Chapter 2

TWO

They'd left him standing in the hall, outside the meeting room, like he wasn't good enough to sit at the same table as the nobs. It had reminded Toby of every time he'd been called to the headmaster's office in school, every time he'd had to sit there, nose bleeding, gut aching, because some wanker had called him a fag and he'd fought back.

Did the fucking arseholes who'd tormented him with homophobic slurs and beat him black and blue ever get into trouble? No, of course not. They were the chosen ones, and he was just some short shit, living in council housing, his dad in prison, and his mum too meek to come collect him from school when he was suspended.

But he'd shown them. He'd shown them all by clawing his way out of his third-rate school, winning a scholarship to university, and landing a job with a prestigious London financial firm, despite his checkered past.

And now he was being asked to wait in the hall while his "betters" talked things out amongst themselves.

So yes, when he was finally called in, fetched like any number of the servants who had probably slaved away for these people for generations, he walked into the room with a chip on his shoulder.

"This is Mr. Toby Tillman," Mr. Hawthorne, senior, introduced him as Toby helped himself to a seat right at the head of the table. "He works for Johnson, Johnson, and Inez. He's an efficiency expert and an assessor."

"What kind of assessor?" the man sitting directly across the table from the seat Toby took asked.

Toby nearly choked on his own spit. The guy must have been in his early thirties. He wore a long-sleeve T-shirt with spots of something on it. His thick, brown hair was tousled, and even through the shirt, Toby could tell his arms were thick with muscle. But despite all that, he still managed to look posh.

And that was before the knobhead narrowed his eyes in disgust.

Toby instantly hated him.

"A business assessor," he answered. And because he just couldn't resist drawing a line in the sand and proving he wasn't some urchin to be pushed around, he added, "I'm here to tell you all the things you're doing wrong so you can keep this rotting relic afloat."

The guy across the table stiffened, and his eyes went even narrower.

"I've asked Mr. Tillman to come spend a few days with us so that he can learn the business of Hawthorne House," Mr. Hawthorne, Sr. said, "and give us suggestions for how we can maximize the income we're already making from the school and the grounds, and so that he can give us further suggestions so we can maybe pull our heads out of our arses and get this train back on the tracks."

"There's nothing wrong with our train," the guy across from Toby said, turning his confrontational look to Mr. Hawthorne.

Mr. Hawthorne, who Toby believed had no business looking like some kind of wild hippie at his age, and with whatever title he'd inherited, frowned at the guy. "Mr. Tillman," he said, "I'd like you to meet my son, Robert Hawthorne, Jr."

Toby nodded curtly at the man, deliberately not extending a hand to greet him.

"The others are my daughter, Rebecca, my son, Rhys, my son-in-law, Nate, and my youngest, Ronald who goes by Nally," Mr. Hawthorne introduced the others. "Not pictured are my wife, Janice, and my other two sons, Rafe and Ryan, who are all off having adventures while the rest of us fight to save this place, and any number of cousins."

Mr. Hawthorne looked at his adult children seriously, which earned him a few extra points in Toby's eyes. He might have been just another eccentric, old aristo, but so far, the only thing he'd really done to piss Toby off was making him wait in the hall before joining the meeting. And for whatever reason, Toby had instantly transferred his annoyance at that insult straight to Robert Hawthorne, Jr. Senior was just trying to protect his patch, and Toby understood that.

"I've had an initial look into Hawthorne House's finances," Toby said as Mr. Hawthorne turned his attention to him. "For a business in the arts, you're not actually doing that bad. You're in the black, but just barely. At a glance, I would say you need to pay down your loans as fast as possible and find more ways to generate income. You're relying too much on grants from various historical foundations. But before I make any number of suggestions, I want to pinpoint places where there is waste."

Toby had prepared his little speech in advance, and he'd even practiced parts of it to make certain his working-class accent stayed as hidden as possible. He'd gotten better with speaking posh while around posh people, but the gnawing resentment that he had to change so much about himself just to make it in the financial world made it harder for him to imitate the people he hoped to work with.

