She wore the same old riding dress—Dom thought again how he’d enjoy introducing her to more fashionable styles and colours that would bring out the chestnut in her hair and the velvety brown of her eyes. He recalled the disdain she’d expressed for shopping and laughed. How ‘Dandy Dom’ would love teasing and bedevilling her through a succession of modistes and dressmakers!
How much more he’d love easing her out of the old habit, using lips and hands to show his appreciation for her unclothed form, before fitting the new garments over her naked skin...
To his frustration and regret, there’d be no chance of that, so he’d best enjoy the innocent delights of conversation and companionship. They made excellent friends, after all. In fact, she was the cleverest, most entertaining and engaging individual he knew, excepting his Ransleigh Rogue cousins.
She rode up to meet him. ‘Good morning, and what a glorious one it is! As if England herself ordered up a perfect day to show me her wonders.’
‘What, you’re not going to credit me with arranging it?’ he teased.
She chuckled. ‘Very well, Mr Ransleigh. I’m sure there is nothing you could not arrange! So, which way first—to the bluebell wood?’
‘No, it’s been a fortnight, and their display will have faded. Along the lane leading north, there’s a stand of jonquils that should be coming into bloom, as well as meadow buttercup and red clover. The land rises as we go; from the highest point, we’ll get a good view over the estate.’
‘Lead on!’
They set off at a trot. Dom didn’t attempt conversation, content to watch Theo ride. As he’d expect for one who’d followed the army, she sat the horse effortlessly, moving as one with her mount, fluid, graceful, and lovely to observe.
They exited the Home Woods into an area where fields bordered both sides of the road. And just as he remembered, up ahead was a glorious stand of jonquils.
With an exclamation of delight, she spurred her mount. He followed, smiling at her excitement as she gazed at the tall yellow flowers nodding in the wind.
‘Papa told me about England’s daffodil meadows—but this is more beautiful than I imagined. And the scent! Sweet as vanilla.’
‘Heavenly, isn’t it?’ he agreed. ‘Shall we ride on? I seem to recall a patch of wood violets along the banks of the brook just ahead.’
* * *
For the next hour, they rode slowly from wildflower display to wildflower display, past a handful of farms. But as the ride continued, Dom’s initial enthusiasm began to dim.
The first farm they’d passed had seemed somewhat rundown, the roof thatch of the farmhouse old and dark, some of the surrounding field still fallow, with an old wooden-bladed plough left in the soil, as if the farmer had been unable to force it to finish its task. He’d noted it with some concern, wondering whether the tenant was old and in need of assistance.
But by the time they’d passed four such farms, each seeming more dilapidated than the last, he knew it couldn’t be a question of aged tenants.
Angry and troubled, he pulled up near a patch of red clover.
Looking at him soberly, Miss Branwell said, ‘‘I’m no agriculturalist, but it seems something is wrong. I thought your estate was profitable?’
‘It has been. It is. I’m no agriculturalist either, but the places we’ve just passed remind me more of the abandoned farms we saw in Spain after the French had plundered them, than a prosperous estate in the heart of England. I cannot imagine how they have deteriorated to this point, but I certainly intend to find out.’
She nodded. ‘Of course you must. These are your people, dependent on your leadership as surely as the men who served under you in the army. They need you to watch out and care for them.’
She hadn’t meant the words as a reproof, but they stung anyway. ‘These are my lands and my people, and their welfare should be my concern. I’d thought about riding the fields ever since I arrived—but there’s no excuse for my not having done so sooner. I find it strange, though, if the farms are in such dire straits, that I’ve not heard a word of complaint or dissension from anyone on the household staff.’
‘You said you’d been absent for seven years, and your family hadn’t resided here for much longer. It’s probably been like this for some time.’
Dom nodded grimly. ‘It might well have been. My father had little interest in agriculture. He prized Bildenstone only for the income it provided him to spend on his hounds and horses. Winniston, the agent, has been here for years, and his father before him. Trusting them to manage things, Papa came only to collect the rents. If the amounts were sufficient, he probably didn’t even check the account book.’
‘He must not have ridden the estate, either.’
‘Probably not. I know he was never gone long from Upton Park.’
‘Well, someone needs to fix this.’ She waved her hand towards another pasture half-grown up in weeds, with a dilapidated farmhouse in the distance. ‘Do you think you could take up the tasks of an agriculturalist? I shouldn’t think it would be so different than evaluating and cultivating horses—though less exciting than a gallop across the countryside.’
Memory returned in a vivid flash: mounting a horse so fresh he fought the bit, coaxing him to accept Dom’s weight, moving him forward. And then the sheer soul-filling wonder of leaning low over the beast’s head while the countryside flashed by him, the exhilaration as the horse gathered himself and threw heart and body over fence or pond or fallen log, the possibility of a rough landing or a fall ever present, adding a spice of danger.
Wonder, exhilaration, and excitement he’d never experience again.
‘I don’t know,’ he answered frankly. ‘By the time I went up to Oxford, I knew I wanted to spend my life breeding and training horses that were the strongest, fastest, most fearless jumpers in England, both to follow the hounds and to race cross-country.’
