Douglas: Lord of Heartache Read Online Free Page A

leathers, which was not exactly a best practice. “You mustn’t be too hard on her. She was frightened, overfaced, and too proud to say so. In an innocent child, we cannot take very great exception to that, can we?”
    He was away down the steps without giving her a chance to reply—what did he know about children or innocence?—then at the mounting block and up on his horse. “Shall we say ten of the clock, Miss Hollister?”
    “If you are truly interested in learning to manage the land, my lord, make a day of it. Get here as soon after sunrise as you are able, dress as comfortably as you can, and be prepared to spend the day in the saddle.”
    “I have my orders, ma’am.” He nodded politely, saluted with his crop, and turned Regis in a neat pirouette before cantering down the drive.
    As soon as he was out of sight of the house and the woman standing on its porch, Douglas brought his mount down to the walk, withdrew the tea cakes from his pocket, and devoured them, slowly, methodically, one right after the other.
    ***
    Gwen watched Douglas, Lord Amery, canter off, noting with one part of her mind that he had an elegant seat, even as the other, louder part began castigating her for this morning’s business.
    If Rose hadn’t been up that tree, Douglas Allen could never have wrested this agreement from Gwen. But Rose had been up the tree, and worse, she could be laid out in the parlor at this moment, dead and disfigured as a result of her childish misadventure. And for just an instant, the man had looked… desolate . He’d looked as Gwen had felt so often, yet he hadn’t the comfort of even a child to console him.
    Douglas Allen had the ability to proceed calmly with the next necessary task, though, and that was a fine quality in a man who intended to find his salvation in the land. And he’d been right about something, too: Rose had been frightened out of her wits, and unable to ask for help. Gwen knew that condition intimately, and she would not judge another harshly when suffering the same state.

Two
    “So why,” Amery asked, “do you have calves arriving in the autumn?”
    “Some calves,” Gwen corrected him. “For a late heifer, or one slow to mature, the extra six months before her first calf is a blessing. Autumn grass is rich, and the cooler weather agrees with the babies more than the summer heat. We get fewer cases of scours, and we aren’t competing with all of the spring market gluts, so we get better prices for them. The same is true of autumn lambs, if you can get the rams and ewes to cooperate.”
    They were on horseback, which made conversations about rams and ewes and other earthy, reproductive things less mortifying—for Gwen, at least.
    “If it’s such a good idea, why don’t you have all your calves in the autumn?”
    She wanted to say the bulls would go into a decline if limited to a single breeding season, but Amery would get that pained look on his face, an expression between bewilderment and disappointment.
    “We have two primary calving seasons to spread the risks.”
    “Can you clarify that? Spread the risk how, Miss Hollister?”
    Please elucidate further, Miss Hollister. Can you give me an example, Miss Hollister? Why is it done thus, Miss Hollister? His lordship was a sponge for knowledge, but if he hadn’t patted his horse from time to time, Gwen would have feared she was riding out with an automaton.
    “With the land, there is always risk,” Gwen said, though she far preferred those risks to the ones she’d face if she ventured back into the view of Polite Society. “You risk drought in the summer and try to manage that risk with irrigation. You risk severe cold in the winter and try to manage that with good fodder and shelter. You hope for a good hay crop but manage that risk by leaving some land in pasture and planting corn in addition. You dodge what nature throws at you if you can’t turn it to your advantage, and you pray constantly as you try to predict the