Chapter 8
Rain had been falling since the previous evening and showed no inclination toward mercy.
It struck the library windows in relentless sheets, a dull roar that filled the silences between sentences and made the fire in the hearth seem a feeble protest against the encroaching damp.
The west library smelled of old oak and wet stone, the scent creeping through the cracks in the casements despite the blaze that Alistair had ordered stoked before dawn.
The shelves that lined three walls held volumes no one had opened in a generation, their spines cracked and faded, and above the mantel hung a portrait of some ancestral Oxley whose expression suggested he found the entire century distasteful.
Nathaniel Beckwith sat across the walnut desk, a map of the Fortunestone estates unrolled between them with its edges weighted by books. He traced a line along the western boundary with a blunt finger while Alistair listened closely, calculating costs in his head.
“The western pastures could hold two hundred head if we fence and drain them proper. But I’ll not lie. Your Grace would anger half the tenants and all of Irwyn’s opinionated gentry. They still think the only thing worse than a tradesman’s son is a tradesman’s sheep.”
Alistair leaned back in his chair, pressing two fingers against the bridge of his nose.
The remark was delivered with the flat candor he had come to expect from Beckwith, a man who saw what needed doing and said so without embellishment.
Since hiring him, Beckwith had proven himself worth every penny of his generous salary.
The man had arrived with references from two northern estates and a reputation for bluntness that bordered on insolence.
Alistair had hired him within ten minutes of their first conversation.
“And the drainage?” Alistair asked, lowering his hand to study the map. “What would it take to make the land suitable?”
Beckwith blew out a slow breath, the kind that preceded figures no one wished to hear.
“Six months of labor, at minimum. Ditching, tile drainage, fencing. The current tenants will not volunteer their backs for a scheme they mistrust, so you would need to bring in outside men. And there is the matter of breeding stock. Decent ewes are not cheap, and most reputable breeders have their stock engaged by prior agreement, so you would be starting from nothing.” He tapped the map where the River Irwyn wound through the low meadows.
“The flooding risk along here is real. Last night’s rain has already turned the lower fields to marsh.
Without proper channels, you would lose lambs come spring. ”
Alistair studied the blue-inked contour lines on the map, tracing the flood path with his eyes. The picture was bleak, but he had built up a mill on worse odds.
“Every estate in Yorkshire profits from wool,” Alistair muttered, more to himself than to Beckwith.
“Every estate but these ones. The whole region thrives on the fleece trade, and yet the local gentry treat it as though raising beasts were an affront to their reputations. My grandfather thought sheep beneath his dignity. My uncle was too occupied with his own vices to correct the error. Two generations of stubborn aristocratic pride, and the result is a duchy that cannot fund its own roof repairs.”
“Aye, this estate has clung to its crop rents for decades, convinced that anything resembling industry will lower the tone of the title. The fact that Irwyn’s prosperity flows directly from your family’s mill did not trouble their reasoning in the slightest.”
The rain intensified outside, hammering the glass with renewed vigor as if to underscore the futility of agricultural ambitions in such a season.
Alistair watched the water stream down the diamond-paned windows, blurring the view of the gray gardens beyond.
He thought of his mill, its great chimneys breathing steam into the Irwyn sky, where decisions yielded results within weeks.
Here at Fortunestone Hall, every step forward invited resistance from ghosts and their living confederates.
He had toured three tenant farms with Beckwith this morning and found roofs patched with rotting thatch, rainwater dripping on the furniture, drainage ditches clogged with a decade of neglect, and families stretching their winter stores to the breaking point.
The previous steward had collected rents and done nothing with the proceeds but line the dowager’s household accounts. And his own pockets, likely.
Alistair sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “The sheep are not the priority. Not with everything else that requires attention. The roof, the tenants’ cottages, the roads. We shall revisit the question once we have stabilized what already exists.”
Beckwith inclined his head. “A sound approach. Better to win the tenants’ confidence before imposing new schemes.”
