Free To Love and to Cherish by Patricia Gaffney Page A

out of this hell we call our life together.
    Sorry for myself today. Unattractive quality. I shall try to do better.
    Mr. Holyoake is beginning to get an inkling that the new lord of the manor may not be the radical improvement over the old that he’d hoped for. Poor Geoffrey: he comes ill-equipped to manage twenty thousand acres of corn, cattle, sheep, and apple orchard, not to mention the men and women who labor on the land for him. What’s really needed here is a sort of working viscount, something between a peer and a squire—but alas, that man isn’t Geoffrey. At first Mr. Holyoake, in his innocence, came to him with questions about steam threshers and zigzag harrows, crop rotations and imported proteins to fatten the stock. He comes no more, the futility of it having been borne in on him rather forcefully the afternoon Geoffrey passed out while he was speaking. Now (unfortunate man!) he actually directs his questions to
me
—questions about whether we can afford a new corn dresser or if the dairy parlor needs a new roof, how much to ask for our oats at the Corn Market next month. I listen to his slow, measured opinions, pretend to weigh them, and then agree with him. It’s a polite fiction we uphold religiously, and then we part ways with identically furrowed brows and, I don’t doubt, troubled minds.
    In spite of my crushing ignorance, I find myself unexpectedly delighted with the beauty of this countryside, the rural peacefulness, the wary kindness of the villagers. I’ve lived in pastoral settings before, but never so intimately; I was a visitor, my father’s daughter, and ironically, his painting distanced me further by making the countryside
other
, an object to be studied and measured and then
rendered
in oils or pastels. But here I am, in a sense, of the land, even a caretaker of it (albeit a spectacularly stupid one), and when I’m not quaking with fear of the responsibility for it, I feel strangely exhilarated. Oh, I shall make an abysmal lady of the manor if—when—Geoffrey goes away and leaves me alone! And yet I’m almost looking forward to it. By default, I will be the only one with responsibility for this sprawling country fiefdom. That thought terrifies me; if I believed in God I would be on my knees, praying for strength and guidance. Well, well, I will simply do my best, and hope I don’t bring plague and famine down on these good people.
    Mayor Eustace Vanstone paid us a visit yesterday. He reminds me of a sleek gray fox with his silvery hair and bony, ascetic face, his cheekbones as sharp as knives. He is a perfect politician, and if he has his sights set on higher game than mayor and local magistrate, I would not be at all surprised. I enjoy watching him flatter Geoffrey, while he runs his thumb and forefinger down the two ends of the elegant mustache that overhangs his upper lip. He ruled Wyckerley, I gather, when the old viscount, for all intents and purposes, abdicated, and now he fears being displaced by the new regime. A groundless fear, as he’ll soon discover, but in the meantime it’s amusing to . . .
    ***
    A STEP ON the stair, heavier than Violet’s or Susan’s, made Anne look up from her writing desk and listen, her muscles tense, fingers whitening around her pen.
    “Anne? You up there?” Geoffrey’s voice from the landing sounded querulous.
    She reached for a clean sheet of paper and slid it over the one she’d been writing on. “I’m here,” she called back, and a moment later Geoffrey appeared in the doorway. He wore riding clothes and he smelled of horse and sweat. He had a drink in his hand, but she couldn’t tell if he was drunk.
    “So,” he greeted her, thin lips curling in his mocking smile. “This is where you’ve been hiding.”
    She slumped a little, and draped an apparently negligent wrist over the arm of her chair. She didn’t answer.
    He walked to the south window and peered out, straightened, went to the fireplace mantel, trailed a finger