Elias In Love

by Grace Burrowes

  Elias’s voice held compassion for that young boy, and also for the man who’d ended up raising him.

  “No wonder you’re attached to your castle. It stood for security and stability when you needed them most.”

  He wrinkled his nose. “Possibly, but castles are also magic, if you have any imagination. I used to lie in the great hall on my back, hoping to hear the voices of the ghosts. Zebedee claimed he saw the first earl and his lady in a passionate embrace upon the parapets one night last summer. He said the lady’s smile put the stars to shame. Zeb was very fond of his wee dram, mind, and we’ve had many a wedding at the castle of late.”

  And Elias had been very fond of his uncle.

  “Tell me about this castle.” Violet could picture him in his great hall, tricked out in his kilt for some cousin’s wedding.

  “A properly maintained castle is bloody expensive,” Elias said, his finger wandering along Violet’s collarbone. “Thank the heavenly powers the roof is mostly sound, or there’d be no limit to the cost of the repairs. As it is, I was wondering if you’d like to buy my farm. All proceeds of sale will go toward keeping Clan Brodie out of the wet for the next two hundred years.”

  Violet had been considering whether the remaining condoms on the night table ought to be consigned to a happy fate when something in Elias’s tone caught her attention.

  “So you came here with intent to sell the Hedstrom property?” He hadn’t exactly said, had he?

  “I came here to see if it can be sold, and if so, how. I’m not competent to manage a farm in these latitudes, and neither was Zebedee. Did you know our alpacas were stolen?”

  Unease trickled through Violet’s rosy mood. “You can’t sell that farm to just anybody, Elias.”

  “Of course not,” he said, kissing her temple. “I’ll only sell it to somebody with a vast fortune and a pressing need for a tax dodge. It’s a pretty patch of ground. I was honestly hoping you might make an offer.”

  He sounded… hopeful. Not even apologetic.

  Violet was off the bed and across the room. “Do you always talk business in bed, Elias?” she asked, pulling a green cotton sundress over her head. She’d plucked from her closet the sort of comfy dress every woman ought to have for lazy summer mornings at home.

  This morning had just lost its quotient of comfy.

  “You’re upset.” Elias had sense enough to leave the bed himself, and even to scoop up the detritus of their protection and pitch it in the waste basket.

  “I’m… I was hoping you weren’t here to sell that pretty patch of ground. I was hoping you might see that it’s worth keeping.”

  Max Maitland would be all over that farm by sundown if he knew Elias was short of cash.

  Elias stepped out of his shorts and fished a pair of black briefs from his backpack. “Zebedee kept it, though why I’m not sure. He was no kind of farmer, and neither am I. Won’t you enjoy having some neighbors for a change?”

  Unease escalated to dread, even as Violet grieved to watch Elias preparing to dress for the day. She’d never see his like again, and almost wished she never had.

  “What do you mean, Elias? Neighbors—plural?”

  “You’re across the road from eight hundred arable acres and not a soul dwells there,” Elias said, facing her without a stitch on. “Wouldn’t a sign of human life every once in a while be some comfort, Violet? Somebody to visit with at the mail boxes?”

  “I visit plenty.” Every two weeks at the Feed and Seed, also at the fire hall’s quarterly pot lucks.

  Unless the tractor was on the fritz, some ewe was ailing, or the accounting was behind again.

  “What aren’t you telling me, Violet?”

  Elias was absolutely unselfconscious about being naked in the morning sun, suggesting he’d been in a state of undress around more than a few women. The briefs went on, followed by his jeans, though he didn’t bother to fasten the snap.

  “I’m telling you, Elias Brodie, that your farm has some of the best ground in the county, if not the state. You have nothing less than class two soil over there, and most of it’s class one. You have two surveying oaks in your woods—virgin trees hundreds of years old. You won’t find two surveying oaks on the same property anywhere else in Maryland—I’d bet my sheep on it. You said it yourself, a farm is a castle, and that makes you its steward. Don’t sell that property. I can manage it for you, make it turn a profit even.”

