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Roland acknowledged the truth of that. ‘So when Cartwright came along with a lifeline, he seized it?’
‘Yes. Unfortunately he did not envisage you would not agree to the arrangement. Naturally, Cartwright demanded the money back. The Earl did his best, sold off a few paintings and ornaments and managed to find the initial capital, but Cartwright refused it. He wanted a vast amount of interest as well. He was a businessman, he said, and money was a commodity like anything else and should make a profit. Your father had deprived him of the profit he expected, namely a title for his daughter, so he was entitled to make it another way. He offered to expunge the whole debt in exchange for Browhill. The strip of land was nothing but heather and scrub, so I advised his lordship to agree. Soon after that Cartwright began successfully mining for lead…’
‘Poor Papa. That must have galled him. According to my mother he thought he had been tricked into parting with the land and Cartwright knew there was lead there even before he suggested taking it. Is that true?’
‘I have no way of knowing. It was enough that your father believed it. He thought if he could recover the land and take over the mine, the profits would be enough to set all to rights. After all, there was a war on and lead was needed for ammunition, not to mention for roofing, piping and paint.’
‘Are you still pursuing the suit?’
‘I have had no instructions to the contrary. Of course, if you should instruct me otherwise…’ He stopped to look enquiringly at Roland.
Roland had been prepared to drop it, but the notion that his father had been bullied into agreeing to the transaction when he was far from well made him hesitate. ‘Tell me, when the bargain was made, was it wrapped up tight? No loopholes?’
‘That is what we have been endeavouring to discover, but Cartwright was far from co-operative and I have no reason to think his daughter will be any more so. My dealings with her have led me to believe she can be stubborn. And as money means nothing to her…’
‘On the contrary, I think it means everything to her.’
Mountford gave a twisted smile of acknowledgement. ‘She has that from her father. He made a fortune trading cotton, sugar and slaves.’
‘So she would not mind losing a few pounds fighting me.’
Mountford shrugged. ‘Who is to say? Do you want me to continue with it?’
‘I will think about it and let you know. Now, what about the house and its contents? Could they not have been saved?’
‘As soon as the Earl’s problems became common knowledge, the dunners were on the doorstep. Tailors, vintners, jewellers, saddlers, butchers, those he has lost to at the tables, not to mention estate workers and servants, all turned up, wanting to be first in line for whatever was going. I was obliged to advise his lordship that simple retrenchment was not enough.’ It was said apologetically. ‘He stubbornly refused to sell, but in the end he did allow himself to be persuaded into moving into the dower house, letting it be known it was on medical grounds and as soon as his health recovered he would return to the main house. The Hall was put up for rent, but no one came forward and he was obliged to realise whatever assets he still had, except the house itself and the rest of the estate, to pay everyone off.’
‘And have they all been paid?’
‘I believe so, yes.’
‘That, at least, is a relief.’
‘If I were you, my lord, I would endeavour to sell,’ Mountford went on. ‘There must be someone who has the blunt to restore the place.’
Roland was reminded of Charlotte Cartwright. How she would crow! She might even put in a bid herself. He would not give her the opportunity. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I am surprised at you suggesting such a thing. I will bring it about myself.’
The man gave him a tired smile. ‘It will cost a great deal.’
‘I am aware of that,’ he said, standing up to leave. ‘I will find the wherewithal.’
His next call was at a tailor’s shop where he bought two new coats, two waistcoats, pantaloons in superfine and riding breeches in soft leather, several shirts, a dozen muslin neckcloths, and a pair of Hessians, arranged for them to be delivered, then he returned to Amerleigh, and, with Travers, set off to inspect his domain.
The estate was large and included dairy farms on the lower ground and sheep grazing higher up and some woodland in between. It had never occurred to him that it would not continue to dominate the surrounding country and its people for centuries more, not even when Cartwright had turned up and bought up the neighbouring estate, pulled down the old house and built an edifice that had the locals wide-eyed with astonishment. He was a mushroom, the detractors said, and like a mushroom would flourish for a day and then be gone. How wrong they had been. It was Amerleigh that would crumble before Mandeville unless he did something about it.
They rode round the village, noting that there were few people about. ‘All working at the Cartwright mill,’ the smithy told him when he asked. ‘’Twas the only work they could get when his lordship let them go.’ He spoke to one or two of the older women who remembered him as a boy and welcomed him home, convinced that now he was back, the jobs would return and the repairs to their cottages be put in hand. From the village, he made his way to the Home Farm where Ben Frost gave him a catalogue of grievances, which did nothing to improve his despondency: his barn leaked, the window casements on the farmhouse were rotting, and, what was worse, a wall separating his sheep from the road had collapsed and the animals were straying onto the highway. Roland promised he would do what he could and then set off up to Browhill to take a look at the disputed land.
