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“Why aren’t we allowed to sit there, by the way?” she asked, pointing to the empty seat.
“You are remembering the first night we met?” he asked, keeping his focus on the books.
“A little. I was wondering if I sat there again, as I did the first night, would you be just as upset and threaten to tip me out of it.”
“Do not tempt me,” he teased her, glancing up briefly. She blushed and looked down at her book.
For a few minutes, they lapsed into silence with the two of them reading comfortably. After a while, Antony grew frustrated with what he was reading, realizing that where he had planned to place the tenants’ new cottages would not work at all. He unrolled the map with frustration and pulled down his pencil, crossing out what he had already drawn.
“What is it you are doing?” Lady Hermione asked, looking up from her book.
“Trying to plan where to build some of my tenants’ new cottages. Where they currently live is falling down around their ears; it won’t do. The land is too boggy where they are as well,” he said, gesturing down at the map to where the tenants currently lived. She stood from her seat and came over to the table, the better to see it. “I am struggling to find where to put them.”
“What is the issue with where you have drawn them now?” she asked, pointing at what he had crossed out.
“Flood plain. I had forgotten about the river nearby. It won’t do.” He rested his elbows on the table and ruffled his hair in frustration, dropping the pencil to the table.
“What’s wrong with here?” she asked, lifting his pencil and using it to point to another side of the map entirely.
“That would be moving them quite far,” he said aloud in thought as he watched where she pointed. “Plus, the track would have to be improved to give them access to this stretch of land. Expensive.”
“Perhaps, but correct me if I am wrong…” she paused as she moved closer to his end of the table, bending over it as she moved the pencil, turning it toward the village closest to her end of the map. “Is this not a church here?”
“It is,” he agreed, noting the small cross that had been drawn on the map.
“There must be a school beside it too?” she asked.
“There is.”
“And your tenants have children?” she asked, looking up to him.
“They do.”
“And do you still not see where I am going with this?” She spoke with a small smile. He folded his arms in his chair, intrigued by her words.
“Go on,” he urged her.
“Maybe it would cost more to move them here,” she used the pencil to demonstrate her thoughts, “but wouldn’t that move your tenants closer to their church and their school? It could make their lives an awful lot easier. Maybe less school days missed, for instance.”
He leaned forward in his seat, examining the map closer. A smile spread across his features. He had been looking for help from Fergus and had somehow gotten even better help than he had been seeking, all from Lady Hermione. He wondered why he had not come to find her sooner.
“That’s an excellent idea,” he said, taking the pencil from her and drawing the cottages in exactly where she had mentioned. “I hadn’t even thought of that.” He looked up, seeing that his praise had made her smile. “You looked at it with a different eye.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, turning and taking the stool that was beside him at the table.
“I mean you looked at it from my tenants’ perspective. This is going to sound absurd now that I am saying it, but I foolishly had not thought to do that.” He shook his head at his own ridiculousness, marveling at Lady Hermione before him. He watched her, seeing how much she sat taller in her seat at his praise.
She is so very different to other ladies.
The words lingered with him. Not only could he flirt easily with her, be intoxicated by her, and be utterly drawn to her, but now she was proving to him how clever she was too. She had a sound head on her shoulders. It left him quite stunned.
“I imagine being Duke can be hard work at times with so many responsibilities for so many people,” she said, looking down at the map and pointing to all the different tenants’ cottages on there. “It can’t be easy. Do you have many aspirations for it?”
“Some,” he acknowledged, turning in his stool to face her. “I pictured opening a school on the estate itself one day, though that hasn’t yet happened.”
“For your tenants’ children?”
“Just so.”
