Nouveau Riche (A Poor Man at the Gate Series, Book 2) Read online

  The hunt was up! Tom very rapidly decided that he was quite willing to be caught – leaving aside consideration of rank and social advantage, which was not lightly done, the young lady was very attractive and said to be intelligent too. He would certainly take the chance to get to know her – he wanted a wife, the Hall needed a hostess, his money would bring candidates for the position like moths to a candle. On the practical side, ignoring her personal qualities which he was as yet unsure of, the daughter of a Marquis would convey the entrée to their children – his heir would be in a position to be a power in the land, doors opened for him by his mother’s name even if his father remained obscure. Obviously it would be a costly exercise – the Grafhams were poor, church mice nowhere in it, and his would be the privilege of alleviating some of that poverty – but that was not unreasonable, his wealth was his sole virtue in society’s eyes.

  “May I join Lady Verity in the gardens to discuss her dogs, ma’am?”

  “Of course, Mr Andrews.”

  There was one ancient gardener slowly swinging a scythe across the lawn and he found the need to be elsewhere when he spotted Tom joining the young mistress - a woman who he estimated was around half his age. The dogs inspected him slowly and gravely, sniffing mightily, and then returned to their ponderous contemplation of nothing in particular, evidently accepting him. He wondered for a moment what would have happened if they had taken him in aversion – they seemed very mild, peace-loving beings, but they had teeth and massive muscles if they should decide to use them. Better to treat them with care. He extended a hand, palm down, towards their muzzles, let them inspect it and then present their heads to be rubbed.

  “Samson and Delilah, I believe, Lady Verity? Which is which?”

  Her eyebrows rose. “One might have considered that to be obvious, Mr Andrews – it seems to me to be abundantly plain which is male!”

  “Well, yes, ma’am, the difference is quite visible, but I have met neither name before, do not know which is applicable to which, as it were.”

  Her eyebrows rose further. “Samson is male, Mr Andrews – as your Bible might have told you.”

  “I am afraid I have but slight acquaintance with the Book, ma’am – a childhood at sea on my father’s boat left me with little time for religious studies.”

  “But, surely, sir, as a midshipman… I am right that you were at sea in the American war?”

  “I was indeed, ma’am, but in a letter of marque, I am afraid – I never aspired to serve the King.”

  She was appalled – a privateersman! Little more than a pirate, but he did have a very pleasant manner and was making no attempt to offer her Spanish coin – perhaps she should not dismiss him out of hand.

  “They are still quite young, sir, barely eighteen months, and this breed do not really grow up until they are two years old. Possibly because they are so big they are very slow maturing.”

  “Then they have not yet finished growing, ma’am?”

  “Not quite.”

  “Do they demand a lot of exercise or are they lazy because of their size?”

  “I normally walk them for three or four miles each morning, Mr Andrews, generally down the Finedon road as far as Mr Rockingham’s famous avenue of beeches.”

  “I might well bump into you when inspecting my lands, ma’am.”

  She thought for a second or two before replying – a negative response would ensure that she would be free of his importunities, a positive answer would be seen as encouragement. Did she want to know more of this red-brown haired former pirate?

  Morton, his informative butler, was able to tell his employer that Lady Verity Masters was to be seen soon after ten o’clock most mornings and his valet, Brown, dressed him correctly for dog-walking in a country environment – apparently he would require different clothing in town, particularly in the way of his hat, a shaggy beaver for country wear but impossible in London.

  They walked together for half an hour, conversation flourishing as Tom outlined his plans for the manor and she commented on the major political issues of the day.

  “I have taken very little interest in government, ma’am – for government has little to say to manufacturers, except for wishing to tax us. Will the war last much longer, do you think? That is a matter of importance to me and one I should have informed myself about.”

  She gave her opinion that the war must last at least another five years, explaining precisely why it would be so. He listened intently, noted her conclusion that the contest must be primarily naval as far as England was concerned.

  “So, an expanding navy and merchant ships under threat of attack… I must write a long letter to George and Fred Mason who are my managers at the ironworks in St Helens.”

  “Why, sir?”

  “To put our production into the materials of war, ma’am. I had assumed it was to be a short war and that it would not be worth the expense, but a long war will be highly profitable to those ready to take advantage of it.”

  She was not at all sure that she approved of making money from war, but she was very pleased to be listened to, to have her conclusions treated with respect and acted on. The great bulk of her contemporaries, women as well as men, were convinced that there was nothing other than froth between a lady’s ears, many going so far as to hold that the possession of an intellect was unwomanly, unnatural, much to be deplored. It was unusual to be regarded as other than a freak for being intelligent, so much so as to make her wonder what it would be like to have a husband who wanted to listen to her and would be guided by her. She looked sideways at him, inspecting him surreptitiously – the scar caught the eye, obviously, but it was not disfiguring, as such – he was not an ill-looking man, tall, strong, not fat. She blushed as she caught herself thinking that they would produce handsome children – well, a pair of dogs with good points produced good puppies, and that was what breeding was all about, after all!

  They parted for the morning, a half promise made to meet again on the morrow if it was not raining, and she walked slowly upstairs to change, lost in her own thoughts. Her mother observed and quietly faded out of sight, not at all displeased.

