And then we fill the trench. The ornamental lake is a vanity project. We're going to divert the stream and build a functional reservoir for the tenant farms. The dry season has been killing their crops. Norah watched him.
He wasn't posturing. There was a grim mechanical determination in his jaw. He was a man trying to dig himself out of the guilt of his bloodline. "You cannot fix it all with money," Norah said quietly. Gabriel stopped chewing. He looked at her. "They don't just need wages," she continued, holding his gaze.
They need a system that doesn't rely on the sudden miraculous goodwill of a guiltridden duke. They need fair leases. They need a steward who is accountable to them, not just to you. Gabriel leaned back in his chair. He studied her face, the defiant set of her shoulders in her cheap, washed out dress.
Most women would have flattered him, praised his generosity, and tried to maneuver the conversation toward marriage. Norah was giving him a lesson in agrarian reform. “You have a sharp mind for estate management, Miss Hastings,” Gabriel murmured. “I had an entire life of silence to observe the mistakes of wealthy men,” Norah replied. It is amazing what you can learn when everyone assumes you are deaf.
A slow, genuine smile cracked across Gabriel's face. It reached his eyes this time. Then I'd better come to the study tomorrow morning. The ledgers are a mess, and my mathematics are atrocious.
August arrived, bringing a heavy, humid heat that clung to the valleys of Foxwood, but the atmosphere on the estate had entirely shifted. The crushing dread that had hung over the workers like a physical weight was gone. Gabriel didn't retreat to the cool, shaded drawing rooms. He spent his days on a horse, riding from farm to farm, tearing up the exploitative leases Croft had forced upon the tenants, and drawing up new ones. When he wasn't riding, he was out by the reservoir.
He no longer swung a pickaxe. The men would not let him, out of a strange, fierce new respect. But he stood in the mud with them, reading the surveyor's maps and pulling his hauling timber. Norah found her own war. She took over the steward's office.
The room that had once been Croft's den of corruption became her sanctuary. She rolled up the sleeves of her plain dresses and dove into the catastrophic mess of the estate's finances. She found the hidden accounts, the ghost ledgers, the money Croft had siphoned away. She wasn't a lady of leisure. She was a weapon.
The workers quickly learned that if they needed a roof patched or a doctor for a sick child, they did not wait for the Duke. They went to the office by the kitchens and spoke to the woman with ink stains perpetually smudged on her fingers. Norah didn't offer them pity. She offered them funds, efficiency, and a terrifyingly sharp tongue if anyone tried to cheat her. The ton, meanwhile, was in collective uproar.