Thomas

by Grace Burrowes

  Loris planted herself in the center of the aisle, between the main doors and the group of idle men, and tugged off her straw hat.

  “Good morning, gentlemen.”

  Only the largest, referred to as Wee Nick, nodded before resuming his solitary effort to rake the barn aisle.

  “Until Baron Sutcliffe finds a replacement for Mr. Chesterton,” Loris said, “I will direct your activities. I expect the stalls to be mucked and rebedded with fresh straw, the water buckets scrubbed and refilled, the riding horses brought in, and the harnesses, saddles, and bridles cleaned, if you please. Should you ask it of me, I will make specific assignments; otherwise, I’ll assume you can sort out who does what among yourselves. Any questions?”

  A taut silence followed, during which Wee Nick quietly departed in the direction of the pastures. Loris slapped her straw hat back onto her head and turned to leave.

  “I’ve a question,” one fellow called out. Anderson was the natural successor to Chesterton in terms of the stable hierarchy: lazy, mean, and insolent. “If we don’t hop to your commands, Miss Tanner, how will you make us, without Chesterton’s bullwhip?”

  Loris nearly thanked Anderson, because a direct, public confrontation would settle matters most efficiently, and she had the perfect—

  “Perhaps,” a deep voice drawled, “I’ll equip my steward with a whip.”

  Sutcliffe strolled up the barn aisle, attired in snug breeches, spotless linen, gleaming boots, a silk waistcoat the same deep blue as his eyes, and a black riding jacket. The man had no business looking so well put together. He probably even smelled good, of flowers and spices and—

  A memory tickled the back of Loris’s mind while His Baronial Handsomeness paused at the half door to his gelding’s stall.

  “Dear me,” his lordship murmured. “No one has tended to Rupert’s housekeeping. How puzzling. The women responsible for the manor don’t need a bullwhip to inspire them to do an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. My quarters were spotless.”

  A telling point, easily made.

  “Miss Tanner?” the baron called, scratching at Rupert’s withers with every appearance of casual affection.

  “My lord?” Loris didn’t move, though she abruptly felt compelled to stand closer to his side.

  “How many men should it take to keep this stable up to appropriate standards?”

  “Five or six, if they’re hard workers, and we don’t have any difficulties with lameness or illness.”

  The baron went on scratching his horse, to the gelding’s obvious delight.

  “Miss Tanner, you must advise me as to which of these men are expendable. I cannot abide inefficiency. Perhaps we might discuss this while you ride out with me this morning, assuming you’re free to join me?”

  Such manners, while Sutcliffe wielded his authority more tellingly than Chesterton had ever cracked a bullwhip.

  “If you wish, my lord.”

  “My thanks.” The baron swept the silent group with a glance that conveyed amused disdain. “In addition to your other duties, gentlemen, you will please saddle Rupert for Miss Tanner and a second horse for myself. Have the horses in the stable yard in twenty minutes, for I’d spare myself and Miss Tanner the worst of the day’s heat as we make our initial inspection of the land. Miss Tanner?”

  The baron offered Loris his arm, and with the stable boys gawping at that spectacle, Loris took it.

  She and his lordship perambulated in silence into the stable yard, as if no one were glaring daggers at their backs. The baron escorted Loris some distance along the front paddock, to a bench in the shade of a spreading oak.

  “That was completely unnecessary, my lord.”

  “Do not drop my arm,” he replied as they sauntered along, “nor by any gesture or expression shall you imply we are in less than complete charity with each other.”

  “We are not in complete charity with each other, sir. You have destroyed any prayer I had of holding authority over that group of scoundrels.”

  “I have established your authority,” the baron corrected her, pleasantly. “Which is more than you could have done on your own.”

  And yet, somehow, Loris had managed Linden on her own for nearly two years.

  “You shamed them,” she hissed, “comparing them to the housemaids. They’ll hate me the worse for it, the housemaids will put on airs, and nothing will be done as it should.”

  Sutcliffe took out a handkerchief edged in lace the same shade of blue as his eyes, and batted at the bench, which was perfectly free of dust, dirt, and bird droppings.

