‘Of course.’ He took her hand.
A freezing gust of wind blew from the lake and rattled the bare branches in a nearby clump of trees, and she shivered. Stefan released her hand. ‘Let’s go into town and find somewhere to have lunch.’
Half an hour later they walked into a cosy pub in the town centre. It was packed with office workers enjoying an early Christmas dinner, and they were lucky to find a table close to the fireplace.
‘Busy place,’ Stefan remarked, pulling a chair out for her.
He sat opposite and handed her a menu whilst he studied the chalkboard where daily specials were displayed. ‘I’ll have the steak pie, although I’m sure it won’t be as good as yours,’ he said after a few seconds.
Heat spread over her cheeks. She lifted the menu to hide her face and pretended to study it, although she had no idea why she should be so flustered. Praising her steak pie wasn’t exactly a sexy compliment, and from what he had said before, she knew he didn’t have a very high opinion of her intellect or her physique.
‘I’ll have the Cumberland sausage and mash,’ she said, putting the menu down.
He asked what she wanted to drink, and got up to place their order at the bar and she relaxed against the back of her chair. A fire crackled in the fireplace nearby and catchy music played in the background. The people sitting at the next table had had too much to drink already, judging from their loud voices and raucous laughter as they pulled crackers and read out the silly riddles inside. Had he been there, her granddad would have probably joined in with a few jokes of his own.
Worry knotted her stomach again, like every time she thought about her grandfather these days. There was definitely something wrong with him. Before withdrawing money as he requested, she had checked his bank balance and found it surprisingly low. What had he done with his money? He must have bought expensive Christmas presents for the whole family this year – not a good idea, considering how small his pension was.
A man’s hand fell heavily onto her shoulder, making her cry out in shock. She looked up and met Piers’s smirking face.
‘Hello, darling. Fancy seeing you here all alone.’
She repressed a groan and forced a smile. ‘Hi, Piers. This is a surprise. Are you having lunch here too?’
‘I was with a client and we just finished. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming to Keswick today? We could have met up.’
‘It wasn’t planned. Stefan Lambert invited me.’ She pointed at the bar where Stefan stood head and shoulders above the other patrons ordering drinks.
‘Is that him over there?’ Piers pulled a face. ‘Poor chap… He does look rather… battered. What happened to him, do you know?’
‘I really couldn’t say. Didn’t Charles write to you about him?’ It was odd that Piers knew nothing about Stefan Lambert when he and Charles Ashville were such close friends.
Piers shook his head. ‘Not a word apart from the original email I forwarded to you.’
Stefan walked back towards the table, half a pint of bitter in one hand and a glass of lemonade for her in the other. His gaze went from Piers’s hand on her shoulder to her face, and his eyebrows gathered in an imperceptible frown.
‘Hi there. I’m Piers Hardy, Charles’s oldest buddy and estate manager.’ Piers removed his hand from her shoulder at last, and she shuffled her chair away from him.
Stefan put the glasses down and introduced himself.
The two men shook hands, and Piers chuckled. ‘Did you catch a cold walking on the hills? You sound terribly croaky. You should ask Cassie to work her magic on you and prepare you a hot toddy.’
Stefan’s face remained impassive. ‘Neither magic nor hot drinks will help, I’m afraid. My croaky voice is one of my battle wounds.’
‘Ah. Sorry.’ A red flush suffused Piers’s already florid cheeks. ‘I must buy you a drink some time so we can compare notes about Charlie. Is he still planning on wasting the best years of his life working for peanuts for a charity in that godforsaken country?’
Stefan’s eyes turned icy. ‘You’ll have to ask him, although I’m not sure he would appreciate you calling his work at Inter Medics a waste of time.’
‘That’s not what I meant… not really…’ Piers’s colour deepened, and he shifted on his feet. He glanced down at Cassie.
‘I hope you won’t forget our date on Friday. I’ll take you somewhere nice for lunch after our meeting.’ His hand found her shoulder again and gave it another squeeze.
She squirmed under his touch. ‘There’s no need for that.’
‘I insist.’
She stiffened as Piers’s hand slid down her back and he bent down to kiss her cheek before finally taking his leave. Stefan watched him walk out of the pub and sat down.
‘You don’t like him much,’ he remarked.
She gave him a tight smile. ‘Is it that obvious?’ She let out a long sigh. ‘Piers is all right, really. He’s been good to my family. He allowed my granddad to keep renting Bluebell Cottage for next to nothing if he takes care of minor repairs, and he gave me the Ashville holiday cottages contract after my mum retired. I owe him a lot.’
‘And he knows it.’
Her fingers tightened around her glass of lemonade. That was true. Piers did take advantage of his position of power and the worst thing was that she was so afraid of making him angry that she let him.
‘He’s been a good friend of Charles Ashville since they were both boarders at a private school in Windermere,’ she remarked to shift the focus away from herself and her lack of backbone.
Stefan pulled a face. ‘I find it hard to believe that he and Charlie have anything in common.’
‘I believe they are very close. They used to do everything together, apparently, and Piers took over the management of the Ashville Estate from his own father.’
Stefan looked thoughtful. ‘Is Hardy a common name around here?’
‘Not really. Piers’s family has been here for generations, like mine… In fact, I recently discovered that his great-grandfather had once been engaged to my great-great-aunt Ruth.’
A waitress approached with two steaming hot plates.
‘Who’s having the steak pie?’ she asked, staring down at the plates as if she was afraid to drop them.
Stefan said that he was. The young woman looked up. Her eyes widened, and her hands shook so much she almost tipped the contents of his plate all over the table.
‘I’m sorry.’ Her chin wobbled as if she was going to cry.
‘No worries,’ he replied, but his face paled and his eyes turned a darker, harder gold.
The girl placed Cassie’s plate in front of her so quickly that it clanked against the salt and pepper dispensers, knocking them over. ‘Oh. No. I’m so sorry,’ she stammered again before hurrying away.
‘Poor kid,’ he whispered when she had left. ‘Sometimes I forget…’
‘Forget what?’
He focussed his serious gaze on her. ‘That not everybody is as good at hiding their feelings as you are.’
Her heart jumped and her face caught fire. Had he guessed that she was attracted to him? ‘What feelings?’ she stammered.
He shrugged. ‘You know. Fear, disgust, pity. That poor girl must be wondering how you can eat with an ugly brute like me. She’s probably going to have nightmares for weeks.’