The Lady of the Manor
A young architect becomes a toy-boy for the widowed lady of the manor. But her Ladyship has darker desires...
Sylviafan
I bought the bungalow on the edge of the woods because it was the only rural property in my price bracket; I had no interest in living in Bristol, where I worked, or in any of the nearby market towns. I wanted peace and quiet and that meant isolation. And boy was this place isolated: it didn't even have a proper made-up road leading to it, just a grassy cart track. And it was sadly neglected, full of hideous 1970's wallpaper and flower-patterned carpets, the kitchen almost beyond redemption with cupboard doors hanging off and an oven that hadn't been cleaned since around the Queen's Silver Jubilee. Add to this an overgrown garden with a falling-down summerhouse and you're starting to get the picture.
But it was basically sound and I knew I could fix it up, given time. I'm an architect, you see. Ok, only a newly qualified one, but I got one of the surveyors in our office to come and have a look and he gave it the thumbs up. And it came with a three-acre paddock which I thought maybe I could develop into a campsite or, the jewel in the crown, sell to a property developer for an obscene profit. The fact that a property developer would be unlikely to gain planning permission for a site with no proper access didn't seem to have occurred to me at the time. Indeed the isolation was a double-edged sword. Yes, I loved the fact that all I could hear were the sounds of the birds and the lowing of distant cattle, but there were undoubtedly drawbacks: for one thing, the waste skip lorry refused to come down the grass track, so the detritus from my renovations had to be lugged five-hundred yards to the nearest road, which was only an unclassified lane. But these inconveniences aside, I loved the place and set to work with a will, stripping rooms, re-plastering, putting in a new kitchen and bathroom.
I'd been in the place about three months when, one Saturday morning, the prospect of another day of intensive DIY suddenly lost its appeal. It was late May, and the byways and hedgerows that criss-crossed the countryside around my place were green and leafy and dotted with wildflowers, the scent of may blossom heavy in the air. I felt like the Mole in "The Wind in the Willows", I needed to get outside and breathe some fresh air. So I put some lunch in a knapsack, grabbed the Ordnance Survey map and walked out of my garden and onto a public footpath, heading towards the spire of a distant church.
It was a warm day, overcast and muggy, the sun promising to break through sometime in the afternoon. I walked for a couple of hours, savouring the freshness of the abundant vegetation and the surround-sound birdsong, walking where my fancy and the footpaths led, consulting the map and checking it against the GPS on my phone. At length, hungry and hot, I found a grassy area by a field gate where I sat down and ate my sandwiches and drank coffee from my flask. Afterwards I leant back against the trunk of a small tree and belched pleasurably, looking across the fields to a nearby spinney, hearing the sound of sheep and lambs in the field behind me, the peak of my cap shading my eyes, the emerging sun hot on my bare arms, flies buzzing through the thick air...
I must have dozed off because I had no awareness of the approaching rider until a voice startled me into wakefulness.
'I say, you couldn't do me a big favour and open that gate for me could you?' a voice said in the cut-glass tones of the British aristocracy. My head jerked up; vision momentarily blurred. A large chestnut horse was standing in front of me, the rider's features shadowed by the sun at their back. I climbed groggily to my feet and slid the locking bar of the gate and pushed it open. 'Thanks, awfully. Were you asleep?'
'I think I must have been,' I admitted as the rider nudged the horse gently and it trotted past me and through the gate, giving me my first look at her. It was, as the voice had suggested, a lady. The first thing I noticed was a highly polished brown riding boot, then, as I looked up, a very shapely thigh, clad in skin-tight cream jodhpurs, a tweed hacking jacket and a black riding helmet. Beneath the helmet was the face of a middle-aged lady, maybe late middle age. Her face was lined, her eyes very blue with pronounced crow's feet. A rather hooked nose over a generous mouth with full lips completed that first impression.
The horse stopped the other side of the gate and I swung it shut, careful to avoid clashing the gate into the post and spooking the horse. The rider sat confidently, holding a riding crop in one hand, the other holding the reins. 'Sorry if I woke you,' she smiled widely down at me, showing strong teeth, her blue eyes crinkling. I'd have done the gate myself if I'd realised you were asleep. Mind you I'd probably have disturbed you anyway; Stanley doesn't tiptoe very successfully.'
'Oh, no worries. I probably need to get on anyway.'
The rider still made no move to go. 'Where are you headed?'
'Oh, nowhere in particular. I'm just exploring. I've just moved into the area,' I explained. She looked quizzically at me, the smile still in place. 'The bungalow, at the edge of Thorpe Wood?' I elaborated.
'Oh, the Richardson's old place! Gosh, that's been empty for simply ages. Does it need much work? I haven't been inside for years.'
'Nothing that completely gutting won't cure,' I said, lightly, and she laughed.
'Are you handy at that sort of thing?'
'I will be by the time I've finished.'
She laughed again. 'That makes us neighbours.' She transferred the riding crop to her left hand and leaned down, extending her right hand in its brown leather glove. I raised my hand and we shook briefly over the top bar of the gate. 'I'm Caroline, or Caro if you prefer.'
'Tom,' I said.
'Is that short for Thomas?' I nodded. 'I'll call you Thomas then. That was the name of my first boyfriend. A while ago now,' she added, still smiling at me.