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‘Yes, please. I will get a much better idea of the whole estate from up there, I think.’
It was a steep climb. The original staircase had long since vanished, leaving only a winding path through the turf. Madelyn was panting by the time they reached the top and thinking that she must design some gowns with rather shorter skirts for daywear.
‘There is the well. Be very careful of the grille over the top—it must be almost rusted through and it is a long way down.’ He dropped a pebble in, and she gasped at the length of time before the faint splash.
‘I feel unsteady just thinking about it. Shall we sit here?’ There was a low bank, and Madelyn perched on that, looking out. ‘I do not know much about agriculture,’ she said after a few minutes. ‘But there do not seem to be many fields with crops in them, or animals, either.’
‘No,’ Jack said. ‘This estate is going to need a lot of work and investment to make it productive again.’
There did not seem to be much to say to that. His father and brother had stripped it of its assets and neglected it and her own father had paid it no heed at all. Jack had already told her that the tenant at the Home Farm seemed to be lazy and old-fashioned in his methods and on the other holdings drainage and fertilising was needed and the farm buildings repairing before there was any hope of decent yields and better rents.
‘There’s that row of cottages by Cherry Brook,’ Jack said, pointing. ‘I told you about them—you can see from here how bad the roofs are.’
‘Look, a carriage is turning in off the road.’ Madelyn pointed, glad of an excuse to change the subject.
‘That will be Lyminge and the new accountant,’ Jack said, getting to his feet. ‘I had best go down and greet them. Are you coming?’
‘I will stay here and enjoy the sunshine,’ Madelyn said. ‘And plan the garden.’
She watched, a warm feeling of happiness behind her breastbone, as Jack jogged down the slope, then strode, long-legged, to the house.
We can do this together, she thought. We will bring this house and the estate back, make it a home. She found an empty snail shell and tossed it into the well.
Lucky children, they are going to have two castles to grow up in. And, if I am very lucky, two parents who love each other.
* * *
It felt intrusive having more people in the house, she decided after breakfast next morning. Both Mr Lyminge and Mr Paulson, the accountant, were gentlemen and professionals, and as such, took their meals in the dining room with Jack and Madelyn. They were perfectly pleasant and would give her an opportunity to practise her skills as a hostess and to practise small talk, she told herself briskly. She and Jack could not hope to spend every day for weeks dining intimately alone and Jack clearly enjoyed the masculine company.
Mr Paulson was a cheerful, bouncing redhead, which surprised Madelyn, who had expected accountants to be earnest characters with spectacles, stooped shoulders and a jaundiced view of life. Paulson was clearly an enthusiast. ‘There is music in numbers, Lady Dersington,’ he had explained over dinner. ‘Music and magic and mystery and it is my task to unravel the mystery and to make the music play in tune.’ But he would, he confessed, be delighted to take up Jack’s offer to borrow a rod and fish in the lake.
Mr Lyminge, with a nervous glance at Madelyn, confessed that he did not enjoy fishing, but that if it did not become cooler soon, he would very much like to swim.
‘I will join you,’ Jack had said, prompting Madelyn’s imagination to produce any number of highly provocative images of her husband rising from the water and striding towards her as she stood on the shore. Or perhaps he would teach her to swim. When they were alone, of course.
Now, as the last of the bacon and eggs were consumed and the men began to spread preserves on toast, Mr Paulson asked where the best place for him to work would be.
‘The estate office,’ Jack said. ‘Wystan will show you the way. The older books are all there as far as I can see, but Mr Aylmer held the recent ones, dating from when he acquired the estate.’
‘Mr Lansing at Castle Beaupierre has sent them all, retaining only the ones relating to that castle,’ Mr Lyminge told him. ‘We will make a start this morning and hope to give you a preliminary report by tomorrow evening.’
‘In that case,’ Jack said, directing a heavy-lidded look at Madelyn, which made her toes curl, ‘perhaps I will investigate the lake with Lady Dersington.’
Chapter Nineteen
‘It is an exaggeration to call this a lake,’ Jack said when they stood on the bank and looked out across the water to the trees on the other side. ‘There were all kinds of cuts and ponds made to divert water from the river into the moat and to provide fish ponds when the castle was built. My grandfather, when he first inherited, wanted to have the grounds landscaped by one of the leading designers, like Brown or Repton, but there were never the funds so he had the fishponds joined up, raised the height of the dam on the lower one and we have this.’
‘But the fishing is good and it is deep enough to swim in?’ At his side Madelyn was already easing off her shoes, one hand on his shoulder for balance. He had noticed that she had got into the way of touching him. It was quite unconscious, he was certain, but he was coming to enjoy her fingers on his arm to emphasise a point, the way she would brush a piece of lint from his lapels or run her fingers along his shoulder when she passed behind him when he was sitting in a chair. He was all too aware that when he touched her he wanted far more than that momentary caress.
‘I always wanted to learn to swim,’ she was saying now when he pulled his attention back to the present. ‘But there was only the moat and it is very deep with sides that go straight down.’
Jack grimaced. ‘Definitely not good. The sides shelve quite gently here and the river is clean. I have no idea how good the fishing is because I expect that every poacher in the area has been emptying it along with any game in the coverts.’
‘Will you hire a keeper?’ Madelyn sat down on the grass and began to untie her garters, as unconcerned as though she was in her own bedchamber.
He found the way that she had shed her inhibitions with him both erotic and humbling. He had tried to make their lovemaking good for her, but he had not expected the trust she showed in him nor her sensual delight, not just in what he did to her, but in the ways she was discovering to pleasure him.
Madelyn stood up, tipping her head to one side to study him as he looked at her. ‘What is it, Jack?’
