Shadow among Sheaves Page 6

  Barric did not lower his own voice as he firmly replied, “As long as she is hungry, she is welcome.”

  Let his workers do with that as they will.

  “You could have offered her work,” William suggested, eyes darting around to gauge the reactions of those working closest to them. “Such an arrangement would certainly be a little more…orthodox.”

  Barric snorted. Of course he had thought of that.

  “Ah.” William nodded as if reading Barric’s thoughts. “Except that I fired several workers just last week.”

  Barric frowned his frustrated agreement. His brother had racked up a nasty line of debt in France, and Barric had asked William to let go of a number of field hands to compensate for the sizable loans. They had been turning away interested workers for months. To hire an Indian woman in their place would cause a nastier scandal, perhaps even put her in direct danger, especially after the mutinies in India. Too much British blood was spilled to make Barric risk seeming at all unpatriotic.

  “She is welcome to return for as many days as she needs,” Barric repeated, intending to put an end to their conversation.

  “You surprise me, Barric. Of course, I know she’s very pretty, but—”

  Had anyone else made such an insinuation, Barric might have taken a swing. “Your toes are approaching an invisible line in this conversation,” he said instead, voice darkening. “You should restrain yourself before I have to do something about it.”

  William dropped his eyes. “Of course. Still, I can’t help but wonder what the other peers might say of such an arrangement. Or your uncle, for that matter.”

  Barric bristled unpleasantly. Yes, Uncle George would certainly have a lot to say.

  “They are as free to speak as I am to conduct my affairs as I see fit. I would assume this arrangement won’t be a problem for you?”

  “Oh, I always welcome a good challenge,” the steward said, his lip curling slightly. “I quite like it, actually. Since Charlie’s left, it’s been years since Misthold has had a good scandal of its own.”

  Scandal. It was the last thing any lord worth the title welcomed willingly, though many might risk it for a pretty set of eyes and a shapely frame. It had been years since Barric had taken such a risk.

  “You haven’t done anything unholy, have you?”

  Taken aback by the question, Barric glanced sharply at William, who had folded his arms in front of his chest and was peering over Barric’s shoulder with a strange expression. “Not recently. Why?” Barric turned to find Parson Richardson strolling toward him with a weary smile.

  “Good morning to you both,” the parson greeted, removing his wide-brimmed hat as he bowed his head in humble greeting.

  Barric squinted at the older man in some confusion. “And to you as well, Parson. Though I must wonder what brings you here this morning.”

  If the question sounded forward, so too was Parson Richardson’s sudden presence there. True, the parson had once been a particular friend to Barric’s father, which granted him an invitation to the occasional party at Misthold. But aside from that, the parson almost never visited Misthold—certainly never on social calls. Though the parson was always friendly toward him after services, Barric sometimes wondered if the parson thought he was as good a man as his father or if he found the younger lord somewhat lacking in the graces of the older.

  “I was told I could find you here by a rather surly footman.” The parson halted in front of him and edged a look around them. “Might I have a private word with you, my lord?”

  Barric scanned the overly tight shoulders of those working directly around him. Most made a task of not glancing at him as they pretended not to overhear.

  Nodding a quick farewell to William, Barric stepped back to gesture the parson toward the road. “Walk with me,” he said, and the parson followed half a step behind.

  The two walked in companionable, though confused, silence until they’d crossed the road, well out of earshot of Barric’s other workers.

  “No doubt you’re perplexed to see me,” the parson remarked at last.

  “No doubt,” Barric replied.

  “It’s a matter of some…delicacy.” The parson paused, his forefinger tapping thoughtfully against his mouth before he glanced at Barric again and asked, “I wonder if you have any tenant homes currently vacant.”

  Barric stopped midstep. The question was unusual. And though he had always liked the parson well enough, he felt strangely defensive. “I’m afraid to say I do not.”

