Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Ellie had been out in the fields with West for hours now, and she was still not tired of his company, nor of their walking.
They had gone out shortly after breakfast, both of them walking this time, with no commentary about a horse.
Ellie had known that West had an interest in farming and agriculture, but she had not anticipated that he would be as knowledgeable as he was.
He asked questions about the treatment of the poorly performing fields, even asking about the quantities of lime and what she had seen as a result of its uses.
He’d read the reports, but he wanted more information than was there.
He asked questions about the crops and the weather, how the fields had been selected for the crops in them now, the drainage techniques used for the fields that had been boggy or flooded, and asked such clarifying questions on behalf of the things she had said that she felt as though their minds were as in tune with each other’s as instruments in a symphony.
He had crouched down to inspect the crops in the fields, pinching them between his fingers and looking at the color of the stems, the leaves, the strength of attachment to the ground, how one plant compared to the one next to it.
Then he would scoop up a bit of the soil and run it through his fingers the way a baker might have done with salt or sugar.
It might have been the most attractive thing Ellie had ever seen.
Which was stupid, was it not? Confusing, certainly, considering it was West and he was attractive no matter what, but whoever swooned over a man touching plants and dirt?
What had impressed Ellie most, however, had been the way West had listened to her.
The fact that he had listened to her. He had asked deeper questions, had not tried to finish her statements or assume he knew what she was going to say or what she might have done, had not even interrupted her—not even one time—and had shown no signs of impatience.
In fact, he had seemed to be entirely at his leisure.
He had asked about the warm summer Ellie had reported on the year before and what adjustments she had made afterwards as contingencies for the future.
He’d asked if she thought laying clay pipes in the northern fields would prepare them for planting a season sooner.
He’d asked about expanding the vegetable garden she’d begun with Mrs. Havens into a greater expanse of the same, or turning one of the empty fields into one for vegetables just for a variety and to add them to the contribution to the Buxton markets.
He’d even asked her thoughts on the investment of funds into some of the more modern equipment for farming and how that might impact the need for day laborers.
It had been a series of conversations that had seamlessly scraped through every part of her agriculture-loving mind, and it had been so invigorating, she was not even fatigued from it.
The respect he was showing her as someone who knew these lands, understood crops, cared about the workers, was humbling and astonishing and wonderful.
There was nothing of the arrogant baron in this man beside her. He was dressed in standard country wear, just as she was, and could have joined in a group mending a roof if he had chosen. After what she had seen today, she thought it entirely possible that he would have done.
Once finished with the fields, they had started the long walk back to the house, but neither of them were walking with any sort of haste.
“Elena,” West began in a soft voice, “I feel the need to apologize to you.”
Ellie snorted once. “Whatever for?”
“Shall I recite the list?” he asked with a laugh that rumbled low and delicious in the air between them, drawing an easy smile from her.
“There is a list?” She found herself giggling, oddly enough. “Now I must hear it.”
West nodded as though this was a sensible idea. “Well, there was my rudeness when I first met you,” he began. “My outrage over your wearing trousers.”
“You still don’t approve of that very much,” Ellie reminded him with a nudge of her elbow.
West laughed again. “My approval means nothing, and it is not for me to pretend otherwise with you. And I have come around to your way of thinking where they are concerned. Is it proper? No. Is it appropriate for what you do in them? Absolutely. I admire your commitment to practicality over fashion, and if you’ll permit me .
. . it suits you. What you’re wearing. Very well. ”
Oh. Oh, well, that . . . that was unexpected. Delightfully so.
She noted he was not saying that she was beautiful, and that was fine. Perfectly acceptable. But something about the sincerity in his words about her present ensemble, the genuine apology she heard in his tone, the way he was coming to understand her . . .
That was better than any flattering compliment or declaration of beauty he could have used.
And that made it even more frightening.
But how did she respond to his words? What should she say? Was it time for an expression of gratitude? A demurral? A sarcastic retort?
He was almost certainly seeing the flush upon her cheeks, so perhaps she did not need to say anything at all. Her smile was still in place, so he would know that her embarrassment was one of pleasure and not mortification.
