Chapter 22
Sunny had never before done physical labor.
His back hurt, and sweat covered his face.
He couldn’t say that he enjoyed it, but he had learned a great deal from helping his tenant farmers sow their fields.
And for the first time in his lifetime, Sunny had planted wheat, barley, and corn on the home farm of his estate.
The fields had been left fallow for decades, and it had taken a lot of hard work and sweat to make them ready for seeding.
It had taken weeks to prepare the ground.
He’d hired local hands, but he’d toiled along with them by digging, pulling weeds, throwing stones, and tilling.
He’d even taken orders and directions from farmers and laborers.
Rubbing his calloused fingers, Sunny felt inordinately proud of himself and his dirty hands. They were not a gentleman’s or a duke’s hands; they were the hands of a man who had worked hard.
His tenants were no longer figures in his bank ledger, but rather names and faces.
Sunny would never admit it to Wick, but his friend had been right.
An absent landlord was a bad one. After visiting each tenant, Sunny realized that all their cottages were in disrepair and needed new roofs.
Something that his steward, who was interested only in making money, had not mentioned.
Nor had Sunny realized how higgledy-piggledy the tenant farms were laid out and had been since the land enclosures from two centuries before.
The farms were oddly shaped, and sometimes a tenant had one field in a separate area from another field, passing by other tenants’ farms. There was no reason or sense to the arrangement.
Sunny had called for a meeting with all his tenants, and together, they had realigned the rented fields based on proximity to tenant cottages and straighter lines for plows.
He was careful to make certain that no one lost land or value based on the changes.
Every tenant approved and signed the new estate maps and closer fields.
Sunny didn’t know that the improvements would necessarily mean more money for himself or the estate, but they would make the lives of his tenant farmers much easier.
Lifting off his hat, Sunny wiped the sweat from his brow. He’d rested on his laurels long enough. The new roof on the Boon cottage was not going to build itself. He picked up a stack of slate tiles and carried them up the ladder to where the workers were on the roof.
“We thought ye’d gone and fallen asleep, Yer Grace,” one of them said with a cheeky smile.
“I nearly did, John, but I knew that if I started snoring, you would, too.”
All the workers laughed as Sunny set down another stack of tiles on the edge of the roof. Then he climbed back down the ladder and went for another stack.
Working all day until he was too exhausted to move had helped Sunny adjust to his new, hardworking lifestyle in his austere home.
He’d hoped removing all the black curtains would make Sunderland House feel more like a home.
Unfortunately, the additional light merely highlighted how shabby the furnishings and floor coverings were.
Sunny had no idea how to make his dilapidated, ancient house into a modern residence.
Nor did he have a great deal of funds to refurnish it.
Again, he felt the disparity between his fortunes and Mantheria’s.
He wished that he were as wealthy as her first husband had been.
Picking up the next stack of roof tiles, Sunny mused that at least now he had done something about it.
He was working to improve his estate rather than being content to let it remain as it always had been.
Like Wick had told him to do, Sunny was putting his blood, sweat, and tears into the land and making it his.
Slowly, he climbed the ladder again and took the roof tiles off his shoulder, placing them on the edge.
The overseer was chewing on a hayseed and gave Sunny a questioning look. “Why are ye helping, Yer Grace? I’ve never known a toff to get their hands dirty before.”
“My friend told me that land isn’t truly yours until you’ve worked it,” Sunny said, setting down another stack of tiles. The previous stack had already been taken and put in its place on the roof. He climbed back down the ladder.
“Yer a good man, Yer Grace,” the overseer said with a half smile, “but a terrible duke.”
The workers all guffawed, and Sunny laughed with them.
* * *
By the time Sunny walked home that evening, he could barely stay upright on his two legs.
Every muscle in his body screamed in agony.
He had gained a newfound respect for all members of the lower classes who toiled physically every day.
He’d nearly reached the back door of Sunderland House when he heard footsteps on the gravel.
“If you lose any more weight, no one will be able to see you from the side,” his mother said, stepping out of the shadows like a black ghoul.
Sunny had lost a stone around his belly and gained a great deal of muscle in his shoulders and arms that made his coats very tight, more than was even fashionable.
He was anything but fashionable now. His work smock was dirty and smelly, and he was dog-tired.
He wanted nothing more than to sink into a hot bath in his copper tub and let the water soothe his aching body.
“So kind of you to visit the house for the first time in three weeks, Mother,” he said sardonically, sweeping her an exaggerated bow. “Is there something that you need?”
She took a few steps closer, and Sunny wished that she hadn’t. He could smell himself, and he really did not want his mother to be able to sniff him, too. “Surely a mother can visit her son without wanting something.”
Other mothers, perhaps, but not Sunny’s mama.
“I have personally seen that the leak in the dower house kitchen roof was repaired, and the trees close to the house were trimmed to your written specifications. I would be happy to receive any further requests by letter or in person after I’ve taken a bath. ”
His mother pulled a white envelope out of her black dress. “This invitation wrongfully came to the dower house. I thought perhaps that you would want it. You always preferred the Stringham family to your own.”
He wanted to retort that the Stringham family had shown him love and affection, something lacking in his own family, but he held his tongue.
Harsh words never helped anyone. Sunny didn’t want to take the pristine paper envelope into his dirty hands, but he had to know what was inside.
The seal was already broken, and he unfolded the letter to see that it was an invitation to Becca’s wedding at Hampford Castle in a little more than a fortnight.
