Chapter Ten
Caesar
I thought this trip was all for show, and that Maddie would introduce me to an estate manager and then take a back seat while he took me around to discuss the nuts and bolts of it all.
She obviously knows her science, but I assumed she’d be theory-based, the kind of PhD graduate who’s all facts and figures but has never actually set foot in a field apart from on an enforced practical exercise.
But I’m starting to wonder whether I was wrong.
She’s not driving a brand-new car, shiny and spotless inside and out.
Her Land Rover is at least five years old, and although I’m guessing Bill has thrown a bucket of water over it, the mud that’s still coating the wheel arches and sprayed across the sides suggests it’s used to off-roading.
The biggest surprise is when she opens the door to the back.
The smell of damp earth hit me as she shoves aside all the items inside to make room for our bags.
It looks like a mobile mini field lab. Her rubber boots, the soles flecked with mud, jostle with a large green waxed jacket and a hi-vis vest, presumably in case she’s working around any farm machinery.
There’s a first-aid kit, a tow rope, and a shovel, and also a large field-testing kit, all items that suggest she gets stuck in.
Bill comes out and throws a pair of men’s boots in the back, says goodbye, and heads inside.
We get in, and I buckle myself in as Maddie moves the seat, adjusts the mirror, and starts the engine.
It’s a manual, and she puts it into first gear and lets the clutch out as she eases the car across the bumpy ground toward the gravel drive.
I glance over my shoulder at the back seat and spot a hoodie, muesli-bar wrappers, hair ties, lip balm, a couple of sun lotion bottles, two baseball caps, an old, well-used clipboard, and no less than six notebooks, several opened to show rows of figures and sketches.
Turning back in the seat, I glance over at her. She looks tense, but equally her eyes are sparkling, and she seems happy as she drives, occasionally glancing to her right at the view of the hills and fields.
I can understand why she likes it here. As we head away from Willowmere, which sits in a valley not far from Arrowtown, the Cardrona valley road winds through steep slopes thick with high-country tussock, while the sky opens out, higher and bluer, it seems, than in the city.
It’s a very different landscape from the rolling green hills of the Ashford family farm in the Waikato Region, but it’s no less beautiful.
“Mads,” I say, thinking about what Bill called her. “Probably a better nickname than Cupcake.”
“Or Caligula.”
I snort. I guess I have Brielle to thank for that one.
I’m still smarting a little from Maddie’s crisp reprimand on the plane.
Her admission that she knew about her grandfather’s offer of acquisition was hard to take and led to me being sharper than I’d planned.
But she was right to scold me. I have to stay businesslike and civil, or I might as well ask her to turn the car around and take me back to the airport.
Whether she approached me at the ball with the intention of softening me up is irrelevant. It’s done now.
Except it’s not irrelevant. It’s the center of the tornado around which everything else is spinning. It doesn’t matter how many times I tell myself it doesn’t matter—it does. And I have no way of knowing whether she was telling the truth when she insisted she wasn’t sent to seduce me.
“That was a heavy sigh,” she says.
“Just an exhalation.”
“Something bothering you?”
I shift in my seat, feeling restless. I need to go for a run or something; I’ve been cooped up for too long.
They often joke at work that I’m like a caged animal, as I hate meetings and being stuck in my office.
I’m always out walking the corridors and often work in odd places like the break room or the main office for a change of scenery.
“How much of this is personal, and how much is business?” she asks.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean your mood. Are you grumpy because of what happened at the ball? Or because of the partnership?”
“Possible partnership,” I correct flatly.
She keeps her gaze on the road. “I didn’t mean it to sound as if I’m assuming it’s over and done with. And I’m sorry if I’m irritating you.”
That deflates me slightly. “It’s not you, Maddie.
It’s the situation. I’m deeply angry that my father’s even considering offering Tom seats on the board.
It feels like the first step toward a takeover.
I’m the eldest, the heir, and the company should be mine when my father retires.
Mine and Marcus’s and Aurelia’s, anyway.
We’d run it together. My father spent years building this legacy.
And now it could be whisked away before I’ve even stepped into the role. ”
“So it’s just about my grandfather?”
