“I believe you, North, but who would have had access to the harrow?”

“Any damned body in the neighborhood. The hinges on the sheds and barns are so rusty a determined old woman could get into any building on the premises.”

“Or she could just peel off the rotten shingles and drop down from the leaky roof. Who would be motivated to do such a thing?”

“Anybody who wants to buy the place,” North said. “Anybody with a grudge against me, Lady Warne, or the Hunts.”

Beck eyed the steward thoughtfully, because this was the first time he’d seen Gabriel North truly upset. “Are those lists long?”

North glared back at him. “How the hell should I know? I have no enemies here that I know of, but perhaps you have an enemy. Three Springs has been rotting on the vine for years, but malicious mischief passed us by until you showed up.”

“True enough.”

“Hell and the devil, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded, it’s just… who would think it amusing to take off a man’s foot?”

“I don’t know. We’re going to have to have a frank talk with the women, and with Allie in particular, North. If there are vandals on the property, that child cannot be scampering around unsupervised.”

“Holy Infant Jesus.” North closed his eyes and marshaled his temper with visible effort. “Polly and Sara don’t need this, but it makes the prospect of hiring help more urgent.”

“I thought we’d start with your friend Lolly. Maudie is a maid of all work, but there’s enough for her to do just in the scullery. Three Springs could use another maid, and those boys of hers could be put to use all over the property.”

“They eat a lot,” North said. “Polly will like that.”

“We need some men, though, and good labor is in short supply.”

“Will Sutcliffe let you keep some of his for a time?”

“I suppose. We have walls to mend, roofs to repair, hay to take off soon, more sheep to shear and dip, and God knows what else.”

“My back is protesting the mere recitation. You’re right. There’s plenty enough work, if you’ve the coin to hire the labor.”

“Three Springs has the coin,” Beck clarified. “If Sutcliffe turns us down, we have other options.”

“Such as?”

“Portsmouth, if not in the village. I meant to tell you last night I’ve secured Sara’s agreement to accompany me there on a shopping expedition when the planting is done.”

“Are you sure it’s a good idea to leave the property with this going on?” North gestured toward the broken harrow.

“If everything stays quiet for the next week or so, then yes. We need more than the village can supply, North. Shingles, hinges, locks, lumber, nails, paint, you name it, if it goes into the building or maintenance of a structure, we need it.”

“Suppose we do. The ladies are looking forward to putting the house to rights, too.”

Beck sent a wary glance toward the house. “One shudders to think of disappointing them. Which reminds me, we need a gardener as well.”

“Can’t you buy one of those in Portsmouth?”

“I intend to try, preferably a very fit, muscular specimen who has a way with a rose bush and a blunderbuss.”

“My thoughts exactly, and I hate to say it, but a footman or two wouldn’t go amiss.”

“I’ll write to my sister at Belle Maison and send word to Nick. They’ll likely have a few stout fellows to spare, at least for the summer.”

“I’d write to Lady Warne,” North said. “This is her damned property, and lady or not, it’s her interests that will be affected if we can’t get a crop in.”

Interesting that Beck turned to his siblings for help, while North pointed out the more appropriate choice. “We’ll get a crop planted. One piece of broken equipment won’t stop a Haddonfield from his assigned task.”

As the week progressed, the weather held, and they did get the crops in. Through correspondence with Baron Sutcliffe, Beck gained permission to offer employment to two of his farm hands, both stout, reliable fellows. Lolly and her two adolescent omnivores were recruited from the village, and letters went out to Belle Maison, Nick’s London townhouse, and Lady Warne’s residence.

While Polly reveled in the need to keep more mouths fed, Beck set Sara to taking the gardens, lane, and porches in hand. Lolly’s sons were put to use as undergardeners, pulling weeds, rebuilding flower boxes, and putting in a huge kitchen garden in the field closest to the barns. With her mother’s help, Allie proved surprisingly willing to tear into the challenge of setting the front beds and main approach to the house to rights. She divided irises and daffodils, pruned roses, moved daylilies and daisies and heaven only knew what according to some design she carried in her busy head.

Sara had been mindful of the need to keep Allie close to the house, leaving Beck a little concerned when he didn’t see the child puttering away in the front gardens on Friday afternoon. It wasn’t sums day or wash day, and for most of the morning, Allie had been planting her posies in the flower boxes on the side terraces.

She wasn’t in the lower reaches of the house, so Beck made his way to the third floor, finding Allie in her studio of choice, much to his relief.

Beck ambled into the room, knowing Allie when sketching was an absorbed young lady indeed. “I had wondered where you’d gotten off to.”

“I’m hiding from those odious boys.” Allie’s tongue peeked out the side of her mouth.

Beck lowered himself to sit on the day bed beside her. “They might be odious, but they plant an impressive kitchen garden.”

And they made for good sketching subjects, Beck saw. Just as she’d done anatomical studies of the filly—Miss Amicus, by name—Allie was visually taking apart Lolly’s sons, piece by piece. The odd quality of the adolescent male wrist was drawn from many angles and positions. Unruly boyish hair stood up in a dozen different inelegant coiffures; strangely graceful, young male hands grasped this or that tool, or flattened Heifer’s disgruntled ears in a thumping pat to the cat’s head.

“I could plant the kitchen garden,” Allie said, putting the finishing touches on an image of a long, dirty boy-foot toe-scratching at a skinny boy-calf.

