Amy Lake Read Online Free

needed to scrimp over outlays.  Cassandra had been correct to remark on the fortune of the viscounts of Cardingham; it was enormous.
    Why? thought Talfryn, for the hundredth time.  Why ignore the land and the people for whom you are responsible, when there is more than enough money in your pockets?  It had never made sense. 
    The late Lord Davies had spent most days at his club, reading the London newspapers and discussing politics.  Talfryn’s mother—the viscountess—had attended whatever society entertainments she wished, and the occasional ball gown was, it seemed, the price his lordship paid to be left to his own interests.  Even the birth of twin daughters had little effect on his habitual indifference to his family.
    Lord Davies could recall only one piece of advice he had ever received from his father.
    “Remember just one thing, my boy,” the viscount had said, “There’s very little in life that’s worth the trouble.” 
    Talfryn had moved the family to Pencarrow following his father’s death, and they remained there for two years, despite his mother’s protests, with only the occasional foray into town.  Not that the viscount had planned to stay so long in the beginning.  Naively, he had thought that ’twould be only a matter of a few weeks to look over the estate.  He would review the books with Kingsley and make adjustments as needed.  The steward was competent, so if given the necessary funds, how difficult could it be?
    Ha.
    He had visited Pencarrow before, of course; even though his father did not leave London his mother could be occasionally persuaded to do so in the dust of a London summer, and he and his sisters all had fond memories of the enormous manor home, the endless fields of the estate scattered between the rocky outcroppings of Bodmin Moor.
    But that had been a child’s view.  The situation when he returned as the new viscount was rather different, and at first he could barely grasp the extent of work needing to be done.
    He remembered, in detail, Barnabas Kingsley’s first report.
    Fifty new roofs for the crofters’ cottages, miles of hedgerows to be tended, repairs to the manor house itself—
    He remembered as well the steward’s expression, the sour look of worry gradually replaced by disbelief—and then hope.
    “Do everything that needs to be done,” Talfryn told him.
    And when Kingsley, finally grasping that his lordship was serious, proposed that he send reports of progress and requests for funds to London, Talfryn shook his head.
    “I’m staying here.”
    And he did, leaving his bed at sunrise and riding the estate until he had a good idea of every acre of the land.  Lord Davies had found some few of his tenants hungry—hungry, in Cornwall —and at that point he had thought Kingsley at fault, but the man reminded him, fairly enough, that if seed was not saved for cropping the situation would only get worse.
        What a miserable kettle of figs that had been.  Lord Davies had thought to purchase extra seed at once, of course, but ’twas not as simple as all that; the weather had been horrible the previous year, and sufficient amounts harder than expected to come by.  And then there was the rising damp in the manor’s east wing.  Talfryn was truly aggravated with the discovery—Pencarrow was not some mushroom’s newly purchased attempt at high society but one of the finest homes in southern England.  He had overseen those repairs personally and for the first time heard himself raise his voice to one of the craftsmen.
    Lord Davies smiled to himself.  His young sisters had words with him on that occasion, and Talfryn, sheepishly, promised to never let it happen again.
    At any rate, between seed stock and roofs, the crofters and rising damp, the responsibility for an enormous estate sat heavily on the viscount’s shoulders for some time, and he found that he cared far more deeply for the land and its people than one might have expected of someone