The Shepherd and the Solicitor

by Bonnie Dee

  The man looked so delighted, Tobin supposed he’d been too generous after all.

  “Is there a Mr. Pruitt available?” Tobin asked.

  They gave him a blank look, much like the one he’d gotten from the innkeeper the night before.

  “’Tis a Pruitt t’over in Faircliffe Market. Ten mile off.”

  Tobin had gotten off at the wrong station. Well, as long as he was here…

  He pulled the worn package from his pocket. He’d tracked this heir for almost a year and had a rote speech.

  He laid out each portrait of the fair-haired young gentleman. The largest was a formal family portrait in which the young man leaned against a grand mantelpiece. Tobin’s personal favorite was the one of him standing in cricket whites with a group of fellow students—it was the only one of the three pictures in which the fellow wasn’t solemn. It revealed he had a rather sweet smile. A lock of straight hair flopped on his high forehead, giving him a windblown, messy appearance. The picture was probably the least useful, because they’d been informed that the heir was always tidy and well-groomed and wore finely tailored suits.

  Every picture showed a slender, well-dressed and rather nondescript standard British gentleman, though Tobin had memorized his features—that long nose, rather full mouth, a round chin—and hoped he could pick the face from a crowd. At train stations and restaurants, he’d taken to scanning the faces, imagining what he’d say to the pestilential heir if he’d come across the fool.

  If such a thing should ever happen, he’d approached the man with care and treat him with deference. One didn’t scream obscenities at high-strung, wealthy gentlemen.

  He cleared his throat and started the talk. “These are photographs of a man I’m looking for. He was last seen in London four years ago. There was an accident, and he vanished soon after. We must find him or declare him dead. His name is Daniel Pierce. A Mr. Pruitt contacted one of our agents and said that he had information. Are these familiar names?”

  They shook their heads.

  A thick finger with a filthy nail prodded one of the pictures, the grim-faced portrait by the fireplace. The man muttered something in a Yorkshire accent so thick one might spread it like marmalade. Tobin didn’t catch a single word.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Wiping his hands on a towel, Meaks joined the cluster of men. “He says that has the look of Bennet, a young farmer up northeast a ways.”

  “His place is about eight, nine miles,” another man offered. “Keeps himself to himself.”

  Someone called, “More like only five miles.”

  Another man said something in the same thick, unintelligible accent.

  Meaks didn’t bother waiting for Tobin to ask for a translation and said, “This man’s brother bought wool from him.”

  The man nodded. “Lambing time. ’E’ll be reet busy.”

  Someone said, “’E’s got a few foin dogs too.”

  Damn Jeffers for this “better than usual information, sir”.

  From what Tobin had learned about Pierce—and studying the lost man had been his job—the heir appreciated art, learning and culture. He attended plays and concerts and dressed in the finest bespoke tailoring Saville Row had to offer. No matter how lovely this landscape, a man like that wouldn’t end up here. As soon as Tobin returned to London, he would send Jeffers off on his own wild-goose chase, perhaps to hunt down the dangerous Snark of Lewis Carroll’s poem. The north of Scotland or the Cape of Good Hope in Africa would serve the man right.

  “Thank you, gentlemen.” He tucked the pictures back into their holder. “Anyone know this Bennet’s first name?”

  They shook their heads, though there were some muttered suggestions. “Caleb?” “Barney?”

  Hopeless, Tobin thought.

  “Sir! My horse,” the big farmer called. “Come on to meet him. A fine gelding, as I said.”

  He wanted to refuse and get back on the train for a more hospitable, populated location, but the farmer sounded so hopeful and happy. Tobin would at least give him a fortnight’s pay. And perhaps a ride around the countryside would help clear the cobwebs of his bad mood.

  “Of course.” He thanked the assembled men again and promised to return to buy a round later in the day.

  Someone hooted. “You don’t want t’whole village drunk before noon.”

  Tobin laughed. “True enough.” He also supposed they’d go fetch their friends from nearby towns to get a chance at free drink, and he’d have more chances to show the pictures and ask about the heir.

