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She crossed the drive and followed the narrow carriage way through the woods. Weeds sprouted through the gravel, and when she reached the yellow stone dower house, all she saw was neglect, an overgrown lawn, sprawling shrubs, and drooping vines. Cassie tried to remember the house’s better days in her childhood when Grandmama lived there before the deaths of Cassie’s older brother Edward, and shortly after, her father. When her uncle became duke, he chose a rather larger estate in Kent to be his principal seat, selling to their neighbor Lord Ramsbury much of the unentailed land of Verwood, leaving the hall to be Grandmama’s residence.

Cassie thrust her key in the lock. The door yielded with a crack, and she entered, immediately shivering at the cold and wrinkling her nose at damp and dust and, she suspected, mice. Sir Adrian had offered to help them move households, and she wondered what other help he might agree to give in his determination to strike a deal.

In the ground floor rooms, she found the furnishings swathed in holland covers, dust, and cobwebs. The drapery had long since been removed from the windows and reused in the main house. Mice had definitely taken over in the kitchen. Only when she climbed the stairs, did her impression of the house improve. The bedrooms, though empty of furnishings, were bright and airy in the morning light, looking out past the kitchen garden over a stone wall into a small open field. A brief childhood memory made her smile. It was a rabbit field. Perhaps, in spite of Honoria’s fears, the house could be made livable. Cassie knew which rooms Grandmama would claim, and which would suit Honoria. Cassie would settle in the middle, between her two relations, where she usually found herself.

She finished her tour of the rooms. If Sir Adrian wanted them to move to the dower house, she would hand him a list of needed repairs.

*

After breakfast Raven sent a bewildered Trimley off to London with instructions, and set out for the village smithy. The landlord at the Crown directed him to George Crockett’s establishment, a long, low, whitewashed building with a thatched roof, darkened and bowed by weather, standing at the lower end of the village. In the yard a chestnut tree towered over a rustic table and chairs, and chickens scratched about, under and around a farmer’s cart without a wheel. A pair of sturdy russet-haired boys tended a smoking bed of coals. Ten feet from the boys stood a wooden framework like a perfect spider’s web surrounded by a ring of leather buckets filled with water. A red setter lounging at the threshold of the open door rose and came to give Raven a greeting, his plume of a tail wagging. From inside came a rapid series of blows of a heavy hammer on wood.

As Raven ruffled the dog’s silky ears, one of the lads dashed into the shop, and the hammering stopped, followed by a quick exchange of male voices. Then the lad reappeared. He halted in front of Raven. “If ye be needin’ me Da, sir, he asks ye t’ wait a tick while he sets a wheel for farmer Hewitt. Me mum has coffee and cake if ye like.”

“Thank you. And you are?” Raven asked.

“Ned Crockett, sir. If ye’ll follow me, sir.”

Raven nodded, and the boy turned and led him into the smithy, dark and warm, and lit by the glow of the forge. The room smelled of iron and horse and burning coke. As Raven’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, he took in Crockett’s arrangements. The long, narrow shop was divided into three areas, at one end a nook under a window with a bench for waiting customers, the main area dominated by the forge against the rear brick wall and the anvil on its stump, and at the end, where Raven had entered, an enclosure for horse-shoeing.

Crockett stood, mallet in hand, contemplating a large wooden cart wheel, assessing whatever repairs he’d made. He was tall and rather wiry, wrapped in the leather apron of his trade, with the muscled forearms of a man who hammered and bent iron into shape. He had a head of shaggy russet hair and a beard to match. Standing opposite him was Dick, the youth Raven had met at the inn the day before. A clear resemblance marked them as father and son, though the youth was the brawnier of the two men. When Dick Crockett spotted Raven, he signaled his father with a quick series of hand motions.

Crockett turned to Raven at once. “So yer the gentleman that stood up for my lad.”

Raven nodded.

“Thank you, sir. If there’s aught I can do for ye, just say the word.”

“There is something, when you can spare the time. But you must know that your son’s first defender was Lady Cassandra Lavenham.”

Crockett glanced at his son. The youth seemed to follow the conversation without the cringing anxiety he had shown the day before. “So our Dick tells us. Still, we are indebted to you, sir. Let my good wife get you some coffee or a pint if you prefer, and you can tell me what it is. First, I must set this wheel for neighbor Hewitt.” Crockett indicated a fair-haired man in a neat brown suit and a straw hat, sitting by the window.

Raven nodded, and Crockett sent Ned through the far door of the shop. A woman appeared, drying her hands on an apron, and bustled up to Raven.

“Sir, good morning. You’re most welcome here. Will you have a pint or some coffee and cake?”

“Coffee,” said Raven, “if I may take a mug outside. I’d like to watch the wheel setting.”

Mrs. Crockett, dark-haired, round, and rosy-cheeked, beamed at him. “There’s a bench against the wall.”

Raven followed Crockett and Dick as they carried the wheel, which Raven guessed must weigh at least two hundred pounds. When the Crocketts lowered the wheel onto the webbed framework in the yard, the Crockett boy Raven had not yet met walked round it, dousing the rim with water. Then the elder Crocketts took up their tongs and moved to the smoldering fire. Watching each other, they lifted from the heat a perfect hoop of iron, flat like a ribbon. They moved in step and positioned the hoop over the waiting wheel. At a nod from Crockett senior, they lowered the heated iron onto the wooden rim. The second boy and Ned sprang into action pouring water around the rim where iron and wood met. Hissing clouds of steam rose into the morning air. Crockett moved in the wake of the boys, hammering metal and wood together as the cold water tightened the iron hoop around the wooden rim. The whole operation was quick and smooth, and Raven could see that Crockett knew his business, and had trained his sons to do their part. It no longer seemed odd that Dick Crockett had found employment with the imperious old duchess.

While Crockett senior and Dick lifted the cooled wheel from the web-like frame, Mrs. Crockett brought Raven a mug of coffee, which he drank, admiring the way father and son worked together. When they needed words, both men used hand gestures. They set the wheel on the wagon axle, and the younger boys brought a sleek and sturdy horse around from the back of the smithy. The farmer, Hewitt, reappeared and hitched his animal to the cart. Civilities were exchanged, and off he drove.

Raven rose from the bench. Crockett came his way, and Mrs. Crockett emerged from her kitchen again to offer her husband a pint. He removed his heavy gloves and took a long pull on his drink.

“Now, sir, what can I do for ye?”

“I won’t keep you long. I am looking to … lease the Verwood property, and I understand that your son works for the dowager duchess.”

“Does all the shoeing for her,” said Crockett.

“Then you must have an idea of the scale and state of the operations at Verwood. I understand the stables will not be included in the facilities a tenant may use.”

“Wondering why that is, are ye?” Crockett asked.

Raven nodded. “I thought you might be able to enlighten me. Is it a working stud?”

Crockett appeared to consider Raven’s question. “I’m that glad ye helped our Dick yesterday.” He regarded Raven with a measuring glance. “Ye kicked a hornet’s nest with that Hugh. He’s a wrong one. Ah well, it’s like he’s gone back to town with yer blunt.”