A Taste Of A Vampire

Chapter 8

By the middle of the week there had been no word from Nicholas, and Claire was doing everything she could to keep her mind and thoughts focused on anything else. She had gone out for rides on the horses, and she had driven the Jaguar into the neighboring villages to explore and find anything to distract herself. She had tried to read several of the books in the libraries at the house.

There was no end of her efforts to remain free of thoughts of him, but he crept into her mind like a silent mist so often, and it seemed to her that the more she tried to push him out of her head and her heart, the deeper he became ingrained in her.

On Thursday, she received a call from Colin who sounded more miserable than she had ever heard him.

“Your ladyship, I’m so terribly sorry, but I am not going to be able to make it out to the manor until the middle of next week. I was certain that I could be there by now, but my superior here at the firm has me tied to my desk with so much work that I can’t seem to get away from it, and when I tried to explain that I needed to come take care of the estate for you, he said that it’s going to be under contract soon and that I must wait until it is. He is in essence tying my hands. Nothing like this has ever come up here before, and I wish that it hadn’t now, but I’m afraid that there isn’t anything at all that I can do about it.” He sighed heavily and she could almost see the frustration on his face.

Claire was feeling her own frustration. “Well, I can’t keep staying here this way. I have a life to get back to in New York. I have a job that I have to return to. Why on earth did your boss tell you that the estate was going to be under contract? I haven’t decided what I’m doing with it. I haven’t put it up for sale yet. There’s no way that he could know that. Did you tell him I was selling it?”

She frowned and her brow creased deeply. It was totally confounding to her that Colin’s boss could ever have even guessed that she would be selling it, or that it would be under contract to anyone.

“Goodness no, of course not! I couldn’t tell him that. You haven’t decided yet what you’re going to do with it! How could I tell him anything when neither of us knows what you’re doing yet?” Colin was properly horrified at the idea that he would have gone behind her back to do anything. “Your ladyship, you and I are the only two people who are working on your estate at all. No one else has even looked at your files here. They are in my custody.”

“Then why would your boss say that the estate will be under contract soon? Where would he have gotten that from?” She planted her hand on her hip and looked out of the window of the library where she had been reading when his call had come in.

“I have no idea, but I do promise you that I will do my best to get down to the bottom of it, and I will make certain that no one else is interfering with your business. I do apologize profusely.” He meant it, and she knew there was no question of that.

With a sigh of resignation, she lifted her hand and rubbed her fingers over her forehead, stilling the headache that was beginning to pierce her. “All right. Well, find out what’s going on please, and come out as soon as you can. I have to get back to New York. I am anxious to talk with you about what we’re going to do with this estate. I was so set on selling it, but now I’m concerned about the staff here. They’re so wonderful and they’ve all been here for so long. Some of them for most of their lives, and I want them to be able to stay. If there was a family member other than me who could take the estate and keep the staff, I’d prefer that, but if there is no one, then I do think I will sell it on the condition that all the staff stay on indefinitely. So at least you know where I am on that part of it. I guess at this point I’d just ask you to start looking for another heir.”

He groaned softly. “There was no other heir. You were the only one I could find, but perhaps… I can look again. Maybe there is someone else that I am unaware of. I will look again before we make it public that the estate is for sale.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “I do appreciate all of the work that you’re putting into this.”

“I’m so very glad to be of service to you,” he answered.

They said their goodbyes and she hung up the phone, wondering how it could be that Colin Dent’s boss knew that she was not going to keep the house and that it might be up for sale. He had said that it would be under contract soon, and the fact that he had said it when he shouldn’t have even known it, and when it was still nothing more than a question in her mind was unnerving for her.

She went out for a long ride throughout the grounds, trying to clear her mind and distract herself from all of it. She stopped for a while on a gently rolling hill that was the highest in her grounds, and sat beneath a stand of trees that offered some shade from the sun and some shelter from the breeze.

The horse that she was riding rested and nibbled at the grass at their feet, and she looked around her at all of the countryside. Her estate was massive, and she could see Grayson Manor tucked into much greenery, but still standing out like a crown jewel in the land.

Off in the distance, she could also see Nicholas’ home. Larger than hers, older than hers, and grander in every way. The grounds that surrounded his home looked different than hers did. She knew that there were many things growing there that had been brought in from other places, but all of it together looked slightly out of time and out of place, and it struck her then, seeing her estate beside his from such a distance that they were juxtaposed in nearly every way, but somehow the differences complemented each other and they seemed to fit.

She found herself staring at his home, wondering if he was there. Wondering what he was doing. He had been gone and had been silent since the day he had found her in his bedroom. She had run that afternoon and evening through her mind so many times, and she could make no sense of it. She was sure that she had driven to his home, that she had walked through it and explored it. She was positive that she had been in his bedroom when he had found her, and that they had made love like she had never experienced before.