Chapter Eighteen
A full week had passed since the ball, and Isaac had not managed, in all that time, to think of very much beyond what had happened between him and Nell in the library.
Every time he closed his eyes, they were there again.
Nell's thighs tightening against his head as he tasted every inch of her. Her moans drowning out all other sounds as she surrendered to the pleasure.
Isaac could still feel the soft warmth of her skin beneath his hands, could still hear the way her breath had caught in her chest when he'd slid his tongue amongst the folds of her cunt.
Even now, the memory of it caused his cock to swell in his breeches. It was, for lack of a better word, very distracting.
He had not intended, although he was certain Nell would not believe him, for the evening to end as it had. Yet that did not change the fact it had happened.
Nell had asked him to pretend that nothing had happened between them and that was proving almost impossible. In fact, in the days since, they had been unable to look at one another without the whole of it rising up between them again.
In order to distract himself, Isaac threw himself into estate business with a thoroughness that bordered on the excessive.
He would ride out each morning to inspect fences that had already been inspected, review ledgers he had already reviewed twice, anything really that might occupy his hands and his mind sufficiently to keep them from wandering back toward the library's dim candlelight.
It did not work nearly as well as he'd hoped.
He would be in the middle of some perfectly ordinary conversation with Fletcher, when suddenly he'd hear Nell's moans in his head, and would have to ask Fletcher to repeat himself, twice, before his attention returned properly to the business at hand.
What made the whole situation even worse was that being around Nell was now painfully awkward.
She found excuses to leave any room he entered, whether it be a forgotten errand or a task suddenly recalled. Perhaps it would have been better if she was in any way believable, but each excuse was delivered with a haste that fooled no one, least of all him.
On the rare occasions they crossed paths in a corridor, she kept her eyes fixed somewhere near his boots and addressed him with cool formality that grated at his nerves.
He understood she wished to forget what had happened, and if he was sensible he would want that too. But he wasn't sure he could.
Tom noticed, of course he did. But his friend had spared him the small mercy of not bringing Nell's sudden behaviour towards him into conversation.
That afternoon, Isaac sat in the study, attempting to concentrate on the most recent stack of correspondence, and failing.
"This is hopeless," he muttered to himself.
"You say something?"
Isaac turned his head to Tom. He was seated in the wingback chair near the window, a paper open on his lap.
"No, nothing," Isaac said, as he leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes.
Tom smirked, but Isaac chose to ignore it, turning his attention back to the papers on his desk.
As he did, a knock sounded at the door.
Fletcher appeared a moment later with several rolls of paper under his right arm.
"Good afternoon, My Lord," he said. "Do you have a moment?"
"For you, Fletcher, I have two."
The man walked across the room to the desk.
"It's about the Ashgrove property, My Lord," Fletcher explained, laying a map across the desk with his usual careful precision.
"Ashgrove," Isaac repeated.
"It's the smaller estate, some distance north—a hunting lodge and several hundred acres of woodland, part of the Rowan holdings for generations, though the late baron scarcely visited it in the last decade of his life.
I've had troubling reports from the steward there.
Timber's gone missing from the western wood, several boundary fences have collapsed, and there are cottages wanting inspection before winter sets in that I don't believe anyone's properly looked at in years. "
"How far?"
"The better part of a day's ride, My Lord."
Isaac studied the map for a long moment, grateful, more than he cared to admit even to himself, for a problem that required his physical absence from Rowan Hall for a few days.
"I'll go myself. I'd rather see the damage with my own eyes than trust it secondhand."
"I'll come along, obviously," Tom said, before anyone had thought to ask him. "Can't imagine you fending off poachers and thieving timber merchants without me there to watch your back.
Before anyone could say anything else, a second knock sounded at the door.
"Come," Isaac said.
Mrs Ellis entered with a tea tray balanced before her, setting it down near the map with brisk efficiency.
