love him, do you?”
“Oh, what do you know of love?”
For some reason, Juliet Lilbourne’s laughing face drifted through his mind. He banished it. “Nothing,” he said crossly. “But I do know you loved my father, and whatever you feel for Pilney is just not the same.”
“Of course, it is not. How could it be? I am not the same woman who ran away with your father. Who is this, now?”
A man on horseback was riding around the base of the hill in the direction of the hamlet. Catching sight of Dan and his mother, he changed direction to come and meet them. Gun barked and dashed toward him, clearly giving both horse and rider reason to pause. Used to such situations, Dan loped forward to catch the dog and tie the velvet ribbon round his neck again.
Jenny peered at the silent newcomer. “Why…why it’s Patrick!”
The rider, of craggy late-middle years, broke into smiles and dismounted, striding the last few paces past Gun to meet her. “Miss Jenny, as I live and breathe! I heard a rumor you were back but refused to believe it. Well, well, you are still pretty as a picture.”
She laughed. “Why, so are you, Patrick! I suppose you must have a huge parcel of children by now?”
“Expecting my first grandchild any day,” Patrick said proudly.
“Dan, Patrick is my father’s steward—” She broke off, frowning. “Or at least, he was.”
“Still am,” Patrick said ruefully. “No one else will take on the wretched position.”
“I’m not surprised,” Jenny said frankly. “Patrick, this is my son, Daniel Stewart.”
Dan offered his hand, and the steward, looking surprised, shook it a trifle awkwardly. “Why is the position so wretched?”
“Dealing with his lordship, for one,” Patrick replied. “For another…breaks my heart to work the land to death and put nothing back. Even by the old standards, we could do better than this, and my son talks of all those new-fangled farming ideas that—” He broke off with an apologetic shrug. “But there, I won’t bore you with that. I suppose you’ll be going back to the big house for tea.”
“I suppose we will,” Jenny said. She smiled. “Unless your Lizzie would like a guest?”
Patrick beamed. “She would love it.”
Dan was happy enough to tag along, both touched and intrigued by the way his mother was remembered after all these years. He had been to Myerly several times and never encountered Patrick, or if he had, he didn’t remember it. But then, he hadn’t really paid a great deal of attention to his surroundings before.
Gun was slightly miffed to be tied up outside the cottage, though he cheered up when Patrick’s younger children burst out of the door to play with him.
Mrs. Patrick came out in their wake and greeted Jenny with tears in her eyes. Proudly, she introduced her children and her heavily pregnant daughter-in-law, who was quickly summoned from her own cottage for the treat of meeting the important visitors from the big house.
While Jenny drank tea and gossiped, Dan got into a conversation with Patrick about the land, bringing up what he had learned from the farmers earlier in the day. He learned a good deal more from Patrick, and more yet from Pat, Patrick’s eldest son, who was full of frustrated enthusiasm for new methods that would work wonders. Only Lord Myerly would not countenance the necessary cost.
“Foolishness,” Dan said, frowning.
“He doesn’t care,” Pat burst out. “Because he gets good money from his land in the south. But it’s us who live and work here that suffer. Not him.”
“That’ll do, Pat,” his father growled.
“No, no, I asked for the truth,” Dan said quickly. “I suppose you must both have spoken to his lordship about all this? Urged such reforms?”
“He’s not interested,” Patrick said again. “It bores him.”
“And would cost him money to begin with, when he doesn’t see the point,” Dan murmured. “Because he hasn’t been out of the house in years.”
“To be fair, the workings of the land never interested him much before that either,” Patrick said.
“Hmm.”
It all made Dan very thoughtful as they walked back to the house. He was aware of his mother watching him with something like amusement, but she didn’t interrupt the silence.
*
Dan rose at dawn again the following morning, put Gun on his increasingly crusty leash, and went down to the kitchen, where the cook had made him up another breakfast parcel and a bowl of scraps for Gun.
“Bless you,” he said gratefully, letting Gun wolf his breakfast before they started off.
“Hmph,” the cook