by Lacey, Lilac
She sighed and leaned her head on her hands, her eyes already weary from trying to decipher the crabbed, disorganized notes in the ledger.
‘Can I help?’ Leo asked.
Tara stared at him, the seed of an idea germinating in her mind. ‘I couldn’t possibly ask you,’ she said, trying to push the idea firmly away. It was inappropriate for more reasons than one. ‘You have already done so much, organizing the journey and bringing me here. I can’t ask you to do any more.’
Leo gave her a long look as if he were looking right into her very heart. ‘My time is at your disposal,’ he said. ‘I have no pressing engagements elsewhere. That is,’ he paused and for the first time since last night a slight note of uncertainty came into his voice, ‘unless you would rather not have me as a houseguest.’
‘Of course I want you here!’ Tara said impulsively. ‘But I couldn’t impose…’
But Leo interrupted her. He took both her hands in his and looked at her earnestly. ‘Are we not friends?’ he asked.
Friends. A simple label, but it warmed her more than it should. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes.’
‘Then impose,’ Leo said firmly. ‘That’s what friends are for. The way I see it you have two tasks. You need to unmuddle these finances and you need to oversee the day to day running of the estate. Would you let me act for you with the latter? I know something of farming. I could ride out each day and do what needs to be done while you spend your time with the figures. Then in the evening I can report to you and you will have the information you need to make the financial decisions.’
For a moment Tara stared at him, speechless. What he was proposing would solve all her problems, she need not scramble to be in two places at once if Leo were acting in her stead. ‘Yes!’ she said, flooded with relief. ‘Yes, I shouldn’t take such advantage of your generosity, but yes, please, it would be such a great help for you to do that.’
‘Then it’s settled,’ Leo looked curiously satisfied, Tara thought, but if he took satisfaction from taking on the burden of Penge, at least for a few days, she wasn’t going to argue. He rose from his chair. ‘Now, if you will excuse me, I have some apple trees to attend to.’
The next few days were a whirr of hectic activity for Tara. She rose early, breakfasted with Leo who told her his plans for the day, then she buried herself in her mother’s study where she pieced together a financial history of the estate over the last few months. Ironically, despite the neglect, Penge seemed to be doing very well. Tara was relieved to find that the costs of her latest season in London had not damaged the family finances in any way. Her secret fear was that she would find that her mother’s collapse had been brought about by a desperate attempt to make ends meet, but that had not been the case. At lunchtime Leo was usually still out in the fields. He seemed to have won over the cook’s heart, perhaps through his consideration towards her son Jed, and she furnished him each day with cold pie, freshly baked bread, fruit and ale so that he was able to eat without returning to the house. Tara took lunch with her mother, who seemed at her best in the middle of the day. She tried to keep the conversation off the running of the estate, but it was difficult. Penge had been her mother’s life for years and she wanted to know everything about it.
‘In Mr Fosse’s opinion the hay is ready for cutting, but it will take no harm if left for another week,’ Tara said, trying to project a note of finality into her voice. ‘I see Mrs Capshaw has sent you a note. I’m sure she would like to call on you. Do you feel up to visitors?’
‘A blatant attempt to change the subject,’ Lady Penge said, fixing Tara with a beady look. Tara looked back at her, unrepentant. The doctor had been and had said that her mother was no longer in danger, but he prescribed complete rest and said she was not to be troubled by concerns about the estate. ‘Does this Mr Fosse of yours know anything about farming?’
‘I believe so,’ said Tara, in fact she had got the impression from her evening conversations with Leo that he knew far more about farming than she did. ‘However in regard to the hay field Leo said that Jennings shares his opinion, and you can’t deny that Jennings knows the business.’
‘Yes,’ Lady Penge said, ‘Jennings is an excellent dairy man.’ She leaned back on her pillows and Tara thought her mother was preparing to go back to sleep when she suddenly gave Tara a wicked grin. ‘Leo, is it now? Not Mr Fosse?’
To her embarrassment Tara felt herself blushing. ‘I have known him for quite some time, Mama,’ she said, deciding not to elaborate on how they had met.
‘And does he address you by your Christian name?’
‘Yes,’ Tara said neutrally.
‘He seems like quite a personable young gentleman,’ Lady Penge said. ‘Tell me about his family.’
‘They are from Wiltshire,’ Tara said, trying to sound uninterested and casting frantically around in her mind for a change of topic, but all she could think about was the allegedly crumbling dry stone walls at the northern end of the farm. Leo was going to check on those today, but telling her mother that would only bring them back to Penge again and she was determined to follow the doctor’s orders and keep her mother’s mind off the minutiae of running the estate.
‘A Wiltshire family?’ her mother said. ‘I don’t believe I know them. Tell me more.’
‘I… I don’t know anything else.’ Tara said. There was a short silence.
‘You brought a complete stranger home with you?’ Lady Penge asked after a moment. Tara found herself cringing under her mother’s incredulity.
‘He’s not a complete stranger,’ she said. ‘Rodney Hulme introduced us.’
Her mother seemed to take a moment to digest this but Tara suspected she was not finished with the topic. ‘If you know nothing of the family, what do you know of the man himself?’ she asked. ‘How does he spend his time in town?’
