“Aye, ma’am.” Hecate would like Mrs. Riley. Phillip took up his scythe and joined in the next song.
By the time the field was half done, he’d removed his shirt, as had every other fellow on the crew, and a second wagon had pulled up, this one bearing the nooning and a small keg.
“Who be ye?” Mr. Travers asked when Phillip had downed his first tankard of fine summer ale. “Ye know what you’re about with that blade, and the other lads are bound a gent from Town won’t show them up.”
“Phillip Vincent. I have a small property up in Berkshire. I’m a guest at Nunnsuch. You’ll see that Mrs. Riley is given appropriate compensation?”
“If that’s your pleasure.” Travers sipped his ale. “Berkshire folk go scything for a lark, do they? Have a taste for blisters on your hands and chaff on your neck?”
“I’m a farmer. I have a taste for getting the crops in and ensuring my livestock have enough fodder for winter. How far behind is Nunnsuch with the haying generally?”
“We got about half done when himself says his ha-has must be tended to. That were over a week ago. Damned foolishness, and if we don’t get rain before the end of this day, my name is not Hiram Hercules Travers.”
“No rain today,” Phillip said. “My shoulder tells me when a storm approaches. You’ll get this field in.”
“Nah,” Travers said. “We’ll get it cut and possibly raked, and then it’ll be soaked through. Himself will tell us to gather it up anyway, and we’ll spend the next six months waiting for the wet rick to catch fire. Happens about every third year. We place bets down at the Pig and Pony with half the proceeds going to the ladies’ charitable fund. Steward tries to reason with Nunn, but there’s no reasoning with one of the anointed. Henry, lad, go easy on that ale. It’ll kick you in the head come sundown if you keep at it like that.”
“I’m thirsty,” Henry said with the mulish logic of the young and vigorous.
“Mrs. Riley!” Phillip called. “Might you offer Henry some water?”
She gave Henry a look that spoke volumes, about stubborn men, foolish displays of pride, and a fine pair of shoulders worthy of some grudging appreciation. She passed him a full dipper of water drawn from a pot on the wagon bed.
“That’s from the spring. It’ll be cold. Mind you don’t gulp.”
Henry grinned—and gulped. “Thanks, Mavie.”
“Mrs. Riley to you, Henry Wortham.” She stalked off with her dipper and waterpot, offering a drink first to the other women on the crew.
Travers watched this interaction with a faint smile. “We’ll none of us have much starch by the end of the day, save for Mavis. You never met a more stubborn lass. Shame about her husband. He were a good lad and worshipped his missus. Didn’t leave her much, though.”
Travers’s tone implied that stubbornness was a fine quality in a woman, and Phillip agreed.
“If the haying is behind,” Phillip said, “what about planting and harvest? Does Lord Nunn interfere with them as well?”
“Planting usually sees him larking about in Town, thank God, and the steward does his best with harvest. Even an earl can see when fruit’s ripe in the orchards. Himself isn’t a bad sort—pays a fair wage, does his bit with the Christmas baskets—but he’s a lord.”
Meaning the tasks Hecate could reach—the Boxing Day baskets, the wage book—were in good order. “And the woods?”
Travers cast an eye over his shoulder. “I’m not a woodsman, but my cousin is the ranger for a family in Surrey. Says Nunn’s woods are a mess. Hedgerows just as bad. Those oaks will take over a field in twenty years flat, but himself must have his shady bridle paths.”
“Do you run the hogs down those bridle paths in autumn and winter to clean up the acorns?”
“You’d have to talk to Silas Grove about that. He manages the home farm. Have you had enough of playing farmer, Mr. Vincent?”
The form of address jarred. For all of his life, Phillip had been Master Phillip, Master Heyward, Mr. Heyward, Young Heyward… then, recently, Lord Phillip. The Vincent part, the part that bound him to Tavistock and the whole peerage… He’d be a long time adjusting to that.
Phillip had already had enough of playing lordling. This morning of honest work had proved that, if nothing else.
“If I leave, Mrs. Riley will take up her scythe, won’t she?”
“She’ll take it up tomorrow if she doesn’t take it up today. She’s good with a blade. Steady and even. Not like the lads who try to storm through a field.”
But to wield that blade this late into pregnancy had to take a toll on a woman’s back. “I’ll return tomorrow morning,” Phillip said. “I’d take it as a favor if you’d keep her sharpening blades for the first few passes after nooning.”
“Aye, and we’ll send her back to the spring to give the horses a drink and refill the waterpot. Mavie can handle the reins as competently as she does the scythe and the lads. A proper Hampshire lass, that one. If I were ten years younger…” Travers’s gaze landed on something behind Phillip. “Here now, look sharp. We’ve company from the manor house.”
Those men without their shirts were putting them on, and the ladies had risen from blankets spread in the shade.
Phillip turned to see Gavin DeWitt at the reins of a dog cart, Hecate Brompton seated beside him.
“I see we’re late,” Hecate said. “And I’d hoped last night’s leftover tarts wouldn’t go to waste. Mr. Travers, good day.”
She looked so pretty perched beside DeWitt on the bench, a straw hat tied in a fetching lopsided bow beneath her chin. She had seen Phillip—he was sure of that—and recognized him and was for some reason avoiding—
Where the hell is my shirt? The thought erupted in his mind like flames exploding from a rotten hayrick.
Mavis Riley flapped a voluminous quantity of white linen several times, then folded it neatly over her arm and brought it to Phillip at the slowest walk she’d evidenced for the entire morning.
“Your shirt, Mr. Vincent.”
DeWitt had stepped down from the gig and was assisting Hecate to alight while Phillip shrugged into his shirt. The buttons were beyond him. Coherent speech was behind him, while DeWitt was grinning hugely.
“You brought tarts, Miss Brompton?” Henry Wortham asked. “I do fancy a tart.” One of the other young men chuckled at Henry’s word choice, and Henry’s ears turned red.
“So do I,” Mavis Riley said, “and I’m sure Miss Brompton brought along a few sandwiches and possibly a cake or two. Ladies, if you’d bestir yourselves?”
The next few minutes were absorbed with serving a second luncheon and gave Phillip time to do up some buttons and get his waistcoat on.
“If you don that jacket in this heat,” Mavis Riley muttered as she passed him a piece of lemon cake, “I’ll know you’re dicked in the nob. And don’t think to put on the neckcloth either.”
“But a gentleman doesn’t appear before a lady in his underpinnings.” Much less naked from the waist up, God help him.
“A gentleman should not be too quick to deprive a lady of a chance to appreciate God’s handiwork. Bring her a glass of cider before that other strutting nitwit can think to do it.”