The mine was set in the side of the hill. There was a great wheel-house in the centre of the site and several brick buildings were scattered about, one of which had a very tall chimney from which a column of smoke drifted. The sound of their horses must have alerted its occupant, for he came out to meet them.
‘My lord Temple,’ he said, recognising Roland. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘You can show me round,’ Roland said.
The man was middle aged, with a stooped shoulder and a distinct limp. His name was Job Bunty and he had once been an Amerleigh gamekeeper, shot, if memory served Roland correctly, by a poacher he had tried to arrest. The man picked up a lantern from a niche in the rock and lit the candle inside it with a flint. ‘This way, my lord.’
‘Is it worked out?’
‘No, my lord, but it’s got mighty deep, two hundred foot and more. After all the rain we’ve had, there’s a deal of water down there and the pumping engine don’ seem able to shift it all. Mind your head, my lord, the roof’s low.’
Roland did not need telling; the lantern cast an eerie glow over a narrow tunnel running steeply downwards. They had to proceed in single file, almost bent double. And then it suddenly opened out to a huge vault. Roland stepped cautiously forwards and, taking the lantern from Bunty, swung it over a great void, noticing the ladder attached to the side, disappearing into the murk below his feet. He picked up a stone and dropped it down the hole. After several seconds he heard the splash. ‘Come, let us go back and you can show me the rest.’
Back on the surface, they passed several men who had just come up from a different level and were extinguishing the candles stuck on their hats. Two young lads, stripped to the waist, were pushing a loaded truck on rails. Their guide led them to the washing floor where the ore was separated from the dirt and other minerals in running water. ‘In Mr Cartwright’s day it was done by small boys,’ Bunty told Roland as they walked on. ‘But Miss Cartwright won’t have them standing in water in bare feet and now it’s the bigger lads who do it and they are provided with boots.’
They arrived at another building where the ore was crushed to prepare it for smelting, work which was done by women, usually the wives of the miners. Next was a blacksmith’s shop, where the smithy sharpened the miners’ picks and drills, and the changing house, where the single men lodged, which was ill lit and gloomy. Everything was covered in fine, grey dust. They were just going to walk up the hill to look at the smelting mill when Charlotte arrived on horseback. Seeing the two men, she dismounted and strode over to them. ‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded without preamble.
‘Assessing the situation,’ Roland answered lightly.
‘Oh, I see, you still think this is Amerleigh land.’
‘Naturally I do.’
‘Then you are mistaken. I would have expected your lawyer to have told you that.’
‘He told me that it was wrested from the late Earl under extreme duress.’
‘I know nothing of duress.’
‘No, I can understand you would not even know the meaning of the word,’ Roland said. ‘But I can tell you no gentleman would have dunned another in so vindictive a fashion.’ His emphasis on the word gentleman was not lost on her.
‘And no honest man would renege on a debt,’ she retorted.
He wondered if she knew exactly how the debt had occurred. ‘My father offered the capital sum back, but your father insisted on exorbitant interest.’
‘There is nothing illegal about that.’
‘No, but my father would have found it given time. He was not given time simply because your father was set on making himself more money from the deposits in this mine.’
She laughed, wondering if there were any truth in what he said. ‘I suppose I am to take it that you are going on with that ridiculous claim.’
He had been wondering if it was worth the time and money, not to say stress, the lawsuit would involve. Thinking about what Mountford had told him, it seemed to him his father was as much to blame as Mr Cartwright. The old Earl should not have spent the money he had been given before making sure his son would do as he wanted, and when he had not, should have offered it back immediately without being asked, then Cartwright could not have dunned him. It was six of one and half a dozen of the other, a silly squabble that should never have occurred. Roland regretted that he had been involved, albeit unwittingly. On the other hand, if the mine really did belong to the Amerleigh estate, the profits could certainly be put to good use. ‘You could revert the land to the Amerleigh estate and then there would be no need for the lawsuit to continue.’
‘Certainly not,’ she said, determined not to give an inch. ‘I am about to open up a new adit. Now, please leave. I am too busy to argue with you.’
Roland bowed and returned to his mount, followed by Travers, doing his best to keep a straight face.
‘You may laugh,’ Roland told him as they rode back to the village. ‘She is a veritable shrew, but I shall get the better of her, you shall see.’
‘Oh, I am sure you will, Major.’ Travers found it difficult to give his master his proper title, but Roland did not mind that. As far as he was concerned he was going into battle and it was one he might enjoy, considering no one was likely to be killed because of it.