  “What would you have done if I hadn’t appeared, Miss Tanner? Lectured them into mucking out the stalls?”

  “Withheld their blasted pay,” she retorted. “Tomorrow is their half-day, and they’re paid at midday. Any man who didn’t put in a full day’s work wouldn’t get his full pay, and I would have informed them of this fact had you not interrupted me.”

  The batting about with the handkerchief went on until the bench was likely cleaner than Mrs. Kitts’s sideboards.

  “That might have worked, Miss Tanner, but who would have done the work today?”

  “Those who wanted to be paid,” Loris shot back. “Never threaten a pack of jackals with an empty gun, Baron. I would have stated to all that those who didn’t work to my standards would not be paid, and then left the men to sort it out.”

  Sutcliffe folded his handkerchief into sixths and tucked it away. “Then you would have the two or three worthy ones covering up for the slackers.”

  Oh, he was a quick study, and so early in the day. “They already do, and what care I about that, if the horses are tended to? The burden of enforcing discipline would then fall on the men doing the work, not directly on me.”

  Sutcliffe gestured to the bench, and even that, a simple twirling of his wrist, was grace personified.

  “Interesting approach, madam, but what if the few honest ones leave in disgust?”

  Blast him for putting an elegant finger on Loris’s nagging worry. “They might, though today’s crisis would have been averted.”

  “Or merely delayed to a less opportune moment. Will you need to change into a habit if you’re to ride this morning?”

  “I will not.” Had his lordship switched topics to avert further argument? “Why put me up on your gelding? Rupert looks quite assured of his own importance.”

  Like beast, like master.

  The bench sat in the shade a little above the stable, and in the distance, several lads dumped wheelbarrows of soiled straw into the muck pit, horses were brought in and turned out, and water buckets emptied.

  “Rupert will behave if I’m about, Miss Tanner. Please do have a seat.”

  Loris was tired, more tired than usual even, given the time of year. She sank onto the bench, and Sutcliffe took his time settling in beside her. Did he put himself in such close proximity to her on purpose, or in the past two years, had she lost track of proper deportment between the genders?

  “I’m hardly sitting in your lap, Miss Tanner.” Laughter lurked in his lordship’s blue eyes, daring Loris to leave him smirking on his bench in solitude.

  She stayed right where she was and pretended to study the activity in the stable yard. “Why did you inform those men I’d be up on Rupert?”

  His lordship laid his arm along the back of the bench, a gentleman completely at his perishing, fragrant leisure.

  “I am intimately familiar with Rupert’s saddle and bridle, and with the horse himself. If the equipment has been sabotaged, if there’s a burr under the saddle, I will more easily perceive it than I would were your mount unfamiliar to me.”

  This was worse than if he’d sought to challenge Loris’s authority. “You think they would try to hurt me?”

  “I’m not willing to take that chance, in part because your safety is my responsibility, but also because such insubordination needs to be identified and eradicated immediately.”

  E-rad-i-cated. Sutcliffe snapp
ed off each syllable, like a ferret shaking a fat rat by its neck.

  “You could eradicate everybody in that group but Wee Nick, old Jamie, and Beckman, and we’d be no worse off.” Loris skimmed her boot along grass overdue for rain. “Chesterton didn’t start his mischief yesterday until those three had taken the wagon into the village. They wouldn’t have stood for his nonsense.”

  “Fear not. We’ll decide what to do with the dead wood among the lads, and they won’t plague you much longer. But a question, Miss Tanner.” The baron crossed his long, booted legs, not a care in the world. “Where do you dwell?”

  “Dove Cottage.” Did he know she’d neglected to dwell there last night? “My house lies through the trees off the drive and is named for its gray color.”

  “Ah.”

  That was all. Merely a lordly “ah,” and no explanation for the origin of the question or the significance of its answer. At some point in the night, Loris had apparently roused enough to leave Seamus’s stall and cuddle up on the morning’s ration of hay, where somebody had draped a clean wool cooler. She had no recollection of it, surely a sign of extreme fatigue.

