Page 56 of A Change of Location
The gorgeous redhead would spend two and half months at Stanwell, portraying a wanton lady of the manor. Hannah, despite her awareness of the storied romances and notorious liaisons between aristocrats and actresses, would not allow her imagination to lead her in an unpleasant direction.
***
Although Jewel never showed much interest in the horses or sheep or cattle she observed when walking with Hannah, if she scented field mouse or a hare, she desperately wanted to track it.
“Don’t pull. Heel.”
No breeze stirred the hot air as they walked from Stanwell House to the pet shop in Milverston Magna. Before departing for a series of meetings, Martin had scribbled a list of required items for agility practice.
“Isn’t that the poor creature Poppy found abandoned at Holly Cottage?” asked Lois, the proprietor. “I told Martin he could change that bed he bought if she doesn’t like it.”
“She does,” Hannah assured her. “Very much.”
“No need to give me your list, I know what Susan wants you to have.” Lois took them to the aisle where she kept the boxed agility kits. “You’re with the film company, right?”
Accustomed to this designation, Hannah gave her usual response. “That’s what brought me here.”
“In yesterday’s post I received a letter from Alistair Somebody, asking to use my old ramshackle barn. Doesn’t want me to make changes or clear it out. I must say, I’d rather not let anyone in, it’s that filthy.”
“He won’t mind. The production crew will take charge. The set dressers don’t just rearrange things, they’ll tidy up before they leave.”
“That’d be payment enough,” said Lois. “Though I won’t turn down the fee. Let’s see—we’ve got your flyball and disk and whistle.” After placing items on Hannah’s list in a carrier bag, she asked, “What to do about this big box with the jump and the hoop and the tunnel?”
“Martin can collect it on his way back from Newbridge. I’ll let him know.”
A spaniel sat outside the butcher’s, patiently waiting for its owner. To prevent a confrontation, she led Jewel in the opposite direction.
Through the bookshop’s open door, she saw a water bowl. Because dogs were obviously welcome, she took hers inside. Moving past a table of current bestsellers, she found a special section with hardcover and paperback editions of Forsaken Fortune, obviously created to capitalize on local interest in the film’s source material. Stacked between the books was the new issue of Posh magazine. A familiar face, stunningly beautiful, beamed up at Hannah from the cover. A banner headline proclaimed “It’s Caroline Bryden’s Year!”
She picked up the magazine and paged through it—until she came to an article titled “The Maverick Marquess: Debutante’s Delight, Countryside’s Champion.”
Martin.
During Hannah’s first visit to Stanwell, a Posh reporter telephoned an uncooperative Poppy, inquiring about an interview with Martin. Later, when she stayed in the Latimer House flat in London, his friend Jess left a message about someone seeking photos. He’d shared many aspects of his past with Hannah, and Poppy had provided additional details. Hannah didn’t expect to learn anything she didn’t already know, but reading other people’s accounts of him might be interesting.
She examined a series of captioned photographs. A younger version of Martin with a group of Eton College classmates, wearing black tail coats and striped trousers. On the Milver St. Mary pitch, in his cricket whites. As an attendee at a society wedding, his arm linked with a brunette beauty in a fancy hat, identified as Natalie. Lying beside her on a beach, bare chested and wearing sunglasses.
Hannah closed the magazine and carried it to the till. She preferred to read about him in private, not in view of any villager who wandered in.
“I’m trying to re-order from the supplier,” the bookseller told her. “Very popular.” He winked.
She’d persuaded Martin to let her make dinner tonight. While Jewel and Ariel engaged in a play-fight, Jan made sure she was aware of recent additions to the kitchen cupboards and the pantry, treasure troves of staples and gourmet ingredients.
Studying the refrigerator meat compartment she decided, “Chicken breasts for a main course with a champagne mushroom sauce.”
“He’ll like that,” Jan said. “Though being so easy to please, you could serve him fish fingers and he wouldn’t complain.”
She laughed. “I’m tempted to test that theory. But not tonight.”
Going to her room, she carried the magazine to the window seat and turned to the section of greatest personal interest.
She studied a full-page collage of candid pictures, apparently shot by paparazzi. A casually dressed Martin strolling in Latimer Row. As a teen, his hair dyed vivid purple, his face colorless in the camera’s flash. On the deck of his narrowboat, moored on the London canal. Girlfriends, official and suspected, were listed in a sidebar. Jessica. Natalie. The Honorable This and Lady That. In the aftermath of a romantic disappointment, according to the author, he had withdrawn to his Somerset estate. Adjectives applied to him made Hannah smile: eligible, elusive, eccentric, erratic.
Her body tensed when she read the estimate of Martin’s net worth. Three hundred million pounds.
A typo, she told herself. Thirty million, possibly, based on the combined value of all his property in Somerset and London, minus mortgages and other debts. Which were probably substantial, because English landowners were reputed to be so hugely leveraged.
But magazines employed fact checkers to prevent reputational harm and ward off legal action. Posh wouldn’t dare print an erroneous, misleading calculation. It was hard enough, accepting that Martin was a celebrity aristocrat—something she hadn’t realized. Worse, he was unimaginably, outrageously, disturbingly rich.
