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“My position still stands, Mr Richmond,” Tuppence warned before he spoke. She returned to raking straw into a wheelbarrow.
Mr Richmond’s brows shot up. “Now, how is that a way to greet a visitor? I haven’t said a word and you jump down my throat. How can you possibly know that this isn’t just a social call?”
Tuppence threw him a rueful look. “We hardly move in the same social circles, Mr Richmond. Hilltop Farm is not for sale.”
“I would beg you not to be so hasty.” Mr Richmond’s tone was smooth, but his eyes flashed with annoyance.
Tuppence suspected Angus Richmond was under the impression that his tone was soothing. On her, it grated. Tuppence didn’t like this man. There was something about the narrow-eyed way he raked her with an assessing look as if he were trying to decide on her current market value.
Or the size of my underwear.
With a shudder, Tuppence threw him a dismissive glance before pushing the wheelbarrow out of the stables, and toward the huge manure pile she had yet to spread across the field. It took effort to lift the heavy weight and tip the barrow’s contents onto the pile, but Tuppence gritted her teeth and hefted it anyway because Mr Richmond had followed her, and was watching her like a hawk would watch its prey. She knew he was looking for any sign of weakness, any hint that she couldn’t run the farm properly, so he could use it to his advantage.
I would never hear the last of it.
When she turned around, Mr Richmond was blocking her route out of the field. Steering around him, Tuppence did her best to pretend that he wasn’t there – until his voice stopped her.
“This is a very isolated place, isn’t it?” he began, his tone conversationally calculating.
“It is a farm, Mr Richmond. It is meant to be,” Tuppence replied unconcernedly.
“Don’t you get lonely out here all by yourself?”
“I have work to do. I am terribly busy, Mr Richmond.” Tuppence glared meaningfully at him, but the oaf didn’t take the hint.
Stepping cautiously around a muddy puddle, he glared accusingly at it, shook off his highly polished boots, and wiped them on the grass beside the gate before hurrying after her.
Clearly, you spend a lot of time on farms then.
Shaking her head at him, Tuppence began to wonder why he was a wealthy landowner if he didn’t like the countryside and wasn’t prepared to get his boots dirty.
“How do you plan to survive throughout winter?” he demanded as if he had every right to ask.
“That is my business, Mr Richmond,” Tuppence huffed while dragging a huge bag of grain out of the storeroom. She dropped it at her feet and glared at him. “I have been living on this farm all my life, Mr Richmond. If I couldn’t survive whatever the weather threw at me, I wouldn’t be standing here right now. Now, is there anything else because I am rather busy?”
Mr Richmond affable gaze suddenly hardened. Tuppence tried not to flinch and forced herself to stare boldly back at him. Her heart pounded. She knew, deep in her heart, that this cold, ruthless man before her was the real Angus Richmond. For the first time in a long time, Tuppence began to feel scared and unsure of herself and her location. It was instinctive to look around for an escape route, but she forced herself to stop. This was her home. She had nothing to fear. Richmond was just trying to scare her. He was a pest, nothing more. He would leave her alone once he realised that she wasn’t going to sell her farm.
Defiantly refusing to be scared, Tuppence sniffed at him. “I have guns, Mr Richmond,” she stated flatly, raking him with a look as if trying to decide if he was worth a bullet. “I am not afraid to use them if I have to. As a farmer, I am within my rights to protect what is mine against man and beast.”
“I will give you a thousand pounds,” Mr Richmond announced suddenly, as if offering someone such a huge amount of money was something he did every day.
“For what?”
“The farm, of course.” Mr Richmond smirked at her. “I will give you a thousand
pounds cash for it.”
Tuppence glared angrily at him. “The farm is worth five times that,” she snorted.
“Oh, come now. It is poorly maintained, worn down, and not worth a penny more than a thousand,” he drawled cajolingly.
“I am not haggling with you, Mr Richmond,” Tuppence rapped. “You can put whatever price you want onto the farm, and criticise it as much as you like, but it isn’t for sale. Not to you, not to anybody.”
Especially you.
“You will change your mind, you know,” he warned, his tone deepening with implied threat.
“I beg to differ,” Tuppence replied firmly. “Even if I did sell it, it certainly wouldn’t be for a paltry sum like one thousand pounds. Your offer is an insult. Now get off my land, and don’t come back.” Her gaze was as wintry as the biting wind swirling around them as she raked him with one final look before turning her back on him.
