Tempted

“Well, I do,” said Lord Mountjoy. “It tells me more about Ralph than I have found out all the times I have talked to him. Now if we could just get it to rhyme,” he mused.

“Thank you ever so much for the help. If you don’t mind, I shall go upstairs and work on it some more.” Ralph bolted from the room before he was likely to be subjected to Lord Mountjoy trying to impose a rhyming scheme on him, and Evan caught Judith grinning at the same thought.

“You were going to tell me about your canal, sir,” Evan said, to distract his father.

“My what? Oh, yes, yes, the canal. Terry, bring one of those candles over to the desk. I have my plans right here.”

As the clock chimed ten, the ladies rose and put away their work. It struck Evan that they led a very dull life here. He could not remember exactly what life had been like at Meremont before, but his Gram had always served tea in the evening, and they had had three meals a day instead of two. He knew that this present situation was not from any paucity of food, but due rather to the scarcity of help. Witness how Bose had been pressed into service in the kitchen in his spare hours. Of course, that might be voluntary, for nothing would put him closer to Joan than helping out at the house rather than lounging about the stable.

Once Evan looked at the map and realized how much land his father had bought up, he could see why they might be beggared. There had to be close to a thousand acres. That brought the size of the contiguous holdings of Meremont to nearly two thousand acres, if one counted the barrens. He stared at his father, trying to divine if the man had become unhinged. Several things suggested this: the will, for one; now this talk of the canal. Lord Mountjoy glanced up at him for approval of the route he had mapped out.

“What’s this bit of land here?” Evan asked. “You haven’t inked it in yet.”

“We haven’t got it yet. Fifteen acres of worthless riverbank. It belongs to Lady Sylvia Vane. With any luck we shall get it for free.”

“How so?”

“We shall if Terry does not drink himself to death before he has her promise of marriage.”

“I suppose I am good for something,” Terry said.

“Such a sacrifice for a bit of land,” Evan said with a smile. “Is she worth it?”

“She’s beautiful,” Terry said.

“Do you love her?”

“I don’t love anyone else. I may as well marry Sylvia.”

“I hope you show her a little more ardor than that,” his father said critically, and Terry smiled crookedly.

“I hope you have not got another aging spinster with an odd plot of land you need. I would not be willing to make such a sacrifice.”

“All that I require of you is that you build the canal. How many men will it take, do you think?”

“Hundreds, unless you want it to take years.”

“We cannot wait years. We need it done in a year.”

“Impossible!”

“Then we will merely hire more men.”

“Have you any idea what this all will cost?” “That’s the other thing I require of you. You must work out what it will cost.”

“I’ll start surveying it tomorrow,” Evan agreed wearily, hoping that he could discourage his father from the foolish scheme by laying in front of him the figures, before his brother leapt into what was bound to be a disastrous marriage.

Judith rode with Evan as usual in the morning. Angel was not yet up, so Evan made Bose go with them. They went north to scout again the area where the canal was to go, the canal from nowhere. Where on earth was he to start from? There would be water aplenty to feed the thing from all the streams that ran through the district, but the point of origin was only vaguely sketched in on the map. The gap in the hills, he supposed. There was a group of buildings there, and he asked Judith what they were.

“A factory village where they used to fire pottery. There’s still plenty of clay left, I hear, but since the owner died the place has been shut up.”

“Then how can Father think this canal will be profitable?”

“You think it’s a bad idea?”

“I think it’s a disastrous idea. I’m just putting off telling him so.”

“That will cause an explosion,” she said.

Bose looked accusingly at Evan.

“Bose, go scout about that village. You can catch up with us later.” Bose clenched his teeth and rode off. Judith followed him with her eyes but made no objection.

“When you first came here you seemed to enjoy setting your father’s teeth on edge.”

“I really didn’t do it on purpose, but he was so prepared to take umbrage it took no effort at all.”

“In fact, you fell in to the way of it quite naturally. Was that what you were like when you were young?”

“I can’t for the life of me remember if I used to bait him or not. That was all so long ago. If I was in the habit of discomfiting him on purpose, I would have thought I would have outgrown it.”

“If you had grown up here, perhaps you might have.”

“What do you mean?”

“Even though Helen is a decade older than me and practically raised me, we relate as adults because I have grown into that role. Our relationship has changed because we have always been together. Your attitude toward your father has never changed, since you haven’t seen him in all this time.”

Evan reined in his horse. “You’re telling me that I’m still playing the rebellious youth to his authority figure?”

“Even though he has no authority over you at all.”

“In other words, I should grow up,” he said with a grin.

“Or at least strive to act as though you have,” she countered with a prim smile.

Evan gave a crack of laughter. “You don’t pull any punches, do you, my dear?”

“I am not your dear.”

“That is what Father calls you,” he said, kneeing Taurus into a walk. “I’m merely trying to act grown-up, like him.”

“If you want to do so by bantering at me instead of him, I am agreeable. At least it will be fair play.”

“Meaning you are more able to defend yourself. Yes, I am well aware of that.” He felt his jaw.

“Whether you seek to or not, you do hurt him, and I don’t like it. I care about him too much.”

“Why do you care about him so much?” Evan asked, reining in his horse again. Judith pulled up beside him.