Which was why, despite the disapproving looks and occasional comments from the partners at Johnson, Johnson, and Inez, he refused to remove his lip ring. He'd be fucked if he gave up everything about who he was just to please someone who had never had to check the couch cushions for change so he could shuffle down to the market to buy a bag of crisps for supper.

"There isn't any waste at Hawthorne House," Rhys Hawthorne insisted with a troubled frown.

"No?" Toby answered. "How much electricity does this place use every month? When was the last time you had the house and outbuildings rewired? Have you considered adding solar panels to your property to help subsidize energy costs?"

When everyone around the table stared blankly at him, Toby knew he was about to find a dozen ways and more that the family could cut costs and maximize efficiency on their property.

He smiled inwardly, but kept his face a mask of professionalism. The job was as close to a guaranteed win as he could get.

And he needed a win.

Not a day went by at the office when someone didn't question his fitness for the sort of work he was doing. They didn't like his hair, they frowned at his aggressiveness, and they definitely didn't like the lip ring. He had so much to prove, not only to Johnson, Johnson, and Inez, but to the people who had vouched for him and got him where he was. That included his teachers and the cunts who had beat him up more times than he could count, everyone who had laughed at him at university, and in an entirely different way, the professors who had championed him.

It especially meant his mentor from the internship he'd had before he graduated, Charles Duckworth. Toby never would have gotten the job with Johnson, Johnson, and Inez if Charles hadn't recommended him for it. A lot of things wouldn't have happened if Charles hadn't taken him under his wing and taught him more than any class ever had.

Toby wanted to ace the challenge of Hawthorne House that lay in front of him, despite his healthy resentment for the upper-class, so he could prove to Duckie that the time he'd spent on him hadn't been wasted. He owed it to his mentor to shine.

"It's good to see that you have a wealth of ideas that could help us already," Mr. Hawthorne said with a smile. "That's exactly what we need. Yes, we have a mind-blowing offer on the table from a company that could make us all very, very rich, but I know we would all rather find a way to keep everything our family has worked for all these generations."

Sounds of agreement and approval came from everyone at the table.

Everyone except Robert, Jr., who still stared at Toby as though he were a bogie that someone had snorted onto their shirt without noticing.

"I think the best place for us all to get started is for Robbie to give Toby a tour of the house and grounds and to explain the history," Mr. Hawthorne went on.

Immediately, both Toby and Robert, Jr. snapped their heads to stare at Mr. Hawthorne.

"I don't have time to give tours," Robert, Jr. said, sending Toby an irritated side look. "I have a class in—" he checked his phone, "—forty minutes."

Toby wanted to come up with an excuse not to be led around by a man who clearly despised him, but he did need to see the entire place.

"You can show him the important things in half an hour," Mr. Hawthorne said. "And you're not the only one who has a class to teach. We all do."

"You're teaching classes now, are you, Dad?" the youngest one, Ronald who went by Nally, asked with a cheeky grin.

If Toby was going to like any of them, it would be Nally.

"I've got other business to take care of," Mr. Hawthorne said standing. He took the last donut from a box on the table in front of him as he did. "Help yourself to food or tea," he told Toby, gesturing to the other box of donuts before stepping away from the table.

The rest of the family rose and started to leave the room.

"What kind of a tour am I supposed to give in half an hour?" Robert, Jr. asked his father as the man walked past him.

"Just the basics," Mr. Hawthorne said. "And if you run out of time, let Mr. Tillman sit in on your class. Give him some clay to play with while you're at it."

He shrugged, then winked at Toby, like they'd been friends for decades, instead of only just having met, and in a business capacity. Then he walked out of the room, leaving Toby alone with Robert, Jr.

Toby stood and boldly helped himself to one of the sugar donuts. He stared straight at Robert, Jr. as he did, daring him to tell him it wasn't his place to take food from his betters, whether it had been offered to him or not.

