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“It’s legal,” James Knightley said. “I’m sorry, Violet, but the fine print on the policy gives them a right of inspection, and you have a duty to maintain the premises in fit and habitable condition.”

Elias had no fondness for lawyers, though Knightley had come on a weekend to sit at Violet’s kitchen table and frighten her at her request.

“What does fit and habitable mean?” Elias said. “The house is entirely habitable, the barn is a dwelling for livestock, not the queen mum.”

“I know what fit and habitable means,” Violet said. “It means exactly what this letters says it means. If I don’t do all of these repairs in the next sixty days, and have receipts to show the work is done, then they can terminate my policy or refuse to honor claims. If I can’t find another insurance company to provide coverage for the farm, then the bank can accelerate my mortgage.”

“I’d have to read the mortgage documents before I’d go that far,” Knightley said. He was blond, lanky, and according to Violet, a competent farmer himself, but he was also a god-damned lawyer. His thorough reading of the mortgage documents would cost Violet as much as some of the “suggested” repairs.

“Is there anything on that list you were planning to do anyway?” Elias asked.

Violet held the letter by one corner, as if it were a filthy rag. “I clean the gutters and downspouts in the fall, after the leaves have come off the trees. I didn’t get to it last year, but everything seems to be draining well enough. But the rest of this… I just repointed and parged the barn foundation four years ago and it cost an entire year’s profit. The homestead cottage has never been painted, and the windows… They want me to replace nearly every window in the house, which is another fortune, and paint the barn, as well as replace damaged siding? There is no damaged siding. It’s just old, and painting the wood will accelerate its deterioration.”

While improving the property’s curb appeal, of course. Far easier to sell a pretty foreclosure than a homely one. 

Elias had been on the roof, and the gutters and downspouts could well use cleaning. Anybody could see that the shade trees had limbs overhanging the house, and the insurance company wanted all of those limbs cut down.

“I’d heard something about Brethren’s hate mail campaign,” Knightley said. “My guess is they’re positioning themselves to be bought out by a larger firm, and any property with a policy more than a few years old is apparently getting the same sort of list.”

“But no inspector came around,” Violet said. “Aren’t they supposed to send notice before they snoop on your property?”

“Notices get lost or tossed in the trash because they look like junk mail,” Knightley said. “I can get after the hanging limbs, Violet.”

“That’s very kind of you, James, but—”

Elias put a hand on Violet’s arm. The idea of her high up in a tree, wrestling a damned chainsaw with nobody else on the premises to know if she fell, suffered an injury, or got into difficulties made his blood run cold.

Violet looked at him for the first time since this impromptu kitchen conference had begun. Her gaze was devastated, broken, defeated.

“I’ll take care of the gutters and downspouts this afternoon,” Elias said. “Knightley can help with that, and I’ll give him a hand with the tree limbs.”

“But the windows, Elias, the masonry work, the painting—what is the point? Maitland will have my mortgage accelerated before my corn is ready to harvest.”

 Knightley rose and helped himself to a brownie from the pan on the counter. “I’d listen to Brodie, Violet. In the first place, the tree limbs are a safety hazard. They come down on your power lines, and it’s bad news—expensive bad news. The gutters and downspouts prevent water damage, and as many storms as we get around here, you don’t want to mess with water damage. That you take care of the obvious hazards makes it much harder for an insurance company to allege negligence if they want to refuse a claim. I’ll get my saw, see if my brothers can spare a few hours.”

“This inspector,” Violet said, tossing the letter on the table. “I’m guessing he came on a farmers market day. I wouldn’t have been here to keep an eye on him or chase him off. Maxwell Maitland had better hope I never come across him or his minions in a dark alley.”

Elias would come across Maitland on Tuesday morning. “The idea,” he said, “is for you to make a show of good faith. You do what you can immediately, taking pictures of the work before, during, and after. You pay Knightley for his time, and he gives you a receipt.”