“Just so.” Alistair rose and moved to the window, clasping his hands behind his back.
The rain continued its dull roar beyond the glass, a curtain of gray that obliterated the horizon.
He could just make out the shadow of the stone gatehouse in the distance, but the avenue of trees had vanished entirely behind the downpour.
“This weather is relentless. If it carries on much longer, the roads will be impassable.”
“They are already near it,” Beckwith confirmed.
“The track from the gatehouse to the village was ankle-deep in mud when I rode in yesterday afternoon.” They both fell silent for a moment, watching the rain streak the glass in unbroken rivulets.
The sky offered no promise of reprieve. If anything, the clouds had thickened since morning, pressing low over the valley like a gray wool blanket draped across the hills.
“I do not have much more time to spare here, Beckwith. The mill has pressing business, and I must leave for London soon to secure an important contract. Hollingford & Goss will not wait indefinitely, and my brother Franklin has been holding them at bay with assurances of my imminent arrival for longer than is prudent.”
“How long will you be away?”
“A fortnight, perhaps longer. It depends on the negotiations and the state of the roads.” He turned back to the room, his gaze sweeping the stacks of Beckwith’s careful notes, the ledgers with their columns of bleak arithmetic, the map with its penciled annotations.
So much to be done, and never enough hours to see it through.
Alistair had always thrived on the pressure of competing demands, but the scale of Fortunestone’s decay tested even his appetite for industry.
At the mill, problems had solutions. Here, problems had histories.
“I am leaving the estate in your hands. You have my full authority. If you encounter resistance from the household, invoke my name without hesitation.”
Beckwith offered a thin smile. “By household, you mean Her Grace the elder.”
“I mean anyone who obstructs progress. But yes. The dowager will test you. Do not be cowed by her. She has no legal authority here, whatever she may believe to the contrary.” Alistair had already begun drafting a letter to his own solicitors in Leeds to make the legal position explicit.
The dowager would receive a copy in due course.
He did not like using litigation with family members, but he did not trust her or consider her family after what she had done to his father.
Before Beckwith could reply, a soft knock interrupted them, followed by the library door opening a few cautious inches.
Genevieve appeared in the gap and stopped short, her silver-blonde hair catching the low firelight. Her pale eyes darted from Alistair to Beckwith, and color rose swiftly in her cheeks.
“Forgive me. I did not realize you were in conference.” She was already retreating. “I only wished to find a volume from the shelves. I shall return later.”
“Come in,” Alistair said, waving her forward. “We are nearly finished. Find what you need.”
She hesitated, then stepped inside with the studied caution of a person crossing ice.
She kept her gaze fixed on the bookshelves along the far wall, navigating the room as though Beckwith were a piece of furniture she was determined not to acknowledge.
Yet Alistair noted the stiffness in her posture, the determined angle of her chin, her fingers trembling slightly as she reached for a leather-bound volume.
Her fingers closed around a slim green book.
Poetry, from the look of the gilt lettering.
She drew it from the shelf with exaggerated care, as though the slightest sound might betray her.
His youngest cousin was seventeen, and her experience with presentable young men extended no further than the fired steward and the ancient butler.
Jerome had kept his daughters sequestered like relics in a cabinet, hidden from the world and otherwise forgotten.
It was a cruelty dressed as protection, and Alistair meant to undo it.
A man of capable bearing and quiet authority entering her sheltered sphere would naturally cause her to feel shy.
Alistair sighed, considering the implications of introducing his relations to the world they had been kept from. They were ill-prepared to venture into society and begin their lives, and an unexpected complication in his.
“I shall take my leave, Your Grace,” Beckwith said, tucking the rolled map under his arm. “I will have the drainage estimates drawn up by morning, and I intend to ride out to the eastern tenant farms this afternoon despite the weather.”
“Very good. Take care on those roads.”
“I have ridden through worse.” He inclined his head, offered a polite nod to Genevieve who did not appear to see, and departed.