Well, no one in actual fact.
Back in London, friends thought his endeavours dull. Lady Conway had wrinkled her nose and half a dozen others had peered at him oddly.
So he’d ceased sharing this side of his life…
Gentleness and compassion got stomped on in the City for there was no time, and he was quite sure that should any of his London friends see him here, kneeling in manure at this hour of the night and coated with sweat, they’d think him brainsick and cart him off to the nearest quack.
Yet, as he stared around the stable box, the broad grins at the birth of this new life and the nip of local liquor doing the rounds, he realised this was the most contented he’d felt for a long time.
This was where he’d always felt contented, until his brother had ordered him to London.
“Get thine besom out,” Grampy Tom commanded the groom. “Tha straw’s too fousty for a new foal.”
Ernest smirked as Daniel rolled his eyes but dutifully grabbed a broom to shift the perfectly clean straw. Most grooms, like Daniel, were hired at the yearly mop fairs, but some like Grampy Tom – who’d been Grampy as long as anyone could remember – were hewn from the Wychmere stone, moulded from the boggy pasture soil and then baked in the Cotswold summer sun.
“Lor, a mortal fine night,” Grampy Tom declared, standing with a creak of knee. “But we’d best leave the girl to it now.” And then seemed to remember he was no longer in charge as of twenty years past. “If thas agreeable with thee, Redmond?”
The Irishman – blithe as only an Irishman could be – grinned. “As ya say, Tom. As ya say.”
Thanking Mr Croft, a farmer and neighbour who’d birthed many a difficult new-born, including a fair few from Mrs Croft, the three of them wandered from the stables, a sense of camaraderie, belonging and satisfaction coursing through Ernest’s veins.
In this place, he wasn’t just a duke’s idle brother but a useful part of the stables. At first, some had gawped to see an aristocrat work thus, but the advantage to being a duke’s brother was that there was no need to explain one’s actions.
“Tha artist lass o’thine…” Grampy began.
“Er, we’re not in any way–”
“Can her cook crowdy?”
Ernest scrunched his eyes, fairly sure the local dish of pig’s head broth might not be within Mrs Locke’s repertoire. “Well…”
“Not that it matters overmuch. She be a fine woman.”
“Ach, and how long are they here for?” grumbled Redmond. “I don’t want that black-haired Cassell woman in my stables. She upsets the horses.”
“Upsets Redmond O’Conner, thee mean,” cackled Grampy Tom.
“Do you know Mrs Cassell then?”
For a good moment or two, unintelligible Gaelic mumbles, mutters and curses spewed forth, then…
“Aye,” he finally bit out.
Before he buttoned his lips.
Grampy Tom clapped a hand to the stable master’s shoulder, and as the two of them ambled off, Ernest gazed to the heavens to assess the coming day’s weather. Dawn tinged the east with an oyster grey, devoid, for once, of any streaks of cloud.
Clear skies at last.
A faint awareness prickled his nape, surely the fresh dawn breeze, but he glanced through the open courtyard doors and to the castle, caught a hint of candlelight glimmering from the corner turret bedchamber and wondered what had roused Mrs Locke from her sleep.
Come rain or shine, this summer would be like no other.
8
WHEN THE HEART IS AFIRE, SPARKS WILL FLY FROM THE MOUTH…
“His lordship’s with fair Lydia at the Wychmere tavern again,” revealed Mr Grampy Tom with a distinct twinkle to his eye.
