The Charming Adventurer

It was clear Lucy needed help to save her beloved Oakwell Hall… but who would step up to offer it?

I’m very sorry.” Christine, the auction house valuer, gave Lucy a tentative smile, the sort to soften bad news. “I’ve looked at the contents of the house and I’ve been through the inventories and there’s nothing worth selling at all.”

“I wasn’t expecting it, really,” Lucy said. “Apparently my great uncle’s ancestors were a bunch of wastrels.”

She frowned. Great Aunt Diana had been a little vague on her husband’s family history, mentioning only that the Lovells had already been in financial trouble by the start of the ninteteenth century, when the heir to the estate had disappeared one night taking all that was left of the family fortune with him.

Somehow they had staggered on, Oakwell Hall falling down around them, until now, when she had become the latest inheritor of what her sister Mora called “the family millstone.”

Lucy sighed. She had already put so much work – and all of her savings – into the plan to renovate Oakwell. Eventually she wanted to open the little manor house to the public. Selling off some of the contents would have been a last resort, but now it turned out there wasn’t anything to sell anyway.

Lucy gritted her teeth. She wasn’t giving up yet. She’d loved Oakwell since she was a child and Great Aunt Diana had entrusted it to her.

“Let me know if anything interesting turns up,” Christine said brightly, stepping over the paint pots that littered the hallway. “You’ve got my card.”

“Thank you,” Lucy said. She closed the door after her and leaned against it for a moment. She felt she needed the support. “Is there a problem?” Lucy jumped. Will Spencer, her builder, was standing a few feet away, a short ladder under one arm, a pile of dust sheets under the other. She had had no idea he was there.

She’d taken to Will immediately when he strode up the drive on her first day, armed with glowing references and offering his services for a ridiculously low fee. He’d told her that he had grown up at Oakwell and now lived in one of the cottages in the village.

“Oakwell is in my blood,” Will had said one day when they were sharing tea and biscuits. “I never really understood how much I loved it until I’d left…”

That had made them kindred spirits, and for a while now Lucy had got into the habit of chatting to him when she bumped into him around the place. She’d told him how she’d come to inherit the house, and how Mora had told her what a fool she was even to dream of renovating it.

Will had encouraged her and shared her dreams. He possessed what her great aunt would have called old-fashioned courtesy, even though he was only a few years older than she was. He’d called her ma’am until she had insisted he use her name, and even then he said “Lucy” with such a mellow intonation it made her quite hot to think about it.

Her face flamed now as she wondered how much of the conversation with Christine he’d overheard. She couldn’t afford to pay him for much longer but she couldn’t tell him that. It felt ungrateful and… Well, she would miss him rather too much if he left.

“Everything’s fine,” she said quickly, stepping past him, accidentally brushing against his bare arm in her haste to escape. His skin smelled of fresh air and leather and citrus soap. It was delicious. She squashed the flare of attraction. The last thing she needed was Will thinking

“Someone WANTS YOU to have them. PERHAPS you should ACCEPT the gift”

she was coming on to him because she wanted him to do the work for free!

Even so, she was intensely aware of him as she walked away and only just resisted the urge to look back. She shot into her study and tried to concentrate on her latest ideas for themed tours and a tearoom selling speciality cakes.

The following morning was bright and hot. In a rush of energy and optimism Lucy flung the drawing-room curtains wide and the sun flooded in, illuminating the peeling walls – and a glorious landscape painting that glowed with rich colour and fine detail.

Lucy dropped her mug of tea in shock. She was certain that picture had not been there the night before; the only thing on the wall had been a large patch of damp.

All morning she puzzled over how the painting had got there. She would have asked Will if he had found it hidden away somewhere but he had left her a note saying he had gone to the wholesaler’s for some supplies. She rang Christine and tentatively described the painting to her.

“How exciting,” Christine said. “That sounds very much like the Turner missing, presumed sold, from the Lovell collection in the early nineteenth century. I’ll come and take a look.”

Over the following two weeks Lucy found three more paintings she had never seen before: a little jewelbright portrait of a young girl in a glorious white silk gown that was hanging behind a door in what had been the nursery, a seascape, and a rather ugly still life.

Christine called in an expert from London to authenticate them with a view to selling, but Lucy felt dreadfully guilty. How could she sell them when she had no idea where they had come from?

She said as much to Will when she took him a cup of tea that afternoon. He listened, his dark gaze focussed on her.

“Someone wants you to have them,” he said. “Perhaps you should simply accept them – as a gift.”

“But they might be stolen!” Lucy said. “Or someone might turn up wanting them back. I can’t just sell them and take the money. That would be wrong.”

That evening she was sitting up late working on her plan for the tearoom and shop. The house was quiet but for the ticking of the clock and the creak of the old timbers in the wind.