‘Oh, er, the usual way, dinner parties, balls, you know the sort of thing,’ Tara said. Everyone else she knew would have accepted her answer, but her mother’s silence was interrogative and despite her reluctance Tara found herself continuing. ‘He paints,’ she said.
‘Paints what?’ her mother demanded.
‘Portraits,’ Tara mumbled, ‘but he’s moving into landscapes.’
Lady Penge fell silent and Tara looked out of the window. It was another beautiful day and she wondered if Leo was enjoying the life of a gentleman farmer. ‘He’s a painter,’ Lady Penge said, almost to herself. ‘He paints for a living, so he is not a gentleman.’
‘He is a gentleman!’ Tara exclaimed. ‘He has done so much to help me and he couldn’t be kinder.’
Her mother looked at her wearily. ‘He is not a gentleman by birth,’ she said.
Tara dropped her eyes. Leo was more of a gentleman than anyone else she knew, but her mother was looking alarmingly pale and the last thing she wanted to do was bring about a relapse by quarrelling with her. She forced herself to speak calmly. ‘No, not by birth,’ she agreed. ‘Would you like to rest now? Shall I remove your tray?’
‘Edgar was right about the walls in the top paddocks,’ Leo said as he and Tara sat down to dinner that night. ‘The paddocks can still be used, but the walls should be seen to soon, while the damage is simple to repair.’
Tara took a sip of her soup and then laid down her spoon. ‘We can afford to get them mended,’ she said. ‘But I don’t know where to find a good dry stone waller.’
Leo was suffering no loss of appetite, she noticed, his soup was nearly gone, it must be spending all day in the saddle, getting fresh air and exercise. She herself had been walking out each afternoon to talk to tenants and to deliver the back pay to the employees who were short, but then she returned to the study where she tried to draw up a plan that would at least take Penge to the end of the summer. Apart from her brief excursions she had been cooped up for days and she wished she could ride out with Leo, but there was still too much to do.
‘Jennings will know of a mason, I’m sure of it,’ Leo said. ‘Leave it to
me, I’ll ask him in the morning.’ Most of the rest of the things he had to tell her were positive, the cow had been seen by the vet and she didn’t have anything contagious, the roots on the giant apple tree in the orchard were still firm, and Jennings had lined up a group of lads from the village to help with hay-making the day after tomorrow. ‘What you really need, of course,’ he added, ‘is a good estate manager, Penge is too much for one person.’
Tara felt herself relax in his easy company. She told him a little about her day, about how her mother was on the mend and about her visit to the dairyman’s cottage where his wife was nursing her fifth baby, a son at last, after four daughters.
‘Jennings must be pleased,’ Leo observed. ‘He’ll do well with a son, he’ll teach him everything he knows and the boy will be able to make a living anywhere he goes.’ He sounded particularly pleased himself, Tara thought. He seemed to thoroughly approve of farming as a way of life. It was not the life she had hoped to have for herself, but until Richard was old enough to take over the running of the place she was stuck here. She shivered as she thought of returning to London after four or five years’ absence. Would any of her friends remember her? Would they even be there, or would they be ensconced in their country homes, married, with all their time taken up with their young families. The thought of doing a season in London as a single lady a decade after her come out was not an appealing one. Perhaps she should have got engaged this year. But it was too late now, here, in the middle of Wiltshire she couldn’t be further away from the marriage market.
She wondered how long Leo would stay for. Knowing she had his company to look forward to in the evening, even if all they did was talk about Penge, made the day bearable, but she did not know how she would survive when he was gone. Then the beginnings of an idea began to form in her mind, and she looked at him, with a sudden, appealing thought, wondering.
Chapter Ten
Tara woke up the next day in a good mood. It took her a moment to remember why, and then it came to her. The accounts were nearly back under control, all the wages owed to the farmhands had been paid but most importantly it had occurred to her last night to wonder if Leo would consider a change of profession and take on the job of estate manager for Penge. He seemed to set a large store by earning what he called an honest living, and what could be more honest than farming? She knew he wanted to paint, but he wanted to paint landscapes and what better place to do that than the countryside?
As Betty came in and drew aside the thick white curtains at the window, sunshine spilled into the room and Tara woke up properly. Although she had been exhausted last night, being alone with Leo, going over the business of Penge, had been so comfortable. It had been as if they were husband and wife, running the estate together. The thought brought her up short. The very intimacy of the evening was exactly why she couldn’t possibly ask him to become the estate manager. She had been too tired and worried about her mother to flirt with Leo these past few days, but she did not fool herself, as soon as things were back in hand she would be drawn irresistibly towards him, and he to her, she was sure of it.
‘Will you be taking tea in bed, my lady?’ Betty asked. ‘Or will you be getting up for breakfast?’
Tara sat up and flung back the covers, ‘I’ll have breakfast downstairs,’ she said. If Leo were her estate manager he would be part of her life and she would see him every day, but he would be her employee and she couldn’t possibly marry him. He would be even more ineligible than he was now. Furthermore, living in the same house, it would be so easy to become Leo’s mistress. The thought simultaneously thrilled and horrified her. She took her day dress out of Betty’s hands and hauled it on to hide her confusion.