  It was only half true. Though the tenant houses were indeed filled, William had a small cottage behind his house, which had been vacant for some time after the death of William’s mother. Still, Barric wasn’t going to mention that until he understood exactly what they were discussing.

  The parson frowned, his eyes falling to his feet as he clutched the brim of his hat. “Yes, I was afraid that would be the case. I have someone in need of housing. A very desperate situation I’m afraid.”

  “Who is the person?” Barric asked, with a touch more interest.

  “New to Abbotsville,” the parson answered, slowly, as if drawing him in. “Two widows have recently come to the area. One is rather young.”

  Barric’s defenses flew up. “You are speaking, of course, of the Indian woman.” He had not realized her mourning dress was worn in honor of a dead husband, though perhaps he had seen as much sorrow in the darkness of her gaze.

  The parson met Barric’s eyes and spoke with equal frankness. “The one picking in your fields right now. Yes.”

  Barric found himself uneasy again. He had offered to escort Rena home the previous night, in case Thomas and Ellis still loitered, but she had adamantly refused him. He could tell she was embarrassed about her home, and the parson’s inquiry only solidified his suspicions that she lived in conditions which were likely hellish.

  Despite himself, he asked, “Where are they staying now?”

  “The Gilded Crown.”

  Barric made a sound of disgust. “You must be misinformed,” he disagreed tightly. “The Gilded Crown is…Well, it’s a—”

  “We both know very well what it is.” The parson shook his head. “And I am not misinformed.”

  Barric battled a burst of indignant anger. The Gilded Crown was a filthy place, though not unpopular among those who lived for distraction. The girl had not told Barric where she lived because she clearly had no wish for him to know or to intervene. She could have begged him for deliverance from such a place but instead kept herself shrouded in secrecy.

  Another thought crossed his mind. With more urgency, he demanded, “She doesn’t…work there?”

  He realized how little he knew about her.

  Again, the parson shook his head. “That was not the impression I was given. Regardless, we both know she doesn’t belong there.”

  Barric was beginning to believe the girl did not belong anywhere. She certainly did not belong in his fields, covered in dirt and surrounded by staring eyes. Yet, if he were honest, he could not imagine her in India either.

  “This news is troubling,” he agreed. “But I’m afraid I cannot help you.”

  He struggled only briefly with the lie. Of course, William’s cottage would suit the two women rather well, but he also knew housing her in such a way would open them both to another wave of speculation. How would it look, if he swept a woman out of a brothel and housed her on his land for free? Wouldn’t it be a logical assumption that she might be a live-in mistress? As William had said, he was a lord who had to consider appearances. Especially with a brother like Charlie who welcomed all manner of scandal.

  “I am very sorry to hear you say so.” The parson’s tone betrayed a bit more than disappointment—did he suspect Barric was holding something back?

  “Have you made inquiries elsewhere?”

  “I have spoken with some of the other gentry,” the parson answered vaguely.

  “And? What were their replies?”

  The
parson offered him a dry look. “Suffice it to say your refusal is the kindest I’ve heard.”

  Barric could only imagine what his peers might have said or suggested, even in the presence of a parson. Still, he reminded himself, the woman’s home wasn’t any of his concern. He had done more than enough on her behalf already, and he still wasn’t entirely sure why. Of course he felt sorry for her. She seemed too young to suffer the way she did.

  Noting Barric’s silence, the parson nodded his knowing farewell. “If you hear of anything, Lord Barric, you will come to me, yes?”

  Barric grunted his farewell, frowning as Parson Richardson took his leave. A passing whim of pity for the girl almost made him offer up the cottage, but he could not bring himself to speak the words. The Barric title had come to him at a high price, and he would not let any woman, however pitiful, muddy his dead father’s good name.

  CHAPTER 4

  Barric was getting trounced. Never had he been dealt quite so many miserable hands in one night, and present company was not helping matters. Even after what had happened on the road the previous week, he had, quite begrudgingly, welcomed Thomas back into Misthold. For Barric, playing nice with family was too often a necessary evil, especially if it meant avoiding a scolding from Uncle George.

