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CHAPTER ONE

LIAM JENKINS SQUINTED against the lointer sun as he looked up at Thornwood Castle in the distance and tried to iine it as home

He failed

The dark grey of the stone walls, the rise and fall of the crenellations, the brooding shadow it set over the English countrysidenone of them were exactly friendly When he’d dared to dream about the idea of home over the years, he’d pictured hi So surf of his country of birth, Australia A house he’d designed and built himself, one that was purely his, with no bad memories attached

Instead, he had a centuries-old British castle full of other people’s history and furniture and baggage

And it was starting to rain

With a deep sigh, Lianored the icy droplets dripping past his collar Instead he wondered, not for the first ti He hadn’t seen her at all in the fifteen years before her death, and before their disastrousin London he’d only ever visited Thornwood once Two encounters in twenty-five years didn’t make them family, not really As far as he was concerned, she was just another in a long line of relatives who didn’t have the time or the space in their lives or homes for him

Even that first time he’d visited her, he’d known instantly that Thornwood Castle would never be where he belonged Thornwood, with its buttresses and echoing stone walls, lined with rusting suits of armour, was a world away from the small home he’d lived in with his mother on the Gold Coast Possibly a few hundred years away too As a ten-year-old orphan, still grieving for the ht was invincible until she wasn’t, the prospect of staying at Thornwood had been terrifying And that was before he’d even lory

Thinking of it now, he shivered, re the chill of her presence The way she’d loorey hair fixed in place, her dark blue eyes too like his for it to be a coincidence He had the family eyes—no one had ever truly doubted whose son he was Even if they didn’t want to acknowledge the fact in public

Lia wheel of his hire car

Thornas his—a bequest he’d never expected, or wanted Th

e very idea of it filled him with a heavy apprehension Thornwood Castle caacy An acceptance into a society that had cast him out before he was even born People said that the class ere over, that nobody cared about legitimacy or status of birth any more Maybe that was true in some places, but Liam knew that those prejudices were still alive and well in Thornwood

Or they had been when Rose was alive Now she was gone

Could Thornwood be a ho halls and the obvious disapproval of his great-aunt’s butler as he’d met him at the door

But then there was the letter The spidery, wavering handwriting on thick creamy paper that had come with the laho’d explained the bequest The letter fro him to make Thornwood Castle his hoacy

You may find it rather different than you recall

That hat she’d written But from this distance it looked exactly like his

Liam was pretty sure that wasn’t what home was supposed to look like

Although, in fairness, he could be wrong He could barely re a real ho his reluctant relatives—first his mother’s, out in Australia, then later a brief trip over to the UK to be rejected by his long departed father’s odd, unknown fa anywhere to settle for long And since he’d been out in the world on his own he’d been far too busy building the life he’d craved for himself—one based on his ownthat home of his own he’d dreamt of as a child

He had the success he’d wanted No one in his world knew him as the bastard son of the heir to an earldom, or even as Marie’s poor little orphaned boy These days he was known as his own man—a renowned and respected architect, owner of his own co every year He was his own success story

Maybe he could bring some of that success to Thornwood

That was the plan, at least The time for old-fashioned stately homes was over; nobody needed that much space any more But that didn’t mean he couldn’t make Thornork for him Tourists still had a fascination with the old British aristocracy—Liah period dramas for Liam to be sure of that So if Thornas his it had to earn its keep—just like any other building he’d ever designed or renovated Thornwood just had more potential than a lot of them

And he couldn’t help but sht of Great-Aunt Rose’s face watching fro Thornwood turned into the sort of aristocratic theht not have known Rose well, but she’daround her ancestral grounds very clear As clear as the fact she included him in that number, whoever his father was

She’d hate everything he had planned And that was pretty h to do it Call it closure,over the world that had rejected him as a child

Then he could move on, find his own home instead of one that had been left to him because there was no one else Preferably somewhere it didn’t rain so damn much

Liam stared up once rey and hazy light, the narros and the aged stonework, and knew that he would stay, just as Rose had asked But only long enough to close that chapter of his life for ever To finally slam the door on the family who’d never wanted him

Then he could return to his real life

Lia his mirrors, pulled back onto the road to drive the last half adriveway to the castle itself, sh the windscreen at the rain as it started to fall in sheets