“But then you’d still be outside, hands muddy, covering up potato sprouts or pulling weeds,” Beck pointed out. “Not honing your craft.”

“Mama says it’s a hobby,” Allie countered, considering her final effort. “But is it a hobby if it’s something you simply must do?”

“I don’t know.” Beck chose his words carefully. “My brother must build a birdhouse every so often, but he would say it’s a hobby.”

Allie considered the boy-foot. “He’d say it’s a hobby because he’s a man and all grown up, and a gentleman cannot work with his hands in any case. I am not a gentleman.”

Beck flicked her nose with the end of one of her braids. “For which we are all very grateful.”

Allie didn’t dimple and giggle as Beck had intended. “If I were a boy, I’d be getting art lessons again, and there would be talk of apprenticing me.”

“You really love to paint and draw, don’t you?” Beck asked, eyeing her work.

“More than anything. Mama says I get lost when I do, but I feel like it’s when I get found. It isn’t that I forget time or where I am, it’s that I’m where I’m supposed to be.”

Beck slid a large hand down Allie’s back, feeling the sharp little bones of her shoulder blades. “Sometimes, princess, you have to allow for people not understanding you, even though they love you and you love them.”

Sometimes, you have to let them send you away, because they love you and you love them. Beck thought of his father, his brothers, his sisters…

“You mean like Mama?” Allie tucked herself a little closer to him. “That’s the thing, though. She does understand, not about painting, but about art. She used to play for people, for important people, and they would pay her money, make her do three encores and everything. Now she doesn’t play, and she forgets. I think it’s my fault.”

“Why would you say that?” Such little bones to carry so much responsibility.

“Because when you’re a mama, you can’t forget the time or the day,” Allie explained patiently. “When you’re a mama, you have to always be… where a mama should be. That sort of thing. Making beds instead of making music.”

“Have you ever asked your mother to play for you?” Beck wondered, as the question left his mouth, if he were fomenting treason.

“I don’t.” Allie set her sketch aside. “I think it would hurt her feelings to remember, and she’s afraid she’ll forget about the beds, and then where would we be?”

“Here’s where you are.” Beck searched for a way to convey his thoughts safely. “You and your mother love each other, and you want each other to be happy. The beds have to be made, but it might be possible you have to paint too, Allie. Your mother is a very smart lady, and if she needs to get her violin out of its case, trust her to know that.”

Allie kicked at the bed idly. “She can’t play her violin. She sold it, but she buys me paints.”

“Maybe she sold it because she was done with it.”

Allie didn’t say anything but leaned in against Beck silently, reminding him of many such gestures and conversations with his younger sisters. Whoever thought little girls were full of simple impulses and silly dreams had never spent time listening to one.

“I enjoy your art, Allie,” Beck said. “I think your mother does too, but what will count in the end is if you enjoy it.”

“Maybe.” Allie shifted away, and Beck let her go. “She likes what I do, but it bothers her too—like I do.”

Beck drew her back for a growling hug. “It is the job of mothers to be bothered by their offspring. Now go see if your mama needs help. She’s unpacking the crates my sister sent down from Belle Maison, and I suspect Nita might have tucked in some maple candy, for we raise both bees and sugar maples.”

“Maple candy?”

“Go.” Beck closed her sketch book and handed it to her. “And don’t stop sketching, Allie, not as long as it makes you happy.”

She grinned and nodded, casting off her pensive mood in the fashion of young children. And then she was gone, leaving Beck to ponder what had changed in Sarabande Hunt’s life that she’d traded in her violin for wrinkled sheets and dirty andirons?

* * *

Appraisers apparently considered it their purpose in life to state the obvious, repeatedly and emphatically, as Henri Bernard was doing now.

“They’re unconventional, very unconventional, but the brush work is…”

Extraordinary, Tremaine thought, wanting to kick something—or someone.

“Mr. St. Michael, I tell you the brush work is nothing short of extraordinary. Absolutely, utterly extraordinary. And the use of light—the mastery of it—beyond extraordinary. Words fail, they simply fail. Have you more works by the same artist?”

He had a good dozen more, larger and just as well executed, the subjects conventional enough for a dowager duchess’s drawing room—provided her grace had exquisite taste in paintings.

“Let’s start with these three. I need a value on them.” Which was the same point Tremaine had made nearly forty-five absolutely, utterly, extraordinary minutes ago.

Bernard stuffed a quizzing glass in his pocket and straightened. “Are they to be sold at private auction? An auction for gentlemen, perhaps? Christie’s will do an excellent job, and there are smaller houses, too, that I can highly recommend.”

Because each of those auction houses would pay the dapper, so-French Monsieur Bernard a healthy commission for bringing these works to the block.

“I’m considering my options,” Tremaine said. “The first step is to determine a value for them.”

“That will take some time, sir. I must correspond with colleagues on the Continent, research sales of paintings of a similar nature.”

Damn the French and their confounded, mule-stubborn delicacy.

“How long will you need,” Tremaine asked, “and how much will it cost me?”

* * *

Beckman set an idle pace across the yard. “My money’s on young Cane.”

“Your money?” Sara liked that he’d escort her like this on a simple trip to the pond, and liked even better the way his hand rested over hers on his arm.

“In the great sweepstakes to win Maudie’s heart,” Beck went on. “She spends more time goggling at the scenery than she does helping Polly. We’ll have to get two scullery maids, one to serve and one to stand as lookout. They can take turns.”