  The chestnut gelding, named Alfie, was as fine as its master Mr. Shaw claimed—if one considered a fat horse with protruding yellow teeth and milky eyes “fine”. But Alfie would do for Tobin’s purposes. The distance to the farm wasn’t too far for the old animal to traverse there and back in a day.

  He paid the man for the use of the horse—no signed contract in these parts, a handshake would do—and heaved himself into the saddle. Not a natural horseman, Tobin rode awkwardly. The broadness of the horse’s back certainly didn’t help. Tobin’s feet poked out on either side so he could hardly dig in his heels to get the beast moving. And clearly Alfie didn’t want to go anywhere but a nice field where he could graze. He plodded along like a schoolboy about to face the headmaster.

  Tobin heard laughter coming from behind him and glanced back to see several townsfolk, including Shaw, watching him ride away. Tobin blithely waved a hand, accepting their laughter as his due. If he weren’t the one bouncing up and down on this fat-arsed pony, he’d be chuckling right along with them.

  By the time Faircliff had disappeared behind a bend in the road, his tailbone was sore. By the time he’d passed half a dozen low stone walls and hedges surrounding various fields, his legs were aching. By the time he’d traveled the “five or six miles”, which turned out to be more like nine or ten, he was wondering if he’d be able to get his cramped body off Alfie’s back.

  But just as Tobin spotted the isolated farm as described to him—a cluster of stone buildings far across a large field—Alfie took the issue of dismounting off his hands. The ancient horse, which wheezed every breath as if suffering from a lung disease, suddenly shook itself and reared up. Unprepared for the surprisingly agile move, Tobin tumbled from the saddle like a sack of meal and hit the ground hard. Before he could climb to his feet and brush himself off, Alfie had sprinted away as fast as a two-year-old colt back in the direction of town.

  Tobin yelled for the horse to come back, then stood in the middle of the deserted road and showered Alfie with every curse word he knew. Abandoned on a desolate Yorkshire moor. What to do? Should he start the long walk back? But no, he was nearly at his destination, and perhaps the man he was seeking, whether it turned out to be Pierce or not, could offer him an alternative way back to civilization.

  The road circled far around the field and would add on several more miles. Tobin elected to cut across the broad tract of land instead. He made his stiff-legged way to the stone wall, clambered over—it was taller than it looked—and began the long hike to the Bennet farm, wondering if the farmer would turn out to be Daniel Pierce or just another dead end.

  The landscape wasn’t as flat as he’d thought when looking across the field. Tobin trudged up and down rises and falls of land—mostly up—with a hard wind pushing him along like a hand to his back. Tobin glanced up at the swirling gray clouds that stretched across the horizon and wondered if he’d make it to shelter before the looming storm broke and drenched him. The house and outbuildings didn’t seem to be getting any closer.

  He was so focused on his destination that he didn’t notice the stalking beast coming up behind him until it made him jump nearly out of his skin with a loud baaah. Tobin whirled to face a large sheep with dirty gray wool and a black face. It gazed at him curiously and bleated again.

  Tobin clapped his hands at the thing, t
rying to drive it away. “Go on. Go home.”

  But the adorable farm creature didn’t run away like Alfie the horse. Instead, it crunched a mouthful of grass between surprisingly large teeth and moved closer. At the same time, a crowd of its brethren crested the low hill. One sheep might be rather charming and pastoral, but an entire herd of them was entirely too much. Tobin had never spent any time around animals, other than his great aunt’s ill-tempered poodle. He wasn’t comfortable with the way the black-faced sheep all stared at him and headed directly toward him.

  He clapped his hands again. “Go on now. Run away.” But the beasts seemed merely intrigued by his clapping. Perhaps they thought he was a dinner bell calling them to food. They swarmed toward him in a great baaing bundle.

  Rather than turning and running, Tobin made the mistake of moving backward. His foot caught on a hummock of grass, or perhaps a badger hole, and he lost his balance, falling hard on his arse for the second time that day. The flock stampeded toward him, their combined weight shaking the ground and the noise of their infernal bleating deafening. He would be crushed by at least a hundred great fluffy tubs of wool!

