With that, Edward Stirling exited, leaving them both staring into the shadows of the backstairs.
“You must excuse my father, Colonel,” she said, the fine design of her profile lit by the golden light of the fire, lush mouth, perfect chin, high-born cheekbones, “the Stirling side of the family wouldn’t know how to make an ordinary exit from a room, even if their lives depended on it.”
“I would agree, Miss Stirling.” He held her gaze for as long as it took for her to register the memory of her own dramatic exit from the conservatory. “And your mother’s side of your family—” Gideon asked, wondering if the mother had been as beautiful as the daughter “—what did you inherit from her?”
“I inherited the guardianship of Nimway Hall, Colonel.” She turned to him, her brow winged in shadow like a flight of ravens. “And now it seems I have inherited you.”
Josie flushed to her toes, realizing that she had just claimed the arrogant Lt. Colonel Fletcher as her own. All six foot three of him. That broad chest, as well, the square jaw and superbly sculpted mouth. The raw fire of his gaze that seemed to snatch all thought from her brain, the maddening quirk of his dark eyebrow directed downward, right into her core.
“Of course, Colonel, I don’t mean that I’ve inherited you. Yourself. Actually. After all, you’re here temporarily—you and your unit.” His unit! Dear God, she’d actually glanced down the front of his trousers. Hadn’t mean to, it just happened. Her flush deepened, heating her neck, rising up to her ears. “It’s—it’s just that this war has created strange bedfellows—”
“Bedfellows, Miss Stirling?’
“Merlin’s beard, did I just use that word? Bedfellows? And am I speaking my thoughts aloud now?”
“You are, Miss Stirling.” He laughed, a deep-chested rumble that surprised her with its generosity.
“Well, good, then,” she said, still blushing, furious for making herself vulnerable to him, for allowing him free access to her unguarded thoughts. “Honesty, sir. If we’re to manage a truce for the duration of your—shall we say ‘occupation’ of Nimway Hall—then we must both be willing to deal in good faith with any issue that might—arise—between us.” ‘Arise?’ Really? Oh, damn! She’d done it again, glanced down the front of his trousers like a street-corner tart. And double damn the man for the smile he was so unsuccessfully trying to hide—for noticing the double-entendres that kept tumbling out of her mouth.
“I agree completely, Miss Stirling.” He took a long, deep breath, then exhaled as he set his glass down on the reading table and turned back to her. “We must encourage honest cooperation between us, whenever possible.”
“Whenever possible?” The abrupt change in the man’s attitude set her teeth on edge, reminded her why she was here.
“Within, of course, the dictates set by my orders from the War Office.”
“And my orders as head of Nimway Hall. That said, I suggest we start by clarifying our boundaries.” Hoping to separate herself from the man’s unbalancing influence, Josie turned away to the wall of bookshelves that framed the huge map of Nimway Hall, its fields and farms, the woods and the village of Balesborough. “Here, Colonel. This map should help.”
She flicked on the sconce lights and stepped back for the wider view of the alcove, would have collided with the man, but he caught her upper arms from behind with his powerful hands, warming her all over with the heat pouring off his chest as he held her there. An intoxicating place to be standing, with him gazing up at the map of her estate, his head above hers, his breathing strong and even, grazing her neck, lighting her nerves on fire.
“How old is this?” he asked so near her temple, his words might have been a kiss. He took a sharp breath, muttered something to himself, released her and stepped forward, drawing an electric torch from his belt and flicking it on. His beam fell so immediately on the Hall itself, she half-expected to see the light playing outside the library windows, seeking entry through the shutters and the blackout curtains. A ridiculous notion, of course, but the man had an uncanny way of spinning her thoughts into fanciful shapes.
“If you’re asking the age of the house, Colonel, no one quite knows.” She joined him at his side, hoping to judge what liberties he might be plotting to take against her. “The map itself was created for Nimway Hall by John Speed himself, sometime in the late 1600s.”
“An original Speed? I’m impressed.”
“Of course, the canvas has been added to over the decades by other artists as the estate changed and expanded. A bit fanciful in places. The Arthurian elements there in the corners, and Excalibur rising out of our Lake Myrrdin—a family legend, of course, but the map is otherwise quite accurate.”
“But it’s current as of today?” His beam settled on the house and its outbuildings.
“Current as of 1938.” The year of her majority, when the guardianship was granted to her by dear Aunt Freddy before she and Uncle Anthony left for America with her grandparents. “Is the date important?”
“Very. I’m surprised it’s still hanging in the open, with all the road names pulled down from intersection posts, and driving maps removed from the shops.”
“We’re not a stately home that gives tours; we don’t advertise.”
“Still—” His inquisitive shaft of light danced across the map, from the Hall, to the woods, then the stables, around Lake Myrrdin, to the tenant farms on the perimeter, to the village itself, the fields and sheep folds, following roads and lanes, streams and footpaths, pausing now and then on the places she loved, before shooting off to the next location.
What had begun as a bolt of resentment at his highly invasive scrutiny of her estate was fast awakening a far more intimate sensation in her, stealing her breath, scrambling her thoughts, as though he were appraising her, his beam of heat first warming her ears, then shifting to her chin, the nape of her neck, the skin between her breasts.
