"Actually, I am usually at work by now," Miranda answered with a chuckle. "I have been talking to Lord and Lady Westhampton for almost an hour."
"Good God." He looked appalled at the idea and went to pour himself a cup of tea.
After breakfast and two or three cups of tea, he seemed more alert, and they went in search of Miranda's father, Rachel having quickly excused herself from an exploration of the old house.
Miranda opted to meet with the estate manager before they began the tour, so their first stop was at his office, which lay across the sideyard and was in the front of the small stone house in which he lived.
"Lord Ravenscar!" he said, looking surprised, when Devin knocked on the door and walked in.
"Hallo, Strong." Devin glanced around the office.
"If you had sent me a note, I would have been happy to call on you in the main house, my lord," the estate manager went on nervously, scurrying around and moving files out of one chair and dragging another closer. He was a short, stocky man, balding at the back of his head, so that he looked as if he wore a monk's tonsure.
"Miss Upshaw had a fancy to see your office," Devin explained. "Miss Upshaw, this Mr. Strong, the estate manager. Strong, the future Lady Ravenscar, Miss Upshaw."
"How do you do, miss? It's a pleasure to meet you." Strong quickly covered up his first look of surprise and smiled at her, whipping out his handkerchief to dust off the seat of the straight-backed chair for her.
"Thank you." Miranda reached out and shook his hand. "And this is my father, Joseph Upshaw." She sat down in the chair while her father pumped the man's hand.
Strong retreated behind his desk, casting a look at Devin. Miranda suspected he was not used to dealing with countesses who shook estate manager's hands. "Congratulations on your marriage, my lord," he said obsequiously. "I wish you very happy, ma'am."
"Thank you. I am sure I will be," Miranda said crisply. "I would like to talk to you this afternoon about the estate, after we finish the tour of the house. Just to get a general idea of what the problem areas are and what it will take to bring it back to a profitable working order. After the wedding, I shall get into it more deeply, of course."
Strong gazed back at her blankly. He blinked. Finally he said, "You—you want to talk to me, Miss Upshaw?"
"Yes." Miranda wondered if the man was a trifle dim. If so, it was no wonder that the estate had gone downhill the last few years. "About the state of Lord Ravenscar's holdings."
"But...but..." he sputtered, looking toward Devin for help.
"They are going to fix the place up," Devin explained. "Didn't anyone tell you that?"
"Well, yes, your uncle wrote me. I mean, I understood that there would be, uh..." His eyes rolled back toward Miranda, and he paused uncertainly.
"An infusion of cash?" Miranda asked politely. "Yes, there will be. But first we will have to see what needs to be done, won't we?"
"I—I—but surely Mr. Dalrymple is the one you need to talk to about that. I mean, him being the trustee and all, he'll be the one handling the money. He'll be arriving this evening, won't he?"
Miranda cast a look at Devin, who said, "Yes, he is due in this evening. But the fact is, Strong, Uncle Rupert won't be the one you will be dealing with anymore. From now on, it will be Miss Upshaw. Or, rather, Lady Ravenscar, as she will be."
The estate manager's mouth dropped open, and he stared at Miranda as if she had suddenly grown two heads.
"We shall start off slowly," Miranda assured the man, thinking that she would probably have to bring in Hiram Baldwin to help Strong, at least temporarily. The man looked as if he might faint. "This afternoon I just want to go over things in general. I won't need to look at the figures just yet. But I really know nothing about the estate. What sort of land it is, how it's being used, whether it's being put to the best use. Later we can get into it in more detail. Then I'll need maps and records for the past few years. We may have to go back even further than that. And, of course, I'll want to ride around the estate and see everything firsthand."
“The whole estate?'' He goggled at her.
"Well, not at one time, of course," Miranda said in what she hoped was a soothing tone. "First, of course, we are going to go over the house and grounds. Devin is going to show us around them now."
