Chapter Eleven
I f Danni ever had a day off, she wasn’t sure what she’d do with it. She’d literally never had a day of holiday in her adult life. She’d been to Blackpool once as a child with her aunt and uncle, but she’d woken up at five every morning anyway, primed and ready for work.
Farmers didn’t do days off. Even Sundays.
So she was up at the normal time, out into the sweet summer sun, taking care of business and working up an appetite.
After doing the most pressing chores, she headed back to the kitchen for some caffeine, and to her surprise, found Eleanor already sitting at the kitchen table.
She was furrowing her eyebrows over a neatly written list of renovation supplies.
“You’re up early,” Danni said suspiciously as she filled the kettle.
“Toast?” Eleanor offered, gesturing at the plate in the middle of the table.
She was perfectly composed, though Danni suspected that the t-shirt she was wearing cost more than her monthly feed bill, despite being a plain white t-shirt.
“I’ve been up for an hour. I like to be productive in the mornings. ”
“Right,” Danni said, grabbing a piece of toast and cramming half of it into her mouth as she went back to the kettle to prepare her normal coffee sludge.
“It’s Sunday,” Eleanor said, tapping a pen against her list.
“Well spotted,” Danni said, swallowing her toast .
Eleanor tapped the pen a little harder. “Sorry, I should have been more specific. I meant that since it’s Sunday, the workers won’t be at the house. Perhaps you could use a little help around the farm today?”
Danni dropped the other half of her toast, bent to pick it up, and then hit her head on the kitchen counter. “What?” she said, rubbing her head.
“Help. You. Need.”
“You want to help with farm work?” Danni said, not entirely sure she was understanding what was going on.
Eleanor lifted her chin. “Yes.”
Danni swallowed and wiped her hands on her jeans. “Um, you do realize that farm work involves things like dirt, lifting, actual effort? There’s a solid chance that there’ll be manure involved at some point too.”
“I started riding when I was three,” Eleanor said, as though this explained everything. “I am fully acquainted with mucking out a stable, thank you very much.”
Nearly choking on her much-needed coffee, Danni said, “You?”
“Yes, me,” said Eleanor, giving her a sharp look. “I’m perfectly capable of physical labor, thank you. I’m a fit and healthy woman.”
Danni felt her eyes dart down to Eleanor’s body instinctively, and she dragged them back up again. “Alright, Princess,” she said. “Let’s see what you’ve got, then.”
DANNI LED ELEANOR out to the stables, fully expecting her to take one look at the manure and bolt. To her surprise, Eleanor smiled slightly and walked over to where Sam, the old work horse, was munching on his morning oats.
“Who’s this then?” she asked.
“Sam,” said Danni. “He came with the farm. He’s been here donkey’s years. Doesn’t do much anymore, but my dad always said a farm without a horse wasn’t a farm at all.”
“Too right,” Eleanor said, admiringly, stroking down Sam’s neck. “He reminds me of my childhood horse.”
“Does he?” Danni asked, rolling her eyes. “And what was he called then?”
“He was a she and she was called Millicent Mary.”
Danni bit back a reply to this. She’d known from the beginning that Eleanor must have had a horse with a stupid name. It was comforting to be proven correct. “Pitch fork’s over there,” she said instead, nodding to where it was standing propped up against the stable wall.
And Eleanor stretched her shoulders and got to work.
For the first five minutes, Danni watched in stunned silence as Eleanor competently shoveled dirty hay into a nearby wheelbarrow.
Until Eleanor put down the fork, put her hands on her hips, and glared at her. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”
“You’ve got hay in your hair,” Danni pointed out.
Eleanor reached up and pulled out a piece.
“There’s more,” said Danni helpfully.
Eleanor sighed. “Still not as bad as the time I got a bird stuck in my hat at Ascot.”
Not sure she’d heard correctly, Danni said, “You got a bird stuck in your hat?”
“Well, it was more of a fascinator, really,” Eleanor explained, picking another piece of straw out of her hair. “It had feathers. A pigeon got confused.”
Danni started to giggle. “That’s the poshest problem I’ve ever heard. And I’d pay good money to see a video of it.”
“You haven’t got any money,” Eleanor reminded her, picking up the pitchfork again. “But I’m sure you have got plenty of other chores to do. So get to them.”
A couple of hours later, Danni found Eleanor sweaty, covered in dust, and oddly triumphant. She watched her grin in satisfaction at the work she’d done, and had to admit, she was impressed. “Nice job.”
