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No one observed the landing.

“I’m tired of explaining myself.” Rosalie set her basket on the wall. “What I do reflects on my parents twofold, because of who they are. Because they followed their hearts. It’s important that my siblings and I appear respectable.”

Anne heaved the bowls box over the wall and hoisted herself up. She flopped forward onto the stone, kicked her legs, and wiggled, then slid down into the grass headfirst.

Really not how you’d mount a horse.

“Your parents let you associate with Georgie,” she said, wobbling upright, molding her crushed bonnet into shape. “Georgie’s not respectable. They’re infamous. A walking scandal.”

“I’m right here.” Georgie frowned. “Let’s not get carried away.”

Rosalie tried to crawl over the wall, but her knee pinned her dress.

The sharp tug of the fabric propelled her into open space with a wild cry.

Anne sprang forward, half catching her, half dragging her until her feet hit the ground.

The two clung to each other in a controlled stagger, almost like dancers, before separating, both of them pink and breathless.

“Georgie is infamous, but Georgie is also coming into a fortune.” Rosalie was panting, but she picked up where Anne had left off, resolutely. “Georgie may have made a cake of themself in front of the entire ton, but—”

“Right. Here.” Georgie waved a bottle back and forth.

“But their rung of the social ladder remains higher than my rung,” continued Rosalie. “My parents assume I’ll meet someone eligible by association. It’s that simple.”

“And you plan to do so. Meet someone eligible.” Anne’s eyes shone with tears.

“Eventually. I can draw it out.”

“That’s not a solution.”

“There isn’t a solution. But if you don’t go to Italy, we can stay ineligibly in each other’s lives, and that’s something.” Rosalie hooked her basket back over her arm and turned to Georgie. “Which way?”

The three of them crossed the field in silence. The next stone wall they encountered was crumbling, so they hopped easily over the rubble.

“It reeks,” complained Anne.

“Dung.” Georgie nodded wisely. This field had been recently plowed and spread itself before them, all rich brown ridges and furrows.

“It’s like an ocean,” said Rosalie, as she began to cut across. “But the waves are solid.”

“And made of manure,” added Anne, wrinkling her nose as her ankle boots sank deep into one of the ridges.

They’d reached the middle of the field when shouts erupted.

“Out! Get out!” A man approached at a trot. He was huge and vibrantly displeased, white teeth bared in his craggy, sunbrowned face, one brawny arm windmilling.

“Oh dear,” breathed Rosalie.

“Run!” cried Georgie.

“Stop!” shouted the man, both arms now in the air. “Not through my turnips.”

Georgie, Anne, and Rosalie stopped as one. Georgie looked at the man and then back the way they’d come, taking in the trampled ridges. Upon closer inspection, tiny green specks revealed themselves. Realization dawned.

“My mistake,” they called. “I should have guessed the field was planted. We were just…” They were still standing on a ridge, to the detriment of who knew how many turnips, so they leapt into a furrow. “Terribly sorry! I pray the turnips make a full recovery.”

The man was not appeased. He kept charging toward them.

“I’m Georgie Redmayne, actually,” called Georgie. “From the manor.”

This revelation should have transformed the man from angry ogre to obsequious giant. Instead, he looked angrier. He halted just short of Georgie, two furrows over.

“Redmayne!” He shouted it then spit at the ground. “Haven’t you done enough to bring us all to ruin? You had to come and grind with your heels?”

“Be easy, Charles.” Another man was approaching. He was much smaller, and smiling, arms at his sides. “We hope we see ye well, Miss Redmayne. We didna know as you were back.”

“I’m just recently back.” Georgie glanced between the men. “Do you farm this land?”

“Charles farms it,” said the smiling man, gesturing. “That’s Charles Peach, that is.” He said it as though the name meant something.

Georgie nodded, trying to think which Peach. The family was numerous. Was this big Charles Peach, who once carried two twenty-stone pigs to market, one under each arm?

Silly question. There couldn’t be a bigger Peach.

“He’s an uncommon fine farmer,” said the smiling man. “And he grows a pretty lot o’ crops. I feed my milch cows on his cabbages.”

“Someone’s got to see the beasts don’t starve,” snarled Peach, glaring at Georgie, his dark eyes hot as coals.

“Do you mean…Should that be me?” Georgie cleared their throat, increasingly unsure how to proceed.

They’d spent the past hour skulking about their tenants’ farms, but they hadn’t noticed if the cattle looked thin.

They hadn’t noticed anything about the state of the animals, or the buildings either.

Wasn’t Harry seeing to all that? Not literally, of course.

No chap, however keen, could count a cow’s ribs from France.

“Mr. Tetley!” They snapped their fingers. “I’ll let Mr. Tetley know, of course.” Mr. Tetley was the steward. He’d always seemed busy, probably because there was a lot to do, and he was doing it. Mr. Tetley would take care of this.

The smiling man’s smile wavered. “It’s not Mr. Tetley now. It’s Mr. Fletcher.”

“It’s been Fletcher for five years.” Peach spoke low and rumbly.

“Whoever it is.” Georgie didn’t give a fig, so long as the person fattened up the cows. Peach looked ready to feed them Georgie. Did cows eat people? If they were chopped up with the cabbage leaves?

“I’ll tell Mr. Fletcher about the cows,” they promised. “And that wall there.” They glanced at the tumbled stones.

“And my turnips, while you’re at it,” rumbled Peach, with such menace in his voice that Anne made a squeaking sound.

Georgie added vague, affirmative noises, and the three friends departed the field with as much haste as care for the turnips allowed.

“That was terrifying,” gasped Anne, once they were all walking again on a lane. “I feared we’d be ripped limb from limb, and the turnips watered with our blood.”

“Was your father ironfisted?” Rosalie gave Georgie a sidelong look. “They’re usually ironfisted, the landlords who get ripped limb from limb.”

“You’re on the ogre’s side?” Georgie clutched a bottle to their chest. “Rankest betrayal! He was in a bad mood because the puppies he ate last night for dinner disagreed with him. My father had the opposite of an iron fist. What’s the opposite?”

“Silver fist?” suggested Anne. “Silk fist?”

“Open hand,” decided Georgie. “He rebuilt the village school. And he always sent a doctor around to the cottagers in winter. There was some talk of improving drainage. Or ditches. Or the drainage had something to do with the ditches. That was all some time ago, but I’m sure…

” Georgie trailed off. They were sure of nothing.

All decisions regarding the management of the estate had been made in absentia for half a decade. Or else left to Mr. Fletcher.

Was everything in rack and ruin?

They applied a bottle to the side of their face. The cool pressure of the glass was reassuring. And reminded them that all they could do at present was watch their step in plowed fields.

And drink.

“I’m thirsty,” they announced. “Champagne, anyone?” They lifted the bottle higher and swerved from the lane. “Meet me under yonder oak!”

Anne reached the oak last. Georgie was already filling glasses, and Rosalie was unpacking the salmagundi.

“So many crows,” said Anne, dropping the bowls box unceremoniously on the grass. “Aren’t they an ill omen?”

“Death,” intoned Rosalie, and reached deeper into the basket. “Oh, good. Plum cakes.”

“Death.”

Something about Anne’s tone brought Georgie’s head up.

She was gazing out over the meadow, gazing at an irregular patch of darkness amid all the green. Georgie squinted and the patch resolved into a lifeless body.

Anne let out a bloodcurdling scream.