A Winter Chase (The Mercer's House Book 1) by Mary Kingswood

Author:Mary Kingswood [Kingswood, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sutors Publishing
Published: 2022-06-13T00:00:00+00:00

15: The Morning After

The rest of the evening passed in a blur. There was music and then cards, and after some interminable time the carriages were ordered. There was no more conversation with Mr Plummer, but Julia could not think about him when Camilla and Lord Charles were so much on her mind.

After a sleepless night, she awoke with heavy eyes and aching head.

Pa took one look at her at breakfast, and said, “What you need, young lady, is some fresh air. Do you want to walk down to the village with me? I have men in at Mr Green’s cottage attending to the roof, but you can have a chat with Mrs Green and see if there’s anything else they might need. I’ve never had tenants before, so I’d like to take good care of them.”

“I always thought the landed gentry had tenant farmers,” she said.

Pa chuckled. “Aye, so they do, but Sir Owen kept all the farm land for the Manor, and kindly gave me the cottages and houses, which bring in a trifling amount of rent and need all manner of repairs to make them habitable.”

“So he bamboozled you?”

“No, no. Nobody bamboozles me, puss. His attorney was suspiciously vague about the properties, so I sent my own man to look into it before I agreed to the arrangement, and then reduced the price accordingly. It suits me, though. Floors and walls and roofs I understand, but farms are beyond me. If I had farmers, I’d need a bailiff to deal with them and it would be all too easy for bamboozling to be going on right under my nose, and me none the wiser. You’ll come then, will you? It’s raining a bit, but you won’t mind that.”

Julia didn’t mind at all. They walked briskly down the drive to the village, spending an hour at the cottage as Pa climbed happily up and down ladders while Julia sat in Mrs Green’s front parlour drinking cheap tea and eating biscuits, as assorted small children wandered into the room, giggled and ran away again. Mrs Green smiled fondly at them, and when Julia asked her how she managed with so many children, she just said, “Ah, but they’re darlings, aren’t they? And the older ones help with the youngsters, so they’re no trouble at all.”

As they walked back home, Pa said, “Did you find out what they might need?”

“Meat, mainly. They only have meat on Sundays and then it’s usually cheeks or trotters or some such, that we only have as a side dish. They’d enjoy some cutlets or a leg of mutton, perhaps. And decent tea,” she added, pulling a face.

“What do they live on, without meat?”

“Cheese. Eggs, I expect, to judge from the chickens in the garden. Bacon. They raise a pig every year to salt away for the winter, although some years they can’t get a piglet. I expect they’d like coal, as well. It was poor stuff they were burning. Are all your cottage tenants

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