  Tobin threw his arms around his head, opened his mouth and screamed at the top of his lungs.

  But instead of sharp hooves and heavy woolly bodies stomping him to a pulp, he felt something grab him by the coat collar and drag him upright. Then two strong bands of iron pulled him tight against a slab of warm living granite, away from the rush of bleating sheep.

  He opened his tight-squeezed eyes and blinked away grit and dust. Staring back at him was a pair of eyes as green as the grassy meadow set in a face that could have been hewn from the same granite as that body—it was that hard and unyielding. This man was nothing like the slender and rather unformed young man pictured in the Pierce family photographs.

  Except that underneath the hard muscles and shapeless jumper, perhaps the grim farmer’s build was the same. And the hair, although longer than that in the photograph, was equally fair. That heavy beard and moustache might hide full lips and a rounded chin. The photos were in black-and-white, but the family had described the missing heir as having “emerald-green” eyes.

  These eyes were certainly that bright and luminescent.

  Before Tobin could clear his throat and introduce himself, the man in the grubby boots thrust him away with a shove. “Who are you, and what are you doing on my land?”

  Chapter Three

  Daniel Pierce the gentleman would never in his life have treated a visitor so roughly. That civilized young man had been soft-spoken, pleasant, agreeable to a fault and utterly incapable of rudeness. But Jacob Bennet said and did whatever he pleased without any consideration for people’s feelings. He was a coarse fellow who spoke with a bit of a Yorkshire accent after living four years in the North Country. Daniel had rarely been outside of a city and had considered a walk through the park exercise. Jacob enjoyed hiking miles over windswept moors when he wasn’t striding across his own field rescuing strange men from marauding sheep.

  Daniel liked the freedom being Jacob Bennet gave him. Now that he was Bennet, he’d almost lost his fear of the world.

  He glared at the dirt-streaked, sweating man who had wandered off some city’s streets. The fellow looked as if he’d started the day starched and pressed, but now his white shirt collar was grimy, and streaks of mud, or worse, marked his trousers. His tie was askew, and his face was almost as red as his bright hair. He had the extremely pale, freckled skin that so often went with coppery hair. Even his eyebrows and lashes were golden-red. Blue eyes stared back at Bennet as if this man somehow knew him.

  He grew too aware of the other man—and did not need that part of his nature awakened.

  “I’m sorry for trespassing. The horse I rented threw me, and rather than walk the long way around by road, I thought I could cut across to your house.” The man straightened, including his tie, and held out a hand toward Bennet. “My name is Mr. Gregory Tobin.”

  The accent assured Bennet that Tobin was definitely a stranger in these parts. What reason might an upper-class twit, likely from London, have in traveling so far to the back of nowhere? Nothing good.

  Bennet stared at the man’s hand, then walked past him. “I’ve work to do. No time for salesmen.”

  Tobin hurried alongside him. “I’m not a salesman. I’m… I’m traveling on business.”

  “Then I suggest you get back to it and leave me be.” Bennet had introduced two ewes and their week-old lambs to the flock and had come to make sure they would find their way to the shelter. It was a job he considered giving to Dickon, but the young man was a bit lackadaisical about his work as shepherd.

  He’d noticed some of the younger sheep were grazing too far away and decided to push them back toward their older, wiser companions who kept to their heft, their area, without straying far. The younger ones had surged forward, probably to get a good look at this stranger.

  “I apologize again for bothering you.” The stranger huffed along at his side, trying to keep up with Bennet’s long stride and actually doing a fair job of it. “But I can see from the sky a storm is coming. I’m stranded without a horse, and yours appears to be the only house in miles. Might I prevail on you to take pity on a traveler and give shelter…and perhaps a bit of lunch…and maybe later a ride to town? If it’s not too much trouble?”

  Bennet shot a sideways glance at the man with the charming smile and the long list of requests. A rogue. He’s used to getting his way with that smile and the cheeky patter. The ladies must fawn all over him.

