The Two Lords of Wealdhant Manor (2 page)

Algernon frowned as he looked over the map. It seemed to him that there was plenty of land available adjacent to the manor, and surely with some money from the estate the farms could be relocated out of the railway’s path.

“Some of these people can be very … well, old-fashioned, I’m sure you can imagine! But it is your land, you see, and progress helps everyone! The prosperity that a railway would bring to this area of Lincolnshire, it would be all for the best.”

“Certainly,” Algernon agreed, nodding as he continued studying the map of Wealdhant Manor and the nearby village of Wilston, most of which was indicated as property of the Allesbury estate. “I do believe that what the railways have done for England’s economy in the past fifteen years is remarkable, and I am myself a devout advocate of the belief that technology improves life for all of us.”

“We are of one mind, then, Mr. Clarke!” Mr. Sutton shook his hand firmly. “It has been such a pleasure to meet you, sir. I shall be in touch very soon.”

Feeling dizzy with hope and amazement at this sudden change of his circumstances, Algernon shook his hand enthusiastically in return. “The pleasure is all mine, Mr. Sutton.”

Mr. Cullen showed their visitor the three steps to the door, and shut it behind him.

“Well!” Algernon exclaimed. “There’s a belated Christmas present for us! Wealdhant Manor, Cullen, and me a landed gentleman! What do you suppose?”

Mr. Cullen raised his brows.

Algernon grimaced. “I am perfectly aware that… well, it’s all a bit sudden and suspicious, isn’t it? But it’s this or the debtor’s prison, unless you see any alternatives. And what if I am indeed the heir of Wealdhant? I think it’s all very grand, Cullen.
This
venture will be the making of me, I assure you.”

It was very good of Mr. Cullen, Algernon thought, that he did not comment on the fact that Algernon had said the same thing about their last three ventures. He did, however, imply it with the set of his frown.

“Wealdhant it is, then, sir,” Mr. Cullen said, and sighed.

I
t had started spitting
rain at a steady drizzle by the time Jasper Waltham came along the bend in the lane and heard shouts and crashing from the direction of the village. Concerned at once, he quickened his steps to find out what was happening. It was a market day, and hardly out of the ordinary that there should be more noise and people in the sleepy little village of Wilston, but the chaos he heard was decidedly not ordinary.

The lane opened onto the cobblestoned market square, where the normally placid village of Wilston was in an uproar. A wagon and a coach-and-four had collided, and the four coach horses were loose in the market square while people tried to help, to stay out of the way, or to protect their own stalls and wagons from the chaos. Above it all, the worn stones of the aged church and buildings of Wilston looked on in stolid silence.

Taking stock of the situation, Jasper strode forward to take command. The worst of the trouble seemed to be the fractious horses which had gotten loose; four of them from a badly-matched coaching set. It prickled Jasper’s ire that someone should have picked out a set of coach horses with so little thought to temperament. Even his layman’s eye could spot two of them were green, one high-spirited, and the fourth a tired old nag who was standing sleepily amidst the mess. Nearby, the two farm horses attached to the wagon stood their ground, reacting with nervousness to all the people milling about.

One of the green horses spooked suddenly and made a break in his direction. Stepping swiftly to the side, he snatched at the loose reins, set his feet and yanked backward, which resulted in him being pulled along for several steps along the muddy lane and nearly hauled off his feet before the horse stopped. Wild-eyed and jumpy, the horse tugged at its reins, but Jasper clucked at it, patting its neck until the horse’s attention focused on him instead of its fears.

“There, there,” he murmured, leading it to a worn hitching-post at the edge of the square and tying it there securely so that he could sort out the rest of this.

“Ho, it’s Jasper! Here, now, Jasper!” one of the men called to him from the side of the damaged wagon, waving him over.

Following the summons, he took a closer look at the wagon. It was missing a wheel, and there were three men in discussion over how the situation ought to be handled while the rain worsened into an earnest downpour.

“Jasper, ye’ll lift, can’t ye?” asked the dark-skinned Mr. Cranston, holding the retrieved wheel and inspecting the damage.

“I’ll lift,” Jasper agreed, squatting down to consider the situation. As far as he could tell, there didn’t seem to be any structural damage to the wagon other than the lost wheel. “Are we placing the wheel?”

“Aye, tyre’s undamaged. ’Twill serve. If you and the gentleman will lift, Malcolm and I can set it to rights.”

“I’ll lift,” said the gentleman, drawing Jasper’s attention. He had a fine London accent and was taller even than Jasper by several inches, though he was slender and athletic where Jasper was solidly muscular from physical labor. The stranger’s eyes were dark and alert, full of long-suffering mirth at their current soggy situation, and his sharp jawline was prickled by day-old dark stubble that roughened the civility of his finely-tailored garb and gave his appearance just a little bit of wildness. Jasper was simultaneously arrested by the impressions that the man was remarkably handsome and that he was in some way not entirely English. Had he been dressed in anything other than a stylishly cut suit, Jasper would have taken him for a gypsy or a Moslem.