Was that enough of an answer?
“What else is on the list of apologies?” Ellie inquired with the faintest clearing of her throat, looking down at the grass before her instead of at the man beside her.
“Oh, there’s a few more things,” West admitted on a sigh. “Underestimating you is a significant one, and I feel rather stupid about it as well as apologetic.”
She smiled softly. “You are not the first man to underestimate a woman, nor will you be the last.”
He gave her a sidelong look. “That is not particularly comforting, Elena.”
“I was unaware that I should be comforting you during the expanses of your apologies,” she shot back, which made him grin.
Merciful heavens, his grin was a thing of beauty.
Where some people had eyes that were diminished in splendor and brilliance by the narrowing that came with grins of that nature, West’s lovely blue eyes sparkled just the same, perhaps danced even more for the joy and amusement in them.
Nothing about them was diminished, only enhanced. Deepened.
Intensified.
Those eyes and that smile, both directed at her, might be enough to burst her very heart in the most perfect of ways.
Inconvenient, but perfect.
“Brutally honest as ever, Elena,” West said, maintaining his smile.
“That is all I can promise you now,” she told him, employing a raw vulnerability she usually avoided like the plague. “No more secrets, and complete honesty.”
West surprised her by stopping and taking her hand, looking down at it for a breathless moment. “That means more than anything to me, Elena. I know what it costs you, and I will not betray that trust.”
Her throat was dry, her mind was empty, her ears were drowning in the sounds of her heartbeat. Her hand was on fire where he touched it. She wanted to sway, she wanted to lean, she wanted to run and twirl and scream in delight.
She wanted to run to the house and burrow under her blankets to hide from all of this.
“Why . . . why do you always call me Elena?” she whispered. “And never Ellie?”
“I don’t know,” he rasped back, meeting her eyes again, his thumb running over the back of her hand. “Elena is such a beautiful name, and from the moment I met you, it was the only name that suited. And I wanted to be the only person to call you Elena.”
She was going to swoon. Fine ladies swooned, pathetic girls swooned, and unwell individuals swooned, but suddenly she thought swooning would be a marvelous course of action. Only her knees were perfectly strong, her vision clear, her skin just a little flushed.
Curses. Her body was not going to allow her to swoon, and that meant she had to face this conversation with completely clear senses.
“Elena is a Greek name,” she told him. “My father found it in his studies and thought it beautiful, so it was the name given to me. He wanted something unique for me, even if my mother was always going to call me Ellie.”
West nodded slowly, his eyes on hers. “It is a beautiful and unique name. Like your clothing, it suits you perfectly. There is no other Elena I know, and no other woman in the world like you.”
He needed to stop this madness. He needed to return to the sensible baron who drove her mad and sparked her temper. This sweet and gentle man was going to set her aflame from sensation alone, not to mention the cacophony of thoughts and confusion swirling in her mind.
Could a mind be set aflame from complication and confusion? She would likely be the one to find out.
“I am also sorry,” West told her in a low tone, “that I ever tried to dismiss you into arranging flowers for Fenmore.”
Surprised by that point, Ellie burst out laughing, fully and freely, leaving her hand in his hold as he turned and began to walk, tugging her gently behind him.
“I had almost forgotten about that!” she choked through her laughter, dabbing at her eyes.
“Believe me, I have not,” he retorted. “Likely one of the stupidest moments of my life, as well as the most arrogant.”
Ellie let herself squeeze his hand. “You did not know me. You thought I ought to be a lady.”
He quirked a brow as he looked over at her. “I am not your guardian, Elena. I am not even a stickler for propriety. Who am I to attempt to conform you into anything?”
“I was more concerned that you thought flowers were going to somehow improve the aesthetics of the house when there was clearly so much more that needed to be done first,” Ellie admitted, chuckling at the memory.
“Should I have put a vase of flowers atop the linen-covered pianoforte in the music room? Or did you have some other linen-covered piece of furniture in mind? Perhaps the windows that were left covered?”
West was laughing himself now, groaning in the midst of that laughter. “Stop, I beg you. It was a nonsensical suggestion as well as an arrogant one. I just wanted you out of the way.”