  They sat around the table with two of their mutual friends—Sir Anthony, a portly gentleman who shared Barric’s property line, and Roger Fiddlestone, the local magistrate, who was uncommonly good at cards. Barric had also invited William, simply because he liked his resolute steward far more than any of the other men who could have been getting drunk on his brandy that night.

  “Ah,” Fiddlestone murmured, mouth curving with raw delight as he studied his own hand against Barric’s face. “Judging by Barric’s stormy expression, we’ve stayed long enough to steal away his last pound.”

  Barric lifted a brow at the pathetic cards in his hand before making a small sound of agreement. “Perhaps I ought to turn in while I have some dignity,” he mused, setting all three cards down in a formal pass. “Return to my room to lick my wounds.”

  Ignoring the hint, Thomas helped himself to another dram of Barric’s brandy. “Word has it you have someone else to lick your wounds for you these days,” he remarked, balancing the glass elegantly in his hand. “That is why the girl is in your fields, isn’t it?”

  Sir Anthony smothered a burst of uncomfortable laughter, eyeing Barric nervously when he realized his blunder. “Well, I’ll say—” the squat man began but chose not to elaborate further.

  Barric’s hand stiffened around his glass. Of course he knew this conversation would come up eventually. Rena was the one subject none of the men had brought up since sitting down. He was impressed Thomas hadn’t spoken of her sooner but not altogether surprised. Though his cousin might best Barric at the occasional hand of cards, he had never once bested him in a fight, not since they’d been children. Thomas must have been further in the bottle than Barric had noticed to finally mention her.

  William studied his own cards coolly, his expression uncharacteristically dark. “Your cousin,” he said to Barric, “is especially vile this evening.”

  “Really, Barric,” observed Thomas, gesturing widely at William as if the steward wasn’t even in the room. “I’m not sure why you feel the need to invite the hired help to a gentlemen’s game.”

  “Well, I’ll say!” Sir Anthony exclaimed again, and cleared his throat in agitation at the snub.

  Fiddlestone shifted his cards, eyeing Barric carefully as if he thought he might knock the table out from between them. “Perhaps we ought to focus on the game,” he suggested. He looked very like a magistrate with his hard-edged smile. “I think we all have rotten hands this round. Shall we start over with another trick?”

  Barric ignored the magistrate’s attempt at burying the conversation.

  “William is here at my personal request and invitation,” Barric said, flitting his eyes briefly toward the steward before smiling faintly. “And, gentleman or not, he is walking away with a good deal of your money tonight, Thomas.”

  “And a good deal of mine too,” Sir Anthony agreed with a lumbering nod.

  “You’re changing the subject, of course.” Thomas shook his head as if sensing a trick. “You don’t need to be bashful with us, though, Barric. It isn’t as though the girl would be overly delicate after having been married. I certainly don’t begrudge you your little arrangement, though I am surprised it was you who made it.”

  Barric briefly imagined punching Thomas straight through his even teeth; his cousin spoke far too audaciously not to be sauced.

  “She works in my fields,” Barric explained tightly. “And then she leaves, and that is all.”

  It was true. Rena had returned to Barric’s field three times since he had told her she could. That was a week ago. Each day, she came into his field, chin tucked low against her chest. She worked quickly and left well before the sun set. Not once had she spoken to Barric or even glanced his way. He suspected her encounter with his cousin was the reason for her haste, the reason her proud eyes rarely ever lifted from the ceaseless work of her hands. Though no one would have guessed it from the steady look in her eyes, she was afraid.

  Fiddlestone shook his head in genuine sympathy. “Poor lass seems a bit too young for a widow’s dress, if you ask me.”

  “Not so young,” Sir Anthony disagreed, rubbing a handkerchief over his ruddy face. “I heard from my wife she’s nearly twenty. Don’t they have child brides over there? Married at eight or ten?”