‘Miss Cartwright, ’tis madness,’ Jacob Edwards told her the morning after her encounter with the Earl at Browhill. He had been summoned to Mandeville to be told she wanted to release funds for a new shaft to the Browhill mine. He was a young man of thirty, dressed in an impeccable dove-grey morning coat and pristine shirt. No one seeing him would have believed he had once wandered barefoot about the village lanes in torn breeches. ‘It is not like you to go on beyond the point of a venture making a profit.’
‘Profit is not everything.’
This statement made him laugh; it was so unlike her. ‘If not profit, what do you hope to gain?’
‘Gain nothing,’ she said, ‘but keep everything.’
‘I am not very good at riddles. Pray explain.’
She began pacing the room impatiently, swishing her grey skirt about her as she turned at the end of each perambulation. He watched, admiring her shapely figure and striking features. He had admired her for years, ever since he had come across her as a child, but she gave no indication that she was aware of it or would consider an approach by him. In her eyes he was simply her factotum, someone to carry out her orders, occasionally to advise, never to look on with affection. He doubted she was capable of it.
‘I do not want Amerleigh given the slightest opportunity to repossess it,’ she said.
‘The land might have been part of his domain, but he never mined it, nor did his father,’ he said. ‘The late Earl never established a claim to mining rights.’
‘Would he need to, given he owned the land?’
‘I do not know.’
‘Then find out.’
‘Very well, ma’am.’ He bowed himself out and she soon followed. She had spent the morning at the Scofield Mill, supervising the loading of barges with bales of cotton cloth, to be taken to Liverpool by river and canal for loading on to the Fair Charlie. She hated the name, but as her father had chosen it to mark her birth, she would not change it. As soon as it was safely aboard, she had returned home to meet Jacob Edwards. Now, with an unaccustomed hour or two to fill, she decided to go for a ride. Not for a single minute did she admit, even to herself, that she hoped she might meet the Earl. The confrontation the day before had roused her in a way that nothing had ever done before. Accustomed as she was to making deals, striking a hard bargain, taking it for granted her orders would be obeyed, it was a refreshing change to have to fight for something. It was the battle itself that put the gleam into her eye.
She went to the kitchens, sent May to the stables to ask Dobson to saddle Bonny Boy, then, taking a basket, filled it with a can of milk, some eggs and a jar of cook’s homemade preserve, all of which she intended to take to Mrs Biggs. The poor woman had recently had another baby and she was struggling to manage since her husband had lost his position as under-gardener at the Hall. The two oldest girls worked at the mill, but they could not earn enough to keep the whole family.
‘It is the Earl’s responsibility to look after his people, not yours,’ Cook told her.
‘Yes, but Beth and Matty work for me. I must do what I can to help them. Besides, I doubt the Earl has had time to see to such things and from what I have seen of him, his pockets are to let.’
‘How can that be? He is an aristocrat, is he not? They always find money from somewhere for what they want. If not, they fall into debt and think nothing of it.’
Charlotte knew this to be true, especially of the late Earl. It was why his heir had come home to desolation. She could almost feel sorry for him. Almost. But that did not mean she was prepared to see the villagers suffer. She had been helping them and would continue to do so. She went up to her room to change into her riding habit and put on her boots, then went back to the kitchen to pick up the basket. Five minutes later she was walking her horse down the drive and out of the gates in the direction of the village, balancing the basket in front of her on the saddle.
Mrs Biggs, who had seven children, lived in a little cottage near the church. Until he had been turned off by the late Earl’s lawyer, her husband had been a conscientious gardener who did his best for the family, but since then he had become low in spirits and very bad-tempered. He did not like charity, but for the sake of the children was forced to accept it. Charlotte tried to go when he was not at home, in order not to embarrass him.
Mrs Biggs bobbed a curtsy and accepted the basket with gratitude. ‘Will you stop and take some refreshment?’ she asked, as she always did.
Charlotte knew that providing her with refreshment would mean others in the family going short and she would not have dreamed of allowing that. ‘No, thank you, Mrs Biggs, I have other calls to make. How is the little one?’
‘All the better for what you bring, ma’am. We all are. Do you think that now the new Earl has come home, he will re-engage the staff?’
‘I am sure I do not know, Mrs Biggs. Let us hope so.’
She stopped to cuddle the baby, unmindful of her expensive clothes, and to talk to some of the other children before leaving, telling Mrs Biggs to send one of them back with the basket another time and she would give him a penny for his pains. She loved children and longed for some of her own, but to do that she must marry and, as she had forsworn to do that, she must put all thought of being a mother out of her head.