  Elias came closer, his expression solemn. “If you had to choose, between my property and yours, which one would you protect?”

  Abruptly, he was not the affectionate, generous lover from the previous night, but a man who spoke several languages, drove fast cars, and played sports Violet had never heard of. He was out of her league—an earl—a wealthy man who tinkered with charitable corporations in his spare time.

  “What sort of question is that, Elias? It’s not like the English are going to come sailing up the Potomac to reprise the battle of Bladensburg.”

  “When was the last time you took a vacation, Violet? When was the last time you drove away from this place without worrying about your sheep, your chickens, your profits, your fences?”

  Her blog, her produce swap, her wood pile, her cats, her finicky tractor, her everything.

  And her valley, when Max Maitland was loose without supervision. “I’m not saying I’d manage your place for free.”

  Elias passed Violet her mug of tea, cold now.

  She wanted to toss it in his face. “Thank you.”

  “I’m in a cash squeeze, Violet. Paying a manager to look after the place, waiting on rents, sinking money into the buildings, purchasing another herd of alpacas or goats or sheep or whatever doesn’t make business sense.”

  Violet sank to the bed. “How bad is your cash squeeze?”

  Elias sat beside her, though he’d be within his rights to keep his finances entirely to himself.

  “Very bad,” Elias said. “The castle will get what I can spare it, but Zebedee also invested in family businesses. One cousin owns some sort of art dealership, and Zeb had open contracts with him. Another cousin owns a golf course of all the albatrosses, and now he’s expanding it. Yet another is a potter, and her business has good and bad years. Jeannie’s husband walked out on her leaving her with a new baby and a newer mortgage. They all leaned on Zeb, and he never let them down or expected them to pay him back.”

  “And they’re family,” Violet said, an enemy she could not combat. “You can’t turn your back on family. Let’s get some breakfast.”

  Elias remained on the bed, while Violet pushed to her feet. She smoothed his hair back—god damn, she would miss him—and would have bolted for the door except he took her hand.

  “I wish I could give you that farm,” he said, kissing her knuckles. “Property should be held by people who care about it.”

  Violet wanted out of the bedroom, where she’d been so foolishly happy. “Promise me you won’t sell that farm to a developer, Elias. It’s good ground, and you’ll get a fine price for it if you keep it under cultivation. You think I’m passionate about this farm, but I’m passionate about all farms.”

  He dropped her hand and rose. “I can’t promise you not to sell to a developer, Violet. I haven’t the luxury of waiting for an agricultural buyer to come along. I’m sorry.”

  He kissed her forehead and snagged his backpack. Violet beat him out the door.

  Chapter Five

  * * *

  Zebedee had claimed the Scots had a talent for grief, but then, Zeb had claimed a lot of things—including an intention to live for 90 years at least.

  Elias didn’t feel grief, so much as he endured a sense of déjà vu, of being again in Headmaster’s office, anticipating unforeseen joys, when instead disappointment and sorrow had lurked in the chapel. He followed Violet down the steps, the feeling in his gut akin to what he’d experienced 38,000 feet above miles of cold, pitiless ocean.

  Queasy, resentful, frustrated. Trapped in a ba
d situation.

  “Are eggs OK?” Violet asked.

  “You needn’t cook for me,” Elias said. “I’ll collect my things and be gone. I’ll look for an agricultural buyer, Violet. I’m not making any promises.”

  She was beautiful in the morning light, auburn hair rioting down her back, nothing but a simple cotton dress between Elias and his sweetest dreams.

  And she was furious.

  “Do you know Elias, in one five-year period, this country lost a space nearly the size of Maryland to development? By some estimates we lose nearly 10 acres of farmland every minute, a square mile every hour.”

  Elias knew better than to argue—Violet was merely revving her engines on this topic. She retrieved a bowl of eggs from the fridge—not a package, a bowl that included both white and brown eggs.

  “The developers don’t go fifty miles into the wilderness to turn some random hillside into a housing development,” she went on. “That would be too costly, of course. Instead, they snatch up the land close to the cities and towns, the land ripe for growing a crop of commuters who will only add to our carbon footprint, while they destroy our ability to produce food.”

