The Rake. Mary Jo Putney

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СКАЧАТЬ men make trouble, it would be wrong to let the soldiers who defeated Napoleon starve. Wrong, and dangerous for Strickland as well.”

      He took a draft of ale and prompted, “So . . . ?”

      “I’ve encouraged the creation of various businesses to provide work. There’s a wood shop in Strickland village that employs eight men, and a brick and tile yard with five workers. Because there are good deposits of clay nearby, it made sense to open a pottery as well. It makes moderately priced ware that the average person can afford. There’s quite a market for such things, and now twelve people are employed.”

      “Who manages the place?”

      She took a deep breath. “I do.”

      The dark brows shot up. “In addition to managing Strickland? Where the devil do you find the time?”

      “I make all the decisions and keep the accounts, but a foreman supervises the daily work,” she explained. “As you can see from the estate books, I haven’t neglected Strickland. I . . .”

      He held up one hand to stop her words. “Before we go too far afield, who are the three minors who are the actual owners of the pottery? Are they local children?”

      Alys poured more ale for both of them before answering. “They are the niece and nephews of Mrs. Spenser, my former employer.”

      “More and more interesting. Where do they live now?”

      With an inward sigh, Alys recognized that it was time to confess what he would surely learn soon. “They live with me.”

      “You’re their guardian?” he asked with surprise.

      She took another swig from the tankard, her eyes cast down. “There were no close relatives whom Mrs. Spenser trusted. One reason she helped me get the Strickland position was so that I could keep the children with me.”

      “I see why they call you Lady Alys,” he said with a mocking humor. “Managing an estate, several businesses, and children as well. You are an extraordinary woman.”

      “Most women are extraordinary. It compensates for the fact that most men aren’t,” Alys snapped, then immediately bit her tongue. With his talent for getting under her skin, Davenport made her forget how dependent she was on his goodwill. She, who had always prided herself on her control, was continually skirting explosion with him.

      He laughed, his extraordinary charm visible again. “I suppose your next project is to advance beyond needing the male half of the species? As a stock breeder, you must know that will be difficult, at least if there is to be a next generation.”

      Alys had no doubt that his supply of suggestive remarks could easily outlast her belligerence. With as much dignity as she could muster, she reached for the ale pitcher. “I have never denied that men have their uses, Mr. Davenport.”

      “Oh? And what might they be?”

      His hand brushed hers casually when they both reached for the handle of the pitcher at the same time. Her nerves jumped, and she dropped her eyes to avoid his gaze. His hands were quite beautiful, long-fingered and elegant, the only refined thing about him. A seductive current flowed from him that made her want to yield, so melt and mold herself, to discover the other ways he could touch, to touch him back. . . .

      In a voice that seemed to come from someone else, she said, “We’re out of ale. Shall we order another pitcher, or are you ready to see more of the estate?”

      “More ale,” he said, apparently quite unaffected by the fleeting contact between them. “I still have a number of questions. For example, the sixty pounds a year for schoolmasters, books, and other teaching supplies.”

      He signaled for another pitcher, refilling his tankard when it arrived. Alys was four rounds behind him, and knew better than to try keeping up. She didn’t doubt that in a drinking contest he could put her under the table.

      And what would he do with you there? a mocking little voice asked. Nothing, of course. More’s the pity.

      Trying to ignore the lewd asides of her lower mind, Alys said, “The teachers are a married couple. He teaches the boys, she teaches the girls. I require all the children on the estate to go to school until at least the age of twelve.”

      “Don’t the parents resent that their children can’t start earning wages earlier?”

      “Yes, but I have insisted,” she replied. “In the short run, it’s better for the children. In the long run, the estate will have better workers.”

      “Miss Weston, did some Quaker or reforming Evangelical get hold of your tender mind when you were growing up?” Davenport asked, his dark brows arching ironically.

      She blinked. “As a matter of fact, yes.”

      “Wonderful,” he muttered into his ale. “A fanatic.” Grabbing hold of her frayed temper, Alys said with hard-won composure, “Not a fanatic, a practical reformer. You have seen the results at Strickland over the last four years. I would be hard-pressed to say precisely which reforms have produced what results, but the total effect has been more than satisfactory. The estate is prospering, and so are the people who work on it. The evidence speaks for itself.”

      “I keep reminding myself of that, Miss Weston,” he said dourly. “I trust you appreciate that you are being treated to a display of open-mindedness and tolerance that none of my friends would believe.” He shook his head. “A female steward, and a reformer to boot.”

      “It’s your income, Mr. Davenport,” Alys pointed out in an icy voice. “If you make sweeping changes, there might be a drop in the profits.”

      “I remind myself of that, too.” He poured the last of the ale in his tankard. He’d drunk most of two pitchers himself. “What about the money given to help emigration?”

      She sighed and traced circles on the table in a few drops of spilled ale. It had been a vain hope that he would overlook her cryptic notes in the account books. The blasted man missed nothing. “Three of the veterans who returned from Wellington’s army wanted to take their families to America, but didn’t have adequate savings to pay their passages and start over.”

      “So you gave them the money?” He slouched casually against the back of the oak settle, relaxed but watchful.

      “Theoretically the money was loaned, but it was understood that they might never be able to repay,” Alys admitted.

      “And the chances of collecting from another country are nil. So you just gave it away,” he mused. “Are you running a business or a charity here?”

      “If you saw the books, you know that less than two hundred pounds were lent,” she said, defensive again. “All of the families had served Strickland with great loyalty. One man’s wife worked on the harvest crew until an hour before her first baby was born.”

      Under his sardonic eye she realized how foolish that must sound to a man of the world. She added more practically, “Helping them leave also reduced the strain on Strickland’s resources—fewer jobs to find and mouths to feed.”

      “If every worker on the estate wanted to emigrate, would you have given money to them all?” he inquired with interest.

      She СКАЧАТЬ