Robert, Jr. didn't say anything, he just stared as Toby took a large bite out of the donut and chewed, all while holding his gaze like they were engaged in a tug-o-war. It was war, alright. It was a war he'd been fighting since the first time someone like Robert, Jr. had called him a queer or a shit or sneered at him for having a charity school uniform either two sizes too small or too big for him because he couldn't afford better. And Toby intended to win.

Toby ate the entire donut while Robert, Jr. watched him. It hit him slightly off-center that the prick couldn't seem to tear his eyes away, or that his gaze dropped to Toby's lips as he licked the last of the sugar away. The bastard was probably thinking posh, put-out thoughts about his lip ring, but fuck him.

"Show me the house," Toby demanded, stepping around the table and nodding to the doorway. "I saw some of it coming in, but your father didn't have time to say much about it."

Robert, Jr. sucked in a breath and jerked around as Toby passed him. For a second, Toby thought the man was sporting a hard-on, but he didn't dare check again to be sure.

"The original house was built in sixteen-forty-five," Robert, Jr. said in a confrontational voice, following Toby into the hall, then walking by his side, pointing where he wanted Toby to go. "It was partially destroyed in a fire in the sixteen-seventies, but the second Earl of Felcourt rebuilt and made it twice as big. The third earl added the west wing during the reign of George I."

They turned a corner and headed down a hallway that looked much more like a mid-twentieth-century school than an early-Georgian manor house.

"The fifth earl built even more after marrying a daughter of the Duke of Marlborough," Robert, Jr. went on. "But by the end of the eighteenth century, the house as it is now was finished."

"Came into money, did they?" Toby commented as their footsteps echoed down the long hallway.

"What?" Robert, Jr. asked with a frown.

"Obviously, if they did all that building and this was the finished product," Toby said, gesturing to a grand staircase that Robert, Jr. led him up, "they came into money around then."

"I suppose they did," Robert, Jr. said distractedly. "Nally is the family historian, not me."

Toby smirked at Robert, Jr.'s rather tasty backside as they climbed the stairs to what proved to be a second hallway of classrooms. "And which brown people who were part of what colony did the earls of the past get their money from?"

"It was nothing like that," Robert, Jr. said so fast and so tightly that Toby was certain at least part of the Hawthorne family fortune of the past had been profit made off the backs of someone's slaves.

Then again, the same could be said for the vast majority of the aristocrats of those days.

"It might seem laughable now," Robert, Jr. went on as they walked down the hallway, which smelled faintly of paint and other painting supplies, "but around the turn of the twentieth century, there was only one son and heir, and no one was entirely certain whether the family line would end with him."

"Poofda, was he?" Toby asked teasingly, though he was one to talk.

Robert, Jr. twisted to glare disapprovingly at him. Once again, the uncomfortable look in his eyes told Toby he'd guessed correctly.

"My great-great-grandfather married in his forties, and he managed to have two sons," Robert, Jr. said. Whether he was aware of it or not, his accent had gone downright prissy. "One of them was killed in the First World War. Because of that, he and my great-grandfather agreed to lend the house to the government to be used as a convalescent hospital."

Toby had watched Downton Abbey. He knew how that had probably gone. The whole place had likely been swarming with officers, turning their noses up at the enlisted men and getting the maids pregnant.

"The family fortunes started to have trouble after that," Robert, Jr. went on as they reached a turn at the end of the hallway that led them out to the grand staircase that Toby had seen when he'd entered the house. As they headed back downstairs, the story continued with, "It was my great-grandfather who had the idea of leasing the house to be turned into a boarding school after the Second World War."

"Leasing it?" Toby asked, a new channel of ideas opening up in his mind.

"Yes," Robert said as they reached the bottom of the stairs, then stopped.

Several people had arrived at the house, likely for classes. They seemed to know where they were going, though. A few even waved or greeted Robert.