  She cracked eggs against the side of the bowl with a practiced expertise. “A farm takes generations to bring to full production, and once it’s been turned into a tot lot, agriculture will never get that land back. And don’t think the farmer can take his business out into the hills, either. What it costs to clear land and get it under cultivation is more than any farmer has in his back pocket.”

  Out in the yard, a chicken yodeled, or whatever chickens did that woke everybody up.

  “God dammit,” Violet said, glowering in the direction of the barn. “It’s not even 7 a.m.”

  “Let me make breakfast,” Elias suggested. “You can see to the chickens, and I’ll get some food on the table.”

  Violet’s expression suggested she didn’t trust him not to poison her, and that… that would make it easier to get on a plane in two weeks.

  Ten days, at the most, possibly sooner.

  “Don’t bring the dogs in until we’ve eaten,” Violet said, shoving the bowl of eggs at him. She slid on her ugly shoes and was out the door with a parting scowl.

  Elias put together an omelet, toasted a few slices of last night’s ham and cheese bread, and put the last of the strawberries on the table on the back porch. He was tempted to look at his phone, but instead sat on the top step and waited for Violet to resume her rant.

  She came stomping across the back yard, a few wisps of hay in her hair which Elias did his best to ignore.

  “This looks good,” she said, taking the same chair she’d occupied last night. “If you sell your farm to a developer, I will hate it.”

  “You will hate me, though I am not responsible for land use problems throughout the United States, Violet.”

  She speared a forkful of eggs. “It’s happening all over the world, Elias. China has lost forty percent of its arable land while its population is increasing. Asians, who number in the billions, are also consuming more meat than ever before, and growing livestock takes a ton more resources—I can’t eat this.”

  Elias could eat, because the alternative was stale energy bars and airplane peanuts. “I thought the American real estate economy was sluggish, and vacant houses were the blight of nearly every city.”

  “I don’t know about the U.S. economy. I just know people would rather steal my farmland than gentrify some part of D.C. I won’t hate you.”

  Magnanimous of her, when he hadn’t done anything wrong. “I won’t hate you either.”

  Violet fell silent, which was worse than her ranting, and Elias’s breakfast lost its appeal. He’d been wrong about her.

  She was not passionate about her chickens or sheep or seed catalogs—whatever a seed catalog was. She was enthusiastic about those things and in some regard, she enjoyed them.

  About preservation of the American farm, she was evangelical. Passionate to the point of irrationality. People had to live somewhere, and America was a huge place.

  “Pass the salt,” Violet said. “Please.”

  “I put salt in the eggs,” Elias replied, reaching for the salt shaker, a plain white ceramic article in the center of the table. He knocked the salt over by accident, and out of habit, shook a bit into his right hand and pitched it over his left shoulder.

  “What was that about?” Violet asked, taking the salt cellar from his hand.

  “Spilling salt is bad luck, so you toss a pinch over your left shoulder, into the face of the devil who might lurk there.”

  Violet set the salt down and rose, going to the steps and gazing across the yard at her barnyard. “I’ll wrap you up some food to take with you, Elias, but I think you’d better leave.”

  “Because I throw salt over my shoulder?”

  She nodded, and instincts honed on four continents—five now—told Elias she was crying. He stood behind her, wishing he was back in Scotland, and wishing he could give her the damned farm.

  “Wait here,” she said, whirling past him.

  Elias finished his breakfast, equal parts angry with Violet, and disgusted with himself. Nobody had lied, nobody had misrepresented, not on purpose anyway, and yet, feelings were hurt.

  Feelings were badly hurt, and it felt as if that was his fault.

  Violet emerged from the kitchen carrying Elias’s backpack, and a brown paper bag. “Some ham and cheese bread, a couple oranges, the leftover mousse,” she said. “I know you haven’t had a chance to get to the store.”

  He was being run off the property, because the Chinese were eating beef. “Thank you. I don’t suppose you’d spare me a bottle of water?”

