Cold-Hearted Rake (The Ravenels #1)(28)

Please tell me if I may help. I am acquainted with the tenant families involved, and I would be willing to speak to them on your behalf.

Lady Trenear

“What’s birdlime?” West asked, handing back the letter.

“A glue made of holly bark. It’s smeared on tree branches to catch birds. The moment they alight, they’re permanently stuck.”

Devon understood exactly how they felt.

After a month of unrelenting work, he had barely scratched the surface of the Eversby Priory’s needs. It would take years to acquire an adequate understanding of crop cultivation, land improvement, dairying, animal husbandry, forestry, accounting, investment, property law, and local politics. For now it was essential not to become mired in detail. Devon was trying to think in broad sweeps, seeing ways that problems related to other problems, finding patterns. Although he was beginning to understand what needed to be accomplished, he didn’t know precisely how it should be done.

He would have to hire men whom he could trust to manage the situation on his terms, but it would take time to find them. Totthill was too old and stubbornly traditional, and so was Carlow, the land agent who worked for him. Replacements were immediately necessary, but throughout England there were only a handful of men equipped for estate administration.

That very morning, Devon had sunk into despair, brooding over his mistake in taking on such a burden. But then Kathleen’s letter had arrived, and that had been enough to bolster his resolve.

Anything was worth having her. Anything.

He couldn’t explain his obsession with her, even to himself. But it seemed as if it had always been there, woven through the fabric of his being, waiting to be discovered.

“What will you do?” he heard West ask.

“First I’ll ask Totthill what he knows about the borrowed funds. Since he probably won’t have a satisfactory answer, I’ll have to go through the account ledgers to find out what happened. In either event, I’ll tell the land steward to estimate what it will take to make the land improvements.”

“I don’t envy you,” West said casually, and paused. His tone changed, sharpening. “Nor do I understand you. Sell the damned estate, Devon. You owe nothing to those people. Eversby Priory isn’t your birthright.”

Devon sent him a sardonic glance. “Then how did I end up with it?”

“By bloody accident!”

“Regardless, it’s mine. Now leave, before I flatten your skull with one of these ledgers.”

But West stood unmoving, pinning him with a baleful stare. “Why is this happening? What has changed you?”

Exasperated, Devon rubbed the corners of his eyes. He hadn’t slept well for weeks, and his cookmaid had brought him only burned bacon and weak tea for breakfast. “Did you think that we were going to go through life completely unaltered?” he asked. “That we would occupy ourselves with nothing but selfish pleasures and trivial amusements?”

“I was counting on it!”

“Well, the unexpected happened. Don’t trouble yourself over it; I’ve asked nothing of you.”

West’s aggression weathered down to a core of resentment. He approached the desk, turned, and hoisted himself up with effort to sit next to Devon. “Maybe you should, you stupid bastard.”

They sat side by side. In the hard-scoured silence, Devon contemplated his brother’s blurred and puffy countenance, the flesh beneath his chin loosening. Alcohol had begun to crosshatch a pattern of threadlike capillaries across his cheeks. It was difficult to reconcile the disenchanted man beside him with the laughing, high-spirited boy West had once been.

It occurred to Devon that in his determination to save the estate, the tenants, servants, and Theo’s sisters, he had overlooked the fact that his own brother could do with some saving as well. West had always been so clever that Devon had assumed he could take care of himself. But the cleverest people sometimes caused the worst trouble for themselves.

It had seemed inevitable that Devon and West would turn out to be selfish wastrels. After their father had died in a brawl, their mother had left them at boarding school while she had traveled the continent. She had fluttered from affair to affair, accumulating heartbreak in small fractures that had eventually proved fatal. Devon had never learned whether she had died from illness or suicide, and he didn’t want to know.

Devon and West had been shuttled between schools and relations’ homes, insisting on remaining together no matter how often people tried to separate them. As Devon reflected on those troubled years, in which each had been the other’s only constant, he realized that he had to include West in his new life – even if he didn’t want to be included. The strength of their bond would not allow one of them to move in any direction without pulling the other inexorably along.

“I need your help, West,” he said quietly.

His brother took his time about replying. “What would you have me do?”

“Go to Eversby Priory.”

“You would trust me around the cousins?” West asked sullenly.

“I have no choice. Besides, you didn’t seem particularly interested in any of them when we were there.”

“There’s no sport in seducing innocents. Too easy.” West folded his arms across his chest. “What is the point of sending me to Eversby?”

“I need you to manage the tenants’ drainage issues. Meet with each one individually. Find out what was promised, and what has to be done —”