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‘There’s your land agent, Mr Pomfret…’ Garfield began.
‘Who has connived in the neglect. I would prefer to see for myself before I tackle him.’ When the other man gave a brisk nod he reined back to allow him to open the gate.
‘We’ll begin with the smallholdings then, my lord.’
Ashe followed as he cantered away across the park. This was not what he had come here for, he had never had the slightest interest in agriculture, but something was pulling him to investigate.
‘What have you been doing with yourself all day, Clere?’ Lady Charlotte demanded from her place at the foot of the dining table. Phyllida, who had been dying to ask the same question, kept her eyes on the cruet in front of her and congratulated herself on having asked for four sections of the dining table to be removed.
‘Miss Hurst has been making admirable progress, I have to say,’ Lady Charlotte added. ‘I am sure she would have welcomed some assistance—or was vanishing into the blue your idea of discreet behaviour?’
Phyllida flinched inwardly. The older woman had no regard for the footmen ranged around the room, no doubt absorbing every word. ‘Lord Clere was very helpful,’ she said hastily. ‘But, really, I get on well by myself.’ She risked a glance at Ashe, immaculately attired in evening dress that had, at least, won the approval of his aunt. There was a magnificent emerald in the centre of his neckcloth.
He was smiling, apparently without strain. She reminded herself that he had been a diplomat. ‘I have been exploring the estate in the company of Mr Garfield, our tenant at the Home Farm. I found it unexpectedly interesting.’
‘I imagine you know very little about agriculture, my lord,’ Phyllida ventured.
‘Which may be why I find it intriguing. But even I can see that there has been a scandalous neglect of the land and the properties,’ he said with a complete absence of his usual faintly amused tone. ‘The tenants are living in poor conditions and the land is in bad heart, which reduces their yields and our rents.’
‘Pomfret was your grandfather’s creature,’ Lady Charlotte observed. ‘Idle devil. I wouldn’t put it past him to have been lining his pockets.’
‘I intend to dismiss him tomorrow,’ Ashe said. He glanced around the room at the footmen. ‘That goes no further, do you understand?’ He ignored the chorus of muttered, Yes, m’lord, and added, ‘I have employed Garfield’s second son in his place.’
‘High at hand!’ his aunt exclaimed. ‘Without consulting Eldonstone?’
‘I found I did not want to have this continue a day longer. My father will agree.’ He glanced at Phyllida and caught her watching him. ‘I have discovered, to my surprise, that although I do not care one jot about my ancestors, I do care about the land and the people.’
His great-aunt snorted. ‘You give me cause to doubt that you are a Herriard! Every one of them of recent generations has cared more for the name and the standing than for the estate, provided it kept on bringing in money.’
‘The land and the people are all that matters,’ Ashe said. To Phyllida’s ears he sounded even more surprised at himself than his great-aunt had been.
‘You can fall in love so easily?’ she asked in jest, with some instinct to cut the intensity that seemed to thrum in the air, and then bit her lip. She should not joke about love to Ashe.
‘It seems I can,’ he said slowly, his eyes shadowed as he met hers across the table. ‘With an idea, that is. I felt the connection, the history, the link back for hundreds of years, more closely riding around the estate this afternoon than I ever did reading about my ancestors or seeing their portraits in the Long Gallery.’
‘If that means you are going to apply yourself to dragging this estate out of the slough it has fallen into, then it doesn’t matter what high-flown sentiments you express about it,’ Lady Charlotte said tartly.
‘My father always intended to do that, and I to help him. I have no idea what his feelings might be when he comes here. If he dislikes the place, then I suppose he will leave it to me to deal with.’
‘You had best find yourself a wife to help you sooner rather than later if that is the case,’ Lady Charlotte observed. ‘Have you any idea of the duties the lady of the house has towards the estate?’
‘No, but I expect you will tell me,’ he said with a smile that Phyllida thought a trifle forced.
‘I do not need to. Marry the right girl and she’ll have been trained to it and she’ll need all that experience. This is not just a large house, but one that will need dragging into the nineteenth century. I wonder if there are any of the local misses who would do,’ she mused.
‘That would save you the tedium of Almack’s, my lord,’ Phyllida said sweetly to cover a little jolt of discomfort at the image of a flock of local eligibles fluttering around Ashe. Each would bear some valuable piece of adjacent land as her dowry, no doubt.
‘I have a strong suspicion that my father is going to desert the field and leave me to squire my mother and sister to that place,’ Ashe said darkly. ‘I doubt I can escape it. I return to town the day after tomorrow.’
The ladies retired to bed after the tea tray was brought in. Ashe kicked off his shoes and swung his feet up on to the sofa as the sound of Lady Charlotte bemoaning the poor quality of the Bohea tea faded into the distance.
It was some kind of miracle the connection he felt to this place now, as though a key had turned in a lock in his brain, a door had opened and he had recognised the rightness of this estate for him. Home. He was, by some miracle, genuinely a Herriard of Eldonstone and so, he hoped, would his sons be.
Which brought him back neatly to the inescapable fact that he needed a wife. What were the duties of the lady of a great holding like this? His mother was going to have to discover them, fast, and a daughter-in-law raised on just such an estate would be invaluable to her.
If he could only conjure up some image of the woman he wanted. He closed his eyes and tried. He knew what her qualities must be, her breeding, but what would she look like, what would her character be?