The stranger returned Jasper’s stare with a lopsided but charming smile. Realizing that he
was
staring, Jasper quickly returned his attention to the wagon.

Mr. Cranston coordinated the effort as Jasper and the stranger braced themselves in the deepening mud and lifted the wagon.

“
Oof
,” the stranger exclaimed, feet slipping in the mud, and he knocked into Jasper, spilling them both into the mud and dropping the wagon nearly on top of them.

Jasper had the briefest awareness of landing on top of a strong, masculine body of lithe muscle, but didn’t allow himself to think about it as he scrambled back up and offered a hand to help the now-muddy stranger to his feet.

“I suppose that was inevitable,” the stranger remarked with a grimace, looking himself over and wrinkling his sharp, handsome nose. “Are you hurt? My deepest apologies.”

“I’m unhurt,” Jasper assured him, feeling both apologetic and amused that the London gentleman had been so thoroughly muddied—worse so because Jasper had landed atop him. “Shall we try again?”

“Yes, certainly.”

This time the lift went off without a hitch, and Mr. Cranston got a wooden beam braced underneath it to keep it up. Jasper stood back as Mr. Cranston saw to the wheel, and found himself by the stranger’s side as they supervised.

“I’m afraid I don’t know the first thing about wagon wheels,” the gentleman said. He was smiling despite the mud and the downpour, and Jasper couldn’t resist smiling back.

“No, nor I,” Jasper agreed, gaze lingering on the gentleman’s dark, handsome features. “I suppose it’s best if we just do the heavy lifting. Are you staying in the area?”

“Yes, actually, I—”

“There we are, Jasper,” Mr. Cranston said, drawing their attention back to the wagon. “If you two gentlemen will lift again, we’ll have that brace out and it will all be right as rain.”

“Of course, Mr. Cranston.” Jasper braced himself again, waiting until the stranger got himself into position so that they could both lift.

Mr. Cranston fetched the brace out quickly, and the wagon was set back onto its wheels.

“It’s a fine thing, you happening along, Lord Jasper,” Mr. Cranston said, grinning as he used the nickname. “We’d need two men to lift like you do.”

Jasper gave him a scowl for the teasing, but before he could retort, shouts went up as one of the still-spooked horses overturned Mrs. Tupper’s vegetable stall. Grumbling at the chaos, Jasper went at once to set the situation to rights.

It was another half hour before the market was fully sorted out, with the horses all returned to their traces and the collided vehicles on their way.

Soaked through from rain and thoroughly muddy, Jasper took shelter at Mrs. Tupper’s stall while she fussed over her bruised, muddied vegetables. He scanned the market square for the gentleman from London, but nearly everyone had gone on their way or taken shelter from the rain, and the visiting gentleman was nowhere in sight.

“Mrs. Tupper,” he tried again to argue, “I know it is market day, but the weather only continues to worsen. Can’t we pack up your stall?”

“Nay, it’ll clear up soon enough!” she insisted, briskly determined despite all of the wet.

Jasper folded his arms, beginning to feel chilled from being so thoroughly wet now that he was no longer engaged in setting the market to rights. He wondered that Mrs. Tupper didn’t mind the cold or the wet, even though she was nearly twice his age. “Near everyone else has packed up, Mrs. Tupper.”

“Fiddle!” she declared. “Just a bit of wholesome English rain. Mr. Otto hasn’t been by yet—he’ll want some parsnips, you can be sure of that.”

Sighing, Jasper gave up the attempt, wondering if he should bother with the supplies he’d come to town to fetch or if it would be wiser to head straight home and warm up so that he wouldn’t catch a cold. Either option required leaving the relative shelter of the vegetable stall, and the rain showed no signs of lessening.

“It seems like there were more people than usual in Wilston today,” Jasper commented, while he considered his next course of action.

“Oh, aye.” Mrs. Tupper nodded. “It was that gentleman up from London, had a new young horse that spooked. Mr. Clarke, it was? Said he’d be staying at Wealdhant, he did.”

Jasper reacted to that with visceral shock. “He
what
?”

Mrs. Tupper clucked in surprise. “What, and didn’t you know? Thought you knew everything relating to the old Manor, my Lord Jasper.”

“I thought I’d finally got you all to stop
lord-
ing me,” Jasper grumbled, tightening his folded arms across his chest. “What are you on about? No one’s staying at Wealdhant.”

“Seems Mr. Clarke is,” Mrs. Tupper said, putting on her ‘but it isn’t any of my business’ face.

“For his sake he had best
not
be!” Jasper said, bristling indignantly. “It isn’t his. No one can have Wealdhant unless it reverts back to the Crown, and if it had we would certainly know about it.”

Mrs. Tupper continued looking prim. “I suppose you’ll have to take that up with Mr. Clarke.”