“And then I tear up your check,” Knightley said, getting the milk out of the fridge. “Neils Haddonfield has done some masonry work for me. He’d probably take a look at your barn for a very reasonable sum. Nobody likes a bully, Violet, and Maitland is arguably bullying you.”

Elias positively hated a bully. “Don’t take the last of the milk, Knightley. Violet might want another brownie.”

“I have plenty,” Violet said, rising and wandering to the window sill. She tested the soil of the African violets she’d watered less than two hours ago, then tried to lower the sash, which resisted before screeching down two inches. “The window replacements will beggar me. Nobody does a good job on windows for less than a fortune.”

“The windows don’t leak,” Elias said. “You show the insurance company all the work you’ve done, dab some paint on the window frames, and document that the windows are still quite functional. When was the last time you put in a claim against your policy, Violet?”

Her next task was to dump out the dog’s water bowl that Elias had recently filled. “I’ve never put in a claim on the property policy. For decades, the premiums have been paid, as regular as clockwork, and now this.”

Knightley downed a glass of milk, rinsed it out, and wiped his hands on the towel hanging over the oven handle.

“I’m off to get my tools, and round up a brother or two. Brodie, nice to meet you.” Knightley’s handshake was firm, but the look in his eyes was commiserating. He doubtless knew that Elias was doing business with the very devil threatening to see Violet evicted from her farm.

The quiet in Knightley’s absence should have been peaceful. The occasional sheep baa’d out in the field, a confused cricket was chirping from the direction of the back porch.

“This is my fault,” Elias said, taking Violet by the shoulders. “I’m sorry.”

She was unresisting in his embrace, also un-reciprocating. “How do you figure that?”

“If your valley works anything like my glens and shires, Maitland knows I’m acquainted with you. Our properties adjoin, my cousin’s truck has been seen sitting in your driveway for hours at a time since I arrived last weekend. I was supposed to cheerfully accept whatever offer Maitland made at our first meeting, a contingency contract, a pittance in earnest money, anything. I sent the negotiation in a different direction, and this is the result.”

Violet slipped away and took the lid off the trash can, drawing out the plastic garbage bag inside.

“James says I’m not being singled out,” Violet said, tying the trash bag closed. She extracted a fresh bag from a drawer, relined the trash container, and replaced the lid. “If this is a coincidence, though, it’s the worst possible timing.”

Elias took out the trash, when he wanted instead to deal Maitland the kind of physical blow that satisfied primitive impulses and solved nothing. When he returned to the kitchen, Violet was wiping down spotless counters.

She’d sweep next, or clean out the refrigerator. The impulse to restore order, to tidy and clean and assert control, was one Elias had learned early. When life went to hell, getting organized—

Insight clobbered him as he stood in the middle of Violet’s kitchen.

He tidied up businesses in disarray. He tidied up familial situations that wanted resolution—Jeannie needing a job, Zebedee wanting company on his polo jaunts. Elias was hellbent on tidying up a castle that generations of Brodies had neglected.

“Violet, stop.”

She straightened, folding the rag. “Is something wrong?”

Everything was wrong. Violet should sell her damned farm to Maitland for a huge sum, leave this valley behind, and set up a not-for-profit that advocated for family farms.

After she married Elias.

None of which was likely to happen, but he could at least open one door for her anyway.

“I want you to make a phone call for me,” Elias said, getting out his cell. “I have a friend who took her blog from a casual set of personal observations to a paying website, to a thriving not-for-profit. Her issue is healthy food, healthy eating. You’d like her.” Elias considered Lady Christina Decatur a dear friend, and had at one time been engaged to her. He scribbled her phone number on the tablet sitting on the table. “Promise me you’ll talk to her.”

Violet hung the rag over the spigot. “Farms are all about healthy food, especially family farms. Not that I’ll have a farm much longer.”

Elias hated it when Violet cried, even though he was probably among the privileged few to witness her tears.

