Thomas

by Grace Burrowes

  The help might be lacking, but the fields were in fine shape, the buildings in excellent repair, and the house itself immaculate and welcoming.

  The room Miss Tanner lead him to, while not large, yet qualified as a library. A wide fieldstone hearth lined half of the outer wall, French doors graced the other half. A fine oak desk sat near the doors, positioned to take advantage of the natural light. The long, heavily cushioned couch faced the hearth, bookshelves extended behind the couch, and a sideboard stood along the inside wall.

  Upon that sideboard sat a full decanter and four sparkling crystal glasses. Thomas lifted the stopper and sniffed the contents, congratulating himself on his purchase again.

  Lord Greymoor had sold the place as is, where is, including fixtures and furnishings. Fortunately for Thomas, the estate was kept ready to receive its master—or his guests.

  “May I offer you a drink, Miss Tanner?”

  She stalked around the room, though her first instinct was likely to sit at Thomas’s desk, where she’d no doubt ensconced her tidy bottom many times before.

  She left off pretending to inspect book titles and peered at him.

  “A drink. Of?”

  “Excellent brandy.” Thomas poured himself a hefty tot. “I intend to sample it myself, but it wasn’t my horse who was just given a reprieve from a firing squad.”

  “Perhaps a small portion,” Miss Tanner said, taking a position at the French doors. She’d turned her back to her employer, which was rude, but probably no more rude than referring to an equine firing squad.

  Miss Tanner was a conundrum, part lady, part employee, part something else Thomas couldn’t easily label. He was helpless to resist conundrums, because a man who’d made his fortune in commerce craved sense and order in all things.

  “A restorative,” Thomas said, crossing the room to pass her what even a high stickler would allow was a tonic to nerves under a severe trial. He stepped back and half-leaned, half-sat on the desk.

  They could tally up their respective rudenesses later. “Has Chesterton threatened you previously?”

  Miss Tanner tilted her glass and took a sniff of the contents. “Must we discuss this?”

  Thomas sipped his drink, studying a tallish, dark-haired woman with gray eyes and a Gypsy cast to her features. Now that he had the chance to examine her riding habit in decent light, he’d classify the color between mud and dust.

  She moved, dressed, and spoke to hide the fact, but Loris Tanner was undeniably attractive.

  Thomas liked women, generally. Liked their pragmatism and humor, their affection and resilience. He liked the women he took to bed, particularly the ones who found their way there, passed an enjoyable hour or three, then found their way back out of his bed—and his life—with a smile and a wave.

  Loris Tanner had a kind of beauty women seldom valued and men never overlooked: earthy, dark, curvaceous, and strong.

  If she were sweet and merry, he might have had a problem, but her surliness was helpful, because they’d likely be working in relatively close quarters—provided Miss Tanner was as competent as both Lord Greymoor and Greymoor’s cousin, Guinevere, Lady Amery, had claimed.

  “One usually imbibes a drink, Miss Tanner.”

  She sampled her brandy, her expression transforming from a pensive scowl to open wonder.

  “What a lovely, lovely, business this is.”

  Thomas added an intriguing streak of hedonism to Miss Tanner’s inventory of characteristics, because as she partook of the spirits, she closed her eyes and tipped her head back, as if to savor the heat sliding down her throat and warming her insides.

  “You are a connoisseur?” Thomas asked, sipping his own drink. The blunt word was tippler, the vulgar word was drunk. Applied to a woman, those terms also implied a class of tragedy Thomas had observed all too often.

  “My work requires I be out of doors in all kinds of weather,” Miss Tanner said. “The occasional medicinal indulgence does not go amiss.”

  But in all the time Miss Tanner had assumed responsibility for running the estate, she hadn’t sampled the owner’s brandy even once.

  The conundrum reared its head again. A lady decided whether a gentleman was to sit in her presence, but an employer was the one who made that offer to the employee.

  Thomas’s saddle-weary arse made the decision for him. “Shall we sit, Miss Tanner?”

  She took the center of the sofa, back straight, hands quietly holding her drink in her lap, as if she were enduring a social call and trying not to glance at the clock.