“What exactly are you searching for, Colonel?” she asked, barely finding the breath to do so. “Perhaps I can point it out for you.”
“Sorry, I was just—” He switched off the torch and looked down at her from his great height, as though surprised to see her standing beside him. She watched him, waiting for him to answer, realizing suddenly that he was staring at her mouth, frowning at it, really, which caused her to wonder if she had dirt on her cheek from her strange stumble through the woods tonight.
Self-conscious for the first time in years, she brushed her finger lightly across her nose, found nothing there. “Have I mud all over my face?”
He stroked his jaw, his smile almost shy. “No, Miss Stirling. I’ve… uh… I was just—” he glanced quickly back at the map, switched on the torch again “—just assessing the lay of the land.”
“The lay of my land, Colonel. Isn’t that the very point of our meeting tonight—to establish boundaries between us? For you to understand where the War Office’s influence ends and mine begins.”
He said nothing, was staring again at the map, his light roving wildly, as though mesmerized by something she couldn’t see, no matter how hard she tried to figure out his intentions. The beam stopped abruptly in the middle of the northern-most field. “Are these structures occupied?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Who normally uses them?”
“Sheep.”
“Ah.” Unfazed, he kept staring at the same spot. “Anyone else?”
“Using the sheep fold?” She laughed at the very idea. “Not that I’m aware of.”
He grunted. “Abandoned, then?”
“We were forced to cull our sheep flocks last fall, by order of the Ministry of Agriculture. Seems that an acre of land planted in a food crop such as barley or wheat or sugar beets can feed many more people than can that same acre of grass, reserved as grazing land for sheep or cattle.”
“Ah, yes.” He turned back to her, flicked off the torch. “My second-eldest brother operates Fletcher’s Packing Enterprises in Maidstone. Last I spoke with Benjamin,
he was doing battle with our father’s old school chum, Lord Woolton, head of the new Ministry of Food. Something about bacon processing and the diminishing supply of hogs. Frankly, I prefer soldiering to farming.”
“I can’t see there’s a jot of difference,” she said, pointedly testing the boundaries of the man’s view of her world. “Between the soldier and the farmer.”
He lifted a skeptical brow. “As different, Miss Stirling, as day is to night.”
“Different battlefields, certainly. Different weapons, different enemies, but, farming and soldiering are equally critical to winning the war.”
“A poetic sentiment, I’m sure,” he said in a patronizing air that raised her hackles. “Spoken by a civilian who has never slogged through a battlefield under fire from an advancing tank. Who’s never slept in a muddy trench or stalked an enemy through the woods—”
“Or slogged through the mud behind a plow until your feet bled, because the tractor has run dry of petrol, or delivered a breech calf in the middle of a blizzard, or driven the miller to the nearest hospital because the runner stone has crushed his leg— ”
“Hardly the same thing—“
“How dare you say that, sir? That my work—our work—my laborers and me, the Land Girls, my tenants, every farmer across this beloved country who work their fingers to the bone to feed your staff officers, your soldiers, the brave pilots of the RAF—that their work isn’t just as critical to the waging of war as the men they support? Is that how you really feel? You implied it earlier, but I hoped it wasn’t your true feelings. Because, Colonel, if so, there’s no point to this meeting at all.”
“How either of us feel about each other or the war is immaterial. The War Office has requisitioned Nimway Hall for military purposes and those orders require your unconditional deference to me.”
“I beg to differ, Colonel. I take my orders from the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Food, who take their orders from the War Office, just as you do.”
“Your point being?”
“That my duties and yours are of equal importance to the war effort. No more, no less.”
“I disagree.”
“I don’t care if you agree with me or not, Colonel. I supervise a vast estate farm, a commercial forest, a large orchard, a cider mill, a flour mill, the village council, the local Women’s Voluntary Service, the Women’s Institute, the care and feeding of four evacuee children, four Land Girls, you lot, my tenant farmers and my household staff—all working toward the war effort. And, should I fail to meet the draconian requirements set down by the Ag, I might very well lose control of Nimway Hall—my family’s home for centuries.”
“Commendable, however—”
“What exactly do you do for the war effort, Colonel, besides hole up in my conservatory?”
He narrowed his eyes at her, his jaw hardened and working beneath the bronze skin of his cheek as he seemed to gather his temper and laid the electric torch carefully on the table in front of the map.
“Without revealing the details of my orders, Miss Stirling, I can tell you that we are to assess the work of the Defense Chain Operations Task Force. Additionally, we will be surveying and siting locations for the Taunton Stop Line.”
“What are you trying to stop?” She knew exactly what a Stop Line was.
He eyed her. “A Nazi invasion.”
“Must be a big chain.” She added a wide-eyed blink and then tried a half-smile.
He frowned, clearly unamused. “A Stop Line is a chain of field fortifications: gun emplacements, anti-tank islands, slit-trenches, natural defenses—”
“That’s why you’re interested in the Speed map. The reason you and your staff were so intent on the map of the Hall when I entered the conservatory, why you were trying to hide it from me. You were looking to construct an anti-tank island in the middle of my barley field.”
