Chapter Three
E leanor, in general, prided herself on being a calm and collected person. There was no need to make a fuss, as her grandmother had told her many times growing up. She didn’t like a fuss. She didn’t like mess. She liked… order. She liked things to be the way they should be.
Which was perhaps why today she wasn’t quite as calm and collected as she usually was.
Having picked up the minimum of shopping from the local market, she was maneuvering her sleek MG down the winding country lane toward home, tapping her perfectly manicured fingers against the leather steering wheel, and running through the ever-growing list of problems in her life.
There were, unfortunately, quite a few.
Firstly, there were the renovations. Samson seemed competent enough, despite his predilection for calling her by the wrong title.
But the whole endeavor still meant trusting her beloved house to a group of strangers.
Would they really respect the centuries-old woodwork?
Would they understand the delicate balance between restoration and ruination?
Would they, God forbid, want to do outlandish things like install an open-plan kitchen?
She’d need to keep a close eye on matters.
Which brought her to her second worry of the day.
Just where exactly she was supposed to be staying.
Should she move into a hotel until the works were finished?
The idea of living somewhere where breakfast arrived via buffet made her faintly uncomfortable.
Plus, there were the additional costs. Not that she was particularly hurting for money at the moment, but who knew how long the renovations would really take?
She could hardly move in with her grandmother. But the alternative was to move through different rooms of the house as the renovations progressed. A solution that was messy, discombobulating, and would ruin her routines. Hardly satisfactory.
Then, underlying it all, was the marriage problem.
She had spent years ignoring the fact that she would need to marry.
She was the only direct heir to the house.
But that counted for nothing, as Isabella had frequently reminded her.
In its long history, the house had been passed down to adopted sons and bastards, to distant cousins and foreign spouses. Exceptions would not be made for her.
Her grip tightened on the steering wheel.
It was absurd that she had to marry just to inherit the home that was already, in every meaningful way, hers.
She loved Brewster Manor with the kind of devotion that people typically reserved for pets or firstborn children.
It wasn’t just a house. It was her history, her future, her entire identity wrapped up in stone and ivy.
Why on earth should she need a husband in order to prove that she was responsible enough to take care of it?
Hadn’t she, and she alone, been responsible for the house since her grandmother’s stroke?
Since Isabella had agreed that the house was too much for her and that she needed, and deserved, a quieter and more relaxed retirement?
She’d negotiated her way through the entire renovation plans and would be overseeing them as they took place.
And yet marriage was supposed to be a sign of maturity and stability. She snorted to herself. Her parents had been married, and by all accounts they had been neither mature nor stable.
Distracted by this increasingly infuriating spiral of frustration, Eleanor didn’t notice the enormous tractor until it was entirely too late.
???
Danni was not having a good day.
She wasn’t even having a mediocre day.
Her day had begun with Tommy informing her that the mechanic had said that the tractor wasn’t worth saving. Given that tractors were somewhat vital to farming, this was, to put it mildly, a disaster.
“Maybe it just needs a bit of oil and TLC?” Tommy had offered optimistically, kicking one of the enormous tires.
“Maybe it needs a miracle,” Danni had said despondently as she watched a growing puddle of fluid leak from the bottom of the vehicle.
“Well, at least Hec let you use his little tractor,” Tommy had said brightly. “And you know what he’s like. He’ll let you have it as long as you need it. Probably.”
Which was probably true, not that Danni wanted to take advantage of his generosity.
And Hector, designated voice of reason that he was, had been utterly unsympathetic when she rang him with the news of her tractor’s final demise.
She’d caught him just as he was going out to repair fences, his most hated job, and he hadn’t been feeling charitable.
“I told you not to buy that place,” he’d reminded her, his voice crackling through the phone. “You’re stretched too thin.”
“I’m fine,” Danni had insisted, though she patently wasn’t. “I just need to get a new tractor, is all. Well, a new old tractor. Not a new new one, obviously.”
“Which will cost money.”
“Which I’ll find,” she’d said.
“You’re a terrible liar,” Hector had sighed. “Have you given any more thought to this buy-out offer?”
She’d stayed mulishly quiet on the other end of the phone until her brother had sighed again .
“It’s a decent offer. You could take that money and start up somewhere else.”
“I like it here.”
“They keep offering,” Hector had said.
“I keep saying no.”