"Lord Ravenscar?" Strong looked almost as doubtful as he had when he had heard that Miranda intended to run the estate.
Miranda smothered a smile as Devin said, "I do remember where everything is, you know."
"Oh, of course, my lord, I didn't mean to imply..." Strong began to rub his hands together anxiously. "I am sure you will do an excellent job of it."
The three of them rose and left me office. Miranda suspected that as soon as the door was closed behind them, Mr. Strong had run to pour himself a stiff drink.
She turned to Devin, saying thoughtfully, "Is Mr. Strong a trifle slow? He seemed to have a deal of trouble understanding what I wanted."
Devin smothered a smile. "I think you are a bit... shall we say, intimidating... for the ordinary man, Miranda. He is not accustomed to a countess walking in and saying she would like to see the books. I am sure he'll be fine once he gets used to you. Give him a little time to recover from the shock. Maybe he will be better after he talks to Uncle Rupert."
They went first around the outside of the house, exploring the neglected grounds and examining the exterior of the mansion. Devin pointed out where the herb garden on the kitchen side of the house had stood, as well as the elegant formal gardens on the terrace behind the house. Flowers still grew there, the roses in a wild tangle, the vines of the arbor running over and dripping down into the doorway. There was a kind of shaggy, careless beauty about the flower gardens, but the unpruned hedges at the bottom of the terrace simply looked like thickets of wild bushes, and the graveled paths were muddy and pocked with holes.
"There's been only old Mr. Pettigrew and his grandson for a few years now, and they cannot take care of it all. I have even seen Cummings out in the roses a time or two, trying to cut back the weeds so he can still have roses for the vases," Devin said. “When I was a boy, I can remember there was a maze down on that side of the terrace." He pointed toward an area that was overgrown with grass now. "It had to be carefully pruned, and over the last generation it had become completely overgrown. Father had them cut it to the ground and uproot it. He was afraid one of us children would manage to crawl into it and become hopelessly trapped.''
“I read that the landscaping was done by Capability Brown," Joseph said. "Is that true?"
"As far as I know. The alternating elms and beeches as you come up the lane are ones he had planted. And over there—" he pointed in the other direction from the maze, where trees encroached upon the grounds "—those were once a very neat orchard, or so my father told me. Fruit trees all in military rows, planted by his grandfather. In the spring it's beautiful, a thick blanket of pink and white flowers."
"I have a landscaper coming next week,” Joseph said with satisfaction. "We'll soon set it to rights. I don't suppose you have the original plans?''
Devin shrugged. "I don't know. I suppose they might be in the library or my study. I shall look for them." He turned and looked back at the house, shading his eyes against the sun. "The exterior stone is in pretty good shape, just nicks and chinks here and there, some stone carvings that have fallen off. The roof needs repair badly, I know that. The west wing is entirely closed off because of the water damage. Most of the chimneys don't draw properly. There's woodworm in most of the banisters and railings. Dry rot. Wet rot. There are some floors in the west wing that I am not even sure are safe."
He looked from Joseph to Miranda and back again. "Still game for repairing the old pile?"
"You must be joking. You've only whetted Papa's appetite," Miranda said with a chuckle. "Lead on."
They went inside and walked through the house, taking what Miranda termed a short overview. The original old great hall of the center wing had been turned into the large entry of the house, the centerpiece of which was an elegant staircase that rose to the landing, then curved in both directions up to the second floor. The steps were marble, as was the floor of the entry, and the banisters were made of English oak. Miranda had already noticed on her way downstairs this morning that the railing was pricked with hundreds of tiny holes, indicating the presence of woodworm.
"At least we don't have deathwatch beetles," Devin said as they started making their way around the stairs. "Or at least we haven't heard them knocking." The larger beetle, which was even more voraciously destructive than the woodworm, was known by the tapping sound it made inside the wood.
"That's good."
