Page 53 of Miss Dashing
Nunn sent a glance in the direction of the stable. “I have a large estate. When the Corn Laws are repealed, which will happen the instant suffrage is expanded, I won’t be able to afford jam for my toast, much less wine with supper or fair wages for the domestics.”
“Suffrage won’t expand that much,” Phillip said. “Not at first. The geniuses in the Lords will give voting rights to just enough more men to quiet the grumbling, not enough to beggar the landed class. As an island nation, Britain needs to maintain food production more than most, though you must agree, rotten boroughs serve no proper governmental purpose.”
“I will grant you that.” To Phillip’s surprise, Nunn fell in step beside him. “I’ve seen you, with the haying crew, in the ditches, mending wall. You must truly like the exertion.”
To Nunn, that explanation probably made sense. “I like the stewardship,” Phillip said. “An estate requires care, just as children, shops, and households do. I was raised without family, and the land became my passion.”
“I knew your father.” Nunn used his riding crop to whack the heads off a stand of blooming nettles. He’d just helped propagate the patch, did he but know it. “You have his height, and you bear a resemblance about the eyes, but he was a self-important, braying ass. I cannot credit that you are his get.”
“Neither could he.”
“Ah. One did wonder, and yet, you look like him.”
As they ambled along, it occurred to Phillip that Nunn had yet to get to the point, and for all his hauteur and posturing, the earl had one. He was not a fellow to indulge in random conversations, an attribute in his favor.
“I should thank you,” Nunn said, “for…” He waved a hand in the direction of the home farm. “For lending a hand. I was a younger son, off to subdue the Americans, and thus I wasn’t raised to manage Nunnsuch. We have manuals for deportment and books that tell us how to cook a roast, but farming…”
“An art learned over a lifetime,” Phillip said. “Henry Wortham has a talent for it. Promote him to assistant steward, and he’ll soon know as much as your steward does. Henry was born on the estate and considers it his home, not merely a place to work.”
Nunn ambled in silence for twenty yards, and the summer cottage came into view. “Loyalty is a fine quality. I’ll consider your suggestion.”
In for a penny… “Or you could simply tell Hecate that the estate is beyond you, and she’d have it in hand within five years.” Particularly if Phillip assisted with the task.
Nunn decapitated a stand of wild carrots this time. “Do you know how incessantly this family expects Hecate to solve their problems? The woman gets no peace, and her thanks is to be maligned and resented, all because she has a good head on her shoulders and does not suffer fools. I’d trade her for the lot of them, and she’s not even a true Brompton.”
That Hecate had a supporter in the earl came as a surprise. “Then why not treat her with a little more respect, a little warmth?”
“I’d make her my damned heir if I could, but the instant I show her any favor at all, her lot will only worsen. She is loyal to the rogues and flirts I call my family, and if I so much as complimented her bonnet, they’d make her pay. Hecate has burden enough as it is. I rely on her to manage what investments I can afford, and she has extended Nunnsuch any number of unsecured loans, some of which I’ve even managed to repay. I draw the line at making her a target for the family’s bile.”
“You might tell her that,” Phillip said, mounting the cottage steps and feeling every joint and tendon protest the effort. “Find a quiet moment to let her know how much you appreciate her.”
“Mrs. Roberts agrees with you, but exactly when does one find a quiet moment amid the rioting of the Brompton throng? If Edna isn’t making a ballyhoo over a lost hair ribbon, then Charlie is placing stupid wagers with men who can buy and sell him twice over, and Eglantine is weeping because her husband—my heir—has once again gambled away her pin money. Society refers to them as the Bedlam Bromptons for good reason.”
And yet, for all Nunn’s exasperation, there remained a thread of affection beneath his words.
“What of Hecate’s father? Was he a rackety sort?”
Nunn paced the length of the porch, and Phillip thought he might ignore the question.
“I introduced Marianne to her dashing sea captain right here at Nunnsuch, if you must know. Hecate’s parents were rounding out the numbers at a gathering much like this one, and Isaac was being the perfect ass that is apparently his birthright. Marianne got it into her head that if she could present Isaac with a son, he’d settle down.”
“And instead,” Phillip murmured, “she presented him with an excuse to hold her in contempt for the rest of her days.” The late marquess was apparently not the only man to ride that weary horse.
“Certainly to disdain her. Isaac needed Marianne’s money, and still does, though Hecate now controls the wealth. Drives Isaac barmy, which is exactly what he deserves. Marianne was a lamb to slaughter when her family agreed to Isaac’s suit. He ought never to have treated her as he did, but try telling a Brompton what to do when they are set on stupidity.”
Or when they were set on providing for an entire family of wastrels and wantons. “Is Hecate’s father still alive?”
Nunn paused at the top of the steps. “Very much so. He bides in Bristol, though his mother’s people are American. He’s quite well-to-do. I suspect a substantial portion of Hecate’s wealth comes from him, though she probably doesn’t know that herself. Marianne learned to keep herself to herself. I write to the man regularly, in part so he has occasional word of his daughter’s situation.”
“She deserves to know him.”
Nunn looked away, to where the roofline of Nunnsuch gleamed above the trees in the westering sun. “She doesn’t ask about him, and he doesn’t want to create awkwardness. She looks very much like him and has his talent with investments.”
Phillip surmised, in what was not said, that Nunn feared to lose access to that talent and to Hecate’s money. Married to a Berkshire courtesy lord, she could continue to supervise, support, and subsidize her Brompton family. With a doting papa to fly to—and American cousins—she might well cut her Brompton ties once and for all.
Not likely, but possible.
“I intend to offer for her,” Phillip said, though he’d yet to work out the details. Another blanket under the stars suggested itself, though he wanted to exceed even the glory of that memory. The only ring he could offer her had belonged to his mother, and what if the size wasn’t right? “I know I ought to ask Isaac’s permission to court her, but he’s not worthy of such a courtesy.”