“Give Christina my regards,” Elias said. “And stop mourning a farm you haven’t lost yet. I’m meeting with Maitland on Tuesday, and if he thinks this petty behavior will bring about the result he wants, he’s in for a very rude awakening.”

Violet stuffed the phone number in her pocket. “Elias, be careful. Maitland is tenacious, well funded, and well connected.”

“I have been careful,” Elias said. “For twenty goddamned years, I have been careful, and being careful won’t make anybody’s dreams come true. I’ll be on the roof. Send Knightley up when he returns.”

He kissed Violet passionately, then headed out the back door without another word.

Violet called Neils Haddonfield, who managed the therapeutic riding barn at the north end of the valley. His busy season would hit as soon as school let out, which was just weeks away, but he promised to take a look at Violet’s barn in the next few days.

As for painting the barn, that wasn’t going to happen. Violet would reconstruct her father’s research regarding the durability of weathered wood. The window replacements would be exorbitant, but the boots tromping around on Violet’s roof wouldn’t let her dwell on that looming blow. Elias didn’t know how to give up, and he had a point.

Three years ago, Violet had used every tool at her command to stop Max Maitland from turning one of the valley’s largest hay farms into a subdivision. Why shouldn’t she work equally hard to preserve her own property? Why had she been willing to accept defeat without throwing a single punch in her own defense?

“Because I am broke, tired, and already trying to wrap my aching head around the Hedstrom property being chopped into cul-de-sacs,” she muttered.

Bruno hopped into her lap.

She put him down. “I have one more call to make. I promised Elias.”

She had to call Christina Decatur, whom she hated sight unseen. Elias cared for this woman. She was probably skinny, blond, spoke eight languages, and looked more stylish in her jeans than Violet had ever looked in her life.

Violet punched in the numbers—a lot of them.

“Christina here,” said a cheery British voice.

“Hello, Christina. My name is Violet Hughes, and Elias Brodie asked me to call you.”

“Any friend of Elias’s is a friend of mine. How is he?” No hesitation, no awkwardness, and the question was genuine.

“He’s on my roof right now, cleaning out my gutters. I think he’s angry. He suggested you know how to turn a blog into a business.”

James was on the roof too, in the blazing sun. An occasional cascade of dead leaves and twigs would fall past Violet’s kitchen windows, suggesting the gutters were badly in need of cleaning.

“Elias said that? He’s an idiot. He’s the one who gave me the idea. I was in-patient for the fifth time, and Elias was ready to kidnap me, he was so frustrated with my lack of—young man, what have I told you about when Mum’s on the phone?”

The shift in Christina’s tone was amazing. In the space of a breath, she went from Mary Poppins’ bubbly younger sister to the Dowager Countess of Doom.

“Sorry,” she said. “Three is such a determined age. What is your blog about?”

“Farming, specifically family farming and agricultural land preservation. What about yours?”

“How to not become a bulimic or fall back into it,” Christina said. “Wretched business nearly killed me, and ruined my engagement to Elias. Is he in love with you?”

What had this to do with starting a business? And yet, anybody who could blithely announce a history of eating disorders would probably have an excellent bullshit—

“You were engaged to Elias?”

When Violet should have been jealous, she instead felt a pang of sorrow for her lover. Elias had hoped to build a future with Christina, and his hopes had not turned out as planned.

“It was years ago,” Christina said, “but Elias wouldn’t mention it, because he’s such a gudgeon. Do you have a moment, because the story—if you do not get off that table this instant, I won’t take you with me when I walk Pepper.”

The conversation proceeded in the same vein, startlingly personal information interspersed with parenting directives, and then the sound of a child—possibly a child sitting in Christina’s lap—humming softly.

Christina had nothing flattering to say about Elias’s first fiancée, a mercenary trust fund princess who’d put on a grand show of charitable interests long enough to catch Elias’s eye. He’d had a narrow escape, in Christina’s opinion, but his relationship with Christina had been more rebound-driven than he’d been able to admit.

