by Lacey, Lilac
‘They look very content,’ Tara said doubtfully, making Leo laugh.
‘You need to see them as stock, as a saleable commodity, not as pets,’ he said dryly. Tara glared at him and tried to view the calves as something to take to market now and sell as veal or to keep until next year for beef. She found it difficult though, to see past the frolicking animals enjoying the summer sunshine. ‘You need to think like a farmer,’ Leo urged. ‘I could tell you what I’d do, but that wouldn’t help you with making such decisions in the future.’
At the thought of him leaving, Tara felt her heart contract. Penge without Leo would be the emptiest place in the world. She stared at him for a long moment, fixing the image of him waiting easily astride his horse, the sunlight making him screw up his eyes so it was as if he were looking at her with a particular intensity, wanting to keep this picture of him forever. But Leo, it seemed, thought she had her mind fixed firmly on cattle. ‘Perhaps considering your current cash situation would help,’ he said.
With difficulty Tara wrenched her mind back to the accounts. ‘We owe nothing, but we are waiting for a number of payments. It would be helpful to have some cash to pay next week’s wages.’
‘There’s your answer then,’ Leo said.
Tara stared at the calves and did a rough calculation in her head. ‘I think I shall sell a quarter of the stock as veal and keep the rest,’ she said.
Leo nodded. ‘You may find it useful to know that Jennings said much the same thing.’
‘You consulted him?’ Tara asked in surprise.
‘Yes, he knows the estate and he knows the local market. His information has been very valuable. What would you like to look at now?’ Leo took her in a circuit around the farm, drawing her attention to its assets and questioning her on her plans. He never told her what to do, but asked her questions which helped her to think objectively about the estate and make her own decisions. But she had the feeling that if she had had any unrealistic ideas he would not have let her suffer the consequences, but would have offered his own advice for the good of Penge. She was impressed with his knowledge of farming and asking him to stay on as estate manager looked like a more and more obvious next step despite her better judgement.
The sun was sinking towards the horizon by the time they had finished the rounds. They were at the furthest point of the estate from the house, on the top of a low hill, next to a copse of birch trees, maturing and waiting to be felled in a few years time. ‘It’s beautiful here,’ Leo said, the reddening sun casting a warm glow on his face as he looked westwards. Tara wondered if he were thinking of painting a Wiltshire sunset. ‘What is it like in winter?’ Tara felt her heart quicken at his interest.
‘Snowy,’ she said, ‘but the wind is rarely bitter, we are too sheltered.’
‘I should like to see it,’ Leo said. ‘The black woodland, the white hills rolling down to your house and the little cottages nestled beyond would make a superb painting.’ Tara felt as if her heart was in her mouth. Leo knew the job and loved Wiltshire, he would make her a perfect estate manager. Hastily she quashed her other concerns and wondered if she should offer him the position now. At that moment her mare put her head down and began cropping the grass. ‘We should get the horses home and fed,’ Leo observed. ‘I wouldn’t let your mare do that for too long or she’ll be the very devil to move.’ He began to walk his horse back down the track. The moment had passed, Tara hauled on the reins and brought Primrose under control, then she urged her forward and they took the hungry horses home at a trot.
As Leo washed and changed for dinner Tara was on his mind. To be fair she was never far from his thoughts. Although now that they were in her own home, and out of deference for her concern over her sick mother, he had forced himself to behave with a decorum he had not shown at Wallingford Manor. Nevertheless, seeing her morning and night, and particularly today out riding, had only served to strengthen his desire for her. Perhaps her unobtainableness had heightened his attraction towards her, but he did not think so. He rather thought it was because he was seeing another side to Tara. He knew she was intelligent, it had shown from her very first sitting with her astute comments and the way she listened to and assessed everything he said. But he had not before seen her apply that intelligence to anything other than society games. The single minded dedication with which she had tackled the muddle in which her mother had left the accounts showed that she had hidden strength of character. He had also been deeply touched by how willing she had been to trust him to deputize for her out in the fields. There had been an attraction between them from the beginning, but now Leo had no doubt that the desire he felt for Tara was fuelled by deepening love.
He frowned at his hands as he did up his cufflinks. The dirt from the farm had washed off, but the stains from oil paints which had sunk into the lines of his skin were not so easily removed. He knew now that he would not be content to have Tara merely as his mistress, he wanted all of her, head, heart, body and future for himself. But would she ever consider marriage to a man who painted for a living? For the first time in a long time he regretted not seizing control of his father’s estate before he drank and gambled it all away. Tara would agree to marry a gentleman farmer, but that was not something he would now ever be. Yet painting was a perfectly respectable career. Leo had made a name for himself as a portrait painter and earned enough money to support a wife and family in comfort.
Then it occurred to him that he was only assuming that Tara would not marry a painter. He frowned in the mirror as he tied his cravat, trying to recall exactly why he believed she would only marry money and her consistent dismissal of Philippe La Monte as a suitor was all that came to him. Maybe he was making too much of a single fact. Tara wanted him as much as he wanted her, he was sure of that, the way she had responded to him when they were caught in the rain on the river only a few days earlier left him in no doubt. She had quivered under his touch and wanted more. His very remembrance of that afternoon seemed to relight a fire within him that burned away his doubts. He and Tara were made for each other, it was time he wooed her seriously.