She had risen later than the day before and she half expected Leo to have finished his breakfast and left by the time she got downstairs, but he was in the morning room, taking a last cup of tea when Tara arrived.
‘I’m going to check over the scythes today, ready for the mow tomorrow,’ he said as Tara sat down. ‘A sharp scythe is worth its weight in gold compared with a blunt one.’ It was so easy to picture him in the role of running Penge, he spoke as if he had been born to it, Tara thought as she abstractedly spooned honey onto her porridge.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I have nearly finished untangling my mother’s ledger, I think the end is in sight.’ As she spoke she felt as if a great stone had lodged itself in the pit of her stomach. With the accounts no longer taking up all her time she would be free to take back the management of Penge and she could not expect Leo to stay here much longer, he had a life of his own to attend to and an income to earn.
The morning dragged, but conversely the last pieces of the accounts seemed to fall unwelcomely into place and almost to finish sorting out themselves. At noon, as she usually did, Tara took lunch with her mother, whose health seemed to have reached a stalemate. She was no longer in danger, but was far from regaining her usual stamina.
‘How are things going?’ Lady Penge demanded as soon as she entered the room.
‘Very well,’ Tara was able to say honestly. ‘I have finished updating the ledger and everything is in order.’ She had decided from the first that it would be more tactful not to let her mother know what a muddled state her accounts been in, suspecting that Lady Penge had not been aware of how far the organisation of Penge had slipped through her fingers, but she should have known her mother was too astute to fool that way.
‘It’s taken you the best part of five days solid work to be able to say that,’ Lady Penge observed. ‘I should have sent for you sooner, but you were in the middle of your fifth season, I didn’t want to scupper your chances of making a match this year.’
For the first time it occurred to Tara that if she did not marry she would be a burden on her brother’s inheritance and while she did not think he would begrudge supporting her, it was not a position she relished. ‘I…er… I didn’t find anyone that suited,’ she mumbled by way of apology.
‘They’ll say you’re on the shelf next year,’ Lady Penge said, and took an unenthusiastic sip of her soup.
Tara looked at her, startled. ‘I won’t be going to London next year,’ she said sharply. ‘I will be here, at Penge.’
Her mother reached out and took her hand, and Tara was glad to find that if her mother’s grip was not as strong as it once was, it was at least stronger than when she had returned home. ‘My dear girl, you’ll never catch a husband buried in the country. Of course you must go back.’ Her mother’s grip was stronger but it wasn’t that strong. Tara gave her a long look and her mother dropped her eyes first.
‘I’ll be here,’ Tara repeated firmly, ‘running Penge with you.’ Her mother’s mouth set in a reluctant line, but she did not try to argue and Tara felt her heart sink. She knew her duty but she took no pleasure in it.
She had just returned to her mother’s study, which she was beginning to think of as her own, when she was interrupted by a brisk tread and the door swung open to admit Leo. In his dusty boots and breeches, with his light summer jacket undone and his shirt open at the throat he looked the epitome of outdoor living and Tara had a sudden impulse to fling herself into his arms and breathe in his summery scent. But what had seemed possible in the heady atmosphere of Rodney’s house party seemed utterly scandalous in the privacy of her own home and she forced herself to be contended with a smile.
Did Leo know what she was thinking? He might do, she thought, looking at the smile which played around his lips and the corners of his eyes. She wanted to step forward and kiss that smile, but she dared not. ‘I heard a rumour that you were finished with book keeping for the day,’ Leo said.
Tara threw a rueful glance at the ledger, which she had just opened. ‘I have balanced the accounts, settled outstanding payments, and sent out invoices to everyone who owes us money, but all that merely brings me up to date. Now I have to look forward. I was just about to start deciding what to send to market next week.
Leo took a step closer to
her - although the study was so tiny he could have reached her from where he stood - and took her elbow lightly with his fingertips. Tara felt as captured as if he had slid his arm around her waist and she was suddenly overwhelmingly aware of his masculinity. ‘You won’t be able to decide about that in here,’ he said, his voice sounding low and musical in her ears. ‘Come with me, we’ll ride out and you can survey your estate. That is the way to decide what to send to market.’
He was right, Tara thought, his nearness in the little room making her almost giddy, but she was very aware that his suggestion sound so attractive after her dull days of bookkeeping that she would have agreed to it even if it had not made sense. ‘I think that is an excellent idea,’ she said and then found herself completely distracted by the natural shift of his fingers on the delicate skin of her arm as he escorted her from the room.
Leo had been confident of her agreement, Tara saw when they reached the stables. Her mother’s mare Primrose was already saddled and waiting for her. She allowed Leo to help her mount and then they set off at a gentle walk around the estate. ‘I want you to take a look at the calves,’ Leo said, sounding for all the world as if he were born to farming. They rode to a paddock on the south side of the estate where a herd of weaned calves jostled each other just for the fun of it and chewed the cud in the sun. In the distance Tara could hear the distinctive clink of stone on stone. The dry stone waller was at work.