“In the future,” he said, “I’ll thank you not to interfere in his schedule.”
“Corvin still has a duty to his apprenticeship. Surely you don’t want a future lord baron neglecting duties. It sets a bad precedent.”
“A future lord baron has no need of a common apprenticeship.” Huxley stood from behind the desk—Baron’s desk—and retrieved the estate ledger, leaning heavily into his cane. He opened the thick volume. “Actually, I’m glad we have this opportunity to speak in private, my lord. It seems your stint as estate manager, however limited, created an alarming number of concerns.”
Baron’s fingers dug into his arm again, but he said nothing.
“Increase in orchard spending—that would be the unnecessary second fertilizer.” Huxley looked up; Baron remained silent. The man returned to the page, running his finger down the side. “Various expenses regarding the nearby hamlet, all extraneous. It seems youtwicepaid for a physician’s visit. Such expenses aren’t the duty of the estate lord.”
“It seems our definitions of duty are in conflict,” Baron said.
While he carefully considered how much to help in most financial matters, Baron couldn’t restrain himself regarding illness. Health was not a plough horse; he would always bear the cost if those he cared for could not.
The memory of his father as the one in bed was still too fresh.
“Here’s a perplexing one: You hired an investigator mid-summer. To investigate what, might I ask?”
His stepmother. After Sarah’s abrupt departure four years earlier, Baron’s father had closed off, refusing to speak about her though it strained his relationship with the twins. Baron couldn’t bring their father back, but he felt the pain of being an orphan acutely enough; he would spare the twins if possible.
Unfortunately, the venture had been a dead end. Sarah hadn’t been found. She’d hopped between relatives immediately afterleaving her husband, but none professed any idea of her whereabouts within the last year.
There was nothing to be done for it. She’d given no indication she was leaving at all, and when she left, she’d given no indication where she might go.
Baron had been the first to see the smoke, to find his stepmother in the yard beside the smoldering spines of former books, their pages crumbled to ash, her eyes alive with the fire that had already burned out at her feet. It hadn’t taken Baron’s father more than a minute to catch up, and then there had been arguing, desperate pleas and struggles to understand met with a wall of refusal. The twins had arrived just as their mother swung into Ruby’s saddle. Baron would always wish they hadn’t heard her parting words: “This family is damned, and I will not stand idly to witness it.”
The books she’d burned hadn’t been from the shelves of the study but from the cubby beneath the floorboards of Baron’s room.
Books on Casting, on Affiliation. On every known kind of magic. Books left to Baron by his real mother. Destroyed by his stepmother.
And no investigator could tell him why.
Huxley closed the ledger. “After careful review of the finances, I see a change must be made. Namely you, my lord. Rather than living off your brother’s estate, I think it’s time you find a sustainable living of your own. Perhaps, with your uniquetalents, you could desalinate water for farmers in Port Tynemon.”
“A tempting offer, Mr. Huxley, but I think there’s a more pressing calling for me closer to home.”
“Surely you don’t think the estate should pay you to hover around, hindering your brother’s progress?”
Slowly, Baron lowered his cane to the ground, stacking hishands atop it. “The estate will pay me to lead the autumn harvest.”
“We don’t need—”
“Unless”—Baron raised his voice slightly—“you can find someone else in the next few days with the required knowledge and experience of how to handle the orchard. Harvesting is a delicate process, I’m sure you understand, and any loss of crops is a loss of revenue for the estate. I suppose you could oversee the process yourself, steward, but I wouldn’t want to burden you with lemons and ladders.”
With a pointed look at the man’s weak leg, Baron gave a shallow nod and excused himself from the study. He found himself trembling as he walked.
It was a temporary solution. By the time spring harvest came, Huxley would realize Walter could lead. Losing Baron would mean hiring an extra worker or two, butcostwas not Huxley’s true motivation. Clearly, he wanted to push Baron out of the estate.
What do I do?
Baron wished he had someone to direct the question to.
After checking on Leon in the kitchen, more for his own peace of mind than anything, he made his way to the edge of the estate’s land, just north of where it met the hamlet. There a small corner had been dedicated as a cemetery, since there was no churchyard until Stonewall. The Reeves family tomb stood in a copse of trees that had never been cleared, the stone structure pierced by sunlight only through the small windows in front and back.
His father’s casket was there, encased in stone and marked by a plaque on the wall. So was his birth mother’s, marked not only by plaque but also by a small statue of an angel mother with wings curled to protect her baby. Baron gently traced the feathers of one wing.
With a sigh, he leaned against the wall and spoke to parents who could no longer hear him.
“Huxley is worse than I’d feared.”
