Mary Nichols Read online

  ‘I find it difficult to believe my father has agreed to it.’

  ‘And who is your father?’

  He did not appear at all overawed, which made her all the more determined to stand on her dignity. ‘The Earl of Luffenham and, before you ask, you are on his land, which, if you are surveying, you surely know already.’

  The young man bowed, though it was more a formality than any show of respect. ‘I am sorry—if I had known who you were, my lady, I would have addressed you correctly.’

  He saw before him an arrogant child of wealth and class on a superb horse. Judging by the size of the horse and the easy way she sat on it, she was quite tall. Her riding habit, which was spread decorously over her feet, was of dark-blue taffeta with military-style frogging across the jacket. Her tiny riding hat, with its wisp of a veil, was perched on top of dark golden ringlets. Her eyes, looking fearlessly into his, were greeny-grey. He would have liked to despise her, but found himself admiring her spirit. She was evidently not afraid of approaching three men and telling them exactly what she thought of them.

  ‘That doesn’t answer my question. Has my father agreed?’

  ‘We are not seeking the agreement of anyone at the moment, my lady. We have yet to establish the feasibility of such a line.’

  ‘And to do that, it appears you must trespass.’

  One of the others gave a little cough, which made her drag her eyes away from the young man towards him. ‘My lady, I think you will find the Earl’s land begins on the other side of the water.’ And he pointed in the direction of the river behind her.

  ‘It does not. It extends up to that ridge.’ Her riding crop indicated where she meant. ‘This whole area is Luffenham land.’ She swept her arm in a wide arc.

  ‘Until we see evidence we must beg to differ, my lady.’

  ‘Then I suggest you apply to the Earl, who will no doubt supply it. In the meantime, desist whatever it is you are doing.’

  The youngest man laughed and she swung round to face him again. ‘It is not a laughing matter.’

  His amber eyes were alight with amusement. ‘I am sorry, my lady, but we have been given a job to do and we will not meekly leave it on the say-so of a young lady who can have no idea what she is talking about. I suggest you continue your ride and we will talk to your papa when the time is right.’

  His condescension infuriated her; though she would have liked to go on arguing, she was not sure enough of her facts, and instead wheeled round and cantered off. Once back over the river, she slowed to a walk, though she did not look back. She was sure that if she did, she would see that they had resumed their inspection of the terrain. She ought to have asked their names so that she could tell her father who they were, but nothing on earth would persuade her to humiliate herself further by turning back to do so.

  The man had been insufferably rude and the two others, who were older and should have tried to curb him, had said nothing, except to back him up. But my, he was a handsome devil, all bone and muscle—but he had a warm smile and laughing eyes, which in some measure made up for his insolence. Of course he would not approach her father, that would be done by his superiors, which was a pity because she would have liked to meet him again, if only to confirm her first impressions that he was a conceited brute of a man who had no idea how to behave towards a lady.

  She wondered what her father would say when she told him of the encounter. He hated change, anything that might interrupt his ordered way of life, and she had heard him rant against the railways so often, she knew he would send the deputation away and threaten to shoot them if they came back on to his land. And he would be angry with her for even speaking to them, so perhaps it would be best to say nothing. He would find out for himself soon enough.

  Myles had not returned to his task, but was standing watching her go, admiring the way she rode, her back held straight, the reins held easily in her gloved hands. He realised he had been arrogant and had not explained carefully enough that he and his colleagues were simply trying to find the best route for the line and that the Earl’s land, far from being compact, was sprawled all over the place, taking in a farm here, a hamlet there, woodland, heath and pasture, as small parcels had been added over the years. A broad strip stuck out like a tongue between the Gorridge estate and the land on the other side, which his father had bought a few years before to build himself a mansion. The railway, if it took the shortest route, which it was almost bound to do because it was costed per mile, would cross straight over that small tongue before going on to the Gorridge estate. Viscount Gorridge had agreed to sell his section to the railway company and had also assured them that he could guarantee that Luffenham would consent to part with his piece of land. He had intimated that he had some influence over the Earl.

