Chapter 5
CHAPTER 5
“H ave you seen Mr. Hastings?” Stephen asked Mrs. Tulane as he entered the foyer of the parsonage and hung his hat on the peg. “I haven’t seen him all day.”
“Oh, well, there was some trouble out to Tuck’s farm, sir,” she said, not looking at him as she dusted the mantle. “He and Grady, again, don’t you know, sparring over that border wall. They sent for the sheriff.”
Stephen stopped in his tracks and very slowly turned back to face her. “Please tell me you didn’t let Hastings go out to Tuck’s without me.”
She turned a bemused expression to him, foregoing her dusting. “Well, you were working on the Widow O’Bannon’s eulogy, and we thought it best not to disturb you, considering as how it’s going to be hard to find a charitable word for the old harridan, God rest her soul.”
“For that I should have been disturbed,” Stephen said, dread settling like a rock in his stomach. “Hastings. In the middle of Tuck and Grady. Honestly, I thought I’d have more time before he was expected to perform his duties after that last fiasco.” It had only been a week since the official paperwork signed by the duke had been delivered, yet Hastings had managed to assault a farmer in the middle of the road over a wayward cow and frighten poor old Mrs. Thompson when he’d mistaken her for a lady of the evening. Stephen found that last one improbable, but Mrs. Thompson was still basking in the glow of her notoriety.
Stephen closed his eyes and put his palm on his throbbing forehead. “As if that eulogy hadn’t given me enough of a headache.” He opened his eyes and asked alarm, “Was he drunk? Or naked?”
“He’s hardly either of them anymore,” Mrs. Tulane assured him. “More’s the pity,” she added under her breath. Stephen chose to pretend he hadn’t heard that last bit.
“That isn’t an answer.” He spun around and headed for the back door. “I’m taking the horse.”
“You’re going to ride Old Timber?” Mrs. Tulane squeaked in alarm. “Do you think that’s wise? Let me get Thomas to fetch the wagon.”
“There will be a rebellion on our hands if I don’t get there as quickly as possible,” Stephen told her as he tried to get around her. She had moved from the mantel to the hallway with unexpected speed. “You are surprisingly spry for your age, Mrs. Tulane,” he said with a touch of amusement as she tried to block the hallway and keep him from the stables.
“You’re underestimating Mr. Hastings,” she said, trying to shoo him away with the feather duster.
“You’re right,” Stephen agreed. “At least one person has probably been shot already.”
“I’m sure his Grace wouldn’t have made him the sheriff if he didn’t think he could handle a little thing like a border disagreement,” she argued.
“Now you underestimate both His Grace’s penchant for chaos, and the full depth of the disagreement between Tuck and Grady.” Stephen sighed in exasperation. “I do not wish to bodily remove you from my path, dear lady,” he told her. “But I will.”
She hesitated for a moment but after gauging the look on Stephen’s face, she stepped aside. “But the horse…” she said, clutching the feather duster. “Remember what happened last time?”
“Old Timber and I simply needed to come to a mutually satisfying arrangement,” Stephen said with a confidence he was far from feeling. His shoulder still ached when it rained. “He’ll let me ride him for as many apples as the fat old dun can eat. I rode a horse in the war, for heaven’s sake. I think I can manage him.”
Timber did indeed let Stephen saddle him as he munched happily on some apples from Stephen’s small orchard. “You see this?” Stephen said to him, holding an apple up as he gave Timber a stern look. “You’ll get it after we arrive at Tuck’s. In one piece. Understand?” He put the apple in his pocket and mounted Timber with no problems. “There,” he said with a satisfied huff. “I knew we could reach an agreement.”
He immediately nudged Timber into a trot as soon as they left the stables. “Can’t ride a horse,” he said derisively. “I rode with a horse brigade in the war, I’ll have you know!” Timber tossed his head with an equally derisive whinny. “Oh, shut up,” Stephen told him. “I did ride with them. I wasn’t one of them, but I ministered to them. It’s practically the same thing.”
“Your hat, sir!” Mrs. Tulane called from behind him. He turned in the saddle to see her standing at the gate waving his wide-brimmed hat.
“My hat be damned, Mrs. Tulane,” he called back to her, throwing caution to the wind—and unwilling to try to slow Timber’s forward progress. “I’m off to save the countryside from Sheriff Hastings!”
* * *
When Stephen arrived at Tuck’s Farm he would have found them even if he wasn’t familiar with the contested border between Tuck’s place and Grady’s holding. There was a huge crowd, all hollering and shoving one another, gathered in one of the fields near a collapsed section of a rock wall separating the two farms, bleating, alarmed sheep looking on. It looked as if some people had ridden over, horses and buggies abandoned at the bottom of the hill. He saw some men at the back of the crowd furtively exchanging money, as if they were betting on a boxing match. It was a complete circus. And of course, Hastings stood in the middle of it, his black hat rising above the sea of straw farmers’ hats surrounding him.