‘Like Diablo.’
‘Like Diablo,’ he said. ‘Horses which, as you know, I can no longer ride. With the endeavour that was the focus of my life since I outgrew short coats no longer feasible, I’ve come back full circle, to Bildenstone, looking for something to replace it. Thus far, singularly bereft of inspiration, I’ve been drifting along, unable to force myself to sever those ties with the past, unable to see a future I want to pursue.’
She nodded, offering him no empty platitudes, for which he was grateful. But as she sat regarding him thoughtfully, Dom wondered what had possessed him to confess his failings to her. Just because they’d shared the same experiences and challenges in the army—just because a potent sensuality pulled them together—didn’t mean she was interested in his inability to redefine his life. A difficulty, incidentally, about which he’d said nothing to Max or Alastair, and admitted only to Will, who’d tended him with a mother’s care after his injuries.
‘So many never made it off the killing fields of Waterloo,’ she said softly, startling him out of his reverie. ‘For you to be so severely wounded and survive, yet be ill equipped to continue your previous pursuits, it seems to me that you must have been spared for a purpose. To become a new man, meant to pursue something that lies in an altogether different direction. Your challenge is to resist looking back, regretting what you’ve lost, and discover instead what is meant for you now.’
‘As you have?’ he asked, well aware that his wasn’t the only life whose course had been shattered by the case shot of Waterloo.
She gave him a brave smile. ‘Easy for me to offer advice. I already know what I’m to do.’
‘Taking care of soldier’s orphans. Are you so sure that’s your destiny?’ he asked, wishing he could find such a clear sense of his own.
‘Despite Aunt Amelia trying to dissuade me, I believe it is.’
A new man with a new purpose. Maybe that’s why it seemed so easy to confide in her, he thoug
ht. Because, rightly or wrongly, he felt Max and Alastair and even Will would always be comparing him to what he’d been, whereas she knew only who he was now.
She saw him and his future as a blank slate, and she expected him to pick up the chalk.
Right before him loomed at least one worthwhile endeavour. And she was right; it was past time for him to start moving forward.
‘Is that why you broke your engagement—because you felt your future would be completely different from your past, and you didn’t think the lady would want to go there with you?’
The question startled him, but by now he should expect Theo Branwell to boldly ask what no one else would dare enquire about. ‘Yes. I didn’t feel it was fair to hold her to her promise when I was no longer the sportsman whose suit she’d accepted. When I no longer could, nor wanted, to move in the same circles, doing the things I’d done before.’
‘So she didn’t pass the test.’
He frowned, not sure what she meant. ‘Test?’
She nodded. ‘If she’d really loved you, she wouldn’t have let you walk away.’
‘That’s a little unfair!’ he protested. ‘I didn’t give her a choice.’
‘That may be, but if Marshall had been wounded and sent me away, I wouldn’t have gone. I’ve have stayed and tended him, and if he wouldn’t permit that, I’d have sat at his doorstep until he relented.’
‘Like you sat on my wall?’ he said, bemused.
‘Yes. And if he had me evicted, I would have written him every day, telling him how much I loved him and wanted to be with him. I would never have given up.’
Dom sat silently, pondering. Had he, on some level, meant his insistence on breaking the engagement as a test—for them both?
If so, he had to admit, he had failed it, too. Since coming to Bildenstone, he’d hardly thought of Elizabeth.
‘Well, in any event, look at me! I’m not the gallant cavalier who had the gall to persuade a duke’s daughter to marry him.’
She stared at him, her eyes narrowed. ‘Maybe that was part of it—the audacity of carrying off the prize on your part, the thrill of flouting convention on hers. Of course, it’s not my place to speculate.’
He chuckled. ‘But you did anyway.’
‘What I see when I look at you is a man as audacious as he ever was. Brave, powerful, immensely attractive, and full of potential. He may be a bit nicked up on the exterior—’ she motioned to his eye patch and missing arm ‘—but the outside isn’t important. It’s the essence of the man within that matters.’
‘I’m not sure what my essence is,’ he admitted. ‘I suppose, before this, I could always rely on what was outside, so I never had to look. I’m looking now, and I’m not sure I like what I’m seeing.’
‘What did you do before?’
‘Oh, followed the seasons as a sportsman. Buying, training and hunting horses in the autumn and winter; balls, entertainments, cards at my club, visits to the tailor in London during the Season, house parties and more horse training in the summer...’
His voice trailed off at the look of incredulity on her face. ‘Pretty useless stuff, actually,’ he allowed, ‘when compared to fighting Boney—or caring for orphans.’
‘Maybe what happened, happened, so you’d have to confront your life and choose to do something different. Something more...important.’
‘Had this not happened, I probably never would have examined it,’ he said, realising that fact for the first time. ‘Nor am I sure what that “something more important” should be.’
‘While you ponder it, do something for the tenants here.’
‘Like hiring an estate manager who knows what he’s doing,’ he said acerbically.
‘Yes. And hopefully,’ she added with a grin, ‘one willing to take on some junior apprentices.’
