A Lord for Olivia (8 page)

“Not now. Your sister has enough on her plate.”

Jason looked at Olivia's pale, drawn features. “Now, Livvy. Don't fret,” he said, catching her up in a hug. “Why didn't you tell me what that mushroom was up to?”

“I . . .” Olivia leaned against him, straining to hold back tears. “I didn't want to worry you.”

“War,” Lavinia intoned. “Not flirting, not trying to rekindle your affections. War. I feel quite as bad as Jason, encouraging him as I did.”

Edmund felt admiration at the way the family drew together. He also felt envy, and a deep sense of loneliness. He turned away, for he had a hay wain to unload.

 

J
ason surprised Edmund by working hard alongside him the rest of that long summer day. He listened carefully to instructions on loading the hay wain, and as the workers tossed hay up to him, he became increasingly efficient at catching and placing it. He received a rousing cheer from workers and family alike when his second wagon made it to the barn without mishap. If it was not stacked quite as high as Edmund's, no one cared. The young squire basked in the praise. By the time the sun set, all of the hay that had been previously cut and dried in the fields was securely stacked in the hay barn and a good start made on cutting the next meadow.

At dinner, Edmund apologized for appearing at the table in riding clothes, the same he had worn the night before.

“I expect your trunks have gone to your brother's, Lord Edmund?” Lavinia asked.

“They are in London awaiting my directions,” he replied. “I had thought to send the bulk of my possessions on to whatever estate was assigned to me for training.”
They would wait there a long time,
he mused bitterly,
for such a destination.
“I will send for them tomorrow.”

They would barely outrun the bills for the tradesmen who had made them, he knew. He had bespoken a small but adequate wardrobe for a country gentleman before departing London, not realizing that every bit of cash he had would be needed to pay the last of his mother's debts.
How will I pay for them?
he wondered.

A quiet in the room brought Edmund's attention back to the Ormhills. “I am sorry, my mind wandered momentarily,” he apologized.

“You are both dead on your feet, I daresay.” Olivia stood. “Shall we make an early night of it?”

Jason grumbled that he had no wish for bed at ten of the clock, and invited Edmund to go to the Black Lion with him for a pint.

“I will, and gladly,” Edmund replied, standing. “I just want a brief word with your sister first.”

Jason agreed to this with transparent eagerness, and Lavinia showed no inclination to play chaperon. “I, for one, am quite exhausted. I shall turn in now.” She hastened out of the room behind her nephew.

Edmund bit back a smile at their tactics. Having given up on Corbright, they once again began to pin their hopes on him. He darted a quick glance to see what Olivia thought of the matter. To his relief, her eyes sparkled with humor. “I shall follow shortly, Aunt,” she said to Lavinia's rapidly retreating back, then sat down again. She even patted the seat beside her on the sofa, indicating that Edmund should join her there.

This looks promising.
Edmund sat beside her, pleased but a little unsure how to proceed. “Miss Ormhill, I—”

“Will you call me Olivia?” she asked.

Better and better.
“If you will call me Edmund.”

“I will. Before you state whatever it was you wished to speak to me about, please let me thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

Her words and the fervor with which she spoke them took Edmund by surprise. “Thank me?”

“I am persuaded you prevented a fight between Jason and Corbright today.”

Did I?
Edmund decided he could take credit, which he certainly needed with the beauty who sat so close beside him. “I couldn't permit him to goad the boy into a duel.”

“It is what I have feared would happen once Jason realized what that beast was doing to us. He has such a quick temper, and I am not sure just how far Corbright is willing
to take this quarrel. At any rate, I appreciate your support. Now, what was it you wanted to say to me?”

“Ah, I fear I am out of turn, and telling you nothing you do not already know, but . . .”

“Yes?” Chin up, she reminded him of a boxer squaring off for the beginning of a bout.

“You cannot bring in yours and Jason's hay in time with the crew you had today.”

“I know that very well. I can do only what is possible.”

