Read Chapter 12: The Local Landlord

The knock came as Maeve was scrubbing the last of the Galway dust from her boots. Two hard raps, the kind that expected an answer before the sound had died. She set the boot aside and crossed the cold flagstones of the hall, pulling the door open to find a man she did not know standing on her step, his collar high against the drizzle and his boots polished to a slate-like sheen that spoke of better roads than hers.

“Mrs. Kelly,” he said. It was not a question.

“I am Maeve Brennan-Kelly, yes.”

“Sir Godfrey Ashby sends his compliments and requests the pleasure of your company at his table this evening. Carriage will be sent at half-seven.”

The name landed like a stone in still water. Godfrey Ashby. Three thousand acres to the east, a man whose fences ran clean to the horizon, whose tenants did not starve because he did not keep tenants—he kept laborers, paid in coin, fed from his own stores, and answerable to no lease or custom. Maeve had seen his land once, on a trip with Kilmartin years ago, and had felt the strangeness of it: fields without potato ridges, straight as ruled lines.

“Does Sir Godfrey often summon his neighbors at a day’s notice?”

The servant’s face was blank as a shuttered window. “He was given to understand you have pressing business, madam. He offers his assistance.”

Pressing business. The words sat wrong. Her debts were known to the bank in Galway, and to Ashworth, and to herself—but she had not announced them to the countryside. Yet news of a widow in distress traveled faster than a horse could ride, especially when the widow had been seen soliciting loans in a bank's front parlor with an English agent at her side.

“Tell Sir Godfrey I shall attend.”

The servant touched his hat and was gone.

Maeve stood in the doorway a long moment, watching the rain pick up over the yard. Padraig emerged from the barn, saw her expression, and said nothing. That was the worst of it—that her own people had learned to read her silences.

She went up to her room and opened the small chest at the foot of the bed. Inside lay her mourning dress, the good black wool she had worn at Kilmartin’s funeral and not since. It smelled of cedar and grief. She lifted it out and held it to the light. Whatever Godfrey Ashby wanted, she would meet it dressed for battle.

The carriage was on time, which told her more about the man than any words could. It was a smart affair, sprung properly, the horse well-fed and sleek. The driver helped her up without ceremony, and they rolled through her ragged fields—past the dead ridges, the blackened stalks, the small figures of her tenants turning to watch the unfamiliar equipage pass. She felt their eyes on her back like fingers.

Sir Godfrey’s house appeared through the trees at the end of a gravel drive that crunched with pride. It was a Georgian box, symmetrical and cold, with a portico that looked like it had been imported directly from London along with its owner’s accent. A footman took her cloak, and she was led into a dining room where the table was laid for two.

Godfrey Ashby rose from his chair as she entered. He was perhaps sixty, clean-shaven, with gray hair combed back from a high forehead and eyes the color of wet slate. He did not bow so much as incline his head, an economy of movement that suggested he had little physical enthusiasm left in him.

“Mrs. Kelly,” he said, his voice as dry as the toast beside his plate. “Thank you for coming. I know the distance is not great, but your circumstances make any journey a burden.”

“My circumstances are my own concern, Sir Godfrey.”

“Indeed.” He gestured to the chair across from him. “Please. The kitchen has prepared a simple supper. I find business is better conducted over food.”

She sat. The chair was carved, heavy, designed to make a person feel small. She had sat in such chairs before, at her father’s table, at her husband’s creditors’ offices. She knew the trick of it—the chair only had power if you let it.

The soup came first. It was rich, beefy, with a depth of flavor her own kitchen had not produced in months. Maeve ate slowly, watching him. He ate too, without hurry, managing the conversation in pleasant nothings—the weather, the roads, the state of the hunt clubs in the county. As if they had all the time in the world. As if her potatoes were not rotting in the ground and her tenants not counting their dwindling stores.

When the plates were cleared and a decanter of port placed between them, Godfrey set down his glass and fixed her with those slate eyes.

“I will not waste your time, Mrs. Kelly. You are a woman of sense, and I respect sense. I know about the loan application in Galway. I know about the rejection. I know about O’Connell, Ashworth’s man, and I suspect you will find his terms less generous than promised.”