  “You had questions, my lord?”

  Have Chesterton and his like kept their hands off you? “How long have you lived on this property, Miss Tanner?”

  “I have lived on this property since before Lord Greymoor purchased it almost ten years ago—he was Lord Andrew Alexander then. My father was steward here until about two years ago.”

  Her grip on her drink had grown quite snug.

  Best get the next part over with. “What happened to your father?”

  “I do not know. He either left or met with foul play. Papa was ruinously fond of drink, but because his lapses were as infrequent as they were spectacular, Lord Greymoor tolerated him.”

  Ruinously fond. Poetic of her.

  This much, Thomas had already been told, but he suspected Mr. Tanner’s minor lapses had been covered up by his daughter, who’d apparently become her father’s right hand despite her gender.

  “I cannot abide a drunk, Miss Tanner. Particularly not in a position of responsibility.”

  Thomas’s guest raised her glass, as if examining the beauty of sunlight passing through brandy.

  “I cannot abide a drunk in any capacity whatsoever, my lord.”

  “We are in agreement then.” Thomas also could not bear to bully this woman regarding her father’s shortcomings when she’d tried so hard to atone for them. “How do you find Linden at present?”

  Now she swirled her drink, a fortune teller divining her tea leaves.

  “Improving,” she said at length. “Prospective buyers came down last autumn, and because they were astute, and members of Lord Greymoor’s family, they were able to inform him of certain changes needed to benefit the property.”

  Again, she was being honest, if carefully so. Guinevere Hollister Allen, Lord Greymoor’s cousin, and a frighteningly competent woman, had come to look the property over with Douglas, Lord Amery, now her spouse. They had discovered Loris quietly performing the tasks of a steward in her father’s absence.

  “Linden is improving, how?” Thomas asked.

  “We’ve sold many of the sheep, which were grazing the place into oblivion. We’re looking at irrigation and drainage improvements, and have started on them in a modest way. We’ll ship the first loads of firewood this autumn, and the ledgers are certainly in better condition than they were.”

  We have, we are, we shall. Miss Tanner spoke like a true steward, one who viewed a patch of ground as creating a community of the people who cared for it and depended on it.

  “What changes remain to be made?” Thomas crossed to the decanter to top off his glass and gestured with the bottle to inquire if his steward would like more.

  “No, thank you.” Her tone suggested drink mattered little when the land was under discussion. “What this property needs is time and people who care about it. For shearing and lambing and so forth, we’re using itinerant crews, as we do for planting and harvest. The local people still work some of the staff positions, but we’re short-handed, and those we do have aren’t as knowledgeable as they should be.”

  Thomas suspected much of the “we” aspect of working Linden was in Miss Tanner’s mind—or her heart.

  “Is the lack of staff a criticism, Miss Tanner?” Thomas resumed his seat, scooting his chair closer to the sofa. He wanted desperately to prop his feet up on the low table, and might have if his steward were male.

  But his steward, or the closest employee he had to a steward, was female,
and Thomas would not discommode her unnecessarily.

  “Whom would I be criticizing, your lordship?”

  “Me.”

  “I don’t know you well enough to criticize or praise you, sir. What would I criticize you for?”

  Oh, how Thomas longed to pull of his boots and put up his aching feet. “You might criticize me for purchasing a property without even seeing it? For buying land in a part of the country I’m unfamiliar with? For firing my stable manager without having a replacement to hand?”

  “Chesterton is an ignorant bully. The horses hate him, and with good reason. He never speaks when he can yell, and he never passes up an opportunity to snap that infernal whip.”

  Miss Tanner’s comment reminded Thomas—inappropriately, of course—of when the ladies at the Pleasure House had taken a patron into dislike. Their judgment, sometimes despite all appearances to the contrary, had invariably been sound.

  “Who hired Chesterton?”

  “One of Lord Greymoor’s factors,” Miss Tanner said, finally taking another sip of her damned drink. “If I were to criticize anybody, it would be my former employer, though he was ever a gentleman and never overtly negligent of his estate.”

