There would come a time soon when he would surpass James Siddons’s wealth and power with his own, he’d vehemently told him, and Louisa would never have so much as one moment’s worry about how they would survive.

 But at the end of that cold encounter the supercilious banker had banned her from seeing him again, told him he would put a watch on her to make sure she kept to the command he’d declared, and he had threatened Seth with what he would be able to do if he should dare have the effrontery to try to persuade her differently.

 ‘There won’t be one dealership in the country that will hire you after what I tell them,’ he’d finished.

 With tears pouring down her face, Louisa had been able to do nothing else but urge Seth to go...

 He sucked in a harsh breath and slowly released it. Why had he bought this place and opened up old wounds that should have long ago healed and scarred? He had nothing left to prove.

 James Siddons had been dead for about a year now and—to his everlasting distress—Louisa had died not long after that volatile meeting with her father, having been mown down by a hit-and-run driver. It had been the most colossal shock, and Seth had honestly thought he would never get over it.

 When the mansion had come on to the market not long after its owner’s demise, six months ago, Seth hadn’t been able to resist buying it. How could he have? It was the place where Louisa had grown up. He had an important personal connection with the place. Despite the house’s dauntingly grand appearance, she’d confided to him that it had once been a very warm and loving home, thanks to her mother, Clare Siddons.

 ‘My mother was a wonderful woman. She was infinitely patient and kind, and she always told me to follow my heart...not just my head,’ Louisa had told Seth. ‘She certainly wouldn’t have looked down her nose at you because you come from the “wrong” background. She would only have had to look at you to know why you have my heart.’ Her pansy-blue eyes had sparkled tenderly as she’d related that.

 Now the atmospheric house she’d grown up in couldn’t help but carry the beguiling remnants of her presence. Although his decision to buy it was no doubt a double-edged sword—one that could just as soon wound him as satisfy his urge to show the local community that he was just as good as his nemesis James Siddons. Seth wondered if he’d been led purely by his ego to buy it.

 Ten long years had passed since Louisa’s death—wilderness years in which Seth had distanced himself as far from his hometown as he could in order to rebuild his life without her—and he’d achieved everything he’d set out to do. He ought to let the past lie.

 Yes, there had been other women after he’d lost Louisa, but throughout all the time that had passed he had never loved anyone else and most likely never would. Buying the house had probably been a completely dumb idea. Talk about rubbing salt into his wounds!

 Cursing himself as a masochist, then feeling certain he could always sell it if things didn’t work out, he shoved to his feet and turned to go into the drawing room. It was now completely devoid of the once grand furniture that had filled it.

 Louisa had once shown him the room when her father had been away on business. But by the time Seth had come to buy the place all that had been left were a few old books and some kitchen items. Everything else had been removed by the lawyers acting for her father—sold off to pay death duties.

 As painfully ironic as it was, it turned out that James Siddons had not been nearly as wealthy as he’d claimed. Apparently he’d squandered his wealth on gambling and living the high life after Louisa had died.

 Now the palatial room in front of him put him in mind of a ball that was at an end, with the well-heeled partygoers never to return. The only material items left in the lofty room were the faded red-and-gold carpets and the crimson velvet curtains that hung at the windows.

 The day he’d accompanied Louisa in order to ask her father’s permission to marry her he hadn’t travelled any further than the imposing hallway. As Seth had anticipated James Siddons had hardly rolled out the welcome mat... Far from it. Instead, he’d straight away gone into attack.

 He smiled grimly. Perversely, Seth was the one who had the last laugh. Now he had the satisfaction of knowing he was free to do what the hell he liked here. Never again would he be accused of not being ‘good enough’ by someone who had been born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth, who hadn’t had to rely solely on his own ability and wits to rise higher in the world, to make it against all the odds as Seth had. He was the one who owned the house now.




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