  “I don’t have any bottled water. The plastics alone—”

  Elias rummaged in the backpack and extracted a nearly empty refillable water bottle. “I haven’t any power across the way, and thus no water. If you’d fill this for me, I’d appreciate it.”

  She took the water bottle without touching his fingers. “You don’t have power or water?”

  Too late, Elias realized what dots her female mind was connecting. “You think I spent the evening with you because my own accommodations were wanting.”

  Though to be honest, he’d come over here hoping to charge his phone, and…. well, hoping. Admitting that would hardly grant him a pardon from the disappointment in Violet’s eyes.

  “You spent the night, Elias, not simply the evening. Try to sell the farm to somebody besides Max Maitland.” Violet’s voice was an arctic breeze on a summer morning. “He’s a scoundrel and he won’t pay you what the land is worth.”

  She disappeared into the kitchen again and re-emerged with a full water bottle. “Before you sell to anybody, get a decent lawyer to explain the agricultural conservancy easement to you. Post your property now, or there will be perc tests in your front yard by Monday.” She shoved the water bottle at him. “Good-bye, Elias. Best of luck.”

  Elias stashed the water in his pack, and ignored the urge to wrap his arms around Violet and babble useless apologies.

  He was sorry, and he was selling the farm to whomever offered him fast cash for it.

  “Good-bye, Violet. Take care.”

  He walked around to the front yard, in the mood to kick something solid—perhaps his own backside. Perhaps Zebedee’s headstone.

  Women liked Elias Brodie, and they knew what to expect from him—a good time, exactly as he’d said. Fond memories, good sex. Not the salvation of Damson Valley’s food production goals, for God’s sake. Not dreams come true.

  The day would be scorching hot, of course, and when Elias’s one bottle of water ran out, he’d have to call Dunstan and Jane to put him up until a damned electrician could be located. Violet might turn him off her property, and Elias would retreat from the lists like a gentleman, but he’d be damned if he’d be banished from his own land.

  He was comforting himself with similarly useless righteousness when a truly cheering thought poppe
d into his head.

  His best suit of traveling finery was hanging on the back of the door to Violet’s downstairs bathroom. At some point before leaving Damson Valley, Violet would probably return his clothing.

  Or maybe… maybe he’d fetch it himself.

  * * *

  “You lose,” Dunstan said. “Hand me that level.”

  Jane passed over the level, which was like a yardstick with a tube in the middle of it, and in that tube was liquid containing an air bubble. When the air bubble sat in the exact middle of the tube, whatever the yardstick was sitting on was level.

  All of which Jane had pretended to find fascinating when Dunstan had patiently explained it to her as they’d embarked on home renovations. Mostly, she found the sight of Dunstan in his work kilt fascinating.

  “Which bet did I lose?” Jane asked, passing over the requisite tool.

  “The laird texted me while you were cutting irises. Mind you, Elias didn’t call me. He texted me, asking that I call him at my convenience.”

  Clearly that bit of consideration had struck Dunstan as imperiousness. In the courtroom, Jane saw guys going toe-to-toe with each other verbally every day, but this cousinly blend of affection and combativeness between Dunstan and Elias left her uneasy.

  “You want me to return the call?” Jane asked, smoothing her hand along the mantel. Dunstan was creating what an interior decorator would call a great room, and Dunstan called a wee project. His farmhouse was a work in progress, formerly the bachelor abode of one hardworking lawyer and a shamelessly lazy cat.

  Jane had moved in after the wedding and the house was undergoing a transformation.

  Wallace remained a feline monument to noblesse oblige, with Wallace in charge of the nobility, and his humans in charge of tending to all obligations.

  Dunstan set the level on the mantel, a handsome span of oak at which he’d been cursing and crooning for most of the weekend.

  “I’ll call himself when this blasted mantel… by God, it’s level. You are married to a genius, Mrs. Cromarty. The damned thing only needed a day or two to settle. This room will be done by Independence Day, see if it isn’t.”