Maeve kept her hands still in her lap. “You seem well informed.”

“I make it my business to understand the land around me.” He poured himself a finger of port, did not offer her any. “Your husband’s debts are not a secret to those who care to look. The bank holds paper on Kilmartin’s estate—on this estate, I should say, since it is yours now—that exceeds its current value. The harvest has failed. Your tenants are eating what they should be planting. And you have sold your horse to buy them bread.”

“You have been thorough.”

“I am thorough by nature.” He set the glass down. “I will make you an offer. A fair one. I will take the estate off your hands—all three hundred acres, the house, the outbuildings, the tenant obligations—for the sum of the debt. I will assume that debt myself and pay it off in your name. You will walk away unencumbered. Free.”

The word hung in the air. Free. It was the same word Ashworth had used when offering to co-sign, the same word the bank had used when explaining her options. Free was what they called it when you surrendered everything to a man with money.

“And my tenants?”

Godfrey’s mouth twitched. “I have no tenants, Mrs. Kelly. I employ laborers. Those of your people who wish to stay and work will find positions. Those who do not will have to move on.”

“Move on to where? The workhouse? The ship to America?”

“That is not my concern.” His tone sharpened slightly. “The estate cannot support them. You know this. I know this. They know it too, though they will not say it to your face.”

Maeve stood. The chair scraped back, and she let it, let the sound fill the room. He did not flinch.

“You have a good offer,” Godfrey said, more softly. “I would advise you to take it before winter makes it necessary to sell at an even greater loss.”

“You speak of winter as if it is my enemy.”

“It is everyone’s enemy, Mrs. Kelly. It is merely a question of who is prepared for it.”

She was at the door before he spoke again, and his next words stopped her cold.

“I understand your husband dealt with a lender in Galway—a man named Coffey. A moneylender, not a bank. It would be a shame if that debt came due before you were able to manage it.”

Maeve turned slowly. “Coffey.”

Godfrey shrugged. “Merely an observation. Men like Coffey are patient, but not infinitely so. And they are often encouraged by those who stand to gain from another’s distress.”

The words settled into her like a splinter she could not dig out. She looked at his face, composed, polite, utterly unmoved. He knew about Coffey. He knew about the loan rejection. He knew about the mare. What else did he know? And how much of what he knew had he helped bring about?

“I will consider your offer,” she said, keeping her voice level.

“I would not take long to consider it.”

The carriage ride home gave her too much time to think. She turned it over again and again—Coffey’s name in Godfrey’s mouth, spoken with the ease of a man discussing the weather. When she had learned of the debt, she had assumed it was simply the weight Kilmartin had carried and hidden. But now the word encouraged sat between them like a third passenger in the carriage.

The house was dark when she arrived. Padraig had left a lantern burning in the kitchen. She took it up and climbed the stairs, past the doors she had not opened in months, to the one she had avoided longest.

Kilmartin’s study lay at the end of the hall. She had not entered it since his fever took him, had let the dust settle on his ledgers and his letters like snow on a grave. But now she pushed the door open and stood in the darkness, the lantern throwing long shadows across the desk where he had sat each night, doing sums she had never been permitted to see.

Whatever he had hidden from her lay somewhere in this room. Papers. Records. A name, a debt, a reason.

She set the lantern down on the desk. Then she began to search.

Summary: Sir Godfrey Ashby invites Maeve to his estate and offers to buy her land at a fraction of its value, revealing his knowledge of her debts and mentioning the moneylender Coffey in a way that suggests he may have encouraged the pressure on her finances. Maeve refuses his terms but leaves shaken, and for the first time enters her late husband's study to search for the truth he kept hidden.

Threads: - Sir Godfrey's offer remains on the table, and he may grow hostile or manipulative if Maeve refuses for too long - Maeve suspects Sir Godfrey has a financial interest in the moneylender Coffey's dealings with her husband - Maeve is now searching Kilmartin's study, which she had avoided since his death, opening the possibility of finding his records - Sir Godfrey's ambition to consolidate land suggests he may move against Maeve's tenants directly if she does not sell - With no horse, no loan, no investor secured, and now an additional enemy, Maeve's position is more precarious than ever