‘Ever watching out for your orphans! Maybe I should become an estate manager. Fattening up little boys like Georgie would be an aim worth striving for. My cousin Alastair is master of his own profitable estate—I’ll write and seek his advice. I also remember him nattering on about the spring shearing at Holkham Hall in Norfolk; where a group of agriculturalists gather to discuss new techniques. Maybe that will ensure I no longer let my tenants down,’ he added, his ire resurfacing.
‘You didn’t know they’d been let down. What matters now is what you do to correct the deficiencies.’
They set off again, Dom still angry and unsettled. How he wished he had Alastair’s expertise, so he would know immediately how to rectify all the problems he’d seen!
As they reached the next farm, Dom noted a man in the field, ploughing behind a heavy-set draught horse. Pulling up his mount, he said, ‘If you don’t mind, Miss Branwell, I’d like to speak with that farmer. I can at least assure him that I intend to begin at once to correct some of the problems he will doubtless want to point out.’
‘Please, go speak with him as long as you like. I even promise not to gift you with my opinions on his suggestions.’
He smiled slightly, appreciative of her efforts to make him feel better. Though nothing but a transformation of the cottages and fields he’d just seen would do that.
‘I won’t be long.’ At that, he slid from the saddle and set off, leaving his mount to graze at the roadside.
Seeing him approach, the man pulled up his horse, watching him warily.
‘I’m Ransleigh,’ Dom said as he approached. ‘And you are...?’
A flash of emotion—resentment, probably—briefly coloured the man’s expression before he nodded a greeting. ‘Willie Jeffers. Heard you’d come back to Bildenstone, Mr Ransleigh.’
‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Jeffers. That’s a fine horse and plough you have. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen others like it on my inspection today.’
‘I reckon not,’ Jeffers said with a short laugh.
‘Your fields look to be in prime shape as well. As you know, I’ve not been to Bildenstone for years, and am shocked by the condition of the farms. Can you tell me what has happened here? Please, speak frankly. Anything you say will be held in confidence. I give you my word.’
After studying Dom for a moment, the farmer said, ‘Folks say you were a brave soldier and a man that keeps his word. So, you want the truth about the farms?’
‘I do,’ Dom replied, meeting the man’s steady gaze.
‘The truth is that Winniston’s always been more concerned with collecting rents than using any of the blunt to improve things—even make necessary repairs. Don’t think he holds back extra for himself. Just doesn’t seem to understand he’ll get more profit from the land if he ploughs some back into it, instead of wringing out of it every farthing he can get.’
‘You seem to have held on to enough to improve yours.’
‘Aye,’ Jeffers acknowledged. ‘My family has farmed these acres for generations, and I’m always looking for ways to do it better. I’ve a brother up near Holkham Hall, and he passes along to me the things they’ve tried up there.’
‘To very good effect, judging by what I’ve seen. First, let me assure you that Winniston will not be supervising Bildenstone’s farms much longer. I am interested in improving things, and want to do so as soon as possible. But as you noted, my experience is with the army, not the land. I’d appreciate any suggestions on techniques you’ve found useful in your fields.’
The wariness in the farmer’s expression turned to the enthusiasm of a master describing his craft. ‘Iron-tipped ploughs help, especially when the ground’s mostly clay. And having the right draught horse. At the last county fair, I talked with a farmer from around Needham Market way. He’d heard of breeding a Suffolk sorrel with a Norfolk trotter, to give the offspring more flesh and stamina. Gentle, tractable, strong, and love to work, those sorrels! If we could breed more stamina in them—now that would be a combinat
ion! I already have a trotter—can’t ride around all these acres on some weak-kneed thing that would give out under my weight in an hour. One of the farmers the other side of Hadwell has a sorrel out of Crisp’s stallion. But when it came right down to it, neither he nor I knew enough about breeding to give it a try.’
The idea immediately piqued Dom’s interest. ‘I might. Not by borrowing your stallion—you need him to ride your fields. But I must return to Newmarket soon to complete the sale of some stock, and will see about purchasing a good trotter stallion and several sorrel mares.’
‘A lot of your tenants would like a horse that could hold the plough longer over heavy ground,’ Jeffers said. ‘Especially further east, where the land’s low and marshy.’
‘Thank you very much, Mr Jeffers. I shall certainly look into it.’
‘Right happy to have you back in residence, sir,’ Jeffers said, before turning back to his plough.
I hope you will be, Dom thought, energised by the conversation. He’d never considered breeding anything other than steeplechase animals, but creating a crossbreed that could allow farmers to plough their fields faster and perhaps grow crops in land previously thought too heavy to cultivate would be an admirable goal.
Was this to be the worthy endeavour he was meant to pursue? A rising sense of anticipation dispelled the last vestiges of his anger and frustration.
‘Looks like it was a profitable conversation,’ Miss Branwell observed as he walked back to her.
‘It was. I may have found something useful to do after all.’
‘Excellent! That calls for a celebration. How about a good gallop? Let’s find an unploughed field just begging to be ridden.’
The disaster with Diablo had so shaken his confidence, Dom wasn’t sure he could manage more than a canter. Well, why not? he thought, buoyed by a newfound enthusiasm. If he could discover a new vocation, maybe he could find a way to keep his seat at a gallop.
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