Four years ago, Uncle Harold had died, and Tristan had taken his place as the Marquess of Hawkridge.
These days, he was anything but carefree.
The young groom tipped his cap. "Take your horse, my lord?"
"Yes, thank you." Tristan handed over the reins. As his mount was led away, his gaze wandered the ancient keep—still as tumbledown as he remembered it—and past it to the old tilting yard that lay beyond. He smiled, recalling games played there as a youth, he and Griffin—and often, Griffin's charming little sisters—running through the untamed, ankle-high vegetation. Those summers spent here during his school years were memories to be treasured. Griffin's family had been a jolly substitute for the lack of his own.
"Tristan. Or I suppose I should call you Hawkridge. Whichever, it's been entirely too long."
Lost in his thoughts, he hadn't heard Griffin approach, but now he turned to see his old friend holding out a hand. He reached his own to grasp it.
"Ah, hell," Griffin said and pulled him into a rough embrace instead.
Tristan tensed for a stunned moment. Other than the impersonal attentions of his valet or a perfunctory handshake now and then, it was the first human touch he had felt in…entirely too long to remember.
He clapped his friend on the back. "Yes. Entirely too long," he echoed as he drew away. "Am I supposed to call you Cainewood?"
"Strikes the ear wrong after all these years, doesn't it?" Like the castle, Griffin's slightly crooked smile was familiar. "Griffin will do. I didn't expect you until tomorrow at the earliest."
Tristan walked with him toward the entrance. "Your note sounded urgent."
Before they reached the front steps, the double oak doors opened. Cainewood's longtime butler stood between them. "Welcome back, my lord," he said with a little bow.
"Why, thank you, Boniface," Tristan returned, pleased to see him again. The man was aptly named, for he had a bonnie face—a youthful countenance that belied his forty-odd years. No matter how hard he tried to look stiff and serious, he never quite succeeded. And other than a touch of gray gracing his temples, the years hadn't changed him a bit.
Tristan couldn't say the same for Griffin. "You look older," he said as they climbed the steps. Griffin's jaw looked firmer; his green eyes looked somewhat world-weary. "But I expect one could say the same of me."
Griffin nodded. "We're both shouldering responsibilities we never thought to have."
"Feeling overburdened, are you?" Tristan was surprised. "Surely the marquessate is less stressful than plotting war strategy."
"You have no idea." They stepped inside. "I have three sisters to marry off, and that's only the beginning—"
"They cannot already be old enough to wed!"
Griffin's laugh boomed through the three-story-high entrance hall, all the way up to its stone-vaulted ceiling. "You expect we aged while time stood still for them?" He led Tristan up the carved stone staircase. "Corinna—the baby—is nearly twenty. Plenty old enough to find a husband."
Tristan frowned. "And Juliana and Alexandra?" he asked, deliberately mentioning her last.
Maybe she would seem less important that way.
"Twenty-one and twenty-two." They turned on the landing and went up a second level to the family's private apartments. "Four deaths in the family have kept them from the marriage mart, but I mean to see them all settled now—and soon."
Griffin ushered Tristan into a dark wood study. Waving him into a leather wing chair, he went to open a cabinet.
Tristan sat warily. "Look, old man, I sympathize with your problem, but your letter indicated you were in dire straits and needed my expertise—"
"Yes." Rather than sitting behind the massive mahogany desk, Griffin chose the chair beside Tristan's. "I appreciate your response." He set two crystal glasses on the small table between them, unstoppered a matching decanter, and began pouring. "Regardless of the fact that you've hidden yourself away in the countryside all these years, you are known far and wide—"
"I'm not in search of a wife!"
"—for your advances in scientific agriculture and land management." In the midst of handing Tristan a glass, Griffin blinked. "Wife? Do you imagine I asked you here to marry one of my sisters? Perish the thought!"
Tristan breathed deep of the brandy as he wavered between relief and annoyance. Never mind that he had no interest in wedding any of Griffin's sisters—or anyone else, for that matter—he wasn't sure he appreciated having his unsuitability thrown directly into his face. "Why did you summon me, then?"
"I need your help. I've heard you've worked miracles with Hawkridge's vineyard."
"I've managed to revive it, yes. We've had two excellent harvests—the wine from last year's is particularly good." Relaxing back, Tristan took a bracing sip of the fine spirits. "You're in need of wine?"
Griffin's sip was more like a gulp. "Charles," he said, referring to his late older brother, "had taken up growing grapes, with an eye to making wine. He planted vines some three years ago—"
"Charles wanted to make wine?"
"It's the latest thing; haven't you heard? What with the prices soaring during the war against France, I suspect he thought to make a killing. But regardless, Charles always was a swell of the first stare."
"Yes," Tristan said dryly. "He was." He well remembered Charles, a tall, dark man with an air of superiority and an eye to owning the best. "Go on, then."
"I've been told not to expect a yield suited for production for another year at the least. But the vines should be bearing fruit by now, shouldn't they? They're not producing anything."
"Three years with nothing at all? Not even the odd bloom?"
"Nothing beyond leaves. I fear they may be dying. And I haven't the foggiest idea what to do." Griffin's fingers tightened on his glass. "I'm trained to lead men into battle, not manage land and livestock."
"Not to mention make wine, which is another enterprise entirely." Tristan sipped thoughtfully. "With more than thirteen thousand acres, a good percentage of that productive, you cannot stand to lose the vineyard? This is your emergency?"
Griffin