“You may be sure that I will! I don’t know what nonsense—” Jasper stopped suddenly as he encountered an unpleasant suspicion that the nonsense in question might be related to the railway solicitor who had come asking after the property rights of Wealdhant some weeks ago. Jasper had sent the man on his way with the very clear information that there was no lord of Wealdhant, that Jasper saw to the old estate, and that Jasper would most certainly
not
be selling any portion of it to strike a railway across.

Suspecting trouble—and probably some sort of legal nonsense rustled up by the solicitors—Jasper straightened his hat and headed in the direction of Wealdhant. His sisters would be wroth with him when he arrived home late, muddied, and without the supplies he’d been requested to fetch from the market, but they would simply have to wait.

T
he roads kept getting
muddier as Algernon’s carriage moved on toward Wealdhant Manor. Algernon pressed his face to the window, peering out into the dismal grey sheets of rain.

They passed an ornate, cast-iron gate which stood open at the entrance to the Manor drive. One half of the gate hung askew, choked with overgrowth. Two tall stone columns flanked the gate, topped with weathered carvings of hunched, winged figures. Algernon thought they might be eagles or griffins.

On the other side, in what would in any other stately home have been manicured park lands, the wet, rugged moors stretched out through the curtains of rain to what might have been a smudge of forest in the distance.

The carriage jolted, knocking Algernon’s head against the roof. He winced, glad that his hat was safely on the seat across from him. The roads had been awful since he had boarded his carriage in Cairkby near the railway station. It was a relief that the railway came at least within fifteen miles of the Manor, which spared him having to endure these roads all the way from London. Once the railway was extended as far as Wilston and past, travel would be vastly easier, faster, and more comfortable.

At last a tall, grey stone structure appeared through the rain, hulking like a great dark beast against the landscape. It was a massive gothic construction, which seemed to have at least one eccentric expansion upon the original structure. The drive, which should have been neatly and fashionably coated in grey gravel to make the carriage ride smoother, was muddy and neglected, and only a few lights were lit in the windows to welcome the new master of Wealdhant Manor.

His carriage pulled to a stop in front of the manor steps, and the manor door opened for Mr. Cullen to descend with an umbrella.

“Cullen!” Algernon greeted him happily as he descended from the carriage under the protection of the umbrella and was swiftly escorted inside. “Do you suppose the weather is always this dreary in this part of the country?”

“I always thought the countryside was supposed to be pleasant,” Mr. Cullen said, smiling wryly as he took Algernon’s overcoat and hat.

“Perhaps not this part of the country,” Algernon sighed. The lofty ceiling above him seemed close and oppressive despite its height and grandeur. The ancient manor was constructed in grey stone and panelled with dark wood. Much of it was still visibly dusty, and one of the treads on the stairwell in the front hall was broken through entirely. Algernon grimaced. It would be quite the project to get the old place back in order, but the estate trust would more than cover it. Land was money, and the rents and produce of the district would certainly create income, but he had no concept of what Wealdhant’s accounts might look like. All he had was a two-hundred-year-old map showing the demesne of the Allesbury estate.

“Welcome to Wealdhant, sir,” said Mr. Cullen, bowing and extending his arm toward the little line of servants who had gathered in the front hall. “May I introduce Mrs. Underwood, the housekeeper, Miss Vance, head maid, Mr. Hodges, underbutler, and Miss Wotton, maid-of-all-work. And you have of course met Mr. Dabney, the groom, and Mr. Ingram, the footman, who fetched you in Cairkby.”

“So I have. A pleasure to meet you all,” Algernon, smiling at his little staff. About half of them were from London, and half had been hired locally. Mr. Cullen had gone ahead of Algernon by several days to begin work on getting the old manor liveable again. Algernon dreaded to think what projects might have taken priority in the past few days such that none of the staff had yet gotten around to repairing the missing step on the main stairwell.

He shook the hands of his new employees, greeting them all personally and then releasing them back to their duties.

Once they’d gone, Mr. Cullen looked Algernon over with an amused glance. “Sir, how is it that you turned up muddier than either Dabney or Ingram?”

“Oh! Bit of a fuss in Wilston,” Algernon explained, following Mr. Cullen up the stairs and hopping over the missing riser. “Horses spooked, you see, and knocked into this old wagon, so of course I had to help get it back sorted again. There was—” Hesitating and glancing back to make sure they were alone, Algernon lowered his voice. “There was this terribly handsome gent who lifted the wagon with me while its owner replaced the wheel. Local farmer or blacksmith, I do suppose. Certainly as brawny as a blacksmith. At any rate, down I went into the mud, and knocked the poor gent over with me.”

“I imagine we’ll have our work cut out cleaning your poor trousers,” Mr. Cullen said, opening the door to what was clearly the master suite of the manor. Four tall, arched gothic windows poured light across a room filled with heavy, old-fashioned furniture. It was a relief to see that the room was perfectly liveable, with fresh linens upon the bed and not a speck of dust remaining.