The Hermit of Aldershill Manor

By K.L. Noone

Charlie Ash is ready to start a new job and a new life at Aldershill Manor. As a historian, he’s thrilled to dive into the estate’s archives. And he can hide from all the memories of his messy break-up back in California, where the man he’d thought he’d marry left him instead. He can find solace in exploring Aldershill’s famous gardens ... until he’s caught in the rain, and found by a gardener.

Lionel Briar enjoys making people happy, as long as he doesn’t have to talk to them. He does not like tourists, small talk, or social obligations. But he does like plants and history and his job, taking care of Aldershill’s historic gardens, helping beauty grow. He likes gently tending the world.

So when Lionel discovers the estate’s adorable new historian getting drenched by a summer thunderstorm in his gardens, he offers Charlie the shelter of his home on the grounds ... a moment of rescue that just might bloom into love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: JMS Books LLC
• Release date: May 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685501297

K.L. Noone

K.L. Noone loves fantasy, romance, cats, far too sweet coffee, and happy endings! She is also the author of Port in a Storm and its upcoming sequel, available from Less Than Three Press, and numerous short romances with Ellora’s Cave and Circlet Press; her fantasy fiction has appeared in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword and Sorceress anthologies. With her Professor Hat on, she teaches college students about Shakespeare and superhero comics, and has published academic articles and essays on Neil Gaiman’s adaptations of Beowulf, Welsh mythology in modern fantasy, and Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels.

Book preview

The Hermit of Aldershill Manor

By K.L. Noone

Published by JMS Books LLC

Visit jms-books.com for more information.

Copyright 2022 K.L. Noone

ISBN 9781685501297

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Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com

Image(s) used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.

All rights reserved.

WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review. This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It may contain sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which might be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Published in the United States of America.

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For my lovely fellow Gardeners group, and all attendant courgette, aubergine, gushing sprinkler, and seed-related jokes. Also for my Dad (even though that’s an odd juxtaposition!), who knows more about plants than I could ever hope to learn.

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The Hermit of Aldershill Manor

By K.L. Noone

Chapter 1

Charlie Ash should have expected rain, on an English countryside afternoon. Unfortunately, he hadn’t thought about it.

As usual, he thought rather helplessly: exactly the way his life seemed to be going lately, the way he kept not seeing things, not realizing, until they snuck up and hit him on the head with thunderstorm force.

Like Aaron leaving. Like the finality of a closed door, an emptied closet.

Or like large fat raindrops, here on a soggy garden path, a good two miles from the spires and crenellations of the historic Aldershill Manor.

He’d gone for a walk because he’d arrived early, tossed his luggage into his assigned scholarly guest room in the east wing, texted his parents that, yes, he’d made it across the Atlantic safely, and then immediately wanted to explore. The skies hadn’t opened up yet, and rolling green grass and tall ancient trees and herb-scented kitchen gardens and a winding silver ribbon of stream had all tempted him. Statues, marble and granite, arched in classical curves and twists. He’d heard there was a lily-pond, the subject of multiple paintings over the centuries.

He’d been on a plane, and then a train, and then in a car, for way too many hours, coming from Los Angeles. So he’d grabbed a light jacket, and he had sneakers on, and he’d thought he’d be fine.

The universe, of course, had chosen now to pour water onto his head. And all across the sprawling lapidary violets and marigolds and ferns and hedges. And dirt—now mud-river—walking paths.

He said, aloud, At least it’s pretty? He did always try to be optimistic.

A few ruffly blue flowers bobbed at him in thanks, and shed raindrops of their own. Charlie, being here to look at estate records and eighteenth-century economic trends, knew next to nothing about horticulture, but he could appreciate beauty. The Aldershill gardens were famous, justifiably so, even in the midst of a startling late-July English thunderstorm.

The estate, dating in parts to the Elizabethan era, remained the home of the current viscountess; she’d opened it for weddings, events, tours, even lavish historical movie productions. The house stood up majestically over its grounds, a solid guardian comfortable in its old bones. The gardens—kitchen, herb, medieval, rare and exotic imports, radiant roses, waterscapes and lily-ponds, towering oak forests—wreathed around it, and drenched the landscape in beauty, everywhere Charlie looked.

Billows of color, pinks and purples and golds, fluttered like butterflies in the rain-mist. Centuries-old ornamental fountains glimmered. The river leapt and splashed.

It was splashing even more in the deluge. Lances made of drops sliced tiny needles through his thin jacket.

Charlie eyed the mudslide of the path up the hill. Considered his shoes. Considered, with longing, thick manor walls and a cozy old-fashioned scholarly guest room with the heat turned up, and a cup of tea.

He could go around the lower incline over there, past the kitchen gardens, where there’d be stone steps, and less mud—except that’d be a longer walk, and he had short legs, and the rain wasn’t relenting, and his fingers were getting cold—

He could find someplace to hide, in the picturesque rock garden or under a tree, though with his luck the tree would get hit by lightning or the rocks would fall over—

He really was starting to worry about his fingers now. And he liked his fingers. Good for research. Writing. Emphatic gestures while teaching. Not that he was doing that, these days.

He essayed a step, in the mud, in the direction of the stepping-stones and the kitchen gardens.

His foot slipped. He flailed, caught himself, shoved