His Inexperienced Mistress: Girl Behind the Scandalous Reputation / The End of her Innocence / Ruthless Russian, Lost Innocence. Sara Craven
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He shook his head. ‘I would offer you tea, but I’d like to get going and check that Bert is okay.’
‘Sure.’ Lily followed him back through the house towards the front door.
‘It seems traffic is particularly bad this morning. The cab driver has had to park up the road a way.’
‘That’s okay.’ Lily smiled. ‘I like walking. It’s a New York pastime.’
‘I suppose it is,’ Tristan agreed, feeling awkward and out of sorts after her disclosures in her bedroom. His instincts warned him to keep his distance from her. After last night she was more dangerous to his emotional well-being than she had ever been, and in hindsight having sex with her had been a terrible idea.
Lily waited for him to open the front door and stepped out ahead of him—straight into the view of at least twenty members of the press, who had breached his security gates and were filling the normally pristine space of his forecourt, trampling grass and flowerbeds as they jostled for position.
They shouted an endless list of questions as camera flashes momentarily blinded them both.
It was like a scene from a bad movie, and after a split second of shocked inertia Tristan grabbed Lily around the waist and hauled her back inside.
‘Oh, my gosh!’
‘I’ll call the police,’ he stated grimly, slamming the door shut before he turned to her and grabbed her chin between his thumb and forefinger. ‘Are you okay?’ His eyes scanned her face for signs of distress, wondering if perhaps she might have a panic attack.
‘I’m fine,’ she confirmed. ‘I told you, I rarely have attacks any more—and, anyway, you grabbed me so quickly I barely had time to register they were even there.’
She smiled and he trailed a finger down her cheek, noting the way her eyes widened and darkened. Tristan felt his body harden and tamped down on the response. He was supposed to be forgetting last night and keeping his distance.
He dropped his hand and stalked through the house until he reached the kitchen.
‘I’m sorry. I should have expected this…’ she said.
Tristan shook his head. Not sure if he was more agitated at himself, her, or the hyenas filling his front garden. ‘I don’t know how you live like this.’
She swallowed. ‘It’s not normally this bad. In New York you get followed sometimes, but it’s different here.’
‘It’s disgusting.’
‘I’m sorry.’
He swore, and Lily flinched.
‘Stop apologising. It’s not your fault,’ he bit out. ‘If anything it’s mine.’ He raked a hand through his hair and pulled his mobile out of his pocket. ‘Make a coffee, or something. We might be a while.’
‘Do you want one?’
‘No, thanks.’
After a brief interlude in his study, Tristan strode out into his rear garden and found Lily sipping tea on a stone bench, studying one of the statues that dotted his garden.
‘Plans have changed,’ he said brusquely, not enjoying the way she seemed to fit so seamlessly into his home.
‘Oh?’ Lily replied, confused.
‘We leave for Hillesden Abbey in an hour.’
‘How?’
‘Helicopter.’
‘Helicop…? But I have a dress fitting today with Jo.’
‘You had a dress fitting. The seamstress will travel to the Abbey during the week to meet with you.’
‘But surely Chanel don’t…?’
‘Yeah, they do. Now, stop arguing. A car will be pulling up in ten minutes to take us onto the Heath.’
‘Helicopters leave from the Heath?’
‘Not as a general rule.’
Ten minutes later two police motorcycles escorted a stretch limousine along Hampstead Lane and pulled up near Kenwood House, where a bright red helicopter was waiting. A few curious onlookers watched as they alighted from the car—but no paparazzi, Tristan was pleased to note.
‘Are you okay to fly in one of these?’ Tristan raised his voice above the whir of the rotors.
‘I don’t know,’ Lily yelled back. ‘I never have.’
He helped her secure the safety harness and stowed their overnight bags behind her seat.
‘I’m co-piloting today, but let me know if you feel sick.’
‘I’ll be fine.’ She smiled tentatively and he realised she probably would be. She was a survivor, and quick to adapt to the circumstances around her.
He handed her a set of headphones and took his seat beside the pilot, not wanting to think about how that was just one more thing to admire about her.
He was looking forward to going home. His father was away on business until Friday, when Jordana would arrive to commence her wedding activities, but Tristan always felt rejuvenated in the country. And most importantly of all, the Abbey was huge. It had two hundred and twenty rooms, which should be more than enough space to put some physical distance between himself and Lily and still remain within the constraints of the custody order. He felt sure that if he didn’t have her underfoot the chemistry between them would abate. Normalise. She’d just be another pretty face in a cast of thousands.
His chest felt tight as the ground fell away, and he berated himself for not thinking of the Abbey sooner.
LILY closed the last page of the play and stared vacantly into the open fire Thomas, the family butler, had lit for her earlier that night. The writer had captured a side of her parents she hadn’t known about. He had focused on their struggles and their hunger for fame and what had driven it, rather than just the consequence of it.
The result was an aspect of their lives Lily knew about from her mother’s diaries but which the press rarely focused on. It was an aspect that always caused Lily to regret who they had become. She had expected that reading the play would imbue her with a renewed sense of disgust at their wasted lives—and it had, sort of—but what she hadn’t expected was that it would fill her with a sense of yearning for them still to be around. For a chance to get to know them.
A log split in the grate and Lily rose to her feet and prodded at it with the cast-iron poker. Then she turned and wandered over to the carved wooden bookcases that lined the Abbey’s vast library.
She had been in Tristan’s ancestral home—a palatial three-storey stone Palladian mansion set amidst eleven thousand acres of parkland resplendent with manicured gardens, a deer forest, a polo field and a lake with swans and other birdlife—for four days now.
She’d taken long walks every day, as she and Jordana had done as teens, petted the horses in the stables, helped Jamie the gardener tend the manicured roses along the canopied stone arbour, and caught up with Mrs Cole, the housekeeper, who looked as if she’d stepped straight out of a Jane Austen novel.
In fact the whole experience of wandering around on her own and not being bothered by the busyness of her everyday life was like stepping back into another era, and the only thing that would have made her stay here better was if she’d been able to see Tristan more than just at the evening meal, where he was always unfailingly polite, and nothing more. It was as if they were complete strangers.
For four days he had studiously locked himself away in his study and, from what Lily could tell, rarely ventured out.
Lily