  “I have work to do,” he repeated gruffly, walking even faster toward the tail end of several sheep straggling away from the group, heading toward a boggy patch. Last thing he wanted was to have to haul sheep out of the mud, especially if it started raining. “I can’t help you.”

  “You’re honestly going to leave me on foot and helpless in the rain?” The too-charming man clasped his hands together in an attitude of prayer. “Please, take pity on a wandering stranger, sir,” he teased with a glint of laughter in those wide blue eyes.

  “The sky is often cloudy around here. It’s not going to rain. You can start walking back the way you came. You should reach Faircliffe before nightfall if you hurry.” Bennet hurried toward several of the flock that were wandering off, reached out with his crook and tapped the side of the leader, driving it away from the swampy ground. The sheep turned in the direction he wanted it to go, and the others followed.

  “Well done.” Tobin sounded quite breathless now as he continued to chug along behind Bennet as closely as a lamb following a ewe. “But don’t shepherds generally have collies to do this sort of thing?”

  “Mind your shoes,” Bennet snapped gruffly.

  But it was too late. The pair of shiny Oxfords splashed into a puddle and pulled out of sucking mud. Their owner gazed at them in dismay. “Oh dear. Ruined.”

  Bennet fought a smile that suddenly sprang to his lips. The rueful expression on the ginger-haired man’s face was too comical, and his mournful tone suggested the death of a loved one rather than of a pair of shoes that clearly didn’t belong in this country.

  “If you’re going to be traveling around these parts, best get yourself a pair of Wellingtons,” Bennet suggested. And then, although he had no reason to be answering Tobin’s questions, he added, “Two dogs are with the main herd, and the other is too near her time to work right now.”

  “Her time? As in puppies? How sweet,” he cooed in a way that seemed not at all manly and made Bennet give him a sharp look. Was this unexpected visitor a man with certain proclivities? But no, the likelihood of coming across someone like that here in the middle of nowhere was about as probable as lightning striking him where he stood.

  “Perhaps I can make myself useful,” Tobin continued. “Shall I go round the other side and…” He clapped his hands at the sheep.

  Bennet
tapped him with the crook. “Leave off. Just keep up, and I’ll give you some lunch at my house after.”

  “After what?” Tobin asked brightly.

  “After I get this group back up t’ hill with the rest.”

  “This isn’t all of them, then? How many sheep do you have? How long have you been sheep herding, or is it shepherding, or, perhaps, farming sheep.”

  “Long enough to know it’s best to save your breath for walking, not talking.” He hurried faster, doing Bets’s work in keeping the sheep grouped and headed the right direction. It made him appreciate the speed and skill of the dog, and he wished she were with him now instead of this yapping man. If he’d known he’d be luring sheep, he would have brought along a grain bucket. If he’d known he was going to be trailing Londoners, he would have brought a way to plug his ears.

  Tobin fell silent at last, all his energy reserved for trotting along. Bennet had to admit the city man did an admirable job of keeping up as they herded the sheep up the increasingly steep grade. They crested another rise, and the main flock covered the hillside, grazing peacefully as the black-and-white border collie, Jip, raced around them, keeping all the ladies in proper order. On the far side of the herd, Dickon’s dog, Penny, did the same. Meanwhile, Dickon, that useless boy, sat on a rock, chewing on a blade of grass and watching.

  “This is impressive.” Tobin stopped stock-still and gazed at the pastoral scene. “What a great lot of sheep you have.”

  Bennet’s charges naturally merged into the bigger group. Bennet marched over to Dickon, who didn’t even look up.

  “There’s a storm coming. Move them up east where they’ll be by the rocks and above any flooding. You must make sure the little ones are protected.”

  “Yes, sir.” The towheaded lad smiled affably.

  “Hurry now,” Bennet said.

  Dickon slowly rose to his feet and whistled at Jip and Penny. The dogs came bounding over, as eager to work as if this were their first task of the day. Too bad Dickon didn’t have more of that eager spirit. Bennet wondered if he should go along and make sure the job got done, but if Dickon was a bit incompetent, Jip and Penny more than made up for him.