  “And yet, he fell short in your estimation. Honest of you to admit it,” Thomas remarked. The brandy spread a lassitude through him that revealed a pervasive fatigue. He was tired to the bone, and in need of a meal, a bath, and a clean bed, in that order.

  “Lord Greymoor didn’t take this property seriously,” Miss Tanner said. “Oh, he liked to bring his Town cronies down for hunting in the autumn, or come around at planting to ride his horses over hill and dale, but he wasn’t—he did not love his own land. Papa said his lordship had nobody show him how to go on with the property, and his lordship was young.”

  Though Miss Tanner was younger than Greymoor, she could apparently neither comprehend nor entirely forgive his lordship’s lack of attachment to the estate.

  “You expect me to love Linden, Miss Tanner?”

  She set her drink aside. “What I expect matters not one bit, does it?”

  Her expectations had been all that had kept Linden together for nearly two years.

  “A gentleman isn’t supposed to argue with a lady,” Thomas said, even though arguing with this lady would be a lively undertaking.

  They lapsed into a silence Thomas felt stretching into a brood. All the while, his steward sat primly, six feet and a mysterious female universe away.

  Thinking of the horse? Thomas rose and stretched a hand down to her. “Thank you for your time. We’ll talk more, I’m sure.”

  Miss Tanner looked first at his hand, then up at his face, then down at his hand again before she seemed to grasp that he was offering to assist her to rise.

  She stood, dropping his hand immediately. “Shall I fetch Mrs. Kitts to you?” she asked, moving toward the door. Miss Tanner loved the land, but she did not in the least love being interrogated by the landowner.

  Lady or not, Thomas was her superior. “Miss Tanner, I haven’t yet excused you.”

  She waved a hand. “A small oversight, your lordship. You mustn’t feel the need to stand on ceremony with me.”

  Then she was gone, leaving Thomas to put his feet up in a bemused solitude that soothed after the peculiar developments of the day. To arrive to one’s own property—and he had sent notice ahead—and find nothing and no one to greet him, was a lowering comment on the state to which his life had arrived.

  He appropriated a portion of his steward’s drink. What did he need with a welcoming committee, for pity’s sake?

  A quiet tap on the door heralded the arrival of Mrs. Kitts, a round, graying little terrier of a woman who seemed to think if she smiled long and hard enough, Thomas might smile back.

  “Shall I assemble your staff, Baron?”

  Baron? Well, yes, Baron. Baron Sutcliffe.

  “In twenty minutes, and I’ll take a tray in my rooms for supper, say around half eight.”

  “Very good, my lord.” Mrs. Kitts bobbed with the enthusiasm of a female one-third her age. “Very good.”

  She withdrew, apparently pleased with her assignment, with her new employer, with the state of life in general, while unease nagged at Thomas. Nobody could be that happy, not all the time, and if they were, they should have the decency not to show it.

  He took the last of Miss Tanner’s drink to the French doors and gazed out over the fields and pastures lying between the manor and the home wood. Lord Greymoor and Lord Amery had both told him the home wood was far too large and poorly maintained. The benefit of this neglect was a quantity of deadfall, enough that Thomas would enjoy wood fires at his own hearth where and when he pleased, and he would also have income from selling the excess if he so chose in the short run.

  Loris Tanner had pointed out the potential profit to be made, and Greymoor had given her leave to start harvesting the wood last winter. She’d also drafted the plans for the irrigation and drainage system, and she’d culled the flocks to manageable numbers.

  All in all, she’d proven competent as an interim steward, but to Thomas’s expert eye, she was utterly inept as a woman.

  Women did not interpose themselves between livestock and bullwhips. They did not march about in stifling heat as if on dispatch for Wellington. They did not accept offers of brandy in the afternoon, even on medicinal terms.

  Women liked to dress up and be told they were pretty. They flirted, simpered, and manipulated, and were usually very charming with it. Women teared up prettily at the mention of distressing developments—their favorite hair ribbon going missing, for example—and they gazed at a fellow as if they might enjoy activities with him that weren’t mentioned in polite circles.