“Perhaps . . .” Edmund did not like to offend her, nor did he blame her for being impatient toward one so clearly inferior to her in knowledge of farming in general and her own land and surroundings in particular.

She raised skeptical eyebrows.

“I passed High Wycombe a half day from here. It is a market town. Surely you could hire some workers there.”

“One would think so.” Olivia's mouth twisted into a wry smile. “I went there yesterday.”

“And?”

“The few who had not yet been hired by others had no wish to be hired by a lady farmer. I have largely overcome that sort of thing here in the valley, but where I am not known . . .”

“Yes. I can imagine seeing a lovely young lady such as yourself in the guise of an overseer is somewhat unnerving to the uninitiated.” Edmund smiled, trying to imagine the rough country types he had seen standing in the square hoping to be hired, being approached by Miss Olivia Ormhill in a pretty muslin dress and a fetching bonnet.

“Well, railing against the stupidity of the male of the species will not solve my problem.”

“Do not spare my feelings, Miss Ormhill. Speak your mind to this stupid male by all means.”

“I do beg your pardon. I am all too likely to do so, as you may have perhaps observed.” She seemed genuinely contrite, so Edmund smiled.

“How can I fail to forgive so charming a traducer?”

She bridled at the gallantry. “Do you have any other
suggestions, Lord Edmund? If not, I feel our conversation is at an end.”

Prickly female!
Edmund frowned. “Perhaps if Jason or I—”

“Yes.” Olivia clearly had anticipated this suggestion. “I will ask him tomorrow. He will do it, of course. Until today I could not have been sure of interesting him in the problem. I have you to thank for that.”

Edmund's innate honesty would not allow him to take this much credit. “I think not. You kept your difficulties from him because of your fears about Corbright's intentions. And you are still afraid.”

“After today, my fears have intensified. Would he, could he, be so evil as to force a duel on my brother, just to get back at me?”

Edmund reached for the tensely clasped hands and gently unwound them. Taking them firmly between his own, he said, “I don't know, but he will have to deal with me first if he tries.”

Olivia looked from her hands, swallowed by his larger ones, to his face bending near hers. She felt herself leaning toward him. So warm, those hands, so strong. So competent-seeming, the man who sat near her. It tempted her beyond reason to put her affairs into those hands.

“Oh!” She jerked away and jumped up. “Do not!”

Edmund stood, too. “Do not what?”

“Make love to me. Use any trick you can to draw me to you. And my brother and aunt will help you in any way they can, the traitors! It won't work, though! You may as well be on your way. As I said last night, I'll not wed any man, especially one whose interest is in my land and fortune only.”

At first her words angered him. But as he glared at her, her lower lip trembled, and he could see the vulnerability, the hurt in her eyes. He reached out to grasp her hands once more.

“Olivia, I find you a devilishly attractive woman. A prickly sort, to be sure, but understandably so. If I could convince you to wed me, I would, and gladly. But not by seduction. Nor by trick, nor force. It is not my way.”

“Huh! So high-principled. Yesterday morning you would have wed my aunt without a murmur, thinking her the one with the property.” Olivia tried to tug her hands away. Unsuccessful in escaping his grasp, she tossed up her head defiantly.

He flashed a wicked grin. “I would have, to honor my wager. But not half so eagerly as I would have wed you. But that is behind us. I am released from my wager, and have won from you the right to learn to manage a large estate. I can't do that if the estate is ruined by Corbright, now, can I?” He let her go. “So I intend to assist you in any way I can.”

Olivia looked into eyes that seemed sincere. Of course, she had seen such a look in other eyes. Lying eyes. Still, in the battle against Corbright she needed allies, and however false he might be about his interest in her, Lord Edmund seemed very sincere about his desire for agricultural experience.

“Very well,” she said, stepping a little farther away, because she wanted far too much to step forward into the circle of his arms. “I appreciate that. You shall accompany him to High Wycombe tomorrow, to hire additional workers.”

