Martha Schroeder (2 page)

“You ride very well,” she said. “You must have had the opportunity to ride when you were in port these last years.”

“Occasionally,” he replied.

“I spend most of my days on Princess. Sometimes I almost tumble out of the saddle and directly into bed.”

“You have no bailiff?” James asked, surprised.

“No. I have performed that function myself for the past several years.”

“Perhaps it is time to hire someone,” he remarked.

“Perhaps.” Meg set her teeth. Who was this stranger to tell her how to run Hedgemere?
The man to whom you are considering turning over your life and your property, not to mention your body—that is who,
she told herself. The silence continued a moment or two beyond what was polite.

Meg tried again. “How long were you in the navy, Captain?”

“I joined when I was twelve. So it has been sixteen years.”

“That young? It must have been difficult to leave your home knowing it would be for such a long time.”

“The navy doesn’t consider twelve young. It is almost beyond the age when one can begin. As for leaving the duke’s estate”—he turned toward her—“it was not difficult. It was past time for me to make my way in the world.”

Meg frowned. There was something very odd about Captain Sheridan’s cold-blooded way of speaking about his home. He never mentioned anyone by name, seemed to have no great affection for anyone there. Who were his family anyway? Who was this mysterious duke?

Meg opened her mouth to ask when Gerald and Annis, who had been riding slowly behind them, came abreast. “You are dawdling terribly, Meg,” Gerald remarked. “Miss Fairchild and I have been traveling at the speed of snails, and we are about to leave you behind.” He smiled at Annis, who sat stiffly in the saddle and smiled back at him.

“I am very much afraid you are right,” Meg said. “I was trying to converse, but perhaps it would be better to let the horses shake the fidgets out. Particularly Aladdin.” She nodded toward James’s mount and without another word dug her heels into Princess’s flanks and set a spanking pace over the meadow toward the hedge that marked the boundary of her property.

Meg didn’t look behind her. Let the captain keep up if he could! Trying to tell her what to do with her property. Damn the man! She could hear hoofbeats behind her, and she bent low over her horse’s neck, urging the mare on. Then, as the hedge loomed, she saw the captain’s black streak by. They pulled to a halt in front of the boundary, and to her surprise, Meg saw he was smiling. It was a singularly attractive smile, crinkling up his eyes and making them seem an even brighter blue. Despite her earlier displeasure, Meg found herself smiling back.

“That felt fine,” he said, leaning over to pat Aladdin’s neck. “Didn’t it, boy?”

“Yes, it was wonderful!” If she had been alone, Meg would have taken off the smart, deep green riding hat with its curling feather, shaken her head to feel the breeze, and turned her face up to the heavens. But one couldn’t do that with gentlemen present. “Shall we go on? The tenants’ cottages are just over that rise.” She gestured with her crop. “You can get a view of the eastern half of the property from the top.”

“Very well, Lady Margaret.” The captain looked down at her. “Someday, I would like to race when you are mounted on a larger horse and you let someone else start the contest.” He didn’t smile again, and Meg found herself feeling a little cheated. But she did notice that his eyes were bright.

She shrugged. “I confess I like all the advantages I can contrive. As a mere female, I think I am entitled to even the odds a little.”

“No one would ever designate you a ‘mere’ anything, Lady Marg—”

“Could you call me Meg?” she interrupted with a smile. “No one calls me Lady Margaret.”

He inclined his head. “Of course, Lady Meg.”

“You are very stubborn. Perhaps you should practice. If you say my name a dozen or so times, it will come to you more readily. Meg, Meg, Meg. Now you try.”

“I fear I will continue to forget. I do not readily use nicknames.”

Meg stiffened. What did this taciturn captain have against her? She was trying to be friendly, to discover what lay behind the harsh planes of his face and under that thick golden-streaked hair. But he was making it remarkably difficult. With a little spurt of temper, she said, “Well, then, I may just forget to answer,
Jamie.”

They completed their ride to the top of the rise in silence. Below them the verdant countryside lay in perfect squares. James noticed some of the furrows on the side of the hill were curved instead of straight as a plumb line, like the ones on the flat. Curious, he asked, “Why do you curve the plowing in some of the fields, Meg?”