That night Tara dressed for dinner with a care she had omitted for the past few evenings. She chose a cerulean blue silk dress with a plunging neckline which almost met the empire line band just below her breasts. It was an audacious dress for a simple country supper with one guest, but it was the dress she was in the mood for. Her afternoon with Leo had left her tingling with anticipation even though at no time had he behaved in any way other than as a perfect gentleman. But somehow that had served to make him even more attractive and although she firmly intended to ask him to take the job of estate manager, and to keep their relationship on a business footing, Tara could not resist dressing to dazzle. She sent Betty to ask her mother if she could borrow her necklace of aquamarines and with the bright stones in their silver setting around her neck she was ready to descend.
The moment she entered the dining room she saw from the widening of Leo’s eyes that she had made an impact. ‘Lady Tara,’ he said, making her realize he had dropped the lady days ago, ‘you look very beautiful tonight.’ He stepped forward, took her hand and bowed over it, brushing the back of her fingers with a kiss that lingered just a little longer than decorum would dictate. Tara felt a thrill run through her at his touch.
‘Do you miss Penge when you are in London?’ Leo asked as they were seated and the footman began to serve them with roast goose, beans and carrots.
Tara opened her mouth, about to tell him the truth, that she did not miss Penge at all during the season, in fact it barely crossed her mind, when she thought the better of it. ‘It’s very beautiful around here,’ she said instead. ‘I always enjoy hunting in the autumn, and Christmas here is lovely, we invariably have snow.’
‘Does it get cold enough to freeze?’ Leo asked.
Tara nodded enthusiastically. ‘Yes, I love to skate. I practice on the duck pond, and there is a larger pond by the village green which everyone skates on. Do
you skate?’ she asked.
Leo smiled, perhaps at a memory. ‘I did as a child,’ he said. Tara sensed an opportunity to find out more about his past.
‘Was yours a very sporting family?’ she asked as casually as she could.
‘We all enjoyed various pursuits,’ Leo said. ‘Tell me about your brother. Is he as keen on hunting and skating as you? He must be coming home from school soon for the summer, mustn’t he? What school is he at?’
‘Eton,’ Tara said and found herself thoroughly side tracked by the subject of Richard, who indeed was expected home sometime in the coming week.
Tara had expected to find herself more tired than usual in the evening after her afternoon of riding, but by the time they had finished dinner the reverse seemed to be true. She felt very keyed up and alive and very aware of Leo. ‘There is something I have been wanting to ask you,’ she said as they withdrew to the drawing room.
Leo gave her a quizzical look, ‘There is something I have been meaning to ask you,’ he said. He sat down on the green damask sofa, next to Tara, but not touching, and angled himself so that he was looking at her. Then without speaking he took her fingertips in his own.
‘What is it?’ Tara asked, trying not to let her sudden breathlessness betray her feelings at his touch.
Leo smiled at her, a predatory smile, Tara thought, with a not unpleasant shiver of anticipation. Almost idly he reached up and twisted a tendril of her hair around his finger before smoothing it back behind her ear. His fingertips on the curve of her ear felt like the most intimate touch she had ever known and Tara could not suppress a gasp. Leo let one finger trail down her jaw line until he reached the centre of her chin. He tilted her face up towards his. He was going to kiss her, she was sure of it, but he kept her waiting. ‘I wanted to know,’ Leo said softly, ‘if you thought I had been too impertinent, when we were out rowing at Wallingford, and I did this.’ Apparently casually he slipped his hand into her bodice and cupped her bare breast in his hand, squeezing it gently and sliding his fingers over the smooth, smooth skin. Tara heard herself let out an involuntary moan of pleasure as she pressed herself into his touch. She parted her lips, welcoming Leo’s mouth as it closed over her own and gave herself up to him.
She was so beautiful, Leo thought through the myriad of sensations touching Tara brought him, her body so supple and inviting, curved in all the right places and he ached to undress her slowly and make love to her here on the sofa. She would be willing, he was sure, her own touch told him that, but it was up to him, assuredly the more experienced of the two, to rein in their passion before it went too far. ‘What did you want to ask me?’ Leo asked after a long moment, pulling back and smoothing Tara’s dress decorously over her breasts.
Her eyes were unfocussed and she seemed to have difficulty recalling what she had been going to say. Leo smiled inwardly; knowing that he was responsible for her confusion was an aphrodisiac. He was unable to refrain from lightly kissing her full, parted lips once more. ‘I… I was wondering if you liked it here at Penge,’ Tara said rather breathlessly, as if it were only by great strength of will that she were able to talk at all.
‘Very much so,’ Leo purred. Right at that moment he could think of nowhere he would rather be than on this couch, teasing this beautiful woman, both her mind and her body.
‘Oh!’ Tara said, but whether she was replying to him, or reacting to the feel of his lips on her earlobe, he could not be sure.