Edmund formally bowed to her and bade her good evening, then left the room to join Jason, whom he expected to be waiting impatiently at the front entrance with their saddled horses. As he approached the front door, he found it open and the stairs and carriageway crowded with people, all seemingly talking at once. Buckman, the butler, stood in the door arguing with a rough country fellow who was demanding entry. Beyond him, by flickering torchlight, Jason could be seen standing in the midst of the crowd, trying to shout them down.

Edmund paused to survey the scene, trying to make sense of it. “What is going on, Mr. Buckman?” he demanded.

“I do not know, sir, but their sort must go to the tradesmen's entrance, and so I have told this brute, but he won't listen.”

Edmund thrust past the struggling butler and grasped his
opponent by the neck of his shirt. “What do you mean by this, my man?” he yelled.

“I mean to see Miss Ormhill, I do. Got a question for her, and mean to hear her answer it.”

“You know the answer, for I told it to you,” a red-faced woman screamed in his ear. “If you don't work for Miss, we'll have naught to eat this winter.”

“M'lord Corbright said she'd no choice but to give us bread, for it is the law.”

“Lord Corbright is mistaken, Jeremiah Bleck.” A quiet, yet firm voice nearby told Edmund that Olivia had joined him. At her words, Bleck ceased his struggles, so Edmund let him go.

“But it's part of the outdoor relief, ain't it?”

Olivia shook her head. “Only the single loaf of bread distributed at the Flintridge bakery is from the government. It is intended to keep the laborer fit to do work when he is needed.”

At the sight of Olivia, the rest of the crowd had calmed and arrayed themselves around her on the steps. “Explain to my Jim, Miss Ormhill,” the red-faced woman called out. “Explain why he shouldna be a-workin' for that new-made lord.”

Olivia sighed. “I can't say what he should do, Mrs. Bleck. But I can advise him to put by the extra pay to feed his family this winter.”

“Thought you wuz a Christian woman,” groused another, older, man who stood just below Bleck on the steps. “Yet here ya go a-punishin' our women and children a'cause we work for someone else.”

“It isn't that at all,” Olivia responded once the agitated murmur that swept through the crowd at this statement died down. “It is like this: If I cannot get my hay and grain crops in before the weather turns, I'll have nothing to feed my cattle. I'll have to spend money for feed. That means I'll not be able to afford to give bread out.”

“So sell 'em,” grumbled Mr. Bleck.

“If I sell them, what will Dick Wilson and half a dozen others who take care of my cattle do for work? They will
have to go on the county then, and you know what that means.”

“The poorhouse, or starvation,” Mrs. Bleck shouted.

Olivia raised her voice to overcome the murmurs of distress in the crowd. “When the enclosures took the small holdings of many of the people in the valley, my father promised to see that those who stayed and continued to work on the land would not be the poorer for it. It was not required of him. The money paid you or your parents at that time was all the law required. But he felt, and Jason and I agree, that it wasn't an entirely fair settlement, since so many would spend that money within a year or two and then be without the right to raise small gardens or gather wood, as they had previously.”

“Then why don't you pay us more?” Bleck demanded.

“You'd just spend it on drink,” Mrs. Bleck asserted, and several women nodded and muttered assent, or glared at their menfolk.

“Higher wages would be one possibility. But Father feared just what Mrs. Bleck says: merely giving a raise in pay to compensate would not work, because some of you would spend that money as soon as it came into your hands.”

Murmurs ran through the crowd again. The women seemed ardently in agreement; the men less so, though Edmund noticed that many of them dropped their eyes or looked away.

“So we have always reserved as much of our grain as necessary to see through the winter those who worked for us—not just the workingmen, but their women and children as well. But without our crops to sell, without our hay to see our cattle through the winter, we won't be able to do that. Not from cruelty, or as a punishment, but simply because the money won't be there. Now, you may work for Lord Corbright. That is for you to decide. Only be careful with your funds if you do. Tomorrow my brother will go to High Wycombe to hire laborers, and then I will feel obligated to help them and their families through the winter. Do you understand?”