  Thomas was enjoying this conversation immensely. “Yes,” he interjected, smacking his hand emphatically on the table. “And you’ll never guess the witless sod she gulled while she was over there.”

  Ignoring Thomas, Barric poured himself another glass of brandy, trying to busy his hands and appear uninterested. Thomas showed all of his teeth as he smiled. “Edric Hawley.” Thomas raised both brows and sank back in his chair, delighted by the sound of scandal on his lips. “Can you believe that? Hawley. Married him for his money, she did, and then he up and died, he and his father both.”

  Barric felt his eyebrows shoot upward in surprise. Edric was their second cousin. It had been many years since they’d all been boys, and nearly ten since the Hawleys had left for India, during which time he’d heard very little of their family. Edric’s grandmother had been Clarissa Fairfax, sister to Barric’s own grandfather before she had mortified the family by marrying a near-nobody lawyer named Maxwell Hawley.

  Some speculated that her husband, who later went on to become Sir Maxwell, had blackmailed his way into the baronetcy, his title and property allegedly granted for some delicate legal matter he’d handled for a relation of the prime minister. It would have been a very delicate matter, indeed, to be rewarded with Hawthorn Glen, a comfortable estate situated on some three thousand acres of land. During his time, Sir Maxwell had acquired an unflattering reputation as a hard-edged miser, and Barric’s grandfather had cursed the fool daily for carrying off with his only sister and buying his way into the gentry.

  By all accounts, Sir Alistair, Edric’s father, had been a far better brand of Hawley, who bore the baronetcy much more graciously than his father before him. Many said Alistair was much more like his mother, his wily nature and shrewd discernment allegedly inherited through the Fairfax line.

  “Poor Edric,” Thomas went on with an exaggerated sigh. “Died before he could ever hear himself called Sir Edric.” He tipped his now-empty glass meaningfully at Barric. “Seems the girl doesn’t mind, though. Seems she’s more interested in trading up—from baronet to earl, eh, Barric? I suppose one must admire her resourcefulness.”

  Barric glanced down at the glass in his own hand, his fingers tightening again. Unlike his dissolute cousin, Edric had been the kind of man worthy of Barric’s brandy, a bit flashy and careless, but a man strong of principle. Last Barric had heard, the Glen was vacant, and Sir Alistair and Edric still alive. And he had heard absolutely nothi
ng of an Indian wife. News ought to have reached them by now, but the rift between the Hawleys and the Fairfaxes, which had never quite healed after Clarissa Fairfax’s defection, probably had much to do with the family’s general silence.

  Realizing the men at his table were awaiting his reply, he took a brief sip from his glass. “You say all of this as if I’m interested.”

  “You sure seemed interested when you played the chivalrous knight to her damsel in distress.” Thomas drove those words at Barric like the sharp tip of a sword. Barric ignored the way William looked between the cousins in obvious confusion.

  “Shall I pay you in kind for what you did?” Barric’s eyes glinted as they rose to Thomas. When Thomas did not answer, Barric said, his voice low but controlled, “Stay away from her.”

  Angling his head toward the other guests, Thomas practically slurred, “As if I’d dirty my boots in that disgusting hovel—”

  “Thomas.” Fiddlestone caught the man’s eyes and shook his head in warning.

  Barric’s frown deepened. So his cousin had discovered Rena lived at the Gilded Crown. He wondered, with a stab of unease, what Thomas might do with that information. What other men might do if they saw her on the road and realized where she lodged.

  Thomas leaned over the table toward Barric and spoke in a low voice. “If you want my advice, I’d make a convenient transaction out of her. Make her pay for that grain. It’s not really fair, after all, to be giving her for free what so many others must work for. I promise you’ll sleep far better for it. Might even take that temper of yours down a notch.”

  Barric stared blankly at the cards in front of him. Such arrangements between lords and workers were quite common, but that didn’t make the idea sound any less monstrous.

  “And if you want my advice,” he cautioned, “I’d stop guzzling my brandy before you say something that might truly provoke me.”