Chapter Four
"Your Grace, I am sorry to disturb you, but there is a matter requiring your immediate attention."
Daniel looked up from the drainage report, the same drainage report he had been attempting to read for the better part of an hour, with limited success, and found his steward standing in the doorway of his study with an expression that suggested the matter in question was neither small nor pleasant.
"What manner of matter, Simmons?"
"A dispute, Your Grace. Between Mr. Garrett and Mr. Hobbs."
Daniel set down his quill pen with careful precision.
Garrett and Hobbs. Neighboring tenant farmers who had worked adjacent plots for the better part of two decades.
He had attended the christening of Hobbs's youngest daughter not six months past, and Garrett's wife had sent a basket of preserves to the Hall every Christmas since Daniel had assumed the title.
"They are disputing?" he asked. "Garrett and Hobbs?"
"I am afraid so, Your Grace. Rather vigorously."
This was Simmons's way of saying that the situation had escalated beyond the point where it could be quietly resolved by the steward himself.
Simmons was a competent man, one of the most competent Daniel had ever employed, and he did not trouble his employer with matters he could handle on his own.
If he was standing in Daniel's study with that particular furrow between his brows, the situation was serious indeed.
"Send them in," Daniel said, rising from his desk. "Both of them. And have Mrs. Gerald bring tea."
"Tea, Your Grace?"
"If I am to mediate a dispute between men who have been neighbours for twenty years, I suspect we shall all require fortification."
Simmons inclined his head and departed, and Daniel took a moment to compose himself before the storm arrived. He moved to stand before the fireplace, unlit, given the mildness of the September afternoon, and arranged his features into an expression of calm authority.
It was, he had learned, important to project calm authority when dealing with disputes.
People who were angry wanted someone to be angry with them, or at them, or on their behalf.
What they needed, however, was someone who would remain unmoved by their passion; a fixed point around which they could eventually orient themselves.
His father had never understood this. The late Duke of Wyntham had approached every conflict as an opportunity for drama, matching raised voices with raised voices, fury with fury.
The result had been spectacular arguments that resolved nothing and left everyone involved feeling worse than they had before.
Daniel had sworn, very early in his tenure as duke, that he would never conduct himself in such a manner. He would be calm, he would be rational and he would be a still point in the chaos.
He was very good at being still.
The door opened, and chaos entered.
Mr. Garrett came first; a broad, weather-beaten man in his middle fifties, with hands like shovels and a face currently mottled with outrage. Mr. Hobbs followed close behind; thinner, older, his white hair standing up in agitated tufts as though he had been running his hands through it repeatedly.
They were both talking before they had fully entered the room.
"Your Grace, I must insist..."
"It is a matter of simple justice..."
"My family has worked that land for three generations…."
"A clear violation of the boundary..."
"Gentlemen." Daniel did not raise his voice. He did not need to. The single word, delivered with ducal precision, cut through the cacophony like a blade.
Both men fell silent, though their chests continued to heave with suppressed grievance.
"Please," Daniel continued, gesturing toward the chairs arranged before his desk. "Sit. Mrs. Gerald will bring tea shortly, and then you will each explain your position. One at a time. Beginning with Mr. Garrett."
This was a calculated choice. Hobbs was the more volatile of the two; giving Garrett the first word would allow the man to present his case while Hobbs was forced to listen rather than interrupt.
They sat and tea arrived. Daniel poured with his own hands, another calculated choice, as it demonstrated that he took the matter seriously enough to serve them himself, and then settled into his own chair to listen.
"Now," he said. "Mr. Garrett. Tell me what has occurred."
Garrett took a breath, visibly gathering himself.
"It is the oak, Your Grace. The great oak that stood at the boundary between my land and Hobbs's. It came down in the storm three nights past, the one that took the roof off the Hendricks’ barn, and now Hobbs is claiming the land where it stood."
"I am claiming what is rightfully mine," Hobbs interjected, unable to contain himself.
"Mr. Hobbs." Daniel's voice remained level. "You will have your opportunity to speak."
Hobbs subsided, though his jaw remained tight with resentment.
"Continue, Mr. Garrett."