‘Was that all you wanted to ask me?’ he murmured. Delicately he slid the silk of her dress up her thigh, wondering how far he dared go before both of them became so caught up in the sensuality of the moment that there was nothing to do but complete the act of passion.
‘Do you,’ Tara swallowed as he raised the hem of her skirt above her knee and gently stroked her upper leg with his thumb. ‘Do you come from a farming family?’
‘Do I what?’ For a moment Leo was completely thrown, it was not the sort of question he had been expecting at all. If she had asked about his intentions towards her, or even his previous experience with women he would not have been surprised, but this continuation of dinner table small talk was completely at odds with what they were doing.
It broke the spell a little and Leo stilled his hands although he did not withdraw his touch. Sounding faintly embarrassed Tara repeated her question. ‘Do you come from a farming family?’
‘I suppose you might say that,’ Leo said, half to himself, wondering why on earth she wanted to know. He raised one of her hands to his lips and kissed it absently as thoughts of his family estate, sold off many years ago to appease his father’s creditors, intruded into his mind.
When his mother died, his father’s drinking and gambling had become worse than ever. Gradually the house staff were dismissed for want of wages with which to pay them. Leo came home from Harrow one Christmas only to find he was not to return to school the following term. The big house seemed to rattle like an empty barrel without his mother, but the farmhands had been similarly reduced and Leo found more than enough to do in the fields and the stables. Dairy cows were continuous work, needing to be milked morning and evening, whatever the weather. Fences needed to be maintained, or repaired after winter storms and stubborn sheep and cattle had done their worst. Poultry needed to be fed and every precious egg needed to be gathered if Leo wanted to have a diet than even came close to meeting the nutritional needs of a growing boy.
He managed the land for two more years, with dwindling resources as cottages and stock were made over to those his father called his friends and whom Leo likened to vultures feeding off game not yet dead. Then one spring afternoon he returned from the fields, optimistic because all four of their remaining ewes had lambed twins, to find the house unnaturally still. He knew, as soon as he stepped over the threshold that he was the only person alive in there, but he went first to the kitchen to fortify himself with bread and cheese, before venturing into the room his father called the library, although most of its books were long gone.
What he saw did not surprise him, he was only surprised by how much he minded. His father’s years of drinking and the imbalance of his lifestyle, eating rich food when he was out with his cronies and living on porridge at home, his only exercise driving the dog cart, had caught up with him. He appeared to have suffered a brain seizure or a heart-attack and was lying, staring sightlessly, on the library floor. Leo never found out the exact cause of his father’s death, he did not call the doctor, knowing there was no money with which to pay him. Instead he summoned his father’s lawyer.
After that things changed very quickly. Lord Fosse’s holdings, Leo learned, were all forfeit to his creditors and Leo was left with nothing but his title and his clothes. He judged himself too old to throw himself on the mercy of his nearby relatives in Bath; his two years of farming had made him a man. Instead he made his way on foot to London, picking up seasonal work as he went. He reasoned that with his education, and his strength to fall back on he would be able to find a job in the capital and he was right. He found work as a calligrapher’s assistant and the seed of his artistic career flourished from there.
Beside him Tara shifted a little uncomfortably and Leo realized he had been lost in thought. ‘Sorry,’ he said, casting around for a way to wrench his mind back from the past. Then he remembered how she had begun the conversation. ‘You never answered my question,’ he said.
‘Which was…oh!’ she squirmed in a way which he found rather delightful when she remembered what he had asked her.
‘Well?’ he prompted, moving in closer, seeing the anticipation flare in her eyes and then kissing her cheek just to tease her.
‘Were you… did I find you impertinent?’ Tara said. She cast her eyes demurely down and for a moment Leo thought she really was offended. His heart seemed to be in his mouth as she said ‘Yes, I did find you impertinent, very.’ Then she looked back up and her eyes were so full of joyous wickedness that he felt he had no choice but to take her in his arms
and kiss her on and on.
‘Leo,’ she said after a while when there seemed to be a natural pause in their ardour, and his heart soared at her intimate use of his Christian name. ‘There really is something I want ask you.’
‘Anything,’ he said, aware he was befuddled with lust and love and revelling in every minute of it.
Tara took his chin in her hand, as if to be sure he was listening to her and said ‘I would like to ask you take the job of estate manager at Penge.’
It was as if she had poured a bucket of cold water over his head. Leo felt himself reel back in shock, he was on the long road towards the proposal of marriage and she was offering him a job! He could not believe he had misinterpreted her feelings for him so inaccurately. Hard on that thought came the question of what Tara had thought she had been doing here on the sofa with him if she wanted him as an employee. Where did she imagine their relationship would go if he were working here at Penge? Did she see him becoming some sort of kept man? The thought was intolerable.
With care he straightened her clothing very precisely, as if doing so would erase what they had just been sharing. Then he stood up and gave her a shallow, clipped bow, distancing himself from the whole situation. ‘Not quite anything,’ he said coolly. ‘Anything but that. I find I must leave in the morning. Good night, Lady Tara, do not trouble yourself by rising early to see me off, I shall be gone.’