.

few more weeks make?

      Aaron arrived at the door of Connie’s sitting room a respectable hour after they had endured another awkward dinner with his father. The fraught atmosphere was made worse by the fact that Aaron and the old man had been arguing about the state of the fields for most of the afternoon. But his father would not listen to reason and Aaron was hesitant to push him too far in case it overtaxed his fragile heart. For the time being, they agreed to disagree. A situation that was beyond frustrating because with every passing day things were becoming less salvageable.

      Unfortunately, Connie was not in her nightdress when she bid him to enter. In fact, she was as formally dressed as she had been at the dinner table and was sitting primly on her sofa, embroidering something. He would have much preferred to see her drying her splendid hair by the fire, although this way was probably for the best.

      ‘I brought port this time,’ he said, waving the decanter in front of her and she smiled stiffly in response, barely lifting her eyes from her sewing. Her guard was up again, he could tell, and Aaron decided he was fonder of her when she was being true to herself.

      ‘I have never tasted port.’

      ‘Then you are in for a treat. This is one of my father’s best bottles. I pilfered it from the cellar and he would be livid if he knew that I had taken it. He would be more livid if he knew that I was sharing it with a Stuart.’

      ‘Then I shall enjoy the taste of it even more.’

      He saw a brief flash of her humour then. Her green eyes had lit up with mischief and wiped away the mask for a moment. Aaron poured them both a glass and sat down on the armchair opposite. ‘I am going to visit some of the tenants tomorrow if you would like to come with me? There are a lot of them so I will give you fair warning that you might be stuck in the saddle for a couple of hours.’ Aaron also wanted to check up on Mr Thomas. The man had claimed that the seed would be delivered to all of the tenants on the morrow and Aaron wanted to catch him out on that blatant lie. Perhaps then his father would listen to reason and dismiss the wastrel. Of course, there was no real reason for dragging Connie around while he did this, except for the fact that he had found her presence today soothing.

      Most mornings since his return, he rode around aimlessly for hours, trying to banish the horrifying images of his dreams from his mind. To his complete surprise, he had found that process much easier to do with Connie in tow. He had forgotten today’s nightmare at almost the exact moment she had brazenly marched up to him in that magnificent riding habit. Lustful feelings aside, he had also thoroughly enjoyed her company. It had been nice to have somebody intelligent and witty to talk to rather than moping around on his own, stewing in his own pessimistic juices. Being with Connie made him feel more normal.

      She positively beamed at him, forgetting to be haughty and uninterested, or regally benevolent. ‘I would like that immensely! Do you think we might find the time to squeeze in another race? I thoroughly enjoyed thrashing you this morning.’

      Aaron had enjoyed it, too, but for very different reasons. ‘We can race from cottage to cottage if you want to.’

      ‘Oh, I want to! I have not had so much fun in ages. My father forbade me from racing years ago. He said it was not ladylike.’ She lowered her embroidery frame and the corners of her pink lips curved slightly, although her eyes clouded at the mention of her father. ‘That has always been his most common criticism of me. Racing is not ladylike, arguing is not ladylike and having such strong opinions, and daring to voice them, are certainly not ladylike. Do you know he once told me that my red hair was not proper at all and that towering over everyone was not ladylike either? I think I have been a tremendous disappointment to him, aside from the fact that I went and got myself ruined, of course, because I have been quite unable to stop doing all of those things that he most dislikes about me. I do not think I have been a very good daughter.’

      Bizarrely, she was smiling wistfully at the memory so Aaron held back what he wanted to say. He did not want to sour the mood by telling her that he thought her father was a nasty piece of work. He rather liked her height, her eyes and lips came level with his, and as for her hair? How the devil could hair be unladylike when it was quite the most beautiful head of hair he had ever seen? It was simply further proof to him that the Earl of Redbridge was a tyrant and a fool. Much like his own stubborn sire.

      ‘Pay it no mind, Connie. As a fellow disappointment to a parent I can assure you that you will never truly be able to please him, no matter how hard you try.’

      She lowered her embroidery again and gazed at him intently. ‘How have you disappointed your father? Aside from marrying me, of course.’

      Where to start? ‘My father has always enjoyed hunting and I do not. When I was younger he used to force me to accompany him in the hope that it would toughen me up. He used to get very frustrated when I refused to kill anything.’

      ‘Then I am to assume that you are not responsible for any of those ghastly stuffed heads?’

      Aaron pulled a face that made her smile. ‘They are awful, aren’t they? But to answer your question, I am not responsible for even one of them. I could never understand what pleasure there was in chasing a frightened, senseless animal through the woods unless you needed to eat them. That disappointed my father a great deal. He was also dead against me joining the army. I had to wait until I reached the age of majority and then I had to purchase my own commission. My father thought he would stop me by reducing my allowance to such a paltry sum that I could barely afford to go out.’

      ‘How did you manage to purchase a commission and a uniform? Those things are expensive.’

      Now it was his turn to smile at a memory. ‘I took all of the money I received religiously to a gaming hell and gambled until I had won enough to buy it all for myself. My father was livid when I came home in my new regimentals. He threatened to disinherit me.’

      ‘But he did not?’

      ‘This house, the estate and the title are all hereditary. The worst he could do was banish me until he died. The law states that it would still all come to me regardless of his wishes. Once I realised that, I knew all of his threats were empty ones. My father likes to control things. He could hardly attempt to control me if he had disowned me. It was all bluster and I called his bluff, the stubborn old fool.’ She watched him take a sip of his port to cover his sudden agitation. ‘He is still being stubborn. I tried to talk to him about the estate again today and refused to leave his study when he met with Mr Thomas.’

      Inadvertently, he had given her an opening that she was not prepared to squander. Connie peered at Aaron over the top of her embroidery frame, suddenly nervous. Subtlety had never really been her strong suit and she would need to be very subtle now if she was going to find out what Mr Thomas was truly up to without tipping Aaron off. ‘Did you find out why your estate manager has not yet planted the fields?’ She pretended to focus on her sewing as if she were merely making polite conversation.

      Connie could hear the frustration in his voice. ‘That man is a weasel. He came up with some convoluted explanation about a new farming method he had been researching, that doubled the yield of a wheat crop by delaying it. It is apparently all the rage in Holland and the landowners there have seen a dramatic rise in their profits. My father was utterly convinced by it.’

      ‘But you were not?’

      He leaned forward in his chair, resting his forearms on his knees, and shook his dark head in exasperation. ‘I just know that he is lying through his teeth. Unfortunately, I still do not know enough about farming to be able to argue back. I never paid attention growing up and now I am trying to cram in a lifetime’s worth of knowledge in just a few weeks. I am beyond confused by it all. I just hope that it does not do more irreparable damage until I can take over.’

      Connie jabbed her needle into the frame to cover up her own unease. ‘Surely one bad harvest does not constitute irreparable damage?’

      ‘One wouldn’t—but this will be the fourth. The estate