It Takes Two to Tumble by Cat Sebastian

Author:Cat Sebastian
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-12-12T05:00:00+00:00

After the cakes had been reduced to rubble, the children ran off to wade in the lake. Phillip knew he ought to acknowledge how happy and healthy the children were, not to mention how they had even come around to not openly detesting the sight of him. He ought to thank Sedgwick for giving him his family. But he couldn’t find the words. And even if he could have, he wouldn’t have been brave enough to speak them.

“I had a fine afternoon cleaning up the mess your Sir Martin Easterbrook made,” Phillip said, trying to put some distance between them with an unpleasant topic. “He’s closed off more grazing land.” He didn’t need to explain to Sedgwick, who had been raised here, that this communal grazing land was all that made it possible for some of the more modest tenants to scrape together a living. “And then he evicts the tenants who can’t pay their rents. So now my tenants expect the same treatment from me, which makes it damned hard to do business with them.”

“I doubt that Martin Easterbrook, whatever his faults may be, is single-handedly responsible for the tradition of mistrusting landlords.”

“Goodness. You’re a radical.”

“Hardly. But I was raised by radicals, so some of it might have rubbed off.”

“I called on him and he was an ungrateful little wretch.”

Benedict frowned. “He swam in this lake with my brothers and me. And now he’s . . .” He shook his head, obviously not wanting to say precisely what Martin Easterbrook was.

“He doesn’t seem overfond of your family,” Phillip said, striving for tact. “Says he can’t bear to see you happy when he’s miserable. And he seems to resent some expenditures your father made on behalf of you and your brothers.”

“He must mean my living or my brothers’ school fees, although the latter can’t have amounted to much. One of my brothers was mentioned in Sir Humphrey’s will, but I don’t believe it amounted to much.”

Phillip thought of the tiny church in the village and the rather tumbledown vicarage beside it; he took in the well-worn soles of Ben’s boots and the frayed edges of his cuffs. Giving the living of St. Aelred’s to Ben rather than selling it hadn’t been what impoverished the Easterbrooks. And the venom in young Easterbrook’s voice suggested more than resentment over a few hundred pounds a year. You really don’t know, the man had said. And now Phillip wondered if Ben even knew what lay at the heart of his neighbor’s antipathy. Whatever the source of Easterbrook’s rancor toward the Sedgwicks, Phillip knew Ben wouldn’t be pleased to learn of it. Phillip realized he would have given a good deal to protect Ben from what seemed an inevitable disappointment.

“You know,” Phillip said. “There’s a time-honored method of dealing with encumbered estates. When my father left me with debts to pay, I found a wealthy wife. I daresay Easterbrook could do the same. He has a title and an estate.”

He watched as Ben sucked in a breath and let it out slowly before he responded.

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