‘Yes. Yes, I’m fine,’ Mollie assured her hastily. ‘Please go on. You were saying about Alex...about the Earl...’
Had Pat heard the angry note of censure and dislike in her voice as she’d said the word ‘Earl’? Mollie shot the older woman a quick look. There was no point in alienating her by allowing her own feelings about the man to show, not when it was obvious both from Pat’s doting tone of voice and the indulgent look on her face that she held a vastly different opinion of him.
‘Oh, yes, Alex... He’s had a hard time of it; there’s no doubt about that.’
She paused whilst Mollie attempted to look duly sympathetic, although inwardly she was silently raging. ‘A hard time of it’. Not from what she had seen, he hadn’t. Oh, yes, she could really buy into that one.
‘His father was killed hunting—which is one of the reasons that Alex has banned it on his land—and his unexpected death left Alex with huge death duties to pay. Luckily he’s managed to keep most of the land, even if he’s had to cut down on staff.’
‘I’ve read that more and more farmers and farmworkers are leaving the land,’ Mollie commented.
An idea was beginning to take shape in her mind, the seeds of what she knew in her bones would make a truly controversial piece starting to germinate in the warm, receptive atmosphere of her own instinctive sympathy for the underdog and her equally instinctive dislike of Alexander, Earl of St Otel, and all that he stood for.
‘Yes. Yes, some are.’ Pat was agreeing sombrely with her. ‘We’ve all had so many problems to face recently with there being so many food scares and new EC laws are coming into force.’
‘I was thinking more specifically of the problems that occur when farmers and farmworkers who have devoted the whole of their working lives to their farms discover, when they come to retire, that they are expected to vacate properties which have probably been their homes for most of their lives. Tenanted farms and tied cottages...’
‘Oh, yes, problems can and do occur,’ Pat agreed readily. ‘Often with tragic results.’
‘Like the woman in the north of England who was evicted from the home she had lived in all her life after her husband’s death, and expected to adapt to city life, living in a high-rise council block at eighty-two years of age,’ Mollie supplemented for her, really beginning to warm to her theme. This was an area she had researched extensively as a student, and such injustices were very close to her heart.
‘Yes, the law can be very unfair,’ Pat acknowledged.
‘Not the law, the landlords who implement it,’ Mollie corrected her firmly. ‘I know that the Earl is your landlord. I expect he owns a great deal of property, both locally and elsewhere.’
‘Yes. Yes, he does, but...’
Mollie could see the headline now, hear the plaudits ringing in her ears as she exposed Alexander, Earl of St Otel, for the selfish, greedy monster that he undoubtedly was. Heavens, such a story might even attract the interest of a television documentary team, and then...
Not that she would ever write a single word motivated by self-interest, she told herself sternly. That simply wasn’t her style. No, what she wanted to do was to draw people’s attention to social injustices, to right wrongs, to slay dragons, and if one of those dragons should just happen to be the Earl of St Otel, then...then that only went to prove how right she had been to...to... Well, anyway, he had had no right to kiss her like that.
Thanking Pat for her time, she hurried back to the Gazette’s offices, where she diligently produced an article including the recipe for Pat’s great-grandmother’s famous chutney. But once she left work and got home she looked out her earlier research and seated herself in front of her own computer, where she set to work producing a far more controversial and explosive piece.
It was an exposé of the way wealthy and uncaring land-owners treated their employees, and although she was scrupulously careful about not naming the Earl of St Otel—after all, she had nothing concrete in evidence against him yet—it was him Mollie had in mind as she worked on her article. He was, she had decided, the epitome of the greedy and uncaring land-owner, and a man too proud and arrogant, too selfish, to have a thought in his head for anyone other than himself.
Writing the article was one thing, she admitted, getting Bob Fleury to print it was quite another, but somehow she would find a way. She was determined. What she had to say, what she had to reveal and unmask about this nationwide issue was far too important not to be brought to people’s attention.
The country’s farmland was quickly becoming one vast mechanised food-production plant over which a small number of ever increasingly vastly wealthy individuals were acquiring total control—a business based merely on profits with no room in it for humanity nor for humans.
Sombrely Mollie watched now as a pair of geese flew over the river. Pat Lawson had mentioned during their conversation that there was a small nature reserve several miles away, the land and the small lake it included having been donated by a local philanthropist—some kindly elderly person, Mollie decided absently as she watched the geese disappear out of sight.
Alex grimaced as the Land Rover jolted out of a pothole in the road with a teeth-clenching rattle. He would dearly love to be able to replace it but he simply couldn’t afford to. For him to spend money on a new vehicle for himself would mean that he would have to take money from some other project, such as replacing an essential piece of farm equipment or ensuring that all his tenanted cottages were properly repaired.
He frowned briefly and then made a determined effort to switch off from thinking about the problems that came from trying to turn ancient privilege and everything that went with it into a modern, self-financing environment fit to go forward into the new millennium—something which hopefully his children would inherit with serenity and joy instead of the grim near despair which he had had to take on with his inheritance following his father’s unexpectedly early death. Death duties had been only the start of his problems, but hopefully they were now through the worst of things... Hopefully.
He looked ruefully at the small peace-offering on the passenger seat—a basket of peaches from the orangery that was the focal point of the house’s kitchen garden. Built at the time of the original mansion, and modernised early on in the Edwardian era, its heating was provided by a complicated labyrinth of pipes and hot water fuelled by an ancient and temperamental boiler.
He himself had been on the point of deciding that the place would have to be emptied and closed down when a retired local gardener had come forward with the proposal that a local group of amateur enthusiasts take over not just the orangery and the succession houses that lined the south wall of the kitchen garden, but also the kitchen garden itself.
This collective, of which he himself was now a part, in that he was an honorary member of their group, shared the produce which the garden gave. The peaches he had packed carefully in a basket surrounded by tissue paper were his share of this season’s.
For reasons which he had no intention of going into, their lush promise reminded him very much of the person for whom his gift was intended. Their fruit would be sweet and juicy but with an explosive and challenging sharpness. Deftly he swung the Land Rover over to the side of the road and parked it.
Mollie frowned as she heard the knock on her front door. She wasn’t expecting anyone. She had not had any time to make any friends in the town as yet, and virtually the only two people she knew were Bob Fleury and his wife.
Switching off the kettle, she went to answer the door. When she opened it her eyes widened in wary suspicion as she saw who was standing there.
‘What do you want?’ she demanded challengingly,