“Danni—”
“I’ll sort it, Hector,” she’d snapped, before hanging up.
The conversation had done nothing to improve her mood.
So, when she found herself behind the wheel of Hector’s old tractor, driving down the familiar narrow lane, she was not in the best frame of mind. And, perhaps, not exactly paying quite as much attention as she should have been.
To be fair, the last thing that she expected to see was a tiny sports car come flying around a bend like it was auditioning for the fiftieth Fast and Furious film.
???
The moment Eleanor registered the tractor in front of her, she slammed on the brakes. Unfortunately, the country lane was both gravelly and damp, meaning her beautifully pristine MG didn’t so much stop as it skidded dramatically forward.
The driver of the tractor yanked the steering wheel to one side, but tractors are not generally known for their grace and agility.
There was a tiny moment of silence as momentum took hold of the situation, and then there was a thud, followed by an ominous crunching sound.
Then a soft, quiet ticking.
Eleanor let out a horrified breath before flinging open the door and jumping out of the driver’s seat. “Oh, my God. You’ve murdered my car,” she moaned, looking down at the damage.
The farmer, who had climbed down and was looking at the dented side of her own vehicle, snorted. “Yeah? Well, your little tin can just took a chunk out of my brother’s tractor, and he’s going to kill me.”
Eleanor, too distressed to really register this, flung herself around and marched toward the other driver, heels clicking against the road. The farmer turned around, planting her work boots on the gravel and putting her hands on her hips.
And the two women stared at each other for the first time.
Eleanor, in her tailored blazer and silk blouse, her blonde hair in a chignon and her heels just the right height, was well aware that she looked exactly how she was supposed to look.
Effortlessly elegant and tastefully stylish.
Despite the stress of the moment, she stood ramrod straight and held her head high.
This farmer, by contrast, looked like she had just spent her morning wrestling a particularly stubborn sheep.
Her flannel shirt had seen better days, her jeans were more hole than denim, her dark hair clearly needed a wash, and there was a streak of something across her cheek that Eleanor strongly hoped was just mud.
“What were you thinking?” Eleanor hissed, gesturing at the damage done to her beloved car. “Were you even looking where you were going?”
“Me?” the farmer barked out a laugh, dark eyes flashing. “You were the one speeding.”
“I was not speeding,” Eleanor shot back, scandalized at the very thought.
The farmer crossed her arms. “Lady, I don’t know if you realize this, but the speed limit around these parts is thirty. You were going at least…” She squinted at the car. “At least sports car speed.”
Eleanor let out an exasperated sound. “This is a classic MG, I’ll have you know. It’s worth more than… than…” She pointed at the tractor, at a loss for a comparison.
“Worth more than a tractor?” the other woman said. “Congratulations, so’s my left boot.”
They glared at each other.
There was tension.
Something inside Eleanor was telling her that this was not the ‘we’ve just had an accident’ kind of tension.
It was more… a ‘why are you irritating and also oddly attractive’ kind of tension.
Which was ridiculous because there was nothing attractive about someone with potential animal manure on their face.
Eleanor took a breath, swallowed, and found her sense of self again.
“Fine, let’s be civil,” she said, pulling a notebook from her handbag. “We’ll exchange details, our insurance companies can deal with the rest.”
The farmer raised an eyebrow. “Insurance? Sure you don’t want to call daddy’s solicitor?”
Eleanor gave her a look. A look that she’d honed in years of dealing with people underestimating her. “I assure you, I am perfectly capable of handling my own affairs.”
The farmer smirked, taking a crumpled piece of paper that proved to be a receipt out of her pocket, and gesturing for Eleanor’s gold pen. She scribbled something on it and handed both to Eleanor.
“This is a feed store receipt,” Eleanor said, looking down at it.
“Paper’s paper.”
Eleanor closed her eyes briefly, as if summoning patience from the heavens. “Unbelievable.”
With a deep breath, and one last glare, she folded the receipt and put it carefully into her handbag before climbing back into her car and attempting to start the engine.
Fortunately, the damage didn’t seem to be bad enough that the little car wouldn’t start. She got a grumble and then a purr, so she shifted into gear, reversed, and drove around the tractor, feeling the farmer’s eyes on her with every move that she made.
Then she sped off down the lane, nursing a sneaking suspicion that this wasn’t the last time that she’d see the infuriating woman.