“I have a few trusted tenants who can take charge of their particular endeavors.” He wished the interfering countess to the devil even while understanding the ladies needed to hear this. “Barkley and his son can handle the orchard. I’ll let the shepherds know Wilson is in charge of the herd until I say otherwise, and so forth.”
“If a situation rises requiring a decision only you can make, would these men listen to a woman?” Iona asked, drifting closer, the light of interest in her eyes.
Where the hell was she going with this? Gerard gritted his teeth. He didn’t care who she was or what title she wore. He wasn’t putting a delicate young lady in charge of large, crude men. His workers weren’t that enlightened.
“It’s doubtful,” he said flatly, hoping that would discourage her.
“What about Mary Mike?” she asked.
That knocked him for a loop. He was pretty certain the entire room fell silent, except for the ringing of doom in his ears.
He didn’t want to embarrass his cousin, but he couldn’t help studying her. Mary Mike was tall, just under six feet, broad at the shoulders but neither stout or slender. If she had a chest, she hid it under double-breasted coats similar to a riding habit. For dinner, she usually wore a straight skirt, but he knew she preferred split ones so she could ride astride. She was a formidable horsewoman—and had a way with animals.
“I can do it, my lord,” Mary Mike stated without equivocation. “I’ve been working with your sheep and stable foremen for years. They just call me Mike or Malcolm. To put it bluntly, we’ve developed an excellent breeding program. They trust me.”
Gerard considered pounding his skull against a wall. Breeding program. The woman had said breeding program. And no one gasped. He had to remember Wystan was another planet, one run by abnormal women.
“But it’s the apples and wheat that need attention now,” he reminded her. “We bring in men who don’t know you.”
“If you’ll allow, they won’t know I’m a woman,” she said in satisfaction. “I can ride those fields better than Avery ever did.”
Gerard remembered why he avoided his estate three-hundred-sixty days of the year. The women were insane and did their best to drive him down the same path.
“She can do it, my lord,” Winifred said firmly. “You won’t know it’s her when she rides out.”
They were effectively telling him that a woman—a lady—could be as good as a man in an all-male terrain. He couldn’t see it. The men were crude and frequently aggressive. They needed someone who spoke their language. Even he was at a disadvantage. It required a man in the middle who could speak to both classes—like Avery, dammit.
“Women are very adaptable,” Iona said with confidence. “We have to be. You’ll be here part of the time. Watch and see.”
He could imagine the little countess now, walking the fields of the north country after her mother’s death, beating sheep into submission through sheer strength of will. He threw back his whisky, swallowed his doubts, and nodded. “Let’s test it then. I make no promises. If the men get drunk at noon or drive sheep over a cliff, that will be the end of the experiment, understood?”
Mary Mike held out her hand like a man. “I’m honored. Thank you, my lord.”
He shook, as if she were a man. He could almost sense a collective sigh of relief.
“Ceridwen says you’re one of us,” Simone said with satisfaction. “Is dinner ready yet? After all this tension, I’m quite famished.”
The bell rang as if her words had yanked the ropes. Or maybe the ghostly Ceridwen.
Before the beekeeper could vanish, Gerard caught her arm and all but dragged her into dinner.
If he wasn’t careful, he’d make her his countess, just to handle the residents of his castle. But she was an impoverished, managing Malcolm, and the very last kind of wife he needed. He would try not to want her too much.
As the soup was served, Iona waited for the earl to scold her for her interfering ways. When she had corrected her stepfather, he’d usually shouted and stomped off, leaving her or Isobel to manage what needed to be done. The earl retained his diplomatic façade, as always, but he was steaming. Even over the heady scent of the chicken broth, she could sense his fury and confusion.
And integrity. She hadn’t smelled integrity often, so she’d been unable to identify the scent at first. It was much like being unable to judge the taste of a spice by its smell. But now she recognized that it complemented the clean fresh odor of honesty well.
She savored the soup but still the earl didn’t speak except when spoken to. He could hold his raging temper—nice.
Hers wasn’t a retiring nature. She’d simply learned to disappear in self-defense. But the earl knew her story, most of it, anyway. If she didn’t mean to hide while she was here, she might as well shake off the rest of her invisibility and try to remember who she was.
“You are perfectly free to scold for my managing ways,” she offered. “I’ve been locked in my room, threatened with a whip, and had feces flung at me. I will assume you’ll be more polite. And since I have to leave anyway, you can even throw me out, if it will make you feel better. But I must say, you dealt with the ladies beautifully this evening.”
The earl’s jaw muscles tightened over aristocratically high cheekbones and his midnight eyes glared. “You are not at fault for Avery’s theft.”
“But you were perfectly content to let him go his own way until I interfered.” She needled him just a little to deflate the steam.
“I would have been perfectly content on the way to bankruptcy,” he retorted in a low voice so Grace on his other side could not hear. Politely, he turned to Grace and asked a question about her loom.
“Mary Mike will