"The oak has stood at that spot for as long as anyone can remember, Your Grace. Longer than I have been alive, certainly. My father always said it marked the boundary between our land and the Hobbs’ plot, and so it has been treated for decades.
But now that it has fallen, Hobbs says the land beneath it, a strip perhaps twenty feet wide and running the length of the boundary, belongs to him. "
"And Mr. Hobbs claims otherwise?"
"Hobbs claims the tree was on his side of the true boundary, and that my family has been encroaching on his land for years without realising it. He says the tree merely obscured the true line."
Daniel absorbed this information, his mind already working through the implications.
Boundary disputes were among the most tedious and intractable problems a landlord could face.
The records were often incomplete, the memories of elderly tenants unreliable, and the emotions involved, the deep, almost primal attachment to land that had been worked by one's fathers and grandfathers, made rational resolution difficult.
"Mr. Hobbs," he said. "Your perspective, if you please."
Hobbs leaned forward, his thin hands gripping the arms of his chair.
"The boundary was surveyed forty years ago, Your Grace, when my father first took the tenancy.
The surveyor's marks are still there, or they were, until Garrett's sheep trampled them beyond recognition.
The tree was always on my side of the line.
I let Garrett's family treat it as a boundary marker because it seemed harmless enough, but the land itself was never theirs. "
"Do you have the surveyor's records?"
"They were lost in the fire that took my father's cottage, Your Grace. But I remember what he told me. That strip of land is mine by rights."
"And I remember what my father told me," Garrett countered. "That the oak was planted by my grandfather as a windbreak for our fields. You cannot claim land that has been worked by my family for three generations simply because a tree has fallen."
"A tree that was on my land."
"Gentlemen." Daniel held up a hand, and silence fell again. "I understand that you both feel strongly about this matter. However, without the surveyor's original records, it becomes a question of memory and interpretation; neither of which is reliable after forty years."
"Then what do you propose, Your Grace?" Garrett asked. "That we split the land between us? That is hardly fair, given that I have been farming that strip for decades."
"And I have been deprived of it for decades," Hobbs countered. "A split would only reward Garrett for his family's encroachment."
Daniel felt the familiar tension building behind his eyes; the headache that always accompanied problems without clean solutions.
He could impose a ruling, certainly. He was the landlord; his word was law on estate matters.
But any ruling he made would leave one party feeling aggrieved, and aggrieved tenants made for poor neighbors and worse harvests.
There had to be a better way.
"Perhaps," he said slowly, "we might..."
The door opened.
Daniel's head turned sharply, an automatic rebuke forming on his lips. He had given explicit instructions that he was not to be disturbed while mediating this dispute. Mrs. Gerald knew better than to...
But it was not Mrs. Gerald who stood in the doorway.
It was Miss Lillian Whitcombe.
She was dressed simply, as always, a pale blue muslin that brought out the warmth of her complexion, and her hair was arranged in that practical, plain style he had come to associate with her. She looked, as she always looked, entirely at ease with herself and her surroundings.
Behind her, peering around her shoulder with an expression of avid curiosity, was Rosanne.
"Oh," Miss Whitcombe said, taking in the scene with a quick, assessing glance. "Forgive me, Your Grace. Simmons said you were occupied, but Rosanne was quite insistent that we might wait in the study. We did not realise you had visitors."
"Miss Whitcombe." Daniel's voice came out more clipped than he had intended. "As you can see, I am in the middle of a meeting."
"Of course. We shall wait in the morning room until you are finished."
She began to turn away, and Daniel told himself he was relieved. The last thing this delicate negotiation needed was an audience; particularly an audience that included a young woman with an unsettling talent for seeing through his carefully constructed composure.
But before Miss Whitcombe could complete her exit, Rosanne spoke up.
"What is the dispute about?" she asked, with the artless curiosity of a girl who had not yet learned that some questions were better left unasked. "Is it terribly complicated? You look as though it is terribly complicated."
"Rosanne," Daniel said, in his best quelling tone.
"I am merely inquiring. If it is a simple matter, perhaps a fresh perspective might help. Miss Whitcombe is very good at fresh perspectives."
"I do not require..."