  Botheration.

  For months, Loris had wished her father would come home. When that wish had proved fruitless, she’d wished Lord Greymoor might take a more active interest in his property. Then she’d learned Linden was for sale, and she’d wished the new owner would take the place in hand.

  Loris thus found herself in an unenviable category of people: She’d got what she wished for at last, and could now regret this good fortune at her leisure.

  * * *

  Thomas forced himself to relax and enjoy the morning air, when he wanted to oblige his steward with the rousing set-to she craved.

  Alas, the louts across the way would respect neither Miss Tanner nor Thomas for airing vocabulary at such an hour.

  The day would soon be brutally hot, and Thomas had come to the stable thinking to give Rupert a chance to stretch his legs. The horse had brought him down from London, jogging through the countryside with unflagging energy. He should be subdued enough for Miss Tanner today, if perhaps a bit stiff from his night of confinement.

  Miss Tanner looked fresh, composed, and tidy—certainly none the worse for dreaming away her night on a pile of hay. She’d brushed and plaited her hair, and donned another sturdy, nondescript dress. This morning, she wore a straw hat, wide-brimmed to protect her face from the sun, but as close as Thomas sat to her, he detected a sprinkling of freckles across her nose.

  Also a hint of lemon about her person, lemon and something else, something edible—cinnamon or nutmeg. She’d turned to keep an eye on the stable yard, and Thomas’s gaze was drawn to the side of her neck. Her dark hair was swept back into some fancy variety of braid, but in the morning’s humidity, tendrils curled against the soft skin below her ear.

  Would Miss Tanner enjoy being kissed there?

  Surely, the heat had inspired that idle curiosity.

  “The horses are ready,” Miss Tanner said, shooting to her feet.

  Thomas rose more lazily and again offered her his arm.

  “I detest this,” she muttered as they ambled back toward the stable yard. “Every time I take your arm, I feel you are informing the world I haven’t the physical strength or competence even to walk across level ground.”

  “You are so prickly, Miss Tanner,” Thomas replied. “Does it not occur to you that strolling arm in arm is a harmless way for a gentleman and a lady to enjoy proximity to one another without offending convention?”

  “Offending convention?” she snorted. “It offends me, sir, and if you’re showing me your manners for the sake of convention, we can dispense with further sacrifices of a similar nature.”

  Lord Fairly would like her. Lady Fairly would adore Loris Tanner. “You find this courtesy offensive?” Thomas asked, making no move to withdraw his arm.

  “Not the courtesy.”

  “Then my person, perhaps?”

  “Not your person, particularly, but the fiction that your assistance is required.”

  Which implied she also took issue with Thomas’s person generally.

  “If you should stumble, madam, would you prefer that I allow you to fall flat on your… face?”

  Miss Tanner slipped her arm from his and marched over to Rupert, who waited by the ladies’ mounting block.

  Thomas followed her to the horse’s side, one step behind. “Allow me to check the fit of his equipment, madam.”

  Miss Tanner comprehended the import of a raised eyebrow, because she stepped aside as Thomas moved the saddle back all of one inch, refastened the girth, loosened and then tightened the noseband on the bridle, and gave Rupert a visual inspection.

  The horse was no more reticent than the lady when matters were not to his liking, and he stood placidly in the building heat.

  “Rupert awaits the pleasure of your company, Miss Tanner.”

  Miss Tanner hopped up the steps of the mounting block and swung a leg over the horse’s back. Thomas realized only then that the horse was not wearing a side-saddle, and his steward was prepared to ride astride, abetted by some manner of divided skirt.

  How indelicate, though riding astride was probably more comfortable over the long term than riding aside.

  She gestured at a sizeable dapple-gray whose reins were held by an exceptionally large blond fellow.

  “That gelding is Evan, your lordship. He’s a steady sort, and not the most enthusiastic about the faster paces.”

