Now, as they strolled back from the church, it seemed the time to build on the intimacy of the moment by showing an interest rather than offering suggestions. ‘I would like it if you would show me the new stables. They seem to be coming along very well.’
Will changed direction and took the path to the farm. ‘You have not been to look at them yet?’
‘You made it clear that you did not require my interference.’ She tried to say it lightly, but his arm stiffened under her hand.
‘I am sorry you see it like that,’ Will said. ‘But there can only be one master giving orders or it confuses the servants and the workers. And I am the master.’
‘I realise that.’ Julia bit her lip. If he was prepared to be conciliatory, then she must not be grudging. ‘And perhaps I had not taken that into account sufficiently when you came home. But this has been my life and my responsibility for three years. It is what interests me, what has always interested me. I do not want to displace you—I could not do that even if I wanted to—but I cannot bear to be shut out. May I not be involved? Can we not discuss things together?’
He was silent as he opened a gate for her. ‘Will, I will go mad if you expect me to retire into the house and become a domestic paragon!’
‘You seem to be that already,’ he remarked. ‘I do not recall the house ever looking better.’
‘Thank you. But there is nothing left to do except maintain it, whereas there is always something with the estate.’ He raised an eyebrow and she knew she was being too enthusiastic, but she could not help herself. ‘I love it! There are always new things to try, experiments to plan, even a crisis or two to enliven the week.’ They stopped abruptly, confronted by a six-foot wide patch of mire where the cows had churned up the entrance to the milking yard after an unseasonal cloudburst a few days before. ‘See? This needs filling with rubble and tamping down.’
Will stopped, pushed his hat firmly on to his head, took her around the waist and swung her over the mud to a large flat stone in the middle, hopped across to it himself and then swore under his breath. ‘I’ve misjudged this—there isn’t enough room to stand securely and swing you across to the hard ground.’ They clung together in the middle, swaying dangerously.
‘You must let me go or we’ll both fall in. We will just have to wade,’ Julia said. Will was enjoyably strong and large to cling to, even if it did seem they were both about to land in the mud. What we must look like... ‘I have old boots on.’
‘Well, I have not!’ Will protested as he took a firmer grip around her waist. ‘These are Hoby’s best.’
‘They are very beautiful boots.’ She had noticed. And noticed too how well they set off his muscular legs. ‘If I go, then you will have room to get your balance and jump.’ An irrepressible desire to laugh was beginning to take hold of her. Where on earth had that come from? Relief, perhaps, after the cathartic tears in the church.
‘I am not going to leave my wife to wade through the mud in order to protect my boots,’ Will said. Julia managed to tip her head back far enough to see the stubborn set of his jaw. There was a small dark mole under the point of it and the impulse to kiss it warred with the need to giggle. He sounded so very affronted to find himself in this ridiculous position.
‘If we shout loudly enough, someone will come and they can fetch planks or a hurdle,’ she suggested. ‘Or is that beneath your dignity?’
‘Yes,’ Will agreed and she saw the corner of his mouth turn up. ‘It is. I feel enough of an idiot, without an audience of sniggering farmhands. Can you put your arms around my neck?’
Julia wriggled to lift her arms. The stone tipped with a sucking sound. ‘I think it is sinking. How deep can this mud hole be?’
‘We are not going to find out.’ Will put his hands under her bottom. ‘Jump up and get your legs around my hips.’
‘My skirts—’
‘Are wide enough,’ he said with a grunt as he boosted her up and then, with a lurch, made a giant stride to the milking-parlour threshold with Julia clinging like a monkey round his neck. She gave a faint scream as he landed off balance, jolting the breath out of her, then, with a ghastly inevitability, they were falling.
Will twisted and came down first into a pile of straw with Julia on top of him. ‘Ough!’
They lay there gasping for breath until Will said, ‘Would you mind moving your elbow? Otherwise we are endangering the future heir.’
Shaking with laughter, stunned to find she could laugh about it, Julia untangled herself and flopped back beside him. ‘At least it is clean straw.’
‘You find this funny?’ He was grinning with the air of a man caught out by his own amusement. It was the first time she had realised that he had a sense of the ridiculous and it was surprisingly attractive.
‘Exceedingly,’ she admitted. ‘Look at us! You have lost your hat somewhere, you have straw in your hair, your shirt is coming untucked from your breeches and, my lord, despite your exquisite boots, you look the picture of a country swain tumbling his girl in a haystack.’
‘And what do you resemble, I wonder?’ Will raised himself on one elbow and looked down at her. ‘Your bonnet is no doubt with my hat in the mud, those boots are deplorable, your skirts are mired around the hem, your cheeks are pink and I do not blame the country swain for wanting to tumble you in the least.’
He leaned over and slid his hand into her hair, very much the lord of the manor exercising his droit de seigneur, she thought, rather than a farmhand. ‘Now then, my milkmaid...’
He kissed her, laughing. She kissed him back, as well as she could. Will’s weight pressed her down into the straw as his free hand began to creep up her stockinged leg. Julia’s giggles turned into a little gasp of arousal. ‘Will...’
‘Coom oop, Daisy! Get along there, Molly!’
‘What the hell?’ Will sat up and Julia scrabbled at her rising hem. ‘Oh my lord, the herd is coming in. Up you get.’ He hauled her to her feet and began to bat at her skirts as Julia brushed straw off his coat-tails.
‘Too late...here they come. For goodness’ sake, Will, tuck in your shirt!’
The dairy cows pushed through the wide entrance from the field, bringing the smell of grass and manure as they stared with wide, curious black eyes at the interlopers in their milking parlour. ‘Go on, get along with you.’ Julia waved her hands and they wandered off placidly, each to its own stall, blinking with their preposterously long eyelashes.
‘My lady! Oh, and my lord too. Never realised you was in here.’ Bill Trent, the dairyman, stood in the doorway, staring at them with as much surprise, and rather more speculation, than his cattle.
‘We came up against the quagmire out there, Trent,’ Julia said. ‘And we rather misjudged the distance when we tried to get across it. Have you seen our hats? They must have fallen off when we jumped.’
‘There they be, my lady.’ Bill pointed to the ground behind the straw pile. There was no way the hats would have fallen in that position except from their heads as they sprawled there. On the other hand, she comforted herself as she went to retrieve them, Bill Trent was not perhaps the brightest of the farm workers and might not have the imagination to draw the very obvious conclusion about what the baron and his wife had been doing.
‘Come