Page 115 of A Rare Find

“Aye.” Peach straightened abruptly.

Georgie tried not to look too impressed with themself. They’d but recently fallen asleep over “An Account of the Mangel Wurzel, or Root of Scarcity” in Annals of Agriculture, volume XI.

“A vigorous crop,” they declared. “Very healthy.”

“Aye.” Peach was squeezing a weed in his fist. He seemed strangely skittish. Shouldn’t their shared revelry have brought them closer? Or was the shared revelry precisely what ailed him? He and Georgie had rubbed shoulders on an occasion quite beyond the bounds of propriety. Midnight memories of scantily clad swimming, laughing, singing, and dancing suddenly filled the space between landowner and tenant.

Oh dear. That was awkward. And Peach and Phipps had danced rather lustily, hadn’t they? In full view?

No wonder the gigantic farmer looked one heartbeat away from bolting.

Georgie thought what they might say to put him at ease.

While they thought, Peach spoke.

“Last night were a bit of a frenzy,” he said, gaze shifting to the left. “Everybody jumping about like grasshoppers.”

“Jolly good fun.” Georgie tried to sound as jovial as possible. “Everybody deserves some.”

“Aye.” Peach’s gaze shifted back. “You won’t go making any big fuss, then, out of what was a trifle?”

His tone wasn’t wheedling, or threatening, but wary.

“I wouldn’t dream of making a fuss,” said Georgie, and paused. “If it wasn’t a trifle, even better.” A longer pause, as they debated their next words. What the hell?

“I don’t think it’s a trifle to him,” they said.

Peach’s mouth opened but no sound came out. The weed fell to earth. He looked down at it. And then—Georgie’s sinking heart rose up again—a dimple flickered in his cheek.

It seemed the right moment to hasten on.

“I came to ask your help,” they declared. “There’s a boulder I need moved.”

Peach lifted his eyes. The dimple was gone. He looked like the old Peach, not apprehensive, not besotted—annoyed. Powerfully annoyed.

“I know.” Georgie winced. “I haven’t been any help to you, not as yet. But I’ve been reading about husbandry and listening to whoever will tell me more. I’m learning all I can, because I want to invest in the land productively and beneficially.” They gave Peach a winning smile. “I recognized the mangel-wurzel.”

Peach grunted.

“And I plan to dismiss Mr. Fletcher,” they continued, with all the credibility they could muster. “There are complicating factors, but I am going to do it. And then I’ll fatten the cattle, splendidly. I’ll bring a portion of the park under cultivation and buy spent brewer’s grains to supplement the hay and cabbages and turnips. I’ll see to repairs. I’ll bring in new manures. I’ve learned a shocking amount about manures. There’s dung, of course, and coal ash, and lime, but I am most interested currently in gypsum. It’s used extensively in Germany. Raw, not calcined. Six hundredweight to the acre. I have an idea to—”

“Botheration,” muttered Peach. “That’s enough.”

He’d said the same to his brother last night, in the same voice. It was firm and yet fundamentally benign. It was not the voice of an ogre.

Georgie grinned, encouraged. “You don’t doubt me, then?”

“I don’t doubt your tongue will keep running like an overwound clock.” But there was a glimmer of amusement in Peach’s resigned expression. He looked across the field to where Elf was waiting by the ruins of the wall.

He brushed the dirt from his hands. “Where’s this boulder?”

—

Georgie and Elf had led him halfway there when he stopped short.

“The boulder,” he said, glancing about at his surroundings, suspicious. “It’s never Holywell Rock?”

Georgie hesitated. “Let’s see, shall we?”