to take care of the bill paying and the…He wasn’t sure what else he needed a secretary for, but he knew he wanted people in the house. Not that their apartment was anywhere near the main house, even though it was connected by a long passageway, but he liked that they’d be nearby. Talk and laughter might keep him from missing his family so much.

  Standing at the end of the formal garden, just before the woodland park began, Jace looked back at the house. Yes, it was hideous, but now that he was really seeing the place, there were things to recommend it. To his American mind, it was odd having two kitchens, but his mother always said that there was no kitchen on earth big enough for two women. If a family lived in the house, Jace thought, it might be nice to have a place that was just for the husband and wife and the kids.

  Stacy would like this house, he thought. When she wasn’t working she could make pancakes for the kids on Sundays and—

  He stopped that thought. It seemed that Stacy had known the house, but she’d never mentioned it to him. And as for having children, that argument had started everything.

  He walked along a path in the woodland, which was acres of beautifully manicured trails shaded by fabulous old trees. He saw copper beech, sycamore, horse chestnut, as well as oak and elm. Most of the trees he didn’t recognize and figured they were exotics, specimens that didn’t usually grow in England.

  Someone has loved this place very much, he thought.

  He took a left at an intersection of pathways and came to a tall brick wall with an oak door. Opening it, he saw a beautiful vegetable garden. Neat rows of vegetables were surrounded by foot-high boxwood hedges. A long greenhouse stood at one end, and there seemed to be half an acre of cages that kept birds away from the berries planted inside.

  As Jace looked about, he saw the pretty girl Mrs. Browne had been chastising scurry from behind one tall bean tower to another. She was followed by another girl. They didn’t see him, so Jace stepped behind the end of the greenhouse and watched.

  One young girl was plump and pretty, the other skinny and plain, and they were sneaking toward the raspberry cage. They opened the door slowly so the hinges wouldn’t creak, then tiptoed inside. Since the garden was huge and enclosed by a tall brick wall, he wondered who they thought might hear them.

  Jace stayed hidden and watched them fill little tin buckets with ripe raspberries. There were row upon row of bushes, each one dripping fruit. He remembered Mrs. Browne’s complaints about the theft of the berries, but he or his employees couldn’t eat all of them, so why not let the girls have them?

  He opened the cage door, noting the oil glistening on the hinges, popped a raspberry in his mouth, and said, “They’re good, aren’t they?”

  The girls jumped at his voice, then the pretty one looked as though she was going to cry. The thin one put on an air of defiance. “We can pay for them,” she said, glaring at him.

  “Will you call the police on us?” the other girl asked.

  “You are…?”

  “Daisy, sir,” the pretty one said. “I helped put you to bed last night. I took off your shoes and socks even though Mr. Hatch said to leave you the way you were.”

  “Thank you.” He turned to the other girl. “And you are…?”

  “Erin.”

  “Do you both work for me?”

  “Yes, sir,” Daisy said. “We clean your house.”

  “And do whatever vile task Mrs. Browne can come up with for us to do,” Erin added, watching Jace to see his reaction to that statement.

  His instincts didn’t allow him to trust these girls as he had Mick and Gladys. He was afraid that they would tell Mrs. Browne whatever he said. “So what do you do with the raspberries?”

  The girls exchanged looks and seemed to decide to tell the truth. Daisy said, “Our mothers make raspberry tarts, then they sell them at the local shop.”

  “May I assume that you do the same with…” He looked around the garden at the other bushes and had no idea what they were.

  “Strawberries, blackberries, gooseberries,” Erin said.

  “And apples, quince, medlars, apricots, peaches, pears, and cherries,” Daisy said.

  “And mulberries,” Erin added. “My mum makes mulberry jam and they sell it at Harrods.”

  “That’s impressive.”

  Erin took a step forward. “But the only way we can turn a profit is if the fruit is free. No one’s lived here for years, so the fruit was going to waste.” She glanced at the cage. “Not even the birds could get to it.”

  “What does Mr. Hatch know of this?”

  “Everything. We couldn’t do it without him.”

  “And Mrs. Browne?”

  The girls again exchanged looks, but said nothing.

  “If she knew for sure, she’d fire you, right?”

  “Yes,” Erin said. “If she caught us here we’d be sacked in a moment.”

  “What if I told her she couldn’t fire you? I do own the place, you know.”

  The girls smiled. “Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but do you? Owners come and go, but Mr. Hatch and Mrs. Browne stay. They make the rules.”

  “I can see how that would happen.” He didn’t say so, but he knew that he, too, would be leaving soon. “Perhaps if I tell Mrs. Browne that you two have my permission to pick all the fruit you want—”

  “Oh, no, sir!” Daisy said. “She’d make our lives a living hell, and we can’t quit because our mums need the fruit, and we all need the money. There are six women, all with children, who work in the business. And no men. My father is ill and Erin’s ran away with the postman’s wife, so—”

  Erin gave her a look that cut her off. “She means, sir, that we have families to feed and while it’s kind of you to offer to help…”

  “It would be better if I kept my nose out of it.”

  “Exactly, sir,” Daisy said, dimpling prettily.

  Looking at her, Jace felt sure she’d be married and pregnant in another year. “All right,” he said, smiling. “I won’t—”

  “Crickey!” Erin grabbed Daisy’s arm and they crouched down in the bushes.

  Jace, not knowing what was going on, remained standing, then he saw that Mrs. Browne had just enter