A Roll in the Hay, стр. 51
“Trouble here, Robin? Do you need anything?”
“No, Jonathan. If anyone is asked to leave due to making trouble tonight, it shan’t be me,” Robin replied with a haughty sniff. “You’d do well to go home and talk to your solicitors, Susannah. I’m sure when they’re done gouging you they’ll tell you I have a strong case and that it’s really less trouble to step aside. Midsummer needs a suitable successor to its laird. James was so beloved.”
“Jimmy was loved,” Susannah agreed, and somewhere inside of her, the dam of propriety and the need to hide her feelings finally broke. “I know that because I was the one who was there when he got ill. Some of us only did monthly visits. Then to see what you’ve tried to do to his good name and mine, and to the estate’s legacy? He’d be disgusted with you. Absolutely disgusted.”
They were drawing attention now. Susannah had tried to keep her voice down, but their body language was giving them away. “My solicitors say you’re the one with no case, and I’ve been indulging you because I thought it was grief all this time. Now I see you’re just after the money, and you’ll get that over my dead body.”
“Listen, I don’t know how you conned my brother for so long with your arrangement,” Robin snapped. “But you don’t deserve any of it. I was going to let you have that dreary pub of yours. Maybe it’s time you got behind the bar and worked for a living. But I think now I’m going to include that in my claim. God knows my family paid for it.”
Tess got fully between them then, not laying a finger on Robin but preventing her access to Susannah. “I think it’s time you went to get a drink and rejoined your friends, if you even have any. Spin whatever lies you want, but you are not embarrassing Susannah any more than you already have. Another sniff of trouble, and I’ll throw you out myself.”
“When I want advice from the help, I’ll ask for it,” Robin replied.
There was a single crackling second when Susannah thought Tess might lose that ready temper of hers. She put a hand on Tess’s arm, rubbing gently. “Let’s go over here,” she suggested as Robin strutted off towards the gaggle of inbred posers she arrived with, leaving Jonathan in her wake. “I just saw one of the councillors I need to turn, so I might be able to get her on board before Robin even knows she’s here. And thank you, incidentally.”
“For what?” Tess turned, her jaw set a little too stiffly and her brow furrowed, but she seemed to shake it off when Susannah gave her a promising look.
“The chivalry,” Susannah answered. “She should never have spoken to you like that, though. I’ll make her pay for that on top of everything else.”
“You don’t have to. She’ll get hers.” Tess adjusted her collar and the sleeves of her tuxedo jacket. It really was one hell of a look. “Now, let’s go charm your councillors.”
“You were amazing,” Susannah said not for the first time. They were loitering at the driver’s door of her car, because she liked being held in Tess’s arms that way. It wasn’t a particularly tight embrace, just arms wrapped around Susannah’s lower back with Tess’s hands resting high on her ass. “Really, I didn’t know you could be that charming. I think at least one of those councillors was ready to propose.”
“What can I say?” Tess looked pleased with herself, tucking a loose strand of hair behind Susannah’s ear. “It’s just a shame it’s a long drive home, or we could crack the champagne and celebrate right now.”
“I’m not counting my chickens just yet. Not until they actually vote on permission next week.”
“Fair. We should head home. Not to rush you or anything but—”
Susannah couldn’t resist stealing a proper kiss. They’d kept it strictly family-friendly all night since Robin had accosted them, and there was a certainty in the air that something more intimate was overdue.
Tess moved a hand behind Susannah’s neck, holding her close, and Susannah revelled in the knowledge that they were absolutely going to sleep together tonight.
“Right, let’s get going. Not to be too presumptuous, but your place or mine?” Susannah asked.
“I’d say yours has a bit more privacy,” Tess said once she was in the passenger seat. “Unless the servants come barging in every morning?”
“I don’t really live in Downton Abbey, you know.”
“Good. Because that show makes me want to pass out copies of Marx and get the revolution underway.”
“Yet here you are, compromising your principles for me.” Susannah steered them towards the road home.
“Ah yes, principles. I remember those. Turns out they’re no match for the sight of you in that dress. Seeing you all fired up for a fight didn’t exactly hurt, either.”
They didn’t talk much on the way back. The roads outside weren’t lit, and only the occasional oncoming set of headlights broke up the long stretches of darkness.
“I love driving at night,” Susannah said. In a few minutes they’d reach the boundary of her land. “Especially around here. You can feel like you’re the only one left in the world.”
“There’s something about it,” Tess agreed. “We can’t have too far to go now?”
As she asked the question, the Land Rover started to make a whining sound that didn’t bode well at all. They’d turned onto one of the private roads on Midsummer’s land, leaving the main road a way behind, hidden from sight by high hedges and the fact that the moon was barely a sliver through some fog.
“It’ll be fine,” Susannah said. The engine must have heard her because it ground to a halt with a horrible noise. “Ah. Fuck.”
“I don’t think