Now that concession caught her off-guard, and her amusement faded into confusion. “Out of the way? Why?”
His thumb brushed over her hand, reminding her of their connection and making her pulse skip.
“Because you were so capable and fierce and knowledgeable. I walked into Fenmore assuming I would be the only one whose opinion mattered, the one who knew the most, the one to restore whatever Leonard had done. And there you were. Already doing what I thought I would, and I was intimidated.”
Ellie blinked a few times, the words having a difficult time infiltrating her mind enough to sink in. “You were . . . what?”
West smirked, nodding. “Intimidated. Very much so. Elena, don’t you have any idea how impressive you are? Not only for how you have been living—without complaint, I might add—but what you have done? Knowing you will never get actual credit for it?”
“I . . .” She trailed off, wetting her lips carefully. “Credit does not matter, not really. Not more than results. And I complained a very great deal in my head.”
West tossed his head back on a laugh, the sound rolling and almost thunderous across the hills.
“And you think that counts? No, Elena, you are extraordinary. So yes, I was intimidated, and I wanted you to be smaller. To go back into the little box I thought you’d fit in.
” He sobered and stopped walking once more, turning to face her and taking her other hand as well.
“I am sorry, Elena. Truly and deeply sorry. You do not need to be smaller in any way. You should always be exactly as you are, exactly as you want to be, and nothing less. You deserve nothing less, and it was my failing to ever think so. Can you forgive me?”
Ellie’s breath vanished on the softest exhale, her fingers warm but her feet cold, her heart pulsing the beginnings of fire into her skin. “Yes,” she heard herself whisper. “Yes, I can forgive you.”
To her surprise, he raised her hands to his lips and kissed the backs of both, not in any sort of passionate or tender way as a lover might, and not in the dismissive and polite manner of a flattering stranger.
Some odd, heart-stopping mixture of the two that held all of the potential and none of the answers.
“Thank you,” West said with such earnestness that her cheeks flushed.
She tugged her hands out of his hold and pretended to tuck stray hairs behind her ears as she turned to walk once more. He fell into step beside her without a word.
“And now that you have forgiven me,” West said, as though her heart had not just been stopped in her chest, “and I am less intimidated by you . . .”
She snorted at that.
“It is time to tell you about the challenge Fred has named for us.” He grinned, quirking his eyebrows playfully.
“I am afraid,” she intoned flatly.
“We,” he went on, gesturing between the two of them, “are to each craft a plan for the estate lands for the next year, starting after harvest, with the understanding that it will proceed as expected. We will have full access to the farmers and their opinions, the state of finances available, everything. One full year of plans to be taken before a jury of the tenant farmers and presented. Whichever they like best will win.”
Ellie was grinning before he’d even finished. “And what will the winner receive? Other than pride?”
“Fred hasn’t figured that out yet,” West commented with a wave of his hand. “Probably flowers.”
“I am not arranging them.”
“No, of course not. He will.”
Cackling, Ellie almost stumbled a step, but West caught her and kept her upright. “Whoops!” she exclaimed.
“Steady on, Elena,” he chided with a wink. “No help will be given to the injured in this endeavor."
"No, my lord," she replied, nodding in all seriousness.
West hummed softly. “You know, as I have not been calling you Miss Williams, there is no need for you to call me ‘my lord.’ Would it be terribly impolite to invite you to call me West?”
Her throat clenched very briefly. “Impolite?” she managed. “No. Informal? Yes. Improper? Debatable.”
“Do you care?” he asked her, the words softer than expected.
Her head was shaking before she even knew what she would say. “No, West. I don’t.”
“Good,” he sighed, sending a ticklish sensation roaring into her chest.
Ellie bit her lip, looking away as the urge to skip with glee started in her legs. “I actually really do like flowers. But not carefully cultivated ones. Wild ones. Not the ones with fuss, but the ones that survive.”
West hummed beside her, a pleasant, curious sound of satisfaction. “You would, wouldn’t you? That suits you, too. Perfectly.”
Ellie nodded, not caring if he would see. And she wondered what else might suit her, if given a chance.