  ‘So that was one of the Earl’s daughters,’ Joe Masters commented. ‘I heard he had three.’

  ‘I wonder if they are all like her.’

  Masters laughed. He was in his fifties and had worked for Myles’s grandfather and father since he was old enough to work at all, which made him more outspoken than most employees. ‘God help the Earl if they are. He has to find husbands for them. And dowries.’

  ‘Are we really on the Earl’s land?’

  He shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter if we are. If he won’t agree to sell, then the land will be compulsorily purchased—you’ve been in the railway business long enough to know that, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes, of course I have, but I hate dissension. It makes for bad feelings all round.’

  ‘You know your trouble, lad,’ Joe said, laughing. ‘Great lump that you are, you’re too soft.’

  ‘I’ll show you whether I’m soft or not,’ Myles said, putting up his fists and punching the other man lightly on the shoulder. Martin Waterson, the third man of the party, watched in amusement as they began sparring, though neither would have dreamed of hurting the other.

  ‘Pax,’ Joe said, holding up his arms in surrender. ‘I give in. You’re not soft.’

  Myles, who was hardly out of breath, dropped his hands. ‘Come on, let’s get on with the job. I don’t fancy a run in with the Earl’s men. Not until it becomes necessary, anyway.’

  They worked on and by late afternoon had surveyed the land along the valley bottom, which would be the easiest route for the line, and were approaching the village of Luffenham. ‘I reckon this is as far as we need go today,’ Waterson said. ‘I suggest we start again at the other end tomorrow and work our way back to this point. We might find a better route.’

  ‘Right. We’ll call it a day,’ Myles said, finishing his notes and putting them in his pocket.

  After arranging where to meet, they mounted the horses they had been leading and went their separate ways. Masters and Waterson went north where they had lodgings while Myles rode home over the hills on a huge black stallion called Trojan, which his father had bought for him four years before on his twenty-first birthday. ‘The size you’re getting, you need a big horse,’ he had said. ‘I’m blowed if I know where you get it from. I’m not much above average in height. As for your mother, she’s tiny. Must be a throw-back to some distant ancestor.’

  His mother’s ancestry was unquestionable. She was the daughter of Viscount Porson, the last of a long line, which had not thrived in the way the Gorridges and Luffenhams had thrived. His lordship had been glad enough to let his daughter marry the son of a mill owner with no pretensions to being a gentleman, but who had become wealthy through business. It was that money, and a generous contribution to Wellington’s army in the shape of uniforms, that had led to his being created a baron. Myles could just remember his grandfather, who worked all the hours God made, driven by ambition and a fear that whatever wealth he had created could disappear in a puff of wind and he would be back where he started. It was a trait he had passed on to his son, Myles’s father.

  ‘My father worked himself into the ground,’ Henry Moorcroft told his own son. ‘He was either at the mill or the factory every
morning before seven and we didn’t see him home again until late evening. His efforts meant I could be educated and learn new ways, but that doesn’t mean I could take my ease. I worked, too, and so must you. You can take your pick where you start, but start at the bottom you will.’

  Of his father’s many interests, Myles could have chosen the woollen mill in Leicestershire where the original fortune had been made, or the engineering works in Peterborough, but he had plumped for building railways, which his father had only then begun to contract for. They were the transport of the future and the whole concept excited him. Starting at the bottom, he had become a navvy and developed muscles, along with a clear understanding of how the men worked, shifting tons of rubble every day with nothing but picks and shovels. He had discovered how they lived, married and looked after their children. Under the tutelage of the contractors employed by his father, he had learned about explosives, cuttings and viaducts, bridges and tunnels, about surveying and costing and keeping within a budget, which was of prime importance if the shareholders were to be paid. He considered himself the complete railway man.