Leaving the cottage, she decided to ride further afield and set off through the village along the lane that ran beside Amerleigh Hall, intending to go up through the wood and on to the hill. She reined in when she saw workmen mending a broken wall beside the road. One of the men looked up at her approach and she was surprised to discover it was the Earl himself in overalls. ‘Good afternoon, my lord,’ she said coolly.
‘Miss Cartwright,’ he answered and waited.
‘My lord, I am surprised to see you mending walls.’
‘It needs doing,’ he said, wondering what censure was coming next. ‘Mr Frost’s sheep have been straying onto the road, so he tells me, and I enjoy working with my hands. It is calming.’
She slipped from the saddle and, picking up her trailing skirt, walked towards him, leading Bonny Boy. ‘I can understand you need something to calm you, my lord, and building walls is certainly a creditable occupation, but there are men in the village without work. Their families are suffering because of it. Could you not have employed one or two of those?’
His face darkened with annoyance. ‘Whom I employ is my affair, madam.’
‘Of course.’ Antagonising him was not the way to influence him, she realised. ‘But I am concerned for the people who once worked on the estate, and because you have but lately returned, I thought you were perhaps unaware of their desperate plight.’
He wiped his hands on his overalls and walked over to stand in front of her. ‘I would not have made a very good officer if I remained blind to what went on around me, Miss Cartwright. I am very well aware of the state of affairs in the village.’
‘Then you will think about re-employing the men? There is one in particular, a man called Biggs. His wife has recently been delivered of her seventh child and they are at their wits’ end.’
‘When circumstances allow I will do what I can.’
His words confirmed her suspicion that he was pinched in the pocket; no wonder he wanted her mine and the profits it made. ‘Thank you. Does that mean you intend to stay?’
He laughed. ‘Would you have me gone again so that you may ride wherever you like, acting Lady Bountiful?’
‘That is not, nor has ever been, my role, Lord Temple. But starving people do not work well or willingly.’
‘I am aware of that, Miss Cartwright, I do not need a lecture.’
He could not explain to her, of all people, that it was not callousness that held him back from helping the villagers, but the necessity to conserve his resources. He wondered why she had not married; she was still young and her wealth must surely be a great inducement. Could it be that prospective suitors were put off by her habit of saying what was in her mind and interfering in their affairs? If she had been anyone but who she was, he might have enjoyed working with her to help the villagers. As it was, enjoyment was the last thing on his mind.
She was about to remount when she became aware of a carriage being driven very fast along the lane towards them. She hesitated, waiting for it to pass, at the same time realizing that there was a small child on the road. She let out her cry of warning, but Roland had seen him too and dashed into the road to rescue him.
Charlotte watched in horror as the coachman tried to pull the horses up. They reared over the man and boy. The coach slewed round and toppled over and Roland and the boy disappeared. The coachman was thrown down beside the wall, which knocked him senseless, and the screams of the vehicle’s occupants filled the air as it turned over.
Charlotte dashed round the overturned coach to the spot where she had last seen Roland and the boy, but was overtaken by Travers, who had been working on the wall with his lordship. The horses were struggling to stand and he quickly released them from the traces, but there was no sign of the Earl or the boy. ‘Major!’ he shouted.
‘Over here.’ The voice, though breathless, was surprisingly strong and came from the ditch on the other side of the carriageway. A moment later, his lordship’s head appeared, followed by the rest of him, carrying the senseless boy in his arms. ‘Had to pull him into the ditch,’ he said calmly, laying the boy gently on the grass beside the unconscious coachman. ‘I think he might have a bump on the head. He’ll come to his senses directly.’ He looked up and saw Charlotte standing uncertainly beside him. ‘Are you hurt?’
‘No, my lord. Are you?’
‘Nothing but a bruise or two.’
She knelt down beside the boy, aware that a portly man dressed in a coat of blue superfine and nankeen pantaloons was climbing from the overturned carriage. He had lost his hat and his hair was awry and he was very angry. ‘Imbecile!’ he shouted, addressing Roland. ‘Letting your brat wander about the public road like that.’
‘I think he is but slightly injured, sir,’ Roland said coolly. ‘But I do thank you for your kind concern.’
‘Yes, well, he should not have been in the road,’ the man said, recognising the put-down for what it was. ‘Did he not hear us coming?’
‘No, he could not,’ Charlotte put in. She had recognised the six-year-old Tommy Biggs, who had come round from his fright and was looking from one to the other, trying to understand what was being said. ‘He is deaf. But your coachman has no business to be going at such a speed he was unable to stop in time. Tommy could have been killed.’
‘Are you his mother?’ The man reached in his pocket and withdrew a purse.
‘No, I am not, but that is not to say his mother would not appreciate some recompense. She is poor and doctor’s fees will come hard.’
