It wasn’t every day you got to resurrect an entire breed.
Bickerton Greys were small, and didn’t carry as much meat on their breast as larger fowl did—but they were tender and notoriously tasty, and what was more, they were some of the strongest winter layers anyone in the village had ever raised. Their eggs had a soft green hue—inherited from the Araucanas in their lineage—and they laid on average one a day from October until March, when fresh eggs sold at much higher premiums than the rest of the year.
It was one thing to raise a single prize bird. Lydia had done that several years running: you hatched your chicks carefully and selected the best and presented them well, and the judges took care of the rest.
But a whole new breed—a rare and glorious bird that had been thought lost for a decade… That was the way to make a mark on the world.
Lydia had thought her time for making a mark had long passed. But perhaps she had been guilty of impatience. Perhaps Fate had only been slow, rather than indifferent.
A sudden shadow fell across the snow. Walter cried out, the same shriek he used when he spotted a hawk or an owl sweeping overhead.
Lydia whirled, heart in her throat.
A woman on horseback, silhouetted in the Gothic arch that opened to the north. Sunlight flickered and shifted behind her as she dismounted, turning her silhouette into something strange and monstrous that made the breath catch in Lydia’s throat.
Crop in hand, the woman strode forward into the ruined church.
Lydia pressed hard against the column at her back and felt the cool stone scrape against the wool of her coat.
Once the woman was inside, the shift in light let Lydia make out the new arrival in more detail. A heavy woolen skirt with flannel petticoats, all short enough to show the worn boots beneath. A sturdy coat so green it was nearly black, with black straps across the breast in the military style. A small hat over chestnut hair liberally peppered with white, and a thick muffler wrapped for warmth around the lower half of her face. She put up one black-gloved hand and pulled down the muffler, revealing a mouth that was one long sensual berry-colored curve.
But above that mouth her eyes were grey and furious and they sliced through Lydia like a saber. “You’re trespassing, madam,” she said.
“Oh!” Shame at even the hint of illegality spurred Lydia forward, hand extended. “You’re right—I’m terribly sorry. My name is Lydia Wraxhall, and I’m only here to retrieve my lost rooster.”
The woman shook her hand, the leather of her glove slippery beneath Lydia’s worsted mitten, and said nothing.
Lydia pressed for more. “You must be one of the new tenants at Thornycroft Hall.”
“Mrs. Harriet Boyne,” the woman said. “And we aren’t tenants. The Hall belongs to us.”
“Really?” Lydia leaned forward. “Everyone assumed you had rented it from Lady Eccleston’s heir.”
The woman raised her chin. “We are Lady Eccleston’s heirs.”
Really? Lydia almost asked again, but bit her tongue.
The whole village knew there was a cousin somewhere in the family, and they’d assumed he would inherit when word had come about Lady Eccleston’s death. Speculation had been fierce: the house had stood empty for months and months, boarded up when the lady took a wild hare and turned volunteer nurse in the early days of the war. Her solicitors were in London, not likely to linger on Bickerton Green for a gossip, or to drop hints about the estate over pints at the Cock and Apple.
But for Lady Eccleston to leave Thornycroft to this stranger? Or group of strangers, more precisely—she’d said we. There were five new inhabitants, according to Mrs. Jeremy, who did for Mr. Finglass three days a week and whose niece had just been hired as a kitchen maid at the Hall. Mr. Finglass had been concerned they might be paying better wages than he was, and that it would give Mrs. Jeremy ideas.
Privately Lydia hoped it did: Mr. Finglass was gruff and careless, and Mrs. Jeremy doubtless deserved a higher wage. Fanny had tried to clean for him once before coming to Lydia’s, and she’d barely lasted a week.
Lydia shook herself. She was wasting time in petty speculation, when there were interesting problems to solve. She nodded a head at the flock. “Are these hens yours?”
“No,” Mrs. Boyne said, a denial like the shutting of a door. “They’re wild birds.”
Lydia’s hopes bounced up again. “So you wouldn’t mind if I took them off your hands?”
“Of course you can’t. They’re on my land.”
Lydia smothered a groan of dismay beneath a perfectly polite smile. “Are you breeding them?”
A flicker of cold amusement in those steel-grey eyes. “Rather the reverse—we’ve been eating them.”
Lydia gasped aloud. Eating them!
Mrs. Boyne tilted her head, as if observing the results of an experiment, and said: “They’re quite delicious.”
