Page 14 of The Mistress of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #3)
She took it obediently and, without looking at Adam, allowed herself to be walked away. At the next landing she stopped and said earnestly, ‘Decius, nothing happened. I promise you.’
‘Didn’t it?’ He looked at her sadly. ‘Life is full of pitfalls. Every journey is beset by highwaymen. You have to be on your guard.’
‘You think Adam Denbigh is a highwayman?’ She wanted to laugh at the idea, but felt much closer to crying.
‘It’s easy to think a person like him is incapable of deep feelings,’ Decius said. She knew he didn’t mean Adam. ‘Perhaps it seems almost a comic idea. But he has a heart that could so easily be broken by you. He loves you, more than he can possibly express.’
Nina took a deep, trembling breath, and said the thing she had never meant to say out loud. ‘But I don’t love him .’
There was a silence in which the words seemed to circle like black, deathly birds, looking for somewhere to settle. Where they landed, leaves would wither, grass would die, darkness would fall. She felt release, relief, and a deep sorrow. There was no going back from here.
Decius looked at her steadily, and in his eyes were understanding, and pity. ‘But you married him.’
‘Yes,’ she said. That was the contract. There was no getting out of it.
Richard entered the library, and found Adeane, the bailiff, and Markham, the agent, waiting for him.
Tiger and Isaac, Giles’s dogs, pushed past him and went to do the honours, tails swinging.
When Giles was away they usually followed Alice, but she had gone out that morning, so they’d attached themselves to Richard as the next best thing.
‘You’re looking unusually grave this morning, gentlemen,’ Richard said.
‘Bad news, sir,’ said Markham. ‘Ezra Bunce is dead. He passed away last night.’
‘Bunce? That’s Hundon Farm, isn’t it? What did he die of?’
‘Pneumonia, sir. He’d been ailing some time. Got soaked through going out in the snow to see to his cattle, caught a cold and went downhill from there.’
‘Well, I’m sorry to hear it. Do we send something to the widow?’
‘Taken care of, sir,’ said Markham. ‘A note of condolence and a ham will be sent over today. And if you should feel able to attend the funeral, it will be well taken.’
‘Let me know when it is. And I must remember to call in next time I’m passing. What happens to the tenancy? Do I remember a son?’
‘His younger son John, sir,’ Adeane said. ‘The older boy, Tom, and his wife both died of a fever a few years back. They left a little daughter. Bunce and his wife have been bringing her up.’
‘Yes, I remember seeing a little child when we visited the house. What a sad thing.’
‘Yes, sir. It was a tragedy for the Bunces, because Tom was a natural-born farmer and keen to take over, but John – well, his heart’s never been in it. Now he wants to quit and go and get a job in Aylesbury. They’re taking on men at the brewery, and it’s good money.’
‘Shorter hours, too, I imagine,’ Richard said. ‘No getting up at dawn to milk the cows, eh? So who takes over? Mrs Bunce – the widow?’
The men exchanged a glance, and it was Markham who answered. ‘I doubt she’d be able to manage, even if she wanted to. But when I spoke to John this morning he said his mother was to go with him to Aylesbury – and the little girl – and he’d get a place for them all together.’
‘He’s always been a mother’s boy, has John Bunce,’ said Adeane, ‘and he’s very fond of the child. Never wanted to get married himself, so I dare say it makes him a kind of family that he wouldn’t have otherwise.’
‘But it leaves us with a problem,’ Richard said. ‘Or does it? Can you find another tenant?’
Another exchanged look, and Markham said, ‘The difficulty is, sir, that the farm’s in poor shape. Good tenants are hard enough to find at the best of times, but for Hundon’s . . . I’m afraid we shall have to take it back in hand, and improve it before we can let it again.’
Richard’s gaze sharpened. ‘But it is capable of improvement?’
‘Oh, yes, sir,’ said Adeane. ‘It’s good enough land at heart, but it’ll take money. And then it’s a problem of making enough profit from it to be worthwhile. A lot of farms,’ he added gloomily, ‘are being left unworked for that very reason.’
Richard grinned. ‘Well, it seems as though the gods are smiling on me.’
‘Beg pardon, sir?’
‘This comes just at the right time. I have an idea I’d like to try, and now Fate has presented me with a farm on which to try it.’