He’d be able to see Mantheria again. His mouth couldn’t help but form a smile.
“I thought you said that she wouldn’t have you. The duchess said that you were irresponsible and raffish.”
As always, his mother’s words cut deep. “Yes, Lady Glastonbury did refuse my proposal of marriage.”
Lifting her veil, Sunny saw his mother’s face for the first time that year. There were more wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. Her hair was becoming more gray than brown. “I didn’t say yes to your father until the third time that he asked me to marry him.”
Despite making mourning encompass her entire life, his mother rarely spoke about his late father. Sunny blinked in surprise. “I didn’t know that. Why did he have to ask you three times?”
“Your father was a notorious rake, and he said that he would change for me. But I wanted to make sure that he meant it. And he did. He gave up his rakish ways for six months, and then we were married.”
He rubbed his forehead with his dirty fingers. “Uncle Simon said Father was always a never-do-well, even after his marriage.”
“Pish posh and nonsense,” his mother snapped.
“Your uncle Simon was always spiteful and jealous of your father’s popularity in society, which only grew after our marriage.
The only thing that the ton likes more than a rake is a reformed one.
And your father doted upon me . . . and you.
He was so proud of his son and heir. He would tell anyone who would listen all about the funny little things that you said and how you climbed up on everything.
He was constantly lifting you off the furniture.
He was so afraid that you would fall and hurt yourself. ”
Sunny wished that he could remember anything about his father.
Even his face. But the image in his mind was suspiciously like the portrait of his parents after their wedding.
When he had thought of his father, he’d always assumed that his father had been a bad parent.
Or at the very least, uninterested in his offspring.
But the picture that his mother painted with her words was much different.
Sunny had once had a proud father. A parent who actually enjoyed spending time in his company, unlike his mother.
He wanted desperately to believe his mother’s version of the story over his Uncle Simon’s much less-flattering one, but there were still the facts. His father had left him with staggering debts, and he had died during a drunken ride. “What of the mortgages?”
Sighing, his mother shrugged her shoulders.
“Your father was no paragon. He had flaws just like any other man. He gambled a bit too much and invested poorly, but there was no malice in his soul. No meanness. And perhaps he was a little too fond of his drink, but no one is perfect, Alphonse. Not even your beloved Stringhams. But I loved him, not despite his flaws but because of them. I loved every bit of him, and it felt like part of me died with him that day.”
Sunny remained silent. This was the longest conversation that he and his mother had ever shared.
And despite over thirty years of resentment, he did feel sympathetic toward her.
His mother had lost the love of her life.
How could she have possibly ever been the same afterward?
Would he be the same person if Mantheria never accepted his courtship or if she were to die?
He hoped that he wouldn’t shroud himself in black and remove himself from the world as his mother had. But how could he know for certain?
But he had learned something for certain from this conversation with his mother.
His father had not been a wastrel; instead, he’d been a wonderful husband and father.
Sunny need not fear any longer that he would not be able to fulfill these roles.
Like his father before him, he could become the sort of husband and stepfather that Mantheria and Andrew needed.
He could change and improve, and he didn’t have to be a perfect man before he married. Just a caring one.
“I wish that I remembered more about Father,” Sunny said in a low voice.
“When I was here in the main house, I thought that I could still feel him with me.”
Then Sunny had forced her to move to the dower house.
Guilt covered his body like a cold sweat.
“I didn’t know, Mother. If you would like to come back and live in the main house, you are welcome to, but not in the mistress’s rooms. I am hoping they’ll be occupied by another very soon.
But I should not have tried to push you out of your own home and mourning. ”
She held up one hand encased in a black lace glove.
“Surprisingly, I have found that I quite like the dower house. Your steward did an excellent job of the repairs and refurbishment after the tenants left, and I have not lived in such comfort in years, by my own choice. I held on so tightly to the past, and the world passed me by. Don’t let the same thing happen to you, Alphonse.
Ask your reluctant duchess to marry you as many times as you need to until she says yes. You deserve such happiness.”
He moved toward her but stopped short, remembering his pungent smell. “So do you, Mother.”
“I have grown too used to despair. I don’t know if I am capable of happiness anymore.”
Sunny had not thought that he could be an able farmhand, but he was managing rather well. “You’d be surprised how much you can change if you try.”
“And what would you change about me?”
Sunny had always wanted his mother to be more like Lady Hampford, who was openly affectionate with her children.
She hugged and kissed them. She teased them and gently corrected her progeny when they drifted off course.
Wick complained when they were younger that his mother was a tyrant, and Sunny had always been jealous that she cared enough to get involved in the minutia of her children’s lives.
It would be impossible for his own mother to change so much in only one conversation—but maybe that was what it took.
One conversation and then another and then so on.
He swallowed, his throat dry. “Would you like to stay for dinner? I can clean up and meet you in forty-five minutes, and you can tell me all about the dower house and any changes that you have made to it.”
“I should like that very much.” His mother’s tone was cold, but her eyes were full of unshed tears. He’d misjudged her for years, believing that she was heartless. Perhaps she didn’t know how to articulate her feelings either.
Instinctively, Sunny pecked a kiss on his mother’s cheek before jogging up the stairs and calling for his valet.
As he washed himself in the copper tub, he wished that all aspects of his life could be so easily changed with hot water and a great deal of soap.
Smiling, he thought about Mantheria and how he’d “cleaned up” his life for her.
He hoped that she would notice the differences.