  She stripped her walking dress off, stood for a moment in chemise in front of the pier glass, not dissatisfied with what she saw; she rather believed he would like it, then blushed again, realising she had never thought that before about any of the very few young men who had caught her eye. She wondered what her father would say if Mr Andrews came to call on him.

  “Tenants to meet with us tomorrow, sir, at one o’clock, the new people, that is.”

  “”What about the men with the old sheep walks, Mr Quillerson? I have no more than glanced at their land yet but it seems to me that much of it might go down to wheat equally successfully.”

  “The great bulk of Hammet’s land could go under the plough, sir. He has a thousand acres, three hundred of it hilltop and the rest shallow slopes up from the stream. Marchant has thirteen hundred acres – his father had half of it and married the only daughter of Jack Peters who had the rest and he was permitted to unite the two tenancies, which was not necessarily the best of ideas for the manor; only about four hundred of his acres could be turned into arable, the slope of the rest is too steep to be practical. What Marchant could do, however, is run cattle on his lower land – beef fetches a better price than wool – but he is stick-in-the-mud hopeless, sir, the farm he grew up with is the farm he will die with, and nothing will change at all if he has his way. Hammet could be persuaded, with a lot of patience, he is not an easy man to converse with, as you will discover – the estate could buy him a plough and a team and set him up with seed for his first year, repayment over seven years – but Marchant will never move, and his son is no better.”

  “Can we push the Marchants into change?”

  “Not easily, sir – it can be done, but we are probably looking at twenty years unless we warn him – do it our way or get out at the end of the next lease. Never popular, that, sir, not with a ma
n whose family has been here for ever.”

  “What if, perhaps, we were to say to him that three hundred acres – no need to push it to four, give him room to find that himself - are suitable for wheat and so must pay the appropriate rental? Could we do that?”

  “He pays fifteen shillings an acre for his land, a fraction low; I would have raised it to sixteen at least in three years time when his seven years tenancy is up. Let us say that another four hundred would be right for cattle – and I would look for twenty shillings for a beef herd; thirty shillings for best wheat land, which his would not be until he had built up the fertility over five years or so – say twenty two shillings and sixpence the while.”

  Quillerson sat down with pen and paper for a couple of minutes.

  “So, sir, at the moment he pays nine hundred and seventy-five pounds per annum in four quarterly instalments; your proposal would raise that to one thousand one hundred and eighty-seven pounds ten shillings – a rise of two hundred and twelve pounds and ten shillings. He will be making about ten shillings an acre per annum at current wool prices and after paying his one shepherd – so his own income will fall by the better part of one third unless he makes the necessary changes, and the choice will be his – if he wishes to stick in his mud then he will find it to be very costly mud indeed!”

  “We can do it without seeming to bully him, in the eyes of the other tenants?”

  “Yes – Marchant is not well-loved on the estate because he tends to be a bombastic, overbearing sort who always knows what is right and will shout down any who dare to disagree with him – he is the wealthiest of our tenants and therefore must be wisest!”

  Tom grinned his appreciation, reminded himself yet again that he must be meek and mild – they all knew who and what he was and needed no reminders, after all.

  “Good! Do it, please, tell him what we will expect of the next lease and at the same time talk to Hammet and persuade him, the meanwhile making it clear that we will be only too pleased to do the same for Marchant. Are there repairs or works we could carry out for Marchant, matters which are clearly the landlord’s responsibility and have been allowed to remain undone?”

  “Fencing to the new smallholdings set up under the enclosure, sir, could be made more permanent and we could gravel the track that leads from road to the stream on the same line. It would show willing, especially to the other tenants.”

  “Put the matter in hand, Quillerson. Those eastern smallholdings are in a damned inconvenient location, how did that come about?”

  “They are surrounded by our land, sir – by intent on the part of the Commissioners for the Enclosure. We can watch them for compliance with the conditions of the enclosure – breach of any of which must lead to forfeiture, though we would in fact be expected to allow them to sell up – to us. We can also keep them honest – had they been located at the boundary of the manor then you can be sure that their fences would creep out, year by year, foot-by-foot, into the neighbouring waste or common land. As well, they will be less inclined to riot or to poach or to steal with us looking over them every minute of every day, and they will be cleaner and more tidy.”

  “Accepted, Quillerson – I had not considered any of those points.”

  ‘Bass, Briggs, Eakins, Barney and Mudge’, Tom mused, committing the names and their locations on the estate map to instant memory – he must make no mistake in the early days. Mudge would have a Hampshire accent but he would have to get the others’ faces firmly fixed, he could not risk offending them. Quillerson would introduce them and they had decided that a handshake was permissible at this first meeting, would not be seen as a social encroachment on their part or a lowering on his.

  They arrived within a minute of each other, which was no surprise; they had all moved into their new-built farmhouses within the past week and the two furthest distant, Mudge and Briggs, were little more than two miles from the Hall.

