In Want of a Wife? Read Free

inclination in him to listen to garbage about love and romance shut down with the finality of a vault door slamming closed on the crown jewels.
    Nicholas was less sceptical, and therefore all the more susceptible to anyone after him for his money.
    ‘How do you know that?’ Lizzy asked, her heart beating fast.
    ‘I’m an expert when it comes to interpreting the sub-text,’ Louis informed her. ‘Ageing actress with five daughters who desperately wants them married off; it could almost be a cliché.’ It went against the grain to confide in anyone, but in this instance it suited his purpose; he could feel from her silence that she knew the family in question, had views on them.
    ‘You must have heard of them?’ He invited coaxingly. ‘The Sharp family?’
    ‘It’s a small town,’ Lizzy muttered non-committally. In front of her, Louis allowed himself a little smile of success. ‘Has … Has Nicholas—Mr, um, Talbot—told you all of this?’
    ‘Like I said, I’m good at the sub-text.’
    ‘And at prejudging other people as well, from the sounds of it,’ she threw back without hesitation. ‘You’ve never even met this Sharp family, but you’ve already made your mind up about them.’ Up ahead she could see the first straggling houses that signified the outskirts of the town. In these parts land was not at a premium, and acres of fields could lie between the houses, but everyone still knew each other and the town was really quite vibrant, considering its size. Beyond the town lay the still, dark waters of one of the smaller lochs and to the left of the town, commanding a hill top, lay Crossfeld House.
    Lizzy had never known it to be anything other than verging on derelict, although half-hearted attempts had been made over the years to try and bring it back to life. The current owners, however, were not locals. They were wealthy businessmen from Glasgow, all ardent golfers who had, so the rumour went, bought it on the spur of the moment and then promptly relegated it to the back burner because they hadn’t reckoned on the time that would be required to fix it up. And so it had malingered, until three months ago when a buyer had been found.
    ‘You need to take the next left.’ Her voice was forced as she directed him on to Crossfeld House. ‘And you’ll have to go very slowly. The roads aren’t in the finest condition.’
    ‘And how far away do you live from the place?’
    ‘There’s no need to worry about me. I’m more than capable of finding my way home.’
    Zooming around on a bike twice his size, Louis was in no doubt of that. For the first time since he had mountedthe motorbike, he became fully aware of his surroundings. There was peace, he thought, and then there was the silence of pure solitude. This place definitely fell in the latter category. Personally, he could think of nothing worse than a prolonged stay in a town where finding a mobile-phone signal could be a challenge. But he was confident that there were a lot of people for whom this sort of thing would be just what the doctor ordered, people who found it relaxing to escape the daily grind of city life.
    Golf had never been a sport that Louis found attractive; he preferred something that actually increased the heart rate. But, that said, there were vast numbers of golfers out there and he could begin to see that Crossfeld House might just turn into a gold mine. Had the ageing actress thought the same thing, and therefore set poor Nicholas within her sights for that reason? Was she aware that he wasn’t the outright buyer of the property?
    There were just one or two things that Louis felt would be advantageous to make clear before his unwitting passenger headed back with tales of the outsider.
    ‘What do the people in the town think about the buy out of Crossfeld House?’ He initiated the conversation via a circuitous route. He was genuinely curious, anyway.
    ‘That it would be nice for the place to be renovated,’ Lizzy told him