"I saw Mr Fletcher arrive, My Lord, and thought you might want for refreshment while you talked over estate business."
"Thank you, Mrs Ellis."
The older woman nodded. "Will there be anything else, My Lord?" she asked.
"Yes," Isaac said. "We'll be leaving for the Ashgrove property in the morning. Myself and Tom, and back within the week, God willing."
"The hunting lodge." Mrs Ellis's brow furrowed slightly as she considered this.
"It's stood shut up these ten years and more, My Lord, if not longer.
I couldn't say what state you'll find the rooms in, but I'd wager it wants a proper airing before it's fit for you to sleep in, let alone entertain a steward and half the local tenantry. "
"That's rather my worry as well," Isaac admitted.
"Then you'll want some of the staff along with you, My Lord, and I'll see to arranging it myself."
Mrs Ellis was already turning the matter over with the particular brisk decisiveness Isaac had come to recognise as her way of solving a problem before anyone else in the room had finished describing it.
"Mary Collins, I think—good sense, and quick enough with a broom and a duster to have the worst of it liveable within a day.
And Nell besides. She's proven herself capable of a great deal more than I expected when she first came to us, and I'd trust her to manage a strange kitchen without burning the place down around her, which is more than I can say for some of the newer girls. "
"Nell," Isaac repeated, keeping his voice carefully even.
"Unless you'd rather I sent someone else, My Lord?"
Mrs Ellis glanced at him with mild curiosity, plainly reading nothing more into the question than ordinary practicality.
"No," Isaac said, a beat too quickly. "No, Mary and Nell will do well enough. See them packed and ready to leave with the carriages by morning."
"I'll have it arranged directly, My Lord."
Mrs Ellis dropped a brief curtsy and took her leave, already murmuring to herself about linens and provisions as she went.
***
They departed the following morning in two carriages. Tom rode alongside Isaac while Mary and Nell travelled behind with the necessary supplies.
As they bumped down the rough country roads, Isaac found that the journey proved somehow longer than the actual miles accounted for.
Each time they stopped to rest the horses, Nell found some reason to remain close to Mary or the coachman, never once drifting near enough to Isaac that conversation might become unavoidable.
What was more, she refused to meet his eye and had said no more than five words to him all day.
Isaac told himself he did not mind it. After all, distance suited him rather better than the alternative, given how thoroughly he had failed to master his own thoughts these past days.
"You know," Tom observed, somewhere past the midpoint of their journey. "I don't believe I've ever seen two people work quite so hard to avoid standing in the same room together. It's rather impressive, in its own way. Takes real dedication."
"Mind your own business, Tom."
"I generally do, but this is a rare exception." Tom's grin faded into something more genuinely curious. "Something happened at that ball, didn't it? More than the wine on Lady Victoria's gown, I mean."
Isaac said nothing and Tom, with unusual restraint, let the matter drop without further pressing.
They arrived at the hunting lodge shortly before sunset.
The low autumn light gilded a house smaller than Rowan Hall, but beautifully situated all the same. It was set beside a still, dark lake and half-enclosed by dense woodland already turning gold and copper with the season.
Years of neglect showed themselves plainly enough on closer approach. The gardens had gone wild, shutters hung loose from their hinges, and two of the outbuildings were sagging visibly toward eventual collapse.
Isaac felt, surveying the whole neglected property, a fresh understanding of exactly how much of his inheritance had been left to quietly rot in the previous baron's long absence.
While Mary and Nell set about airing the lodge's shut-up rooms and preparing what supper they could manage from the supplies they'd brought, Isaac and Tom made their way down toward the old stable yard where they found the local steward.
He was a stooped, weathered man named Corbett, and behind him stood a small knot of tenant farmers, their caps in hand.
"My Lord." Corbett bowed. "I'd not looked to see you here myself, I'll confess it plainly. We've had troubles enough these past years that I scarcely knew where to begin putting them in a letter to Mr Fletcher, and I doubt half of what I did write ever conveyed the whole of it."