"Dormans Boys' School took over operations of the house and paid to have the west wing renovated and made into schoolrooms," Robert continued. "Our family paid for the east wing to be converted into dormitories, and my grandfather and his brothers moved into what had been tenant cottages elsewhere on the property.

"The lease with Dorman Boys' School was for fifty years," Robert, Jr. went on, "and by the time it ran out in the nineties, the school didn't have enough attendance to carry on. So the family took possession of the house once more, converting the dormitory portion into flats. And because it had already been in use as a school for decades, we opened the Hawthorne Community Arts Center, and we've been operating it as a local art school ever since."

If he were honest, Toby found the history of the house and the various uses it had been put to in the last hundred years fascinating. It wasn't his job to be charmed by a bunch of titled snobs, though, even if they didn't have the money behind their title anymore and they needed his help.

"Well," he said with a cocky shrug, "to start off with, you have too much unused space. I counted about six or seven unused classrooms in the small bit of the house we just walked through. I've also seen your catalog. You could either offer more classes, or, if you don't want to pay those instructors, you could rent out the classroom space, either to artists who need studio space or to people who need a classroom to teach in on a freelance basis."

The look of surprise that Robert, Jr. gave Toby felt deeply satisfying. He'd taken the bastard by surprise and wiped the smugness right off his too-handsome face.

"I'm not sure that's something Dad wants to consider," Robert, Jr. mumbled.

Toby's smile widened. Translation, he liked the idea, but it burnt him that someone so far beneath him had come up with it.

Before either of them could continue the battle, they were interrupted as a stunningly pretty young man with his long hair tied back in a ponytail came out of the office and walked toward them.

"Robbie," he said with a smile as he reached them. "June Somersby called to say she wouldn't be able to make your class this morning. Her arthritis is acting up again."

"Thanks," Robert replied with a tight smile. He checked his watch, then sighed. "I need to get down there. My class starts in five minutes."

The pretty man only barely acknowledged that before turning to Toby and extending a hand. "Hi. I'm Early Stevens. I work in the office and run the house social media accounts."

"Toby Tillman. Pleased to meet you," Toby said, deliberately being nicer to Early than he was being with Robert. He even gave Robert a sly grin to rub it in.

That grin vanished when Early asked Robert, "Is this a new boyfriend?"

"No, he's?—"

"I don't know how you do it," Early said with a teasing smile for both of them, "but you always find the best men. You were too good for Keith. He wasn't nearly enough fun. Toby here seems like a lot of fun." He winked at Toby.

"He's not?—"

"I'm not his boyfriend," Toby said.

"He's the financial assessor who Dad hired to tell us all what a shit job we're doing of running our family business," Robert said in clipped, seething tones.

He then went straight into, "Excuse me, I have a class to teach," before marching off down one of the corridors off the front hall.

"Ouch. Sorry about that," Early said, wincing a little. "It's just that we're all sad for Robbie after the break-up. Keith really wasn't good enough for him. You seem very much like his type, and I just—" Early cut himself off, pinching his face. "Sorry."

"Robert, Jr. is gay?" Toby asked, one eyebrow raised. He wasn't sure how he felt about that. It gave the earlier, imagined hard-on a whole different meaning.

"Everyone calls him Robbie," Early corrected him. "Robert is the earl."

The reminder that Toby was dealing with a bunch of aristocrats chilled whatever heat had sparked in his gut at the knowledge Robbie was gay.

"Yeah, well, Robbie was supposed to give me a tour of the house and grounds so I could begin my assessment," he said, letting his accent slip a little. "But now he's buggered off to his class."

"I'll give you the tour," Early said, gesturing for Toby to follow. "I've been working with the Hawthornes for two years now, so I have a lot of tea to spill. I also know a lot about the house."

Toby smiled, relaxing for the first time since stepping foot in the house. He was still determined to do his job well, despite how many arseholes lived at Hawthorne House. He relished the idea of coming up with the plan that saved the day…and having Robbie Hawthorne kiss his feet because of it.