“I deserve a medal,” Eleanor declared.
Danni smirked. “I’ll get you a sticker later. Ready for lunch? ”
Eleanor disappeared upstairs to clean up while Danni, feeling magnanimous, made sandwiches from thick cut tomatoes and cheese that Hector had brought down the day before. When Eleanor came down, she was wearing jeans, neatly ironed, and a shirt with rolled up sleeves.
“What?” Eleanor said, catching Danni’s look. “I thought I should be more appropriately dressed.”
Danni wasn’t at all sure that appropriate was the word for the way those jeans curved over Eleanor’s backside, but she didn’t say anything. Eleanor sat and took a bite out of a sandwich.
“Delicious,” she said. “I wouldn’t have thought you capable of making sandwiches.”
Danni narrowed her eyes. “What do you think I eat? Grass?”
“I assumed you survived on raw meat and determination,” Eleanor said with a sniff.
Danni gave her a look, but was fighting back a grin. “Got another of those letters on Friday,” she said. “They’re coming in about once a week now.”
“Sounds about right,” Eleanor nodded. She wiped her hands on a napkin and sat up straighter. “Which reminds me, there’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.”
“That doesn’t sound ominous at all,” said Danni, taking another sandwich.
“It’s about ways to legally protect your farm from predatory buyers,” said Eleanor, dabbing the napkin to the corners of her mouth.
Danni blinked. “Legal protection?”
“I’ve been doing some research,” Eleanor said, pulling another of her neat notebooks to her. “There are ways to tie up the land in so much red tape that any investor would find it more trouble than it’s worth.”
Intrigued despite herself, Danni frowned. “Like what?”
Eleanor launched into an explanation, and Danni listened carefully, nodding along, genuinely interested in what Eleanor was saying.
For a moment, she forgot that Eleanor was just a posh woman she’d crashed into with a tractor, a business partner in a business marriage.
Her explanation was to the point, useful, and Eleanor herself was clever, quick, and actually trying to help.
Then Eleanor reached over to hand Danni a document, heavily highlighted, and their hands brushed.
For an instant, nobody moved.
Danni felt that odd shiver again, like her blood was warming up inside her. She gulped and pulled her hand away, even though it felt like pulling iron from a magnet.
Eleanor cleared her throat and slid the paper the rest of the way across the table to Danni. Danni leaned over it, feigning more interest than she really had, while she waited for the flush to dissipate from her cheeks.
THE REST OF the afternoon passed in a strange, new rhythm.
Danni found that she was unexpectedly observant, noticing things about Eleanor that she really hadn’t seen before.
The way she chewed her lip when she was thinking, the way her hands moved when she talked.
But then, she told herself, they hadn’t exactly spent a lot of time together before.
In fact, this was probably more time than they collectively spent in each other's company in total.
For her part, Eleanor seemed to be relaxing more, laughing more, responding to Danni’s sarcasm with chuckles instead of rolling her eyes like a school prefect.
It was, Danni decided, quite nice actually.
Having someone to help with the farm was nice. Though she supposed it was no different than having Tommy around. Except it was different. Different in ways that she didn’t quite want to think about, thank you very much.
They were just finishing up for the day. Danni had corralled the chickens back into their coop, Eleanor had given Sam his evening oats. The sun was still warm and Eleanor stretched and sighed.
“What?” asked Danni.
“Nothing,” Eleanor said .
“No, go on, what?”
Eleanor shrugged. “I was just thinking about the new facing for the library shelves, whether they should be stained darker or whether we can get away with a lighter stain that will develop a patina as it gets older.”
For some reason, Danni’s stomach dropped into her boots.
The house.
Right.
That was what all this was about for Eleanor. Not about them getting along. Not about a brush of hands. Not about laughing or chatting or even developing a feeling that maybe, just maybe, they were becoming friends.
This was a business deal, a proposition, a bargain.
This was about a house.
Eleanor’s house.
Danni swallowed down something that tasted a bit like disappointment. She wiped her forehead with her arm and stretched out her back. “Yeah, you’ll have to get that sorted. Don’t want a library with mis-matched shelves now, do you?”
Eleanor rolled her eyes, and Danni turned away, suddenly feeling very tired. She wasn’t supposed to forget what this was all about, that it was about a farm and a house and not about a farmer and a lady.
But for a moment there, she almost had.