friend but some sort of tutor.
During the last school holiday he had spent at Elmswood he’d left, before it was over, when he was sixteen to Kate’s ten, not to return to school but to go to London to take up a position at the Admiralty. When he’d next returned, on reaching his majority, after an absence of five years, he had left both the Admiralty and his youth behind. The deeply tanned young man she had encountered one morning, staring grim-faced at the lake, had been a rather intimidating and fiercely attractive stranger who’d left Kate embarrassingly tongue-tied.
Where he had been in the intervening years not even Papa knew, and it had only been after he’d left—a long time after he’d left—that Lord Elmswood had revealed his son was off ‘exploring the world’. And, the world being a very big place, it had seemed unlikely that he would return any time soon.
‘Any time soon’ had turned into never. If there had been letters, old Lord Elmswood had kept the contents to himself. On his death, it had seemed like a minor miracle when his lawyer had revealed that he knew how to contact the heir, and a miracle of considerably larger proportions when he’d sent word to Elmswood to inform Papa that the man himself had actually arrived in London.
But, regardless of the fact that he’d inherited an estate and an earldom, Kate was willing to stake her life on Daniel Fairfax, nomadic explorer, heading back to his life of wandering the far-flung corners of the world as soon as he possibly could.
In fact, she thought wryly, she was banking on him doing exactly that, even though she knew almost nothing of him. She was taking a leap of faith, but he was Lord Elmswood’s son, after all, and she’d heard nothing to suggest he was in any way of dubious character or unsavoury temperament. In any event, if her plan came to fruition she wouldn’t have to put that assumption to the test, since she was unlikely to see hide nor hair of him for the foreseeable future.
‘Excuse me, I have an appointment to meet Mr Wilson.’
‘Lord Elmswood!’ Kate scrabbled to her feet.
Daniel Fairfax, for it was unmistakably he, stood in the doorway, eyeing her quizzically. ‘This is still the Estate Office, I assume?’
‘Yes, you are in the right place. I am Mr Wilson’s daughter, I—’
Kate broke off, blushing. Dammit! Cool, calm and collected was what she needed to be, not a simpering miss! Daniel Fairfax might be a self-confident man of the world, and she might be a country hick, but she was a country hick who knew his estates like the back of her hand, and he needed her—even though he didn’t know it yet.
‘Lord Elmswood. You clearly don’t remember me. I am Kate Wilson. How do you do?’
‘Miss Wilson? Well, I never! The last time I clapped eyes on you, I’m sure you had pigtails and freckles.’
‘I was almost fifteen the last time you were home, and I have not worn my hair in pigtails since I was ten.’
‘Really? Good Lord, that makes you—what?—twenty-two? How did that happen?’
‘By the simple process of aging. It affects us all, unfortunately.’
‘Well, the passing years have certainly done you no harm, if you don’t mind my saying so. I hardly recognised you.’
‘Since you have, in all the years I’ve lived here, barely acknowledged me,’ Kate retorted, flustered, ‘that is not really surprising. I’ve not changed so very much in seven years.’
‘You’re quite wrong. But I can see I’ve touched a nerve. I hadn’t thought myself rude, not even as a sulky youth, but clearly I was. Please accept my belated apologies.’
‘You were not rude. It’s not surprising that I barely registered with you, given that you were six years older than me and—’
‘I still am.’
‘The gap is more of a chasm when one is younger.’
‘True, but I apologise for my ill-mannered younger self all the same.’ Daniel Fairfax glanced at the clock. ‘I thought your father was expecting me? Didn’t he receive my note?’
‘He did,’ Kate said, belatedly remembering her carefully rehearsed plan for this meeting. ‘On behalf of my father and myself, Lord Elmswood, may I offer our condolences on your loss?’
‘You’ve already done so—or your father has, in a letter. I understand I have him to thank for organising the funeral too. I’m told it was very well-attended. I’m sorry I wasn’t here, but by the time I had word of my father’s accident he was already dead and buried, and it took me the best part of six weeks to get myself back to England. Is Mr Wilson intending to meet me this morning or not?’
‘I’m afraid he is indisposed, but I believe I can settle all the necessary business on his behalf.’
‘Without wishing to be rude, Miss Wilson, my business is with Elmswood’s estate manager. Perhaps it would be better for me to return when your father is feeling better—tomorrow, perhaps?’
‘Lord Elmswood, when I said my father was indisposed, I’m afraid I did not mean he was afflicted with some minor ailment. Would that it were so! Unfortunately his condition is both long-standing and irreversible. I take it you are unaware that I have been acting in my father’s stead? Clearly you are,’ Kate continued, in response to his blank look. ‘In fact I’ve been helping out for some years now, but in the last eighteen months or so I have been obliged to take on almost all of my father’s duties as his health has failed.’
‘I am deeply sorry to hear that. But, with respect, I am surprised to learn that he delegated the management of the estates to you. No matter how competent you are, you are a female, and that alone, in my father’s book, would make you quite ineligible. Your father must have known that.’
‘The arrangement was of an—an informal nature.’
‘Ah. So my father was blissfully ignorant of the fact that his estate manager’s daughter was running things.’
Kate bristled. ‘I was born and raised here, and have been helping my father ever since I was old enough to ride a horse. With the greatest of respect, and with no offence intended, my lord, I know your estates a great deal better than you do.’
‘That would not be difficult, for even the cows in the fields could claim that.’
‘I love this place, my lord, even if you do not.’
‘There’s no need for those raised hackles. I am not questioning your competency. In this, as in everything else, I have nothing in common with my father, and I have no issue at all with having a female estate manager.’
‘In that case, perhaps you would care to take a look at the summary of accounts.’
Kate pushed the ledger forward, but Daniel Fairfax gave it only a cursory glance. ‘I won’t pretend to have any grasp of the financial ins and outs, but I know from that London lawyer fellow that the lands are in good hands.’
‘Relatively, all things considered. Unfortunately your father was reluctant to invest either his time or his money. Frankly, he seemed uninterested in his estates.’
But once again Daniel