“There’s a boundary you should not cross, Miss Stirling, should you find me or my staff wandering the estate with surveying equipment and measuring devices. We are not trespassing on your privacy, but scouting for elevated locations such as this—” he returned to studying the map, took up his infernal electric torch, shoulders straight, one hand behind his back as though about to launch into a lecture to his troops. He landed his beam of light on the top of Windmill Hill. “From this spot, we will survey the terrain across the Levels, west toward Taunton and Bridgwater to the Bristol Channel, north toward the Mendips and south along the Polden Hills.”
“You’re a surveyor? I thought you were a soldier.”
“And an engineer. I hold dual commissions, the Royal Engineers and the Royal Marines.”
“And you’ve been posted to rural Somerset?” She paid little attention to military matters, but there must be a story here. A fearsome soldier like Fletcher posted to the wilds of Somerset?
He left her question hanging and went on. “My staff office will also serve as a command center for a number of other DCO Task Forces who are operating in the area—”
Command center? “Just how many people do you anticipate coming and going every day?”
“Me, my staff of nine, plus or minus another ten, possibly twenty, depending on the day.”
“Twenty or thirty of you, tramping through my conservatory? You bloody well better treat it with the respect it is due. That goes for the rest of Nimway. Because if I find any damage, anywhere, I will blame you personally and raise holy hell with Mr. Churchill, himself. A man who has been entertained in that very conservatory on countless occasions.”
“We are not barbarians, Miss Stirling.”
“Some of your lot have proved otherwise! I’ve heard horror stories from family friends who live just a few miles south of here. Bannington Manor, their once stately country home, has suffered a collapsed ceiling in the entry hall, broken furniture, not to mention the damage to the grounds, turned to mud by the reservists and volunteers being trained and billeted there. Lady Bryce is beside herself with the extent of the destruction.”
“Ah, yes, I know the case in question.” He had civility enough to look contrite. “I assure you that the officer commanding that particular unit has been disciplined and demoted as a warning to others. Myself included.”
She wanted to believe the man, for no other reason than the earnest expression on his handsome face, so deeply planed in the shadows of the library. But this was no time to falter in defense of her home. The sooner she plowed and planted every inch of arable land for the war effort, the safer Nimway Hall would be from additional requisitioning by the military, or from her practices being found in default by the Ministry of Agriculture and losing possession of the estate.
“Now that you’ve shared the nature of your operations with me, Colonel, it’s time for you to listen to my list of concerns and demands.”
The lout crossed his arms and leaned against the bookcase. “I am agog.”
“You are not.”
He shrugged. “I’m listening, then. Will that do?”
Best to ignore the man and the flickering quirk of his smile. His wry sense of humor humanized the hell out of him. Not a good sign.
She grabbed his electric torch and focused the beam on the map, landing squarely on the entrance to Nimway. “First and foremost, Colonel, I require full access to my own front gate and my own front door. If I’m to keep the estate running in top form, I must be able to freely come and go as I normally would. That goes for deliveries, hay wagons, tractors and everyone in my employ.”
“I have no quarrel with that. Through the main gate, with my guard posted day and night. Anyone who shows the proper papers and identity cards is free to come and go.
“You mean to have me stopped at my gate every time I—”
“Every time, Miss Stirling. Strict orders from the War Office to keep the enemy from sneaking into our operations.”
“Sapper Mullins knows full well who I am. We met today, as I told you. Met my father, as well, a man with an unforgettable face.”
“I’m certain that Mullins well remembers you and your father, however, that’s not the point—”
“And I don’t see the need for a guard at the front door of the Hall. Post a guard at the door to your office, but having one at the front door is a waste of manpower.”
“Seems reasonable.”
“I also have five tenant farmers, their families and a variety of farm hands that work on the holdings, depending on the season. If any of them walk or ride across the fields as they usually do when they come to the Hall for business, what then?”
“Do your tenants carry identification papers?”
“Yes, they do. And gas masks.”
“Then we’ll take care of those situations as they arise. Nimway Hall has a vast uncontrolled perimeter that can be monitored only if everyone on the estate is on guard for strangers or unusual activity, and reports to me anything suspicious. The main gate will guard against overt enemies and unsecured vehicles.”
“Enemies of Nimway Hall?” The blasted man was beginning to make a certain amount of sense and she didn’t quite know what to do about it, what to say. “If only you could stop the Timber Supply Department at the gate and refuse them entrance.”
“Who is this?”
“They arrive tomorrow morning to lay waste to Balesboro Wood, Nimway’s ancient forest.”
“A timber operation? No one cleared that with me.”
“They won’t start tomorrow. I can guarantee it. In fact, Colonel, they will start felling my trees over my dead body.”
He blinked, scowled. “Explain please.”
“Two inspectors from the Timber Supply Department will be here tomorrow to assess the suitability of Balesboro Wood as a source of timber for the war effort. Our wood has been here since time immemorial, and it will survive the war, but only if I protect it with my last breath.”
The Legend of Nimway Hall_1940_Josie Page 6