"Start wherever you like, Mr Corbett. I've the whole evening, and I mean to hear it all before I leave this yard."
Corbett glanced back at the gathered tenants.
One of them, a broad, sun-browned man, took a step forward.
"Name's Adam Struthers, My Lord," he said, turning his cap over in his hands.
"And what can you tell me about the problems facing Ashgrove, Mr Struthers?"
"It's the western wood, My Lord. Men've been in there cutting timber that's no more theirs than the moon is, near two years now by my reckoning.
Cart tracks leading off toward Denby most nights, and not one soul troubled to stop them, on account of there being no one left on this property with the authority to do it. "
"How much wood, would you say?"
"A considerable stretch of it. I could show you the stumps myself, come morning, if you'd care to see."
"I would." Isaac turned to the next man, who needed no further prompting.
"The bridges, My Lord—the two crossing the streams below the lake.
I told Mr Corbett a twelve month past that the timbers were rotting through, and I'll tell you the same now.
My own boy near went through the planking, not a month gone, and only his quick feet saved him from a broken leg, or worse. "
"They'll be rebuilt," Isaac said. "Before the ground freezes. I'll have men out to survey them at first light."
A third tenant stepped forward. He was older than the other two.
"What do you wish to say?" Isaac prompted.
"There's poachers working the deer besides, My Lord, bold as you like—I've heard shots in that wood most nights this fortnight past, and found more than one carcass stripped and left to rot where it fell. Whoever's doing it knows full well there's no gamekeeper left to trouble them."
Corbett cleared his throat, and it was he who finally raised the matter Isaac could see, even in the dim light, weighed heaviest on the whole gathered group.
"And there's the Hollis family, My Lord.
Their roof came down in the storm three weeks past—same storm as washed out the village road—and they've nowhere left to shelter their flock before winter properly sets in.
I'd have written to Mr Fletcher sooner, only I didn't like to trouble the estate with more bad news than I'd already sent. "
"Where's Hollis now?"
"Waiting at his own gate, My Lord, not liking to presume he'd be welcome here uninvited."
"He's more than welcome. Send for him."
Isaac looked around the assembled group, the last of the daylight nearly gone now, lanterns beginning to appear at the edges of the yard.
"I want to see the wood, the bridges, and that barn myself before I decide anything final. But hear me now, all of you—this property's been left to rot through no fault of yours, and I don't intend to leave it that way a day longer than I can help."
Isaac spent the better part of the remaining light walking the property himself rather than relying on the steward's account alone.
"New fencing along the western boundary," he told the steward, as the last light faded from the sky.
"And gamekeepers enough to put a proper stop to the poaching—I'll have men sent up from Rowan Hall within the week if you can't find suitable ones locally.
The bridges get rebuilt before the ground freezes, whatever the cost. And that family's barn—"
He paused, thinking of the widow Marsh's roof, of buckets catching rain through three ignored winters.
"Timber from our own woodland, cut and delivered before the week's out. I'll not have a family lose their whole flock for want of a roof I could have ordered built the moment I heard of it."
"Very good, My Lord," Corbett said.
It was full dark by the time Isaac finally made his way back toward the lodge, and he was, admittedly, bone-tired. But in the satisfying way a long day's honest work produced.
As he entered the house, his mind turned over fence lines and timber counts. He walked towards the kitchen and paused in the doorway before entering.
Nell stood with Mary, her sleeves pushed back and flour dusting across one cheek. The two women were talking and laughing quietly amongst themselves.
Isaac cleared his throat, and Nell turned her head at the sound. Her eyes found him, and Isaac felt the whole of the past week's careful distance collapse into something more complicated than mere awkwardness.
Then Nell lowered her eyes and turned back to her work, and the moment closed as quickly as it had opened.
Isaac was left standing in the doorway with his exhaustion forgotten, and the library's unresolved memory settling, once again, heavy and unspoken between them.