This is my first story that isn't Andith. I wrote it to please some of the wonderful friends, writers and readers, that I have here, and at their request (you know who you are!). I hope this first chapter, or the ones to come, aren't a disappointment.

"To know your ruling passion, examine your castles in the air" — Richard Whately

The castle felt cold, so very cold. He knew every inch of this place, the castle and the surrounding estate, the grand entrance hall, the large, ornate drawing room, the amazing library that he knew she would love...would've loved. It had all always given him pleasure. As Agent, he had been entrusted with the care of Brancaster, and he took that duty seriously, carrying it out to the best of his ability. By all accounts, and most emphatically in cousin Peter's opinion, Bertie Pelham was exceptionally good at his job.

Good at what had been his job. Past tense.

Now he had to be good at Peter's job as well, or more likely, good at Peter's job instead. There was too much work for one man to be both Marquess and Agent, and do both jobs properly. And if nothing else, he was a meticulous man: he would always want things to be done properly.

Perhaps that was what had upset him about Edith and Marigold. At first he had leapt to conclusions, and thought it was Edith's choice. That she didn't care about doing the family thing properly. It was a natural enough thought but he didn't like himself for thinking it. Especially when Edith had told him the whole story, and it hadn't been like that at all. Yet he still felt uncomfortable. It wasn't the fact that Edith had an illegitimate daughter. Surely he was more liberal than that? Yes, of course he was. He had never judged Peter and his...unorthodox tastes.

He had thought it was because Edith hadn't trusted him with the truth from the beginning. He had thought that he was justified in breaking off the engagement because of this. But the more he thought about it...and he had had lots of time to think about it, and had thought of it constantly on his trip to Tangiers and back...in fact all the time he hadn't been thinking of cousin Peter...none of this added up. None of the reasons he'd given himself for his discomfort actually felt correct.

He walked around the castle. He still hadn't got used to the staff addressing him as 'my lord'. He doubted he ever would. Rooms and views which had always given him enormous pleasure and a warm pride, especially from the castle down the hill to the bridge, now felt distant and heartless. He was alone here. He had, within a matter of days, lost two of the three people who meant most to him in the world. His relationship with the third, his mother, was spiky at best. He could expect fifty years of this cold existence of duty and loneliness if he didn't meet someone else. And surely he wouldn't meet anyone like Edith, because Edith was...

Edith was warmth, and sweetness, and trusting. She took on challenges that she wasn't sure she should have, unsure they could be accomplished, but buckling down and getting it done all the same. She was unprejudiced, seeing a lowly agent for who he was and what he could do and valuing it. She was not proud.

She was love.

He thought back to when he first learned Marigold was Edith's daughter. Her sister, Mary, had started to say something about admiring him for taking Edith on 'with her past'. He'd been so focussed on what that meant at the time, but now he realised that it was such a strange, accusing thing to say. Not that he was good to take Edith on 'because of her daughter' or for 'becoming Marigold's father' which, if she really had thought Edith had told him would have been much more natural ways to put it. No, she said 'her past', a very loaded phrase. Tom had tried to stop her too, hadn't he? That surely meant that Tom knew Edith hadn't told him, and Tom knew that Mary was about to. Edith had said that she and Mary didn't really get on, but he never had any idea that their relationship was as bad as all that. What was the history to that, he wondered. Edith had hinted that she was still single in her late twenties because Mary, and indeed all her family, had ruined any romantic chances Edith had had?

Bertie stopped walking, icy fingers gripped his guts. Mary knew that mentioning it then would ruin Edith's reputation in his eyes, and that was exactly what she meant to do. And Edith...Edith had faced up to this...with bravery. She didn't challenge Mary then, neither did she deny the truth, she had told him plainly, without hesitation, as though...he sobbed...as though she had been preparing to tell him anyway and she knew the words she would use, perhaps she had even rehearsed it.

All those hints that she had scattered in his path. "I can't tell you straight away." "Can I bring Marigold too!" "I'm not as simple as I used to be." "I've been in love before, I won't deny it." Even when she took him to the nursery to see Marigold, she must have been watching him like a hawk. Will he accept her? Will he judge me? Even if all goes well now, will he resent her in a few years' time?

All he had done was confirm to her that he was a stuffy, judgemental, pretentious bigot! Think of the situation from her point of view. She wants to tell me about her secret daughter, but she knows that if I disapprove it will end the relationship, and I will then be in possession of a very sensitive piece of information that could ruin her. So she tries to discover what my reaction will be before she dares to tell me, but I, like a fool, keep pushing her. I proposed on a day of tragedy, and forced her into an answer only days after I'd heard Peter had died. I was so desperate to have another anchor in my life, someone else I could love and who would love me back, that I didn't see her floundering. And when I thought that she had been hiding this from me, I throw a hissy fit because she hasn't lived up to my ideal of someone I can rely on. Bertie Pelham, you are an idiot! A certifiable, complete fool!

Was there anything he could do? Any way that he could convince her to let him have a second chance? For the life of him he couldn't think of any opening, any approach he could make that wouldn't send Edith running away from him. How was he going to bear this?

…

The week after he received a telephone call from Lady Painswick, Edith's aunt.