  While Miss Tanner seemed to prefer life at a dead gallop. “We’ll get along,” Thomas said, swinging up and settling into the saddle. He took a minute to readjust the length of his stirrups, patted the horse, and nudged him firmly with his calves. Evan was apparently preoccupied with weighty matters known only to himself, because he stood stolidly despite Thomas’s suggestion that the time had come to move.

  A single, solid whack with the crop on Evan’s broad hindquarters startled the horse into a trot, which earned him a pat on the neck, and had Rupert moving off in his wake.

  They rode over the home farm, past two tenant farms, and back onto Linden land proper before Thomas noticed that his steward was smiling at him.

  “You make Evan look like quite the blooded gentleman. He’ll be full of himself now, won’t you, Evan Alexander?”

  “The horses acquire Greymoor’s surname?” Thomas asked, letting the gelding have a loose rein.

  “Why not?” Miss Tanner replied, doing likewise with Rupert. “That would make you Rupert Jennings,” she informed her mount.

  “Actually, it’s Sir Rupert Jennings, according to a very young lady I know. Has a pleasant ring to it. Do you like children, Miss Tanner?” Thomas asked, holding a branch back to allow her and Rupert to pass.

  “I do, but not those kind of children.” She brought her horse to halt, and Thomas followed her gaze to a farm pond that lay through a break in the trees. The tranquility of the scene was broken by the laughter and yelling of a half dozen stark naked boys of various ages and sizes.

  They took turns running the length of the dock, then hurtling into the water, bellowing encouragement and insults at each other all the while.

  The pond would feel divine, even this early in the day.

  “What’s wrong with that variety of children?” Thomas asked, as the smallest boy went sailing off the dock.

  “They are boys. Noisy, trespassing little boys who should not be here unsupervised.”

  To Miss Tanner the lack of supervision was apparently a worse transgression than the lack of clothing.

  “The day will soon be stifling,” Thomas said, “and they are full of energy. A nice, cool pond makes for a perfect start to their morning.”

  “They are children, Baron. They require supervision.”

  “They swim like otters.” Would the woman argue whether the sun rose in the east? “The older ones look out for the younger ones.”

  “Not always,” Miss Tanner muttered darkly, ju
st as one of the largest boys careened off the dock, landing squarely on top of the little one who’d gone ahead of him.

  “Timmie!” a third child screamed. “Our Timmie! He’s gone under! You’ve killed my brother!” Splashing, yelling, and general, wet pandemonium ensued.

  “God’s riding boots. Wait here,” Thomas ordered, shrugging out of his jacket and tossing it to the lady. “I mean that. Please wait here.”

  He cantered the horse to the edge of the pond, dismounted on the fly, yanked his boots off, and executed a slicing dive from the end of the dock. The whole sequence, from Timmie’s disappearance to the surface dive, took only a handful of seconds.

  Timmie had sunk like a stone directly beneath the scene of the impact, and when Thomas broke the surface, he kept his right arm crooked around the child’s chin and swam for the dock. The other boys were still yelling and churning up a tempest, but one of them had the presence of mind to hoist himself onto the dock and reach down for Timmie.

  Thomas heaved himself up as well and knelt over Timmie, who wasn’t moving, though he hadn’t been in the water long. Thomas picked the child up and tipped him so his head fell below his chest, but little water drained from his mouth or nose.

  “Is he dead?” one of the boys asked. “Me mum will kill me if he’s dead.”

  “Timmie’s mum will kill us all,” another pointed out ominously.

  “She’ll kill me first,” the bigger boy said. “Mister?”

  Thomas beheld a circle of wet, anxious little faces. “Timmie simply got his bell rung a bit too hard. I expect he’ll come coughing back to consciousness directly. Perhaps somebody could fetch his shirt?”

  The boys, so casually naked around each other, exchanged glances suggesting they realized that their nudity was now displayed before a grown man, one who’d galloped out of nowhere to rescue Timmie—and the rest of them. They made a collective grab for their shirts, then returned to the dock.

  “If someone could tether my horse,” Thomas said, “I’ll be spared a long walk to the manor.”

  “You’re that baron fella,” the largest boy remarked. “Down from London, you are. Heard me da talking about you with Timmie’s da.”