Meg smiled at his use of her nickname and promptly dismounted. James followed suit. For the next few minutes words that sounded to James like “drill plow” and “crop rotation” and “contour plowing” flew around his head like gnats as Meg described the new agricultural methods she was adopting at Hedgemere and the theories behind them.

At last, James held up his hands in mock surrender. “Enough, please! I can see I will have to read an enormous number of journals and books to begin to comprehend what you are attempting.”

“I will be glad to lend you some of my papers and correspondence. And the works of Lord Coke.” Meg smiled, feeling for the first time a hint of shyness. “I find it all fascinating, but I understand that others do not.”

“Not everyone wants to determine a ship’s course by using a sextant either, Lady—Meg. I think perhaps it is not so much a question of liking a subject as it is of finding it useful. I have never had to consider how to farm, but I have had to plot the course of a ship of the line.”

It was the longest speech he had treated her to, and Meg was absurdly pleased that the wealthy captain with his mysterious family had felt at ease enough to speak his mind. She decided to push him a little further, if she could.

“Do you wish to have a property to care for?” she asked.

“Yes, I believe I do. It was just an idea until Sir Gerald asked me to accompany him. But now I think perhaps there is something here I have missed.” James looked around him. “Your land is beautiful, Lady Meg.”

Meg decided not to press him to drop her title and use only her name. He was clearly uncomfortable with it, and many of her neighbors would consider it very fast of her to suggest it on such short acquaintance. She shrugged. She didn’t care much for her neighbors’ opinions of her manners. They respected her ability to manage an estate well, and that was what counted in her eyes. That they also thought it slightly scandalous for a young, unmarried woman to be devoted to such a task bothered her not at all. As for James Sheridan, if they were both truly considering marriage to each other, it was extremely silly to insist on formal manners.

Though it remained to be seen if they could seriously consider each other as potential partners, Meg found that some small part of her was, in fact, considering it with every move he made. He was difficult to know, and she sensed a core of mystery  he would not readily reveal. But despite his prickly exterior, Meg thought Captain James Sheridan might be a good husband.

The thought brought her up short. She was not ready to think about actually marrying anyone. Judging from the ladies of her acquaintance, she reasoned that she was not the stuff biddable wives were made of. But there was no reason why Captain Sheridan would not make a fine husband—for someone else. He seemed not precisely malleable, but teachable, perhaps. He knew what he did not know, and he seemed aware she did know many of those things. For a moment Meg was hopeful. That might mean he would realize she should manage Hedgemere and that he should do ... something else. As he gazed at the countryside below them, lost in his own private thoughts, she slanted a glance at his granite jaw and tall, unbending figure.

It occurred to her James Sheridan would not be an easy man to keep in his place—if that place were not of his own choosing. She sighed and closed her eyes for a moment. It was too beautiful a day to think about depressing things like marriage to a stranger—or dress shops in Harrowgate. Cheerfully, she mounted Princess, signaling to James that it was time to head back.

* * * *

Later that afternoon, seated at her desk in Hedgemere’s untidy but cozy book room, Meg wasn’t so certain that staying at Hedgemere, even if she could contrive it, was desirable after all. “Bills, bills, bills,” she muttered.
And nothing to pay them with.
In his will, her father had left her Hedgemere, the only unentailed property not already sold, but nothing with which to run it. That was bad enough, but she was used to it. He had left her in charge from her teens and asked nothing about the estate except how much she could send him. But then, after his death, the bank had notified her that the late earl had mortgaged Hedgemere ten years before for an amount far in excess of its value. That mortgage, the Friday-faced banker informed Meg the day after the earl’s funeral, was due and owing in full as of the date of his lordship’s death.

Meg leaned back and tried for the thousandth time to think of something that would save her home. And for the thousandth time, she found no answer. She had no way of satisfying one-tenth of the value of the mortgages. If she did not sell Hedgemere and use all the money to satisfy the mortgage, the bank would foreclose and sell it for her.

