Beth’s heart had swelled twice its size, and she’d smiled brightly the next time she’d seen Mr. Penworthy, causing him to mutter something about cheerful girls.
Apparently she was not the only one on loan that day. In Mr. Jones’s farmyard, she saw a dozen land girls in a semicircle. She hurried to the edge and nodded hello to Christine and Anne from the dairy farm in Combrook and Alice, a girl who’d just turned eighteen and had come to help with the sheep in Alderminster. She’d seen them last at a country dance at the end of March, each one dressed in their best, imitation stocking seams drawn up the back of their calves with eye pencil and lips coated in the precious lipstick they saved for when the men from RAF Wellesbourne Mountford were allowed off the air base. Now these same girls were scrubbed clean, dressed in bulky green sweaters and loose-fitting, durable trousers. Without their makeup and with their hair pulled back, they all looked startlingly young, but, Beth supposed, that was because they were.
“Welcome to Highbury House Farm, ladies,” said Mr. Jones, casting a skeptical eye over each of them. “I don’t know what it’s like on your farms, but I want to make it clear that I won’t tolerate any whinging here. If you can’t do the work, I’ll send you back. Is that clear?”
“And what work will we be doing?” a strapping girl with a crooked grin asked. The posh cut to her vowels drew some looks, and even Beth cast her an extra glance. Yet this girl leaned forward as she spoke as though she couldn’t wait to get stuck in.
Mr. Jones grunted. “Clearing land at the big house. We have a week to prepare and plant it.”
Beth’s heart sank at the idea of all that beauty sacrificed to the war effort. Each time she made her deliveries for Mr. Penworthy, she risked a little peek at the garden. She didn’t dare go as far as the lake because of the risk of being spotted by the hospital or household staff, but she loved the garden rooms with their surprising little nooks and crannies. She’d asked Stella about them, but her friend said she had far too much to do every day to spend time in the garden.
“Which of you can drive?” Mr. Jones asked. Beth and Christine put their hands up. “You’ll find the keys in the ignition. The rest of you can walk.”
Beth walked over to one of the two tractors and climbed up into the cab.
“Mind if I join you?” called a voice from the other side.
Beth peered over the seat and saw the posh woman staring at her, hands on her hips. “Climb up.”
The woman hauled herself up as Beth pressed the clutch and turned over the ignition. The tractor roared to life.
“Been driving for long?” her companion asked.
“Two or three months,” she said.
The other women shrugged. “That’s good enough for me. I’m Petunia Brayley-Hawthorn.” Beth started, and Petunia laughed. “Horrid name, I know, but it’s better than what Mummy calls me.”
Beth couldn’t resist asking, “What is that?”
Petunia made a face. “Petal.”
She laughed. “You’re right. Petunia is better. I’m Beth Pedley.”
Mr. Jones shouted over to them, “I’m not paying you to socialize, ladies!”
“He’s not paying us at all, rotten man. The government is,” said Petunia matter-of-factly.
Beth bit her lip, fighting a grin.
Highbury House Farm was, unsurprisingly, the next property over from Highbury House, as it had once belonged to the manor. However, “next door” in the country meant something very different from “next door” in town, and the slow-moving tractor took a good ten minutes to arrive at the fields that edged Highbury House’s land.
All of that time gave Beth a chance to learn that Petunia wasn’t posh. She was a bona fide blue blood—the daughter of a baron’s second son who had taken a modest inheritance from a beloved aunt and grown it to an incredible size.
“Papa was in banking before the war, but he works for the treasury doing something now. War bonds, probably. Mummy used to sit on the board of several charities, but she pivoted to war work as soon as Germany invaded Poland,” said Petunia.
“How did you become a land girl?” Beth asked, steering toward the greenhouses at the property line.
“Do you mean why this and not the Wrens?” Petunia laughed.
Beth blushed. “I’m sorry. It’s just that the navy’s service is—”
“Where all the toffs like me end up,” Petunia finished with a kind smile. “I like being outside.”
Beth’s mind immediately conjured up images of Petunia in a red jacket and jodhpurs, jumping over streams in a hunt.
“And not just riding and hunting,” Petunia said, as though reading Beth’s mind. “I fish, row, camp, hike. My brothers are to blame for that.”
“How many brothers do you have?” Beth asked.
“Three, and they’re each as infuriating and wonderful as the others.”
“I wish I’d had a brother. Or a sister,” said Beth. Things might have turned out differently if that was the case. Her parents would have still died, and she still would have gone to live with Aunt Mildred, but maybe she wouldn’t have been quite so lonely.
Petunia was happily nattering away. “If I’m out of doors, I’m happy. Being a land girl seemed like the best way to make sure I could stay outside and still do my service. I think it gave Daddy a moment of pause, but Mummy is just happy I’m out of her way.”
They broke through the tree line, and Petunia gasped.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Beth asked, a strange sense of pride filling her chest as she gazed out over the view from the edge of the lake up to the house. “I think it might be the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.”
“It seems a shame to tear it all up for broad beans or whatever they’ll put in here,” said Petunia.
They stopped behind the other tractor, and Beth killed the ignition. A few patients in bath chairs or using crutches slowly walked the grounds closer to the house, and Beth could feel their eyes on her. They were curious looks—not hostile—and she could understand why. They didn’t see women driving huge tractors every day.
She started to climb down from the cab when a man’s outstretched hand, an exposed shirt cuff, no jacket, appeared. She looked over her shoulder and found Captain Hastings grinning up at her.
“You look as though you have the matter well in hand, but I thought I would give my assistance. Just in case,” he said.
Her work at Temple Fosse Farm had kept her in the barn and out of the fields, so it had been a solid week since they’d last spoken, and she found herself surprised at how pleased she was to see him. Pleased and… a little bit guilty because the last time she’d written to Colin she’d reassured him that she hardly spoke to any of the injured soldiers at Highbury House.
But when she returned Captain Hastings’s grin, she couldn’t help the little tug of attraction low in her stomach. She took his hand, even though she was fully capable of jumping down herself. When she hit the ground, however, he winced.
“I’ve hurt your shoulder,” she said.
“It’s nothing.”
“Captain Hastings.”
“The day I let a pesky injury dampen my gallantry, I shall have to give up, Miss Pedley,” he said.