Then she heard a faint sound from the hall – the chink of the picture chain and the faint scrape of wood against stone.

She threw open the study door and marched out, mobile phone in one hand with the police on speed dial, brass candlestick brandished in the other.

The hall was full of moonlight and shadow but she recognised the tall figure about to step out of the garden door.

“Will!” Lucy wasn’t sure if she was more shocked or upset to see him. “I didn’t trust you with a key so that you could break in and… and hang a picture!” she said. The ridiculousness of the situation just made her even angrier.

Presumably he had found a stash of paintings somewhere about the house and thought it was amusing to tease her like this. She had confided in him – and all the time he’d been laughing at her.

“Leave your key and go, please,” she said coldly.

“Lucy – ” Will pushed the hair back from his forehead. “If I might explain…”

Lucy turned away and a moment later she heard the click of the key on the table and the garden door close after him. The house was quiet again but for the loud ticking of the grandfather clock.

Lucy looked at the painting. It was the image of a young man, broad-shouldered in naval uniform. He had a strong, lean countenance, a tiny crescent-shaped scar on one cheekbone and grey eyes that possessed a wicked glint. Red hair sprang from his brow. Lucy could imagine him raising a hand impatiently to push it back, just like… Just like Will.

She stopped and stared more closely. Surely this was Will, this handsome daredevil with amusement in his eyes and a proud tilt to the head. Beneath the picture were the Lovell family crest and motto, and the words: Captain William Spencer Lovell, 1802.

Lucy rushed over to the garden door. The lawn stretched away, chequered in black and white, lined by tall oak trees like chess pieces. There was no sign of Will.

Impatiently she turned the handle. The door was locked. It always had been, she remembered. She’d never found a key for it. And yet Will had walked straight out of it and had disappeared…

She sat down with a thump on one of the rickety hall chairs which creaked out a protest. Thoughts, memories and wild speculation rushed through her mind.

Will Spencer and William Lovell simply could not be the same man. It was impossible – madness. Perhaps Will was descended from her great-uncle’s family?

Yet if so, why hadn’t he inherited Oakwell? Diana had told her she had left the house to her sister’s grandchildren because there were no Lovells left.

There was a white card tucked into the picture frame. Lucy picked it up. Will’s writing: The paintings area gift. Use them to restore Oak well, as I should have done. It was signed Will Spencer Love ll. Lucy made her way slowly back into the library, reaching for the only book on family history that Diana had left to her. Dated 1872, it was entitled A History of the Illustrious Love ll Family of Oak well Hall and smelled of old dust. She had often thought of reading it, but the dry style had always put her off.

Now she flicked through impatiently until she reached the end of the eighteenth century.

By 1780, the Georgian Lovellsh ad drunk and gambled their estate into deep debt, the author, a Victorian vicar, had written disapprovingly. When Captain William Spencer Love ll, a renowned adventure rand explorer, inherited the Hall in 1800 at the age of thirty his patrimony was all but ruined.

In disgust he turned his back on the estate to return to the Royal Navy. He visited Oak well only once more, removing the last remnants of its once famous never seen again…

Like a whisper Lucy heard the echo of Will’ swords. Oak well is in my blood…

He had proved that. He had worked alongside her to save the house. He had brought her the paintings, the last of his inheritance, to help her.

“I wish you would come back, Will,” she said aloud, but there was no reply.

Ayear to the day later, on a beautifully sunny June afternoon, Oakwell Hall opened to the public. The day was a rousing success, especially the nautically themed cakes in the new tearoom – in honour, Lucy announced, of one of the house’s benefactors.

Elated but exhausted she stood by the garden door that evening, watching the long shadows cast by the old oaks across the lawn.

“I wish you would come back,” she said, turning away from the view to address Will’s portrait which was still hanging on the panelled wall where he had left it. That was one picture she hadn’t sold, even though Christine had told her it was quite valuable.

“I am at your service, ma’am.” The deep voice made her jump and she spun around. There, standing just inside the locked garden door, was Will himself.

His arms closed around her and he felt warm and strong and very real. Lucy raised a hand and gently touched the little crescent-shaped scar of his cheekbone.

“I would ask where you had been,” she said, “but I doubt I would believe you.”

He pressed his lips to her hair. “Sometimes,” he said ruefully, “a man finds himself travelling far further than he had ever imagined.”

Soon, Lucy thought, she would ask him about that, how it had come to be, how it was possible. Perhaps she might even step through that locked door and travel with him. But for now she was content just that he was here.

“I knew you would come back,” she said. She nodded towards the portrait as she pressed closer in his arms. “It’s your family motto, after all: Iwill return.”

Thoughts, memories and WILD SPECULATION ran through her MIND