  Bass had entered the estate office first – he was nearest – had taken his flat cap off and accepted Tom’s hand with some surprise. He was a short man, barely over five feet tall and almost as wide, powerfully built; he had worked at a forge for years, farming a few acres on his Sundays, market gardening essentially, his wife doing the bulk of the sowing and weeding and hoeing and harvesting, and now had reached the summit of his ambitions – his feet under his own table in a big new farmhouse. He could be relied upon, Quillerson had said, to do exactly as he was told – he would never jeopardise renewal of his lease. The Thrapston road and Rockingham’s avenue ran across his acres, making them the most familiar to Tom; all could go to the plough and had been part of the Great Field prior to enclosure. Their fertility was lower than it should have been – the unhedged Great Field having been poorly cultivated and full of weeds and rotations never having been enforced – but the new fields would come round quite rapidly, he was assured.

  Tom waved his hand to the side table where there was a teapot, sugar and milk as well as a jug of beer and tankards; the men would make their own choice depending on their chapel-going or other habits. He made a quick mental note – ‘short, heavily muscled; brown-eyed, going bald, thirty-ish, missing half his teeth, hooked nose, small, flat ears, takes tea’.

  Eakins and Barney came in together, chuckling over some comment made in the yard; Eakins was as tall as Tom, thin, quick-moving, dark, alert while Barney, equally bright, Tom had been assured, was quiet and slow on his feet, middle height – about five feet three – carrying a small belly that promised in ten years time to be a massive gut. Both took beer.

  Briggs walked in, appeared very similar to Bass whose cousin he was – that would be a nuisance!

  Mudge drove in his own pony and trap, a little more prosperous than the others for having had his own acres in Hampshire. He was fleshy, heavily built but not yet fat, red-cheeked and blue-eyed and jovial-seeming and watching everything and everyone alertly, the outsider and aware of the fact; he would have to be made to feel welcome.

  “I am pleased to meet you all here, gentlemen! You are welcome at the Hall, and will know, I hope, that you can, and must, call at these offices whenever you feel the need. Mr Quillerson will always be very pleased to talk to you and will listen to all you have to say – which is not, of course, to commit him to doing anything you want!”

  They laughed quietly, somewhat heartened by his comments – they had not liked the previous agent, Smythe, but farm tenancies were very few and they had had to accept all that he had offered, including snide condescension.

  “Mr Quillerson will be discussing your tenancies with you at the earliest possible moment but don’t worry! He will not be putting your rent up or putting you out! He will, however, be discovering exactly what, if anything, you have already paid and what may be due – if you have receipts and records they would be very useful.”

  “Beg pardon, sir?”

  “Yes, Eakins?”

  “Does that count in the deposit I paid against possible dilapidations?”

  “Most definitely, Eakins! Mr Quillerson, have you any knowledge of such deposits?”

  “I have seen no reference to them in the estate accounts, sir, though I had heard rumour of them…”

  “Please accept my apologies, Eakins, and the rest of you, I suspect?”

  They nodded as one.

  “Inform Mr Quillerson of the sum involved, please, and deduct it from your first quarterly payment. If I can lay my hands on Smythe I shall recover the monies from him, but I suspect he will be running far and fast.”

  Barney smiled quietly and caught Tom’s eye. “I were gooin’ to sell ‘e a ‘oss what I got special, just for ‘im, sir, but I reckons I’ll just take a loss on ‘im and send ‘im to the knackers; ‘e’s getting on anyway. Looks all quiet and mild, so ‘e do, then, third or fourth time you goos into ‘im in ‘is box, all unsuspectin’ by then, ‘e do swing is arse round and pins you agin the wall while ‘e as a bite and a kick and a stamp at you. Bugger ‘alf-killed a cousin of mine!”

>   “A pity I sent him away so quickly, I suspect, Barney, but I would not have wanted him laid up in bed here in any case!”

  They laughed more loudly this time – the new master was a hard man, it seemed, not in the least upset by the thought of Smythe being crippled as a revenge – they could live with a man of his sort, they suspected.

  Tom nodded, seeing what was going through their minds.

  “I want the estate to be brought up to date, as it should be, and that means by you, of course; we are at war, and I am assured that it will be a long war with very little wheat coming into the country from the old sources. In time the Americans will be able to supply a lot, but not yet, so there will be a shortage of bread flour especially and the price of wheat will rise every year – and that is a certainty!”

  They nudged each other and nodded enthusiastically – that was good news indeed.

  “Beef will always be wanted, and the navy will be buying heavily for stores; pork as well; sheep meat less so. Mr Quillerson will be building up breeding herds on the Home Farm and you will be able to avail yourselves of bull and boar to improve your own beasts. I will promise you here and now, in public, that if you increase the production of the land, if you improve your acreage, you will keep it! You have seven year leases – work your farms well and they are yours for life with your son to walk in after you; the rents will rise with your profits, of course – and they will fall if bad times come. You have heard about me, I expect – a businessman, not a gentleman born, which is perfectly true, and I want you to know that I value people who work, like I have, to make something of themselves. Together, we can make this a wealthy estate, with rich farms and well-off farmers – you will make more money than you ever dreamed of, and I won’t lose, you can be sure of that!”

  “That’ll do me very well, sir,” Barney responded. “I shan’t be first to let you down, sir, that I promise in my turn.”