Hope bloomed in her chest, like the fragile star-shaped white flowers bursting through the thick forest undergrowth to reach for the spring sun.Could this actually work?Could her schemes, and Lucy’s, pay off and get their family back to London?
The hope felt good, but it was a sharp-edged pleasure all the same.Gemma’s heart clenched at the sudden realization that getting their family out of this mess would meangoing back to London.
It would mean leaving Hal Deveril behind.And never seeing him again.
Now why did that thought make her feel as though if she tried to cry once more, right now, she might actually manage to do it?
Nonsense, she told herself fiercely.It was the pollen, all the new spring growth making her eyes burn and her throat tighten.
Nothing more.
ChapterTen
Today marked Hal’s first official Rogation Day as the Duke of Havilocke, and he was already making a hash of it.
When he was a child, he’d snuck out of Kissington Manor to join the group of men and boys beating the bounds every year.There was a purpose behind the annual tradition—solidifying the community understanding of the boundaries between lands and counties in the absence of detailed maps of the countryside—but for the young Hal, it had been an adventure.An excellent occasion to slip away from the bored tutor whose thankless task it was to teach Hal how to be a gentleman, and escape Kissington Manor, which was either empty and echoing if his parents and elder brother were in Town, or riotous with strangers if they were holding a house party.
Neither situation had inclined Hal towards spending time at home.
So he had run away to join the rogation party, and they had welcomed him with back slaps and jests, sips of cider and singing to pass the miles as they tramped about the countryside.
Then Father had died, and Hal had been sent away to school, and Walter had become the new duke.Hal had missed Rogation Day for many years, away at school and then studying at university, and now he was home, and he was Duke of Havilocke, and nothing was the same.
Instead of the cheer and high spirits he remembered, their dispirited group trudged along the border of a limestone wood like a party of conscripted soldiers on a forced march to battle.
When he’d arrived at the turnstile crossing that morning, the dozen or so men and boys who had gathered there merely nodded in greeting and turned to set off.There was no singing; there was barely any conversation.Rogation Day, which Hal remembered so fondly, had clearly become nothing more than a grim exercise in tradition, another chore in the long, hard string of labors that made up his people’s lives.
Hal took a deep breath of the early spring air, earthy and pungent with the oniony scent of the white-blossomed ransoms carpeting the forest floor.Guilt, his ever-present companion, pressed heavily on his shoulders.His family had broken this place, and done its best to break its people, and sometimes Hal wasn’t sure if he could ever mend it.
This land, and the people who called it home, had been the Montrose family’s responsibility for generations.It was a responsibility many of Hal’s ancestors had taken very lightly—when they weren’t taking full advantage of it to line their own pockets.
Hal looked around him at the familiar, weather-beaten faces of the men he walked with.Farmers and smallholders, tenants and villagers, recent additions to the community and descendants of the village’s founders, men with families and responsibilities of their own.
A complex web of dependence and trust connected them to one another: Mr.Woodhill, an elderly Black freeman from Jamaica, shared his kitchen garden’s overflow with Bess, who turned the abundance of vegetables into savory pies and stews he brought home to share with his friend Mr.Prince.Mr.Mulgrave, a middle-aged white farmer, shared his cows’ milk with the Court family, who in turn gifted him with a share of the butter and cheese they made in their small dairy.The miller, a white man of Scottish descent, Mr.Evans, was married to the baker’s sister, originally a Pickford girl and Bess’s cousin, and the two families together provided much of the county’s bread from the village bakehouse.Mr.Cartwright, an older white man who had served on a merchant ship in his youth and brought home an Indian wife, mended his neighbors’ farm equipment in exchange for hay for his horses.
And where did Hal fit in?What did he have to offer?
He owned the land these people worked and lived and shared and died on.That was all.
An accident of birth, dire chance and unasked for fate, had set him apart from the people who had welcomed him his whole life.
Mr.Cartwright, beside him, used his stout walking stick to brush aside a low-hanging branch and hold it back for the rest of the group, and the way he dipped his head when Hal went past made Hal’s jaw tighten.
The deferential gesture from one of the most respected elders of the village—a man who’d known Hal since he was a wild, ungovernable child—curdled in his stomach like last week’s skimmings.
This was the man who had lifted Hal onto his broad shoulders and carried him, when Hal’s short legs grew tired from the long hours of walking.
“Thank you,” Hal made sure to say, looking the older man directly in the eye.
Mr.Cartwright regarded Hal thoughtfully from under his bushy gray brows.His lined, tanned face was shaded by the brim of his hat but Hal could clearly see that the still-brawny man had something he wanted to say.
Welcoming the distraction from his morose thoughts, Hal squared his shoulders.He prepared to hear another list of repairs that needed doing, requests for aid with handling livestock, or even a grim, low-voiced hint that one family or another was having trouble putting food on the table.In the past year, Hal had heard every one of those concerns and more, often from Mr.Cartwright.
The village blacksmith and farrier, though most of the physical labor was now carried on by his eldest son, Mr.Cartwright had dealings with everyone in the county, regardless of rank, and he was known as a man who spoke his mind.When someone needed help but was too proud or too uncertain to approach the new Duke of Havilocke himself, Mr.Cartwright carried the message.
“What is it, Mr.Cartwright?”Hal asked, his mind already racing ahead to the possible problems to solve and work to be done.“I’m already promised to the Fieldings’ farm for tomorrow, helping them bring the hay in, but beyond that I am at your disposal.”
“Very kind of you,” Mr.Cartwright said slowly, his deep voice gruff.“But I’m not after making more work for you just now.”
