Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Silence had never been so painful, so poignant, or so panic inducing.
Ellie felt her feet go numb, her stomach clench, and her scalp prickle with fire before she managed to draw in a breath, and she was not a talented enough actress to keep every emotion from crossing her face.
She looked between West and George with a sort of frantic energy she could not control, her voice absolutely refusing to cooperate.
West was not releasing George’s hand. Nor was he looking away from her.
He did not seem angry so much as determined, but his eyes were also cold and hard, which frightened her more than outright anger.
Her heartbeat pounded in her ears, calling her a liar with every single cadence.
She wasn’t just a liar. She had brought George into this lie, this scheme, with her, making him complicit. He could be fired for that. He could lose his farm, his family’s security, his livelihood, for helping her. Forget her losing Williams as a role and a pseudonym, this was about someone’s life!
Oh heavens, what had she done?
It was one thing to bring him in to talk with neighboring estates and vendors and the like. It was quite another to do that for the master of the estate.
Elena was going to be tossed out of the estate, but George . . .
“I am so sorry,” she whimpered at last, covering her mouth as her eyes burned with tears. “I . . .”
“Elena,” West said firmly, interrupting her emotional rambling before it picked up the speed required. “What are you sorry for? Explain, please.”
She bit her lip and gestured to George. “Can you . . . will you release him, please? None of this is his fault.”
West seemed surprised by that, then looked at his handshake with George before looking the man in the face. “Apologies, George.” He released his hand. “It took me a moment to place you, but you are not so changed as to be unrecognizable.”
That was kindness in his tone. That was a promising sign, wasn’t it? He wasn’t going to destroy a man’s life while sounding so nice, was he?
“I was certain you would not remember, my lord,” George told him in a somber tone, “or else I would have said something to Miss Ellie to prevent this misunderstanding.”
West’s gaze flew back to Ellie, his eyes still unreadable, sending a chill through her. “Don’t worry. I think Miss Ellie would have found a way to pull the wool over my eyes no matter what. The only question I have is why.”
George looked at her now as well, his expression sympathetic.
She flicked her attention between the two a few times, then heaved a weary sigh and slumped her shoulders in defeat. “Fine,” she murmured, flicking her fingers towards his desk. “You might as well have a seat, my lord. This will take a moment or two.”
“I rather thought it might.” He nodded and walked over to his desk, but did not move behind it. Instead, he leaned against it, folding his arms and crossing his ankles.
George took a chair, staying as silent support. Perhaps he would even chime in a time or two to help her, but there really was not a way to dress this scheme up in a way that did not involve deception.
It was nothing but deception. Well-intended, effective, helpful deception, but deception all the same. If West had a passionate devotion for complete integrity and honesty, she was going to be in trouble, no matter her motivation.
Ellie looked down at her hands, focusing for a long moment on her fingernails.
They had never been the long and elegant, softly curated nails of a fine lady, even when she was younger.
But in the last several years, they had been short and stubby, usually with dirt beneath them, bordered by calluses or cuts from her work.
Her knuckles were usually rough and red, her hands creased with lines and cracks that meant she would never look refined from her hands alone.
She’d never wanted to be refined, really.
At this moment, she wondered if she would have been more likable as a soft, refined woman.
Her hands had done so much. Would they now be forced into some sort of softness just because a woman was not supposed to do more?
“Elena.”
West’s voice—always calling her Elena, never Ellie—was surprisingly steady, not nearly as cold as his eyes had been.
It was that steadiness, that lack of anger, that gave her the strength to let this secret go free.
“I am Williams,” Ellie admitted. “I always have been. It is my surname, and common enough to be used in all stations.”
West released a harsh breath, but otherwise made no sound, no movement, no change in his expression. He just remained focused on her, listening intently.
Ellie swallowed with some difficulty, her throat feeling rough and tight. “It started when I arrived at Fenmore. I was always intending to involve myself in the details of the land where possible. You know why, my lord. We’ve discussed this.”
West nodded at that, the motion smooth and easy. “I do.”
His lack of excessive words actually made everything easier. They were not having a conversation; she was engaging in a confession. She had no doubt that they would be discussing more later, but he was evidently going to let her get all of this out before he participated.
“I began taking walks across the estate lands,” Ellie went on, “so I found myself in the fields eventually. I saw the weakness in the crops, the gaping holes from lead mining, the fields that had been left to fallow or grow boggy. I could see other fields on other estates that looked much healthier even from a distance, so I knew it was not a local issue. It was a Fenmore issue. I saw that we sent almost nothing to markets. The reports from Rokesby were inconsistent at best. I started asking questions of the tenants, including George here. No new tools despite the need. No crop rotation. No draining for the flooded fields. A pattern of neglect that had been left for so long that we were likely looking at significant damage to the soil.”
She looked to George, more out of fear and nerves than anything else, and he smiled at her, nodding in encouragement.
Ellie exhaled a quick, silent breath. “I asked more questions about Rokesby as the estate manager in general. High rents despite no repairs. No care for farms, crops, or the loss of livestock over the years. No caring whatsoever but for the money, but without assisting in giving them the means to earn any money. I did not have a great fortune, and I could do nothing about the repairs to the house, but I did know something about agriculture and such, as well as proper estate management. My father’s passion for it had prepared me well, and if I was going to be Lady Bickham someday, I wanted that to mean something. ”
She toyed with the idea of relating to her marriage abstractly, given that George was in the room with them, but ultimately decided against it.
She needed to offer West complete honesty if she wanted to remain in his good graces, and though he already knew about the marriage, she refused to let anything be unclear anymore.
“That was when I knew that I needed to marry Leonard instead of just being engaged to him,” she murmured quietly.
She heard a soft gasp from George, but looked at West instead. His expression was tense, but his folded arms had loosened. He was far more relaxed now than he had been when he’d started, and when her eyes met his directly, he flicked her a small smile.
Ignoring the bubbles currently developing in the center of her chest, she went on.
“I wrote to the London solicitor who had managed the engagement details and inquired about a marriage by proxy. I did not want to be married. Leonard, I knew, did not want to be married. But I needed the authority of a marriage to act. I explained to the solicitor that I wanted to help out more at the estate, and I knew I needed legitimacy to do that. We worked out logistics and details, he wrote to Leonard in Spain—that’s where he was at the time—and we were married by proxy via special license a week after I received word of his approval. ”
She scrunched up her nose in thought. “I knew I could not remove Rokesby without replacing him with someone. I did not want to be known as Lady Bickham until I had to be, and I needed to invest all of my efforts in mending the lands. So I crafted the person of E. Williams as a new estate manager. I fired Rokesby and installed myself into the role, writing up reports and ledgers to ensure all was in order. When I needed a public-facing persona for Williams, George stood in, as he is the estate’s head farmer and he is the most knowledgeable.
None of the other farmers were aware of the deception.
I did the rent collection and said Williams preferred to focus on the lands. After all, that was true.”
She smiled a tight smile for herself alone.
“With legal authority over the estate, I could divert my own funds where I liked. I wasn’t paying Williams a salary—can you imagine if I had?
” She laughed at the thought, and would swear she heard West chuckle, too.
“At any rate, that saved some money as well, having an estate agent we did not have to pay. Market day negotiations over crops or equipment were handled by George, either acting as himself or as Williams. Most everything else that Williams had to do could be accomplished by letter, and I’ve never had a feminine hand with a pen, so that suited everything. ”
Ellie closed her eyes, suddenly fatigued by it all—the secrets, the work, the splitting of her mind between the lands as well as the house while managing the minutiae surrounding everything that was Fenmore. And this confession was pulling all of that effort and burden to the surface.