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for another day. ‘We’ll go straight to the GreatHall,’ she told the girls, leading them swiftly past the danger zone.
    Excitement started to bubble inside Bronte the moment she stood in front of the old hall. The sun had made a welcome return, burning through the clouds, and the warmth and light changed everything. It raised her spirits and softened the blackened stone, turning it rosy. This could all be so romantic, if it weren’t so run-down. Her plan had been to bring the girls along to enthuse them, but she clearly had a long way to go. They had gone quiet, which was a bad sign. ‘Come on,’ she said in an attempt to lift their spirits. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got round the back.’
    More decay. Dried-up fountains. Tangled weeds. Crumbling stone.
    For a moment she felt overwhelmed, defeated, but then she determined that she would find a way. Scrambling through an upstairs window, she brushed herself down. The echoing landing smelled musty and dust hung like a curtain in the shadowy air. She could hardly expect Heath to feel enthusiastic about this, Bronte mused as she walked slowly down the stairs, let alone spend his hard-earned money putting it right.
    She could only hope the girls would stick with her, Bronte concluded as she picked herway across the broken floor tiles in the hall. How depressing to see how quickly everything had deteriorated. It didn’t help to know she had only added to the destruction. She’d tried her mother’s door key, only to discover that the one useful thing the previous estate manager had done before Heath sacked him was to change the locks. Adapting her plans accordingly, she had shinned up a drainpipe, forced a window and climbed in. And this was not the testimony to Uncle Harry’s generosity that he deserved. Plants had withered and died, while chairs had mysteriously fallen over, and plaster was falling off the walls faster than the mice could eat it.
    Shouldn’t Heath be here doing something about this?
    And why was she thinking about Heath when she could just as easily do something about it? She had already established that Heath’s interest in his inheritance was mild at most. Heath only cared about the profit he could make when he sold it on. He’d made that clear enough. He could barely spare the time for this weekend’s flying visit. Heath’s life was all about making money in London now.
    With a frustrated growl, she scraped her hair back into a band ready for work—onlyto be rewarded by an image of Heath in her mind, standing beneath the vaulted ceiling of the Great Hall looking like a conquering hero as he fixed her with his mocking stare. Why did it always have to come back to Heath?
    Because Heath was blessed with such an overdose of darkly brooding charisma it was impossible not to think about him, Bronte concluded. But a man like Heath could hardly be expected to hang around when there were so many people waiting to admire him—and she was hardly the swooning type. So, who needed him? There was nothing here she couldn’t handle.
    Having convinced herself that she had ejected Heath from her thoughts, she now had to confront all the other impressions crowding in. ‘I’m going to change this,’ she murmured, staring round.
    ‘Talking to yourself, Lady Muck?’ Colleen called down to her from the upstairs landing.
    Bronte’s heart leapt. So the girls had decided to join her. ‘You made it,’ she called back. ‘Come and join me. We’ve got the place to ourselves.’
    ‘No boarders to repel?’ Maisie demanded, sounding disappointed as she clattered down the stairs in a cloud of cheap scent and goodhumour. ‘I thought there’d be at least one hunky ghost for me to deal with.’
    Or Heath in full battle armour with a demolition ball at his command, Bronte mused—that was one boarder she wouldn’t have minded repelling. Or, better still—half-naked Heath, muscles bulging, on his knees in front of her. Much better. She’d keep that one—as well