She had seen the way Daniel looked at Lillian. She had seen the way Lillian looked back—not with the desperate hunger of a woman seeking a title, but with something more dangerous: genuine interest. Genuine curiosity. A desire to understand.
If anyone could reach her brother, Rosanne thought, it might be Lillian Whitcombe.
And if Lillian could reach him, if she could somehow breach those walls he had spent a lifetime constructing, then perhaps this cold, careful, suffocating house might finally begin to feel like a home.
She closed the sketchbook and tucked it safely in her desk drawer.
It was a foolish, childish hope.
But hope, she had learned, was often the only thing that kept one going.
Chapter Four
"Your Grace, I am sorry to disturb you, but there is a matter requiring your immediate attention."
Daniel looked up from the drainage report, the same drainage report he had been attempting to read for the better part of an hour, with limited success, and found his steward standing in the doorway of his study with an expression that suggested the matter in question was neither small nor pleasant.
"What manner of matter, Simmons?"
"A dispute, Your Grace. Between Mr. Garrett and Mr. Hobbs."
Daniel set down his quill pen with careful precision. Garrett and Hobbs. Neighboring tenant farmers who had worked adjacent plots for the better part of two decades. He had attended the christening of Hobbs's youngest daughter not six months past, and Garrett's wife had sent a basket of preserves to the Hall every Christmas since Daniel had assumed the title.
"They are disputing?" he asked. "Garrett and Hobbs?"
"I am afraid so, Your Grace. Rather vigorously."
This was Simmons's way of saying that the situation had escalated beyond the point where it could be quietly resolved by the steward himself. Simmons was a competent man, one of the most competent Daniel had ever employed, and he did not trouble his employer with matters he could handle on his own. If he was standing in Daniel's study with that particular furrow between his brows, the situation was serious indeed.
"Send them in," Daniel said, rising from his desk. "Both of them. And have Mrs. Gerald bring tea."
"Tea, Your Grace?"
"If I am to mediate a dispute between men who have been neighbours for twenty years, I suspect we shall all require fortification."
Simmons inclined his head and departed, and Daniel took a moment to compose himself before the storm arrived. He moved to stand before the fireplace, unlit, given the mildness of the September afternoon, and arranged his features into an expression of calm authority.
It was, he had learned, important to project calm authority when dealing with disputes. People who were angry wanted someone to be angry with them, or at them, or on their behalf. What they needed, however, was someone who would remain unmoved by their passion; a fixed point around which they could eventually orient themselves.
His father had never understood this. The late Duke of Wyntham had approached every conflict as an opportunity for drama, matching raised voices with raised voices, fury with fury. The result had been spectacular arguments that resolved nothing and left everyone involved feeling worse than they had before.
Daniel had sworn, very early in his tenure as duke, that he would never conduct himself in such a manner. He would be calm, he would be rational and he would be a still point in the chaos.
He was very good at being still.
The door opened, and chaos entered.
Mr. Garrett came first; a broad, weather-beaten man in his middle fifties, with hands like shovels and a face currently mottled with outrage. Mr. Hobbs followed close behind; thinner, older, his white hair standing up in agitated tufts as though he had been running his hands through it repeatedly.
They were both talking before they had fully entered the room.
"Your Grace, I must insist..."
"It is a matter of simple justice..."
"My family has worked that land for three generations…."
"A clear violation of the boundary..."