  He had been so busy he had had little time for the ladies, but he supposed that sooner or later he would have to begin thinking about marriage. His father, who was still rooted in his working-class past, would not care in the least whom he chose, so long as she was not extravagantly frivolous, but his mother might be more particular that he chose someone of breeding. The Earl’s daughter certainly had breeding, but was she frivolous? Judging by the riding habit she was wearing, she was certainly accustomed to extravagance. She was spirited, too, but he could deal with that.

  His laughter rang out, startling a flock of starlings who had settled on a tree beside the road. What on earth had made him think of her, the spoilt child of a stick-in-the-mud peer, who would certainly not consider him a suitable husband for his elegant daughter? He would probably never meet her again. On the other hand, if he had cause to visit the Earl on railway business…He laughed again, raising his face to the sun. You never could tell.

  Chapter Two

  The Earl of Luffenham arrived home that evening in time to take dinner with his family. He was, Lucy noticed, not in a good mood. He snapped at the servants and criticised Rosemary’s gown, saying it was unsuitable for a young lady not yet out. ‘What is that shiny stuff?’ he asked.

  ‘Taffeta, Papa.’

  ‘What’s wrong with muslin?’

  ‘Nothing for day wear, Papa, but it is not the thing for dining.’

  ‘You are getting above yourself, miss, and I wonder at you, madam, for allowing it.’ This last was addressed to his wife.

  ‘It is not new, my lord,’ she explained. ‘It is one of mine I had remade. That deep pink colour suits Rosie and I thought it would recompense her a little for not having all the new clothes Lucy has had this year.’

  Slightly mollified, he grunted and nodded at the footman to begin serving. His economies seemed unnecessary and inconsistent to Lucy. He grumbled about money spent on clothes, yet would never have dreamed of managing with fewer servants, particularly those, like the footmen, who were seen by visitors. He insisted on frugality at family meals, having only four courses, but, when entertaining, the food on his table was lavish in the extreme. His horses were the best money could buy, his hospitality at the annual hunt meeting was legendary, but he begrudged the repairs to his farmer-tenants’ buildings, maintaining that if they let them go to rack and ruin, why should he have to stump up for their negligence?

  They ate in silence for some time until Lucy ventured, ‘Did you have a good journey, Papa?’

  ‘It was as abominable as usual.’

  ‘Did you come home by road, then?’

  ‘No, I did not. I came on the railway, but it kept stopping for no reason that I could see.’

  ‘I expect it was because you went from one company’s lines to another,’ Lucy said. ‘You have to be coupled up to their locomotives.’

  ‘What do you know of it?’

  ‘I read it in the newspaper. There was a report about a debate in the Commons about the number of lines being agreed to and Mr Hudson’s plans to amalgamate them so that there is no need for constantly changing in the middle of a journey.’

  ‘Not suitable reading for a young lady, Lucinda. And Hudson will come to grief, you mark my words.’

  ‘Why are you so against the railways, Papa? I should have thought they brought enormous benefit.’

  He looked sharply at her. ‘What is your interest in them, young lady?’

  ‘It is only that I journeyed by train for the first time when we went to London and I found myself wondering about them. It is a very fast way to travel. Over forty miles an hour, we were told. It felt like flying.’

  ‘So it may be, but the countryside where they go is ruined for ever. They run over good farm land and are so noisy they frighten the cows so they don’t produce milk, the sparks from their engines are a danger to anyone living near the line, and they ruin the hunt because the fox can escape on to railway land where horses can’t follow. And that is after all the desecration to the countryside the navvies cause when they are building them. They throw up their shanty towns wherever they fancy and spend their free time drinking and quarrelling. Their children run round in rags with no education and no notion of cleanliness. Does that answer your question?’

  ‘Yes, Papa. What would happen if a landowner refused to allow the railway to go over his land?’

  ‘Then they would have to go round it. Now, enough of that. Let us have the rest of our dinner in peace.’

