The Leopard Prince (Princes #2)(50)

“What do you dream about at night?”

Rats. He suppressed a shudder. “Nothing.” He winced. That wasn’t what a gently born lady wanted to hear. “Besides you,” he added hastily.

“No.” She tapped him on the shoulder. “I’m not fishing for a compliment. I want to know what you think about. What you want. What you care for.”

What he cared for? At this time of night? After he’d loved her, not once, but twice? “Ah.” He felt his eyelids drifting shut and struggled to open them again. He was just too tired for this. “I’m afraid I’m a simple man, my lady. I think mostly about the harvest.”

“What do you think?” Her voice was intent.

What did she want from him? He stroked her hair as her head lay on his chest and tried to think, but it was too great an exertion. He let his eyes close and said whatever came to mind. “Well, I worry about the rain, as you know. That it won’t stop in time this year. That the crop will be ruined.” He sighed, but she was quiet beneath his hand. “I think about next year’s planting, whether we should try hops this far north.”

“Hops?”

“Mmm.” He yawned gigantically. “For ale. But then we’d have to find a market for the harvest. It would be a good cash crop, but would the farmers have enough of their own to keep them through the winter?” She traced a circle on his breastbone, her touch almost tickling. He was waking up now as he thought about the problem. “It’s hard to introduce a new crop to the farmers. They’re set in their ways, don’t like innovations.”

“How would you convince them, then?”

He was silent a minute, considering, but she didn’t interrupt. He had never told anyone of this idea. “Sometimes I think that a grammar school in West Dikey would be a good idea.”

“Really?”

“Mmm. If the farmers or their children could read, were educated even a little, innovation might be easier. And then each generation would be more learned, and they in turn would be more open to new thoughts and ways of doing things. It would be an improvement measured in decades, not years, and it would affect not only the landowner’s income, but also the lives of the farmers themselves.” Harry was wide awake now, but his lady was silent. Perhaps she thought educating farmers a foolish idea.

Then she spoke. “We’d have to find a teacher. A gentleman who was patient with children.”

Her we warmed him. “Yes. Someone who likes the country and understands the seasons.”

“The seasons?” The hand on his chest had stilled.

He covered it with his own and rubbed the back of her hand with his thumb as he talked. “Spring, cold and wet, when the farmers must get the seed into the ground, but not too soon or it’ll frost, and the ewes are all lambing at once, or so it seems. Summer, long and hot, tending the sheep under the wide, blue skies and watching the grain grow. Fall, hoping for the sun to shine so the harvest will be good. If the sun shines, the people celebrate and there are festivals; if it doesn’t, they go about with thin, fearful faces. And winter, long and dreary, the farmers and their families sitting by a little fire in the cottages, telling tales and waiting for spring.” He stopped and squeezed her shoulder self-consciously. “The seasons.”

“You know so much,” she whispered.

“Only what goes on in this part of Yorkshire. I’m sure you could find many who would think that little enough.”

She shook her head, her springy hair brushing against his shoulder. “But you’re aware. You know how the people around you think. What they’re feeling. I don’t.”

“What do you mean?” He tried to see her face, but her head was tilted down against his chest.

“I get caught up in silly things like the cut of a gown or a new pair of earrings, and I lose track of the people around me. I don’t think about whether Tiggle is being courted by the new footman or how Tony is doing all by himself in London. You wouldn’t know it to look at Tony, he seems so big and strong and in control, but he can get lonely. And Violet…” She sighed. “Violet was seduced this summer at our family home in Leicestershire and I didn’t know. I never even suspected.”

He frowned. “Then how did you find out?”

“She confessed just this morning.”

Her face was still hidden, and he tried to brush the hair away from her eyes. “If it was a secret, if she didn’t want to tell you before now, it would be hard to know. Children of that age are very mysterious sometimes.”

She bit her lip. “But I’m her sister. I’m the closest one to her. I should have known.” She sighed again, a small, sad sound that made him want to shield her from all the world’s worries. “He’s pressing her to marry.”

“Who?”

“Leonard Wentworth. He’s a penniless nobody. He seduced her simply to get her to wed him.”

He smoothed his mouth over her forehead, unsure of what to say. Did she see how similar her sister’s situation was to her own? Was she afraid that he, too, would demand marriage as a forfeit for their lovemaking?

“Our mother…” She hesitated, then began again. “Our mother is not always well. M’man has many illnesses and complaints, most imagined, I’m afraid. She spends so much of her time looking inward for the next disease that she doesn’t often notice those around her. I’ve tried to be a mother to Violet in her stead.”