Henry became focused on organizing a pile of sickles and scythes that needed no organizing.
“Had a healthy girl baby just this morning. Named her Willa, after William, her late da. Midwife says everything went well.”
“Leave Mrs. Riley some flowers.” Phillip dusted his fingers through his hair and wiped his face with a handkerchief. “Two bouquets, one for the mama, one for the baby. Pick them yourself.” Phillip had picked flowers for Hecate that morning and left them in her bedroom. She’d been fast asleep, done in by a visit to the summer cottage.
Making love under the stars was wonderful. Making love in a big, soft bed while the night breezes stirred the curtains was another kind of magic entirely.
“Flowers?” Henry appeared to be working out a complicated math problem. “Two bouquets?”
A Crosspatch Corners tradition shared from father to son and uncle to nephew. “Two. When Mavis is recovered enough to receive callers, ask to hold the baby. Admire the child, who is doubtless beautiful, as all babies are beautiful. Bathe before you call and bring Mavis some smoked beef or a quarter ham. She needs to regain her strength.”
Henry perched a hip on the wagon bed. “I’m the oldest of eight. I know all about babies. They are little and troublesome and loud, when they aren’t little, troublesome, and smelly.”
Ah, youth. “That tiny girl is all Mavis has of the man who loved her enough to spend the rest of his life with her. When you admire the baby, you respect Mavis’s memories.”
Henry made a face. “I respect Mavis, but William was the better man. Smarter than me. Not such a brute. I stink of the forge when I’m not stinking of worse. Pa won’t give up smithing, and yet, I’m supposed to take over for him if he doesn’t outlive me.”
“Are you thinking of looking for work in London?” Phillip took out his flask and offered it to Henry. This was a discussion he’d had with many a young fellow in Crosspatch. “That’s lemonade. Leave some for me.”
Henry sipped and passed it back. “Wages are higher in London, and I’m a hard worker.”
“You’re the one directing the crews, aren’t you? Travers barks the orders, but you’re telling him what work needs to be done.”
“Travers is a tenant. He knows his patch and does right by it, but I’ve rambled the whole estate since I was old enough to toddle, and I like to be busy. I’m also bringing in a bit of coin when the forge is slow.”
Phillip drained what remained in the flask—his spare—and knew he ought to be getting back to the summer cottage. The sun was still far above the horizon, but the house party was observing country hours, and all that aside, he missed Hecate.
“London wages are higher, but everybody and his cross-eyed dog are in Town looking for work. All the soldiers who’ve mustered out, the domestics whose rural households can’t pay them, the weavers who can’t make a living because of the factory looms, the sawyers replaced by steam power, everybody. I’d advise against a foray into Town.”
“I know,” Henry said. “We get the London papers. People starving in the streets, turning to gin, perishing of disease. I don’t want to leave, but…”
“I’ll put in a word with Tavistock,” Phillip said. “He recently bought a property in Berkshire, and every estate can use workers who know what they’re doing.”
Henry’s smile was wan. “Can’t court Mavis if I’m in Berkshire.”
“You can write to her.”
Henry looked intrigued, as if the concept of using the royal mail to further the interests of true love had never occurred to him.
Phillip put away his flask and bid Henry and the rest of the crew farewell. The walk across the park was pleasant, and the long hours of work passed the time between sightings of Hecate. Across the terrace, at supper, over a chessboard … She was always lovely, always poised and correct, but to Phillip’s eye, she had also acquired a quiet sparkle.
Maybe he was sparkling a bit, too, if such a thing—
“My lord.” The Earl of Nunn, attired for riding, emerged from the bend in the path that led to the arched bridge. “Out impersonating a peasant again, I see.”
The old besom was very much on his dignity, while Phillip could not be bothered to be offended. In less than six hours, he’d once again be abed, listening for Hecate’s key turning the latch on his French doors.
“I impersonate a peasant every chance I get,” Phillip said, wondering if he should have bowed. “The land thrives when those charged with tending it take a direct hand in matters. You have a beautiful estate, my lord.”
Nunn sent a glance in the direction of the stable. “I have a large estate. When the Corn Laws are repealed, which will happen the instant suffrage is expanded, I won’t be able to afford jam for my toast, much less wine with supper or fair wages for the domestics.”
“Suffrage won’t expand that much,” Phillip said. “Not at first. The geniuses in the Lords will give voting rights to just enough more men to quiet the grumbling, not enough to beggar the landed class. As an island nation, Britain needs to maintain food production more than most, though you must agree, rotten boroughs serve no proper governmental purpose.”
“I will grant you that.” To Phillip’s surprise, Nunn fell in step beside him. “I’ve seen you, with the haying crew, in the ditches, mending wall. You must truly like the exertion.”
To Nunn, that explanation probably made sense. “I like the stewardship,” Phillip said. “An estate requires care, just as children, shops, and households do. I was raised without family, and the land became my passion.”
“I knew your father.” Nunn used his riding crop to whack the heads off a stand of blooming nettles. He’d just helped propagate the patch, did he but know it. “You have his height, and you bear a resemblance about the eyes, but he was a self-important, braying ass. I cannot credit that you are his get.”
“Neither could he.”
“Ah. One did wonder, and yet, you look like him.”
As they ambled along, it occurred to Phillip that Nunn had yet to get to the point, and for all his hauteur and posturing, the earl had one. He was not a fellow to indulge in random conversations, an attribute in his favor.
“I should thank you,” Nunn said, “for…” He waved a hand in the direction of the home farm. “For lending a hand. I was a younger son, off to subdue the Americans, and thus I wasn’t raised to manage Nunnsuch. We have manuals for deportment and books that tell us how to cook a roast, but farming…”
“An art learned over a lifetime,” Phillip said. “Henry Wortham has a talent for it. Promote him to assistant steward, and he’ll soon know as much as your steward does. Henry was born on the estate and considers it his home, not merely a place to work.”
Nunn ambled in silence for twenty yards, and the summer cottage came into view. “Loyalty is a fine quality. I’ll consider your suggestion.”
In for a penny… “Or you could simply tell Hecate that the estate is beyond you, and she’d have it in hand within five years.” Particularly if Phillip assisted with the task.
Nunn decapitated a stand of wild carrots this time. “Do you know how incessantly this family expects Hecate to solve their problems? The woman gets no peace, and her thanks is to be maligned and resented, all because she has a good head on her shoulders and does not suffer fools. I’d trade her for the lot of them, and she’s not even a true Brompton.”