Most of the income of the estate came, in fact, from wool. But the sheep were reproducing at far too exuberant a rate for them all to remain comfortably on the land until old age took them off. Someone needed to manage the flock just as someone needed to manage the land. Percy was not a manager, nor did he have the slightest ambition to become one. The very idea! But he did recognize need when he saw it, as well as poor management or pretty much no management at all.
The farmyard, just beyond the confines of the park to the north, was looking considerably down-at-the-heels. It sported a few milk cows and would soon sport some calves too—Percy did not ask where the bull was that had made the latter possible. There were a few goats, which appeared to have no particular function, and so many chickens that it was hard not to trip over them at every turn as they pecked about the yard. It was also quite impossible not to step in their droppings. A duck pond had some ducks to complement it. There were a few sheep pens for the lambing and, presumably, to house the flock during shearing season and in particularly bad weather. The pens looked as if they would be perfectly happy to give up the ghost any day now.
The hay in the sagging barn looked somewhat gray, as though it might have been there as long as the barn itself. The mice within it probably lived in comfort and died at a ripe old age.
The farm laborers seemed to be mostly gnarled old men, their sons presumably having departed long ago for pastures that were literally greener. The stable hands and gardeners within the confines of the park showed somewhat more youth and vigor, though they did appear to include more than their fair share of the lame and decrepit, further evidence of Lady Lavinia’s tender sensibilities.
Percy hoped a new steward would be found sooner than soon and that he would gallop out here without stopping for food or rest along the way. He hoped the man would not take one look when he arrived and turn tail and flee.
Percy had worn his oldest clothes as he tramped about, though the fact was he did not possess anything that was much older than a year. Watkins would not have stood for it. The same applied to his riding boots, which were quite undeserving of the punishment they suffered in the farmyard. He did not carry a staff, but he did have a faithful dog at heel, that embarrassment of a skinny mutt with the grandiose name of Hector. The great Trojan hero Hector had shot the mighty and seemingly immortal Achilles in the heel and killed him. At least Hector the dog did not try to bite his heel. It had attached itself to him, Percy believed, only because the other dogs at the house, including that massive and lethargic bulldog and the sausage dog, shunned it and would not share their feeding bowls with it or allow it uncontested access to its own—and because the cats, especially the growling Prudence, intimidated it. Hector was, in fact, a sniveling coward and did nothing to enhance Percy’s manly image as he strode about his neglected land.
It was enough to make any self-respecting gentleman farmer weep. Not that he wanted to be a gentleman farmer, at least not a gentleman farmer who behaved like one. Heaven forbid.
The following morning, after an uneventful night in his bedchamber, Percy walked purposefully across the lawn toward the dower house and found exactly what he had suspected he would find, namely a roofless edifice barren of any workers at all or any other discernible sign of life. He returned to the hall and changed his clothes. By the time Watkins had finished with him, he would have turned startled heads even on Bond Street—especially on Bond Street, in fact.
“My ebony cane, Watkins,” he said. “We did bring the ebony, I suppose?”
“We did, m’lord.” Watkins produced it.
“And my jeweled quizzing glass.”
“The jeweled one, m’lord?”
Percy fixed him with a look, and the jeweled glass was produced without further comment.
“And a lace-edged handkerchief,” Percy said. “And my ruby snuff box, I believe. Yes, the ruby snuffbox.”
Watkins was too well bred to comment on these ostentatious additions to a morning outfit, but the wooden expression with which he always demonstrated disapproval became almost fossilized.
“Be so good as to look through the window to see if my traveling carriage is at the door,” Percy instructed him.
It was. And a grandiose piece of workmanship it was too. He had inherited it from his father and seldom used it. He had brought it here only because Watkins would have been stoically disappointed if he had been forced to travel in a lesser specimen of coach.
Percy had ascertained upon his return to the house that Lady Barclay had taken the gig into Porthdare, as she had said at breakfast she intended to do. There was apparently an elderly lady with a sore hip who needed visiting. Women really could be angels on occasion, though it took a stretch of the imagination to consider his third cousin-in-law once removed and angels in the same thought.
Sometime later, having discovered the name and place of business of the roofer from his butler, Percy stepped unhurriedly down from his carriage outside the man’s shop, which was situated in Meirion, a village six miles up the river valley. He looked languidly about him, ignoring the smattering of gawkers who had stopped to watch the show—or, that is, him.