"Those are the best tapestries." Devin pointed to the huge, faded hangings that decorated the walls of the large room, along with several enormous portraits of ancestors, many of them darkened with time. "Mother had the best ones taken from all the rooms and moved down here, where they would be seen first."
He led them next to the vast kitchens and the warren of small larder rooms and servants' quarters, then took them into the main ballroom, a huge expanse of marble floor that took up most of the central wing of the bottom floor. Then they climbed up the stairs and started from the top, opening the windows in the attic to look out upon the slate tiles of the roof, many of which were broken or displaced, and examining the water damage. They made their way down, walking up and down the halls, poking into all the rooms, so that by the time they reached the second floor, where the main family rooms were, it was long past time for lunch, and they were hungry and dusty, as well.
However, Joseph and Miranda wanted to finish the tour, so Devin led them down the hall, looking into what he called the morning room, which had been paneled all in dark wine-red Cordovan leather with brass studs, now faded and cracked. Next came a music room, and across the hall was what he termed the small ballroom, a chamber about half the size of the main ballroom below. Beyond it lay the library, a large, gloomy room.
Devin crossed to the windows and pulled aside the heavy draperies, revealing a set of tall windows that faced south, letting in a pleasant light that revealed a room two stories high, filled with books.
''Oh, my..." Miranda breathed.''What a wonderful room!" Two tables and a number of well-cushioned chairs sat in the middle of the room, as well as a large globe on a stand and another stand containing a large, old, leather-bound Bible. Built-in bookcases eight feet high ran all around the room. The double bank of windows took up much of one side wall, and above the bookcases on two of the other walls were more hangings and portraits. But the fourth wall held a wooden walkway about four feet wide, reached by a wooden staircase, and that wall was also filled with bookcases.
Miranda walked all around the room, admiring everything, thinking of how she would refurbish the room and make it beautiful and comfortable. This, she knew, would be a room in which she spent much of her time. "I love it here."
She climbed the wooden staircase to the loft of the library, noting that the banister here, too, had the tiny pinholes that indicated woodworm. When she reached the upper level, she walked along, admiring the books.
"Oh, look!" she cried. "Here are books about the house. I can't quite see all the titles. I wonder if there is a map of the gardens in any of them." She stepped back to get a better angle of sight to the top shelves. "I'll need a stool."
She went up on tiptoe, straining to see better, and reached behind her to balance her hand on the rail. The balustrade gave way beneath her hand, and Miranda, off balance, felt herself falling helplessly backward into space.
Chapter 12
Miranda shrieked, twisting and grabbing frantically as she fell. With one hand she managed to grab one of the slender railings, and she held on for dear life. Below her she could hear her father shout her name and the sound of feet running. Her arm felt as if it were about to tear out of its socket, and her fingers were slipping from the railing. She scrabbled desperately with her other hand for some purchase, but found nothing but slick wood floor. Then the rail snapped, and she plummeted toward the floor below.
But the seconds when she had clung to the railing had given Devin enough time to reach the spot below her, and he caught her as she fell, so that instead of crashing into the hard wood, she thudded against the solid flesh of his chest. He staggered back under the force of their collision, and they fell into a heap on the floor. For a moment they lay there, stunned. Devin's arms were clasped around Miranda so tightly she could scarcely breathe, and she realized an instant later that she was clinging to him equally hard. She closed her eyes, and a shiver ran through her. For an instant she had thought she was gone.
"Miranda! Are you all right? Jesus God, I thought you were dead!" Her father, who had run for the stairs to climb up to her, now hurried over to where they lay.
"I—I'm all right," Miranda said, her voice muffled by Devin's shirt.
Joseph reached down and grasped her arm, helping her up, and Devin released her. She stood up, brushing at her dress with her hands. She wanted to burst into tears, she realized, to throw herself back against Devin's firm chest and give way to hysterical sobs. But that was not her way. Besides, she told herself, Devin had just saved her life; she shouldn't repay him by turning into a sodden, clinging female.