Devil's Daughter (The Ravenels #5) - Lisa Kleypas Page 0,33
find a horse.” His smile broadened as he added, “He be a sprack ’un.”
“Sprack?” Phoebe repeated, unfamiliar with the word.
“A lively lad, quick in mind and body. Up early and late. Sprack.” He snapped his lean fingers smartly as he said the word. “Mr. Ravenel knows how to make it all go together—the new ways and the old. Has a touch for it. Put the land in good heart, he has.”
“It seems I should take his advice, then,” Phoebe mused aloud. “About my own farms.”
Neddy looked at her alertly. “Your farms, milady?”
“They’re my son’s,” she admitted. “I’m looking after them until he comes of age.”
He looked sympathetic and interested. “You be a widder, milady?”
“Yes.”
“You should buckle to Mr. Ravenel,” he suggested. “A fine husband he’d make. You’d get some great rammin’ bairns off that one, certain sure.”
Phoebe smiled uncomfortably, having forgotten how frank country folk could be in discussing highly personal matters.
They were soon joined by Mr. Ravenel, Sebastian, and Justin. Her son was bright-eyed with enthusiasm. “Mama, I pretend-steered the engine! Mr. Ravenel says I can drive it for real when I’m bigger!”
Before the tour resumed, Mr. Ravenel ceremoniously escorted Justin to a shed containing cisterns of pig manure, claiming it was the worst-smelling thing on the farm. After stopping at the shed’s threshold and sniffing the rank air, Justin made a revolted face and hurried back, exclaiming in happy disgust. They proceeded to a barn with an attached dairy, a feed house, and a shed of loosebox stalls. Red-and-white cows meandered in a nearby paddock, while the rest of the herd grazed in the pasture beyond.
“This is stock rearing on a larger scale than I expected,” Sebastian commented, his assessing gaze moving to the rich land on the other side of the timber rail fence. “Your cattle are pasture-raised?”
Mr. Ravenel nodded.
“There would be less expense involved in stall-raising them on corn,” Sebastian pressed. “They would fatten more quickly, would they not?”
“Correct.”
“Why let them out to pasture, then?”
Mr. Ravenel looked somewhat chagrined as he replied. “I can’t confine them in stalls for their entire lives.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
Phoebe glanced at her father quizzically, wondering why he found the subject so absorbing, when he’d never shown any interest in cattle before.
“Mama,” Justin said, tugging at her elbow-length sleeve. She looked down to discover the black cat brushing against the hem of her skirts. Purring, the creature wound around Justin’s legs.
Phoebe smiled and returned her attention to Mr. Ravenel.
“. . . would be a better business decision to keep them in stalls,” he was admitting to her father. “But there’s more to consider than profit. I can’t bring myself to treat these animals as mere commodities. It seems only decent . . . respectful . . . to allow them to lead healthy, natural lives for as long as possible.” He grinned as he noticed the expression of a nearby workman. “My head cowman, Brick-end, disagrees.”
The cowman, a heavyset mountain of a man with piercing gimlet eyes, said flatly, “Stall-fattened beef brings a higher price at the London markets. Soft, corn-fed meat’s what they want.”
Mr. Ravenel’s reply was conciliatory; clearly it was an issue they’d discussed before, without a mutually satisfactory resolution. “We’re crossing our stock to a new shorthorn line. It will give us cows that fatten more easily on pasture grass.”
“Fifty guineas to hire a prize bull from Northampton for the season,” Brick-end grumbled. “It would be cheaper to—” He broke off abruptly, his sharp eyes focusing on the cow paddock.
Phoebe followed his gaze, and a shock of horror gripped her as she saw that Justin had wandered away and climbed through the paddock’s timber fence rails. He appeared to have followed the cat, which had scampered inside the enclosure to bat playfully at a butterfly. But the paddock contained more than cows. A huge brindle bull had separated from the herd. It stood in an aggressive broadside display, shoulders hunched and back arched.
The bull was no more than twenty feet away from her son.
Chapter 11
“Justin,” Phoebe heard herself say calmly, “I want you to walk backward to me, very slowly. Right now.” It took twice as much breath to produce the usual amount of sound.
Her son’s small head lifted. A visible start went through him at the sight of the bull. Fear made him clumsy, and he tripped backward, falling on his rump. The massive animal swung to face him in a lightning-swift change of balance, hooves churning the ground.
Mr. Ravenel had already vaulted the fence, his hand touching