Stephen took the time to throw Timber’s lead around a fence post and hastily shoved the promised apple in his mouth. “You better be here when I get back,” he warned, and Timber just gazed at him from one baleful eye.
The crowd parted when they saw Stephen and he marched right through to find Hastings holding back the two men at the center of the disagreement, a hand splayed on either chest. Tuck was wiry and a notorious scrapper, but Grady had at least ten stone on him and shoulders the width of an oak trunk. They both had the O’Bannon curly brown hair, however, and their grandmother’s dimpled chin. The cousins had been at odds since the day they were born. The widow O’Bannon had been the matriarch of a large clan, and her death was reverberating throughout the shire in many ways.
Hastings looked over as Stephen broke through the crowd. “Where’s your hat?” he asked calmly, and Tuck and Grady stopped their yelling and turned to Stephen.
“Here, take mine, sir,” Grady said, whipping off his straw hat.
“Why is everyone so concerned about my hat?” Stephen demanded in irritation, and Grady hastily put his hat back on.
“Suit yourself,” Hastings said with a shrug. “I will remind you of this when you’re complaining tomorrow because you’ve had too much sun.” There were murmurs of agreement in the crowd and Grady was nodding.
“I do not complain, and I most definitely do not complain about getting too much sun,” Stephen told him. “Now, what is going on here?”
“I’m sheriffing,” Hastings said, as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world. “Isn’t that what you’ve all been telling me to do?”
“Well, yes,” Stephen said. He tried to choose his words carefully. “But the last time didn’t go so well, so I thought we’d agreed that I’d go along to…smooth things over.”
“Me jaw still aches,” Farmer Ringer yelled from the back of the crowd. “Punched me, he did,” he told anyone who would listen. “And just because me cow was blocking the lane!”
“In my defense,” Hastings said, “I was very drunk.”
Stephen sighed. “That is not a defense.”
“Where I come from it is,” Hastings replied in a way that indicated that discussion was over. “I’ll just sort these two out, then,” Hastings said, removing his hands from where they’d been resting on Tuck and Grady’s chests. Both men moved back a step.
“See here, now,” Tuck said angrily. “He’s trying to steal my land. He built this border wall ten feet over into my field!”
“I did no such thing,” Grady said calmly. “I went to the registrar and consulted the map and even had a surveyor out to give me the line. And I only had to build the wall because he was stealing my sheep. These here,” he gestured at the bleating sheep, “are mine. He destroyed the wall to steal them.” The crowd gasped at this most dastardly accusation.
“I what?” Tuck demanded. He balled his fists up. “Take that back or I’ll lay you out.”
“Be quiet or I’ll lay you both out, and you won’t be getting back up,” Hastings said mildly.
The crowd gasped again. Hastings’s exploits as an agent for the Home Office was a well-known secret, as was his fighting ability. He’d had a row or two in the local pub, and then there was Ringer’s jaw. Ringer had at least two stone on Hastings and still hadn’t stood a chance.
“Hastings,” Stephen admonished gently. “These are not London ruffians.” There was shuffling and more bets changed hands in the crowd.
“The way they’re acting, they sure seem the same to me,” Hastings said with a shrug.
Just then a carriage came careening around the bend in the road, heading for the field. Stephen recognized the Duke of Ashland’s carriage. “Oh, wonderful,” he murmured to himself. Freddy would most assuredly play instigator, escalating the situation. And if he had his two sons with him, mayhem would be the result. Those two boys caused chaos wherever they roamed. God help them all when the oldest boy, Bertie, became duke. England would surely fall.
“Hold on there, Sheriff Hastings,” a woman called out. “The duke is on his way! We wouldn’t want him to miss anything.” The crowd laughed and shouted in agreement.
“I don’t need the bloody House of Lords here,” Tuck said impatiently. “Just arrest him and make him move the wall.”
“Arrest me?” Grady said, incredulous. “I’m not the one who’s been stealing.”
“What did I say about being quiet?” Hastings asked. His voice was low and menacing and gave Stephen a little shiver up his back. That voice said do what I say when I say it and had the confidence to back it up.
Stephen’s reaction wasn’t from apprehension. He did not care at all for the way his body had been acting since Hastings was unceremoniously dumped, naked and drunk, in his garden by Simon. Hastings had been entrusted to Stephen for the sole purpose of helping him navigate his violent and, lately, unfulfilling life. He was at least ten years senior to Hastings and Stephen had no business finding him so damn attractive and tempting, even when he was sober and dressed. Those feelings might do very well for his friends, but Stephen was a man of the cloth, and the Church of England frowned quite vigorously on that sort of thing. Unfortunately, however, the Church was not uppermost in his mind when he was around Hastings.
Stephen reluctantly turned away from Hastings to greet chaos as it emerged from the carriage.