Page 10 of Waiting for Love

“Is that your job now? Pulling rotting planks from the boathouse?” The question was rude, but she was feeling peevish.

Benjamin smiled grimly. “I’m not expected to wield the hammer and nails.” He was evidently trying to jest. “But I’ll hire the carpenter if I think something needs to be done.”

“If? But Jasper said it needed fixing.”

“He said to use my discretion.” He pulled a hand through his hair. “Lady Olivia, my job, if done well, is not to simply carry out Iversley’s orders but to anticipate what needs to be done. I am to lift the burdens of the care of Chaumbers from Iversley’s shoulders so he can concentrate on weightier matters.”

She sniffed. She understood what being a steward meant.

Oh, but this was hard. She still thought of their steward as old Bradwell. Not Benjamin. Who had once skipped rope with her for half a morning when she was feeling blue because Jasper had told her she couldn’t accompany them swimming that afternoon. Underneath this new seriousness, was he still that Benjamin? The one who had bothered to look beyond her Taverstonian bravado—and understood that sometimes her brothers’ teasing did hurt?

“If you’re supposed to anticipate, why has Reg been telling you what to do all day?”

“He has been familiarizing me with ongoing issues with the tenants.” A gentle exasperation sparked his voice. “He could leave me to figure it all out for myself, some lords would, but that would be a terribly inefficient way to go about it.”

Funneling information through Reg was hardly the most efficient course. “So Jasper, who has hardly spent any time at Chaumbers this past year, told Reg, who has spent even less, what to tell you to do.”

He paused, giving her a sympathetic look before staring hard at his folded hands. “They all care a great deal for…for Chaumbers, even if they could not always be here.”

“Yes, of course, they do.” He misunderstood. She missed her brothers, certainly, but she was not whining about their absence or neglect. She was annoyed by their assumption of her uselessness. “That isn’t the problem. It’s that they still see me as a darling featherbrain to be cossetted or ignored as it suits them. And you’ll follow their lead, I suppose.”

His gaze flicked up, wide eyed and startled, then away.

“My lady, Iversley has placed his trust in me.”

That sounded plaintive. She noted his lowered eyes, his reddening ears. Oh, good Lord! Benjamin still saw her as a child. A fatuous fourteen-year-old admirer. Which she was not! She almost told him so. But that would not be pretending “it” had never happened. Instead, she lifted her chin.

“I care a great deal for Chaumbers too. I am a Taverston, after all, Mr. Carroll, and I also appreciate efficiency. So I suggest we go look at the boathouse rather than waste time standing around here.”

Chapter Five

Benjamin kicked himself for overreacting. Olivia didn’t need him to explain the duties of a steward. Good God! Or to shove a wall between them by mentioning Jasper’s trust, as if she might tempt him to betray it—when the temptation was only in his awakened imagination. He was a fool to have found a race so affecting. To find Olivia so affecting.

“We can let the horses graze by the lake,” she said, tossing the words over her shoulder as she turned to lead Oatmeal toward the coppice.

He should never have indulged in a playful race, but finding himself seated upon such a fine specimen of horseflesh had fired his desire for a good strong run. Olivia was right about his horsemanship. He had been “practicing,” if one could call riding for one’s life practice. Stealing company horses back from the Blackfoot natives was a fool’s errand. Assignments like that were why he had not signed on for another term. He was willing to die for his king, but not for the governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company.

Still, Benjamin knew he was a better-than-decent rider. For a moment, he’d actually believed he would win, until she lengthened the lead he’d thought he was narrowing. He could not have caught her. He could only chase after her. Awed.

Olivia on horseback—throwing caution to the wind. She was magnificent.

He trudged behind, scuffing through the brittle leaves littering the footpath.

The devil. Things had been going well. Of all the Taverstons, Reg was the best intermediary. As an earl’s third son, Reg was marching down the social ladder himself. He could have lived comfortably and respectably as a rector, but chose instead the life of classicist, studying ancient Greek philosophy. A marginally acceptable eccentricity for a gentleman, if he were a hobbyist fading into genteel poverty, but Reg was being paid for his work. Which put him, in the ridiculous eyes of the ton, on the outside of polite society. By all rights, Reg’s branch of the Taverston family should shuffle off into oblivion. Instead, hilariously, Reg had married a duke’s daughter who came with twenty thousand pounds. Her respectability salvaged Reg’s. As long as they didn’t have too many children and dilute that dowry, they could all remain prominent, if untitled, members of the ton for another generation or two.

Perhaps three. While sorting through Taverston financial affairs, Benjamin had come across Crispin’s will. He left everything to Reg. And while his officer’s pay would end with his death, his cottage in Binnings was another valuable Taverston asset.

Even so, Reg would understand the fine line Benjamin must walk. A steward was not a servant. He could use the front entrance and be invited to sit in the earl’s presence. But he was an employee, not a friend. A friend might be forgiven an indiscreet word; an employee would not.

They emerged from the coppice, and the expansive, sun-speckled lake lay before them. Benjamin could just make out the opposite tree-lined shore. His heart tightened, remembering lazy days he’d spent here with the blessed-by-the-gods Taverston brothers—until the divide between them grew starkly evident, because of their sister.

Of course, Benjamin had not fled across the ocean merely to escape Olivia. The Hudson’s Bay Company offered a man of moderate intelligence and good education a steady job with a livable wage. More importantly, Canada promised a chance to leave behind the rigid hierarchy of class. Unfortunately, these promises had proved to be myths, and the New World presented the same temptations as the old one.

The deuce. Jasper should not have hired him without references. He shouldn’t have implicitly trusted Benjamin to exercise sound judgment. Not when impatience, greed, and shockingly poor judgment had led to his difficulties in Canada. Jasper had never asked.

“We can leave them there.” Olivia interrupted his thoughts, gesturing to the scrub grass stretching from the shore up a small hill. “They won’t stray far.”

“All right,” he said, keeping a close rein on his tongue.