“No… if I’m honest, I’m not impressed with Brielle’s AI model. I appreciate that you have data to back it up, but it feels like sleight of hand, a flashy show to distract us from the real intention.”
“To take over.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s not,” she says. “Look, I’m not going to deny that my grandfather’s driven, and he can be direct and even ruthless.
But he got where he is by understanding the technology.
He’s a smart guy. When he asked me to go to the board meeting, he told me to imagine how much more we could improve the yield I’d improved at Blackridge with Ashford’s pasture growth data system.
He can see the potential in combining the systems.”
“Sorry, but you’re being na?ve if you think Tom’s interest in Ashford AgriTech is purely scientific.”
“I’m not na?ve. I understand what you’re saying.
I’m just asking you to accept that greed isn’t the whole issue here.
We all need to think bigger than stocks and shares and board seats.
Imagine how different the world would be now if Tim Berners-Lee had sold the internet to the highest bidder? That’s what this is about, Caesar.”
“Feeding the world?”
“Yes, feeding the world, and you can say it without that touch of sarcasm, please. We have the opportunity to create a life-changing technology if we combine our systems. It could have a significant effect on farming everywhere. Ever since the Neolithic, people have been trying to grow their crops and feed their sheep and cattle better. There have been so many crop failures and famines. So much hunger over the last four or five thousand years.”
She hesitates after that long speech, then adds, “If I tell you something, do you promise to keep it to yourself?”
“Uh… I guess.”
“My grandfather has seven brothers and sisters. He was the eldest. His dad was a farmer. They lived not far from here, on a farm high in the hills. When Gramps was seventeen, his father died in an accident. It was up to Gramps to keep the farm going and to look after the rest of the family. Pasture growth was poor in those first years, and the family struggled. I’m not asking you to forgive him—I know you can’t do that.
But maybe it helps to explain why he’s so keen to make this work.
He believes in the science, and he genuinely wants to help people. ”
I don’t say anything for a moment. Maybe it does explain why he’s like he is, but that doesn’t excuse his ruthlessness or arrogance.
I’m not impressed by the story. My family doesn’t come from money either, but it hasn’t made my father an asshole. One doesn’t naturally lead to the other. It’s possible to be poor and polite.
Still, I understand that Tom is her grandfather, and I admire the way she looks up to him, even if I don’t agree that he deserves it.
“You think I’m idealistic,” she says.
“Honestly? Yeah. I used to be like that. Age and experience have made me cynical. But I like how you’re passionate about your work.”
She rolls her eyes. “God, you’re so patronizing.” She throws me a glare. “You talk like you’re twenty years older than me. You don’t know everything.”
“Well, I am a god, so…”
That earns me an exasperated glance.
“I don’t mean to be patronizing,” I say in a softer tone. “I’ve had a lot of hard knocks, that’s all, and my company is out there like a pile of raw meat watching as the wolves circle. It’s scary.”
“Technically, raw meat doesn’t have eyes, so it can’t watch anything.”
If she’d been any other Rutherford, that would have annoyed me, and I’d have snapped back, but I discover I don’t want to do that with Maddie. I don’t want this weekend to be miserable for either of us. We shared an intimate moment, and I like her, despite everything that’s happened.
“Like a wounded deer, then,” I offer. “Does that make more sense?”
She doesn’t reply for a moment, keeping her eyes on the road. Then, eventually, she says, “Do you feel like your company is wounded?”
Again, if she was anyone else I’d have denied it heatedly, but I was the one who made the comparison.
It’s possible she’s going to report straight back to Tom or her father, so I have to be careful not to reveal too much, but equally she would’ve seen the headlines.
She’ll be aware what’s been going on behind closed doors.
“A little,” I say. “When Tom made the offer of acquisition, he’d obviously heard that my father was thinking about retiring.
When Dad called the board meeting to tell us about it, the board made it clear that investors need to see stability.
So my father basically gave us a dressing down because none of us is in a committed relationship and said if none of us is married with an heir on the way by next Christmas, he’s going to sell to Tom. ”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. You read about Wren?”
“That she asked you for a baby?”
“Yeah. We’re old friends, and she approached me the night of the ball. After you and I…” I let the sentence trail off.