  Lucy decided it was definitely not the time to mention seeing the surveyors, and after a few minutes of eating in silence her mother began to talk about their visit to Linwood Park. ‘I do not know how big the house party will be,’ she said. ‘Nor exactly what plans have been made for our entertainment, but we must go prepared.’

  ‘Naturally we must go prepared,’ the Earl said. ‘There will be riding and excursions, shooting and cards in the evening and undoubtedly at least one ball.’

  ‘I wondered if you might consent to allow Rosemary to accompany us. The invitation was for the whole family….’

  ‘Whole family,’ echoed Esme, speaking for the first time. ‘May I go?’

  ‘Certainly not!’ snapped her father. ‘But I will think about allowing Rosemary to go, if she behaves herself.’

  ‘Rosemary always behaves herself,’ Lucy put in, winking at her sister. ‘And I shall be glad of her company if we are to be with a crowd of strangers.’

  ‘They won’t all be strangers,’ the Countess said. ‘Many of them you will already have met in London.’

  Lucy did not see the surveyors again and supposed they had either decided she was right about their trespassing or they had finished what they were doing and gone elsewhere. In a way she was sorry because she could not get thoughts of that tall man out of her head. She could see him in her mind’s eye, standing facing her with his feet apart, his hands carefully crumbling soil, his head thrown back and his lively eyes looking up at her. His stance had been almost insolent and she should have been repelled; instead, she found him strikingly attractive. She found herself wondering what it would be like to be held in those powerful arms and, even in the privacy of her room, blushed at the scenario she had created. She must stop thinking about him, because he was nothing but a labourer, a brute of a man used to working with the strength of his broad back, and, though she might be attracted by his physique, he would never fit in to the kind of life she led. He would, for instance, never be at home in a ballroom. On the other hand, Mr Gorridge was to the manner born and knew how to dress and behave among ladies. And Mama and Papa approved of him.

  Linwood Park was not above thirty miles from Luffenham Hall and, for a short stretch, their lands abutted, so it was an easy carriage ride to go from one to the other, which was how the Countess and her two daughters travelled, followed by a second coach containing Annette, Sarah to look after the girls
and the Earl’s valet, together with all the luggage piled in the boot and strapped on the roof. The Earl decided to ride so that he would have his own horse with him. Lucy would have liked that, too, but he had said arriving on horseback would not create the right impression; if she wanted to ride, she would undoubtedly be provided with a mount from the Viscount’s stables.

  The house stood halfway up a hill above the village, which in times gone by had been known as Gorridgeham, from which the first Viscount had taken his name, but was now simply Gorryham. The house, at the end of a long drive, was surrounded by a deer park, an enormous lake, a large wood in which game birds were reared and several smaller woods and farmsteads. Behind the house the land rose to Gorridgeham Moor, shortened by the locals to Gorrymoor, a wild, uncultivated tract of country ideal for riding and hunting.

  The house itself was built of stone with a façade at least a hundred feet in length. There was a clock tower at one end and a bell tower at the other. In its centre above the imposing portico with its Greek columns was a huge dome, above which fluttered the Gorridge family flag. The evenly spaced windows on the ground floor reached almost from floor to ceiling, though matching rows on the first and second floors were not quite so deep.

  ‘I was right,’ Rosemary said in awe. ‘It is a palace. Fancy being mistress of that, Lucy.’

  Lucy did not comment. It was not the place that concerned her, but the people. The size and opulence of a house could never make up for arrogant, unkind people. Not that Viscountess Gorridge had ever been arrogant and unkind on the few occasions when Lucy had met her before going to London. And in London, when they had attended the same events, she had been most affable. She could not speak for the Viscount because she had hardly exchanged half a dozen sentences with him. He had a way of ending all his pronouncements with a barked, ‘Eh, what?’

  As the carriage drew up, the doors opened and Lady Gorridge came out to welcome them. All the corsetry in the world could not disguise the fact that the Viscountess was fat. She had a round, rather red face, which gave her the appearance of jollity. And her welcome seemed to bear that out.