Page 46 of To Seduce a Stranger

For a long moment, Markham said nothing, and Edward imagined he had not heard his words clearly across the distance and over the rattle of the horses’ harness and the plow. But when Edward had come within a few rows of newly overturned ground, he stopped the team. “I thought you meant to be off today.”

“A visitor arrived this morning.”

“Oh?”

“Claims to be Lord Beckley. Not the man I expected,” Edward added hastily, avoiding Markham’s gaze. “Not the man your father would have known.”

“An heir? But his son disappeared years ago.”

“So they say.”

After looking Edward up and down, Markham slipped himself out of the loop created by the reins and held them out. “Plow, then, if you’ve a mind to. I’ll follow along with the seed.”

Gratefully, Edward took up the leather and slung it over his own shoulder, chirruping to the horses, whose ears turned forward and backwards as they investigated the change. Together, the two men made one pass across the breadth of the field without speaking.

Already, he could feel the strain of the task in his back and his legs, and he welcomed the discomfort, though it did little to distract his mind. Two more rows, and the field would be done. “Looks like rain.” Edward nodded toward the horizon, where clouds were gathering.

“Aye.”

“It won’t flood the fields?” Where he had come from, the rains often were not gentle, and they could not afford the loss of the seed.

“Just a spring shower,” Markham reassured him. “It’ll pass and the sun’ll be shining again before you know it.”

But rather than brightening, the sky grew increasingly gray.

“It speaks well of the man that he came back to Ravenswood after his father abandoned the place all those years ago,” Markham ventured.

“I . . . suppose.” Edward knew better than to reveal too much, to encourage Markham to speak badly of the man he believed to be his landlord. But surely it would do no harm to inject a note of caution into the conversation. “I imagine he had some particular motive in doing so. Perhaps he hopes to investigate Ravenswood’s income.”

Markham’s boot stomped the sprinklings of seeds into the ground with a heavy tread. “That’d do for us all.”

An ambiguous phrase. Markham might have meant that everyone on the estate and in Little Norbury would be benefitted by greater attention to Ravenswood’s profitability. Or he might have meant that if the new landlord was focused only on pounds and pence, they were all doomed.

It was difficult not to side with the latter interpretation when the skies opened. Rain came down in thick drops, heavy enough that the hedgerow he had been using to guide the horses and plow was little more than a darker blur in the distance. It felt like an ill omen.

Still, they kept moving. By the time the field was finished, Edward was soaked to the skin and his boots made a sucking sound with each step.

“Much obliged,” said Markham when, at the end of the row, Edward laid the reins across the other man’s palm, grateful for the ache in his forearms.

“I would say the same to you.” The exertion had taken the edge off his temper, at least, though his head was no clearer. How had he found himself in such a predicament? Why had he not returned to England years ago, while his father was still alive, when he might have done something to set things right?

“Might I ask you a personal question, Cary?” Markham asked, waving off Edward’s offer to help with unhooking the plow.

With more trepidation than he would care to admit, Edward tipped his head in assent. “What is it you want to know?”

“It’s about Miss Harper, sir.” Nervous fingers knotted and unknotted the harness as he spoke. “Mari.”

Markham’s unexpected answer succeeded in driving all thought of the imposter from his head. “What of her?”

“I wondered if she—that is, well . . . is she spoken for, sir?”

Edward had only just managed to bank the anger that had been stoked by the would-be earl, so Markham’s words were like the puff of a bellows to glowing coals. In less time than it took the other man to blink, Edward faced him, toe to toe. The horses shied in alarm at the sudden movement.

“Do you mean to ask if she is mine?”

“I—” The reins slipped from his hands.

“My . . . mistress? My . . . property?” Stunned, Markham attempted no answer. The man who claimed to be Beckley had just insinuated as much, and Edward knew where his anger ought really to be directed, but he lashed out nonetheless. “Mari Harper is not now, nor ever was, ‘mine’ . . . in any sense of the word. Do I make myself clear?”