The Vintage Girl Read Online Free PDF Page A

travel sweet?”
    “The bed that … ?” I momentarily took my eyes off the road, saw the cluttered glove box open and Fraser holding out a tin of hard candies. My heart gave an illicit bump.
    Even in jeans and a cable-knit sweater, Fraser Graham looked like a Regency gentleman. The thick blond hair, the wide mouth, the accent that sounded like expensive dark chocolate—and what really swung it for me, the charming, totally unaffected manners.
    He grinned affably, and I melted a little further. Fraser had actually opened
my
car door for
me
when I’d picked him up at his flat in Notting Hill. It was a constant struggle not to imagine him galloping around on a horse, tipping his hat to the ladies. He was absolutely wasted on Alice, who kept trying to make him wear long-sleeved T-shirts and get a trendier haircut.
    “Yes, help yourself,” I said, before remembering that we were in Max’s car. “Oh, actually, be careful that—”
    Too late. He was opening the tin and frowning at the contents.
    “Ah,” said Fraser, quickly slamming it back into the glove box before I could see what was in there. “Perhaps not. Where was I? The McAndrews—lovely people, Duncan and Ingrid. They used to stay at Kettlesheer in the summer when Duncan’s uncle Carlisle had the place. Now,
he
was a one. His wife, his horse, and his dog all had the same name—to save effort, apparently.”
    “He sounds mad.” I
loved
bonkers posh people. No one wore a jaunty hat and matching cape for breakfast like a minor British aristocrat.
    “Oh yes, dangerously so. I don’t think Duncan was expecting to inherit, but then, you don’t expect a ninety-year-old man to disinherit his two perfectly good sons and take up mountain biking, do you?”
    “Not in my family,” I said. “There are rules about mud. So come on, give me the gossip. Alice went all discreet on me.”
    Fraser settled back into his seat and crossed one long leg over the other, revealing a flash of red sock. “Well. Up until two years ago, Duncan was a deputy head teacher at some prep school in Kent, and Ingrid was the school secretary. Nice house in Wimbledon, his and hers Jaguars. Suddenly Carlisle falls off his bike, and bang! Duncan’s got his own tartan and grouse moor, and poor Ingrid’s having to learn fifty ways with cocktail haggis. Mum says she went round in a trance for the first month, virtually begging someone to tell her it was a huge practical joke.”
    The traffic had slowed down, so I sneaked another sideways glance. “But … surely you have an inkling that you’re going to be left a
castle
? It’s not like being left a train set.”
    I didn’t add that if there’d been any chance of
me
inheriting a castle, however remote, I’d have been fantasizing about complicated lawnmower accidents at family gatherings involving anyone standing between me and the keys to the drawbridge.
    “Ah, well. Family tradition. Duncan inherited because there’s this ye olde McAndrew superstition that the castle can’t be left to an unmarried heir, and both of Carlisle’s sons were divorced. Well, one was divorced, the other misplaced his wife in Thailand.”
    “I don’t understand. Why can’t they inherit?”
    “Because bad things happen.” He made a
Whooo-oooh
gesture, wiggling his fingers and jiggling his eyebrows up and down in Scooby-Doo ghost fashion.
    “Like … what?” My imagination filled up instantly with walled-up nuns and hauntings.
    “Oh, just the usual bad things that happen when a man doesn’t have a wife to run his castle,” said Fraser. “Grill-pan fires. Unflattering trousers. Tax inspections.” He gave me a wink. “Not such a bad policy, if you ask me.”
    I felt my cheeks go hot, but then had to snap my attention back before I hit the car in front, which had slowed to join the back of the traffic jam ahead.
    Banquo bounced reproachfully in my rearview mirror.
    “So is your mum showing them the ropes?” I said, trying to regain my