  Loris Tanner had been raised by her father, a drunkard by her own account, who had dragged her from one rural estate to another. She’d never had the benefit of genteel associations, and that lack showed.

  Thomas would have to do something about her. He wasn’t quite sure what, but doing something about Loris Tanner went onto his list of matters to be addressed—right at the top.

  Chapter Two

  Thomas had long ago resigned himself to a life full of petty ironies and minor frustrations. Here he was, bone weary and much in need of slumber, but unable to sleep. He’d summoned Chesterton and dismissed him with two months’ wages and no character other than a letter verifying the period of employment and position held.

  Chesterton’s gaze had narrowed on the epistle, though Thomas doubted the man could read. Thereafter had come—bless Mrs. Kitts and her staff—a bath, a good meal, and bed.

  All a weary fellow could want on such a day, but sleep, fickle lady, would not join Thomas in the bed.

  He tossed, he turned, and he tossed the other way. He mentally recited some of Caesar’s Gallic letters in the original Latin. He composed an epistle to his former employer, David Worthington, Viscount Fairly. Next, he made a stab at the Scottish royal succession from Kenneth MacAlpin down through the Jameses, none of which brought slumber closer.

  So Thomas got out of bed, pulled on his breeches and shirt, and padded barefoot down to the library for another nip of the “lovely business.”

  A niggling cocklebur of a thought intruded on the way to the decanter: Thomas had let his stable master go. A man of business knew that loose ends were the stuff of avoidable disaster, and Chesterton’s dismissal meant nobody was in charge of the stable.

  Rupert was in the stable, as was Miss Tanner’s gelding.

  Thomas used the flame from the sconce in the corridor to light a carrying candle and left through the French doors. Moonlight gilded the path to the stable, and the night breeze made the air nearly cool, a blessed change from the sweltering day.

  Heat lightning flickered to the north, but the horses were calm, some munching hay, some dozing.

  Seamus had curled up in the straw of his loose box, his gaze clear, the remains of a pile of hay near a hanging bucket. Somebody had brushed out the geld
ing’s coat so no trace of his earlier ordeal remained.

  Beside the bucket, nestled on a horse blanket, Thomas’s steward lay curled into the corner.

  A woman—a tired, badly dressed, inconveniently pretty woman—defended the Linden stable.

  With plural pronouns, perhaps?

  Thomas scooped Miss Tanner up, blanket and all, as gently as he could and cradled her against his chest. For her to share a bed with a horse was ill-advised, unsanitary, and a poor reflection on Linden’s owner.

  Miss Tanner muttered, “Tired,” and, “soon.” Possibly, “Papa.”

  The stable was one of Linden’s best features, lavishly commodious and sturdily constructed. It would do well enough for Miss Tanner as protection from the elements. Thomas deposited his burden on the pile of hay tossed down for the morning’s rations—he’d slept on worse and been grateful—though he’d likely not looked as fetching.

  In the saddle room, he found a wool cooler used to keep a hot horse comfortable in the winter—clean, fortunately. He brought it back to the woman slumbering in the hay and hunkered down to tuck it around her.

  “Seamus?” she murmured sleepily.

  “Go to sleep, sweetheart. Seamus is well.”

  She subsided into her dreams, leaving Thomas nothing more to do but slip from the barn and walk back to the house.

  He scrubbed his dusty feet clean, finished a hefty nightcap, and tried once more for sleep, though something would, indeed, have to be done about Miss Tanner.

  * * *

  Linden’s new owner, His Most Exalted Imperial Handsomeness, Thomas Jennings, Baron Sutcliffe, had created a situation, and Loris did not intend that the situation be allowed to fester.

  She strode into the barn at full daylight to find that somebody had forked the morning’s ration of hay into each stall, but otherwise, the lads were lounging about, enjoying an absence of supervision.

  The stalls had not been mucked. The water buckets had not been scrubbed or refilled. A lead rope was coiled in the dirt, where any unsuspecting horse could tangle a hoof in it and come to grief. The riding horses at pasture overnight had not been brought in.