‘And what idea’s that, sir?’ Adeane asked indulgently.
‘Milk,’ said Richard. ‘No, hear me out! I’ve been in London, and seen how hard it is to get good fresh milk.
In some parts, the stuff is hardly drinkable – thin and grey and full of bits.
Bits of what I don’t like to know! Now, London is barely an hour away by train.
If we can get the milk promptly from farm to station and arrange the distribution at the other end we could make a fortune.
Everyone wants good milk, and no-one‘s providing it. The market is wide open.’
‘Interesting idea,’ Markham said. ‘But could you produce enough from Hundon’s to make it worth while?’
‘Not from poor old Bunce’s twelve bony cows,’ Richard said.
‘My idea is to clear the pastures, expand and improve the herd, raise the quality of the milk, and then, once we’ve got the thing established, bring in all the other farmers along the valley.
They would keep the cows, produce the milk, then we’d collect it along with our own and send it up to London for the capital’s breakfast tables.
“Ash Valley Milk – the Londoner’s Choice! ” What do you think?’
‘You’re talking about a very long-term project,’ Markham said. ‘This can’t happen in months – it will take years. And you’d have to have a standard quality of milk.’
‘I don’t see that as a problem,’ Richard said. ‘At the moment, each farmer just keeps a couple of cows for the house, but if you told him he could make a profit out of milk if he increased his stock and followed some rules, well, he’d jump at the chance, wouldn’t he?’
‘I know some as would,’ Adeane said. ‘But there’s others that’d want some convincing. Farmers don’t like change. They want to do things the way their fathers and grandfathers did.’
‘But farmers have sons who will be taking over from them one day,’ Markham said. ‘And they’ll want to take over something that has a future.’
‘Exactly. This is the future.’ Richard smiled engagingly at them.
‘I’m thinking – Dairy Shorthorns. I’ve looked into it, and they’re hardy, productive, and they give high-quality milk.
We encourage our farmers to buy more cows, and we keep a top-quality bull to serve them.
We oversee conditions and practices, and build up a sort of co-operative herd.
London will clamour for our fresh, clean, creamy milk.
No fine lady will brook anything else on her tea-table. ’
Adeane was shaking his head. ‘They’ll never go for it, sir. It’s not farming the way they know it. It more like . . . manufacturing. They won’t like it.’
‘I think the younger ones might take to the idea,’ said Markham. ‘But it’ll need a lot of investment – on their part as well as on ours.’
‘But think of the returns! For them as well as us.’
‘And there’s the business side of it. Collecting the milk and getting it to the station – well, that’s just a matter of organisation, I suppose, but it’ll need some thinking about. And then the distribution in London – that’s not an area of commerce we know anything about.’
‘Fortunately, I know a very canny businessman . . .’
‘Someone in the dairy trade?’ Markham said hopefully.
‘No, but business is business, and what he doesn’t know, he’ll know how to find out. After all, jam wasn’t his area of expertise, but he jumped on board our expansion there.’
Markham’s brow cleared. ‘You’re thinking of Mr Cowling?’
‘Indeed. He’s my sister-in-law’s best friend’s husband, which makes him practically my brother-in-law, and one should always make use of family connections.’
‘What’s in it for him, sir, giving away all this advice?’ Adeane asked suspiciously.
‘Well, if he thinks the idea has possibilities – which I’m convinced it has – he’ll probably want to come in with us as a partner.’
‘It wouldn’t be a bad thing to have someone with some business experience involved,’ said Markham. ‘But first we need to talk through the whole scheme, work out some details, and put something down on paper.’
‘You’re in favour, then?’ Richard said hopefully.
‘It’s worth looking into,’ Markham said cautiously.
‘I’m not. It’d be throwing good money after bad,’ said Adeane.
‘If we’ve got to take the farm back in hand anyway, we might as well be bold and try to make something of it,’ Richard said.
‘And it won’t be your money that’s thrown at it, Adeane, my good fellow, so you needn’t look so glum.
’ He strode to the desk, pulled out a sheet of paper, and headed it in big capitals, ASH VALLEY DAIRY COMPANY.
He looked up at the other two men and grinned.
‘It’s rather fun being in at the birth of something, isn’t it? ’