Seducing Miss Lockwood. Helen Dickson
with the harvest, Dolly?’
‘Always does. Loves it, he does. He’s always there come hay time and harvest. Seems to like the physical work—suppose it’s got something to do with him being in the army. There’s no keeping him away from it.’
‘But don’t the workers find his presence intimidating?’
‘No—not a bit. They’re used to him and treat him like one of them—which is the way he likes it when he’s in the field. He wouldn’t have it any other way.’
Reaching the field, Juliet thought what a beautiful sight it was. It was full of people, young and old, with men bending low, grasping the corn in handfuls and cutting it with the serrated edge of the sickle, the metal shining in the sun as the heavy heads of wheat fell in a graceful form before being hooked into sheaves. The men cut and the women gathered the sheaves together with their bare hands. Each sheaf was bound with a straw bond, which had been made from the cut corn and tied with a special knot. They worked until the mid-day sun baked the cornfield, making the uncut wheat crackle and the reapers’ hunger and thirst for food and drink.
A cobalt-blue sky smiled over the green crest of hills in the distance, golden sunlight pouring down the slopes. High overhead a hawk hovered, while a couple of noisy magpies perched on a fence. Dogs with wagging tales and tongues lolling from panting mouths watched and waited in a shivering, excited alertness to catch the frightened rabbits that would come darting out from the corn, disturbed by the cutters.
Juliet’s eyes drank in the intoxication of it all. She suddenly felt like a gilded bird freed from its cage for a few precious hours.
Juliet and Dolly carried the basket to the shade of the hedge, where others from the house, who gave them no more than a cursory glance, were already unpacking baskets. Placing the basket on the ground, Juliet took a moment to let her gaze wander to the surrounding fields where the corn had already been cut and stooked and stood like aisles of cathedrals in long rows on the golden stubble.
Kneeling on the ground, she began helping Dolly. Juliet liked the young maid, who was easy to talk to and always went out of her way to make her life easy at Lansdowne House. Dolly looked at her and smiled.
‘This isn’t the kind of work I expected to see you doing, miss. You don’t have to.’
‘I know, but I’d like to. Besides, it’s my day off, and it’s much better than being by myself. Who are all these people, Dolly? Where do they come from?’
‘The village mostly and surrounding hamlets. Casual workers are paid by the day, others by the week. It’s backbreaking work, with not many breaks. Too much time resting in the heat of the day and the target of corn to be cut, tied and stooked will not be reached. If the heavy rains come and lay the corn, it’s difficult to cut so they keep going.’ She looked up at the sun. ‘They’ll soon be breaking off. There’s the Duke over there.’ She pointed him out. ‘He’s handsome, don’t you think so?’
‘Yes, he is.’
‘He’s a lady’s man, too, when he goes to London,’ Dolly said in a matter-of-fact way. ‘Randy as a ram in town, but he never brings any of the ladies back here. He’s never been known to interfere with the female staff, either. He’s sober and fair minded and generous towards those who work for him, and admired by everyone in the district.’
‘You certainly place him in an amiable light, Dolly. It is not consistent with his behaviour when he is in London.’
She shrugged. ‘He can do what he likes in town, it’s how he behaves when he’s here that counts. Take people as you find is what I always say. His friends are a bit lively, though, and he has a habit of setting the whole house in uproar during the shooting and hunting season, when every gentleman here abouts invades the house. Always puts poor old Pearce in a flap and Mrs Reed never knows how many she has to cater for. That Sir Charles Sedgwick has to be watched. Have you met him?’
‘Yes, on my arrival.’
‘He’s an ever-so-charming rogue with the ladies if ever there was, so you watch out for him,’ Dolly warned, pausing in her work to give Juliet a stern look, as if she were instructing a child when in fact she was younger than Juliet. ‘He can be very persuasive.’
‘Well, he is very good looking.’
‘They all are, miss. That’s the danger of it. Let them have their way and the next thing you know you’re in the family way. Miss Geraldine Howard’s got her hooks into him, but he’s not averse to trying it on with any pretty face that comes his way. Always causes quite a stir among the housemaids when he comes a-calling.’
Juliet laughed lightly. ‘Never fear, Dolly. I’ll take heed of what you say, although I like to think I have a cool head in matters of the heart and always keep my feet firmly on the ground.’
Juliet paused to watch the workers toiling in the field, becoming thoughtful about what Dolly had said about her employer. Had she been mistaken about his character, and that except for his dissolute behaviour when he went to town, his actions when he was at Lansdowne Hall put a different construction on his character? To be fair to him, from what she had observed of him as he went about his work, he conducted himself with dignity and was always civil and courteous, and had Dolly not given him an almost flawless character?
In her plain dove-grey dress, a few seasons old but flattering with a modest neckline and short ballooned sleeves, some of the workers began to take notice of Juliet. Unlike the other maids in their white aprons and caps covering their hair, from beneath her bonnet Juliet’s hair hung loose about her shoulders, the sides drawn back and secured with a narrow ribbon. Young men in the field became fascinated by her presence, exciting them and thrusting from their thoughts all the other young maids who were unpacking baskets of food.
When there was nothing to do but wait for mid-day, sitting a little away from the others beneath the shade of a willow tree, spreading her skirts about her, Juliet watched those hard at work. It was a cheerful group of maids who, happy to be relieved from household duties for a short while, eyed the youths in the field with encouraging flirtatious glances, tittering and giggling and hoping they would be singled out when they came to eat.
It wasn’t difficult for Juliet to pick out her employer, who was arranging up the sheaves in stooks of eight. Never had she seen a figure of such masculine appeal. Against her better judgement she allowed her captivated senses to propel her deeper into her own thoughts, and as often happened, she was filled with such longings and yearnings as she had never thought to experience, and she felt that melting sensation in her secret parts.
Like many of the other male workers, he was naked to the waist. His legs were clad in buckskin trousers that fitted him like a second skin, tucked into high black boots and secured around the waist with a leather belt. The hairs on his chest glistened like strands of polished jet as every time he lifted a sheaf caused hard muscle to tense and ripple under his bronzed skin.
In no way did he resemble the refined gentleman who inhabited Lansdowne House. He was more like a gypsy, too swarthy for a nobleman, yet as much at ease in a fancy drawing room dressed like a duke as stripped half-naked in the harvest field, working and sweating like a beast of burden with everyday folk.
At mid-day it was a cheerful yet weary group of workers that drifted to the shade of the hedge. They gathered around the baskets, mothers picking up their babies and unashamedly bearing their breasts to feed them. They sat quaffing ale and cider, the women and children cold tea, before tucking into bread and cheese, fat bacon and Mrs Reed’s succulent pasties and pies.
The air was languid, the warm, sweet smell of the cornfield prevalent, and butterflies and insects fluttered about. For a while silence reigned, as everyone was content to munch away, unfazed by the presence of the Duke among them, content to work side by side with him, their only concern being to get the work done.
Juliet watched him throw himself down on the ground with his fellow workers, and when one of the men spoke to him a slow half-smile curved his sensuous lips, and she saw him give a careless shrug before lifting his a flagon of ale to his mouth.