In either case the answer was the same. No money for Meg, no money to run Hedgemere. She had been contriving and scrimping and robbing Peter to pay Paul for years. Repairs to the tenants’ cottages, a new roof for the barn, a prize bull for the herd—nothing had been done that was less than an emergency.

At this moment Meg didn’t know how she was going to be able to purchase the much-talked-of dress shop in Harrowgate. For once, her natural optimism and confidence failed her, and she literally shook with fear. She had no relatives to depend upon; both her parents had been only children, as had their parents before them. The new earl was a distant cousin she had never even heard of, let alone met before he assumed the title.

Her talents were not salable. She knew estate management. Perhaps she should try for a position as a bailiff. That notion brought a tired smile to her face. A female bailiff! Ludicrous. No one would hire a woman for such a position. Except for a rudimentary knowledge of sewing, she had no domestic skills.

She rubbed her forehead. There was an answer somewhere; there had to be. She just hadn’t thought of it yet.

Of course, there was Gerald’s answer: Captain James Sheridan. A man apparently without a home or a family, but with plenty of gold. Enough to spare for Hedgemere. But would she have to sell herself in order to get it?

Oh, stop sounding like a bad melodrama,
she told herself, well aware most of the marriages in the ton were alliances made for money and property. No one marries for love, she thought, recalling the London newspapers and novels she had read detailing the dissolute life in the capital. She was being asked to do what most women of her class did, without question.

Nevertheless, some corner of her heart rebelled. She would not, could not, give a man she hardly knew absolute rights over her body as well as her property—not after having managed for so long on her own. She rose jerkily and went to stand in front of the bay window that overlooked the garden. It was marriage or exile. With her usual ability to puncture her own pretensions, she thought,
Exile, indeed! And who are you tonight, my girl? Mary, Queen of Scots? Doing it far too brown, Lady Margaret!

She gave a shaky chuckle and decided she would think more lucidly after dinner and a night’s sleep. Surely something would occur to her tomorrow.

* * * *

Later that evening James stood by the long window in his bedroom and looked out over the moonlit garden of Mattingly Place. What would it be like, he wondered, to have lived all your life in a place like this? A place you belonged to every bit as much as it belonged to you? He sighed, then called himself to task. There was nothing in his life to sigh about. He had come out of England’s bloodiest and most costly war with all his limbs intact and a great deal of money. He had retired only after Napoleon Bonaparte had been defeated. James knew that in a peacetime navy, advancement would be based on political connections rather than performance at sea. And he had none.

For a moment he asked himself if it wouldn’t be better to buy a smallish property in a spot where he was unknown and live out his days there in comfortable anonymity.

He shook his head. He wanted more than a place that was his by purchase. He realized for the first time that he wanted people whom he cared for and who cared for him in return. A reluctant smile eased the usually straight line of his lips. The navy had given him plenty of responsibility—a whole ship full of people he was charged with taking care of as well as forging into a fighting machine. He should be heartily sick of it by now. Instead, he must have developed a taste for it. It would seem he wanted a place where he belonged. A home.

And Gerald Mattingly had given him a way to get one— complete with a wife who knew the countryside the way he knew the sea. A wife who was at the very least an attractive and interesting woman. And at most? He sensed that once her affection and loyalty were given, she never reneged, never fought shy. Yes, his instincts told him Lady Margaret Enfield was a prize worth winning.

So, it seemed he was seriously thinking of marrying a virtual stranger. An idea that only yesterday he had called absurd. And if he looked at it coldly, it was still absurd. He was completely ineligible. Lady Margaret would see that the minute she knew his history. He tried to imagine telling her, but he saw those candid hazel eyes darken, her finely carved lips tighten with distaste.

Yet he wanted to stay here, deep in the country, surrounded by peace. He wanted a place of his own, a family of his own. In just a few hours, Hedgemere had struck a chord that had never resonated before.

But was this the only way he could get a home? Surely, if Gerald was correct about the straits in which Lady Meg now found herself, he could simply purchase Hedgemere and proceed to spend his life improving it.