“Even after we became engaged, I held him at arm’s length, so to speak,” Christina said, “owing to body image issues the likes of which nobody ever talks about. Elias came upon me on my knees in the loo, and realized immediately what was afoot. It all came out, the previous hospitalizations, the failed therapies, my family’s exasperation.”

The boots on the roof had gone quiet. Violet had visions of James and Elias perched on the peak, having a guy talk about guy stuff, while she and Christina talked about sad stuff.

“What did Elias do?” Violet asked, because she couldn’t imagine him turning his back on a fiancée when she’d most needed support.

“He found me a program I hadn’t tried before, one with some history of actually providing treatment instead of 28 days of lecturing, shaming, and attractively disgusting meals. I didn’t want my family to know, so Elias paid for it all, came to the family days, never breathed a word to anybody. I’d been there three weeks when he told me to stop blaming myself for a past that couldn’t be changed, and instead to use my beautiful heart to help others. He said that—my beautiful heart.”

“Elias says things other people don’t have the courage to say.”

“Elias knows that tomorrow isn’t promised,” Christina replied. “And he’s a caretaker to his bones. Lovely, lovely man, though I couldn’t marry him, not after that. He said he understood, but with him, one doesn’t know. Tell me about your blog.”

While somebody hummed an off-key version of The Farmer in the Dell, Violet described her blog, her audience, her plans and dreams for expanded content, newsletters, forums, and guest posts. Christina responded with observations about monetizing, ad revenue, grants, and products. When Elias and James came in the back door arguing about duct tape and baling twine, Violet had been on the phone for nearly an hour.

“Is that Christina?” Elias asked, passing James a heather ale.

Violet nodded.

Elias gestured for the phone, and Violet passed it over.

“Have you killed the boy yet?” Elias’s question was rife with affection. He talked to the child—his godson, apparently—and asked after Christina’s business, her husband, and her parents.

The conversation was so normal, so warm-hearted. Violet listened to the tone more than the content, her mind abuzz with the ideas she and Christina had discussed, the hopes and dreams that hadn’t germinated even an hour ago.  

And yet, as Elias rang off with a casual “give the boy a hug for me,” Violet was equally aware of Christina’s comment, about Elias being a caretaker to his bones. He was, though not in an unhealthy sense that Violet could see.

And yet, a question plagued Violet, as James and Elias switched to arguing about the best way to maintain a chainsaw.

Elias was a caretaker—of properties, charitable businesses, people, and entire family legacies.

But who looked after Elias?

“Lady Christina Decatur, your former fiancée?” Dunstan asked for the third time. “You put your current girlfriend on the phone with a former fiancée? Did you take a fall from Violet’s roof?”

“It’s not as if Christina and I were physically intimate,” Elias said. The fireflies were out in greater numbers tonight, odd little lights glowing and fading in the gathering darkness of the hedgerow behind Dunstan’s yard.

“Did you tell Violet that?”

“I suspect Christina did.” Violet had been so animated when Elias had come upon her in the kitchen yesterday. She’d been pacing, the phone to her ear, her free hand waving about as she’d made some point about milkweeds and blueberries. 

“I’m a deliriously happily married woman,” Jane said from Dunstan’s side, “but what sort of woman is engaged to you without taking the occasional test drive?” 

Dunstan patted her hand. “Not every member of the family is as irresistible as your husband, wee Jane.”

“I chose to be flattered that Christina—unlike her predecessor—would commit to me without sampling my charms,” Elias said. “Christina was in significant difficulties and I barely noticed, which is apparently not unusual with the problem she battled. The simpler explanation is that I was an idiot.” He was becoming proficient at idiocy. “Do you know what bothers me the most about this whole situation?”

“There’s so much to choose from,” Dunstan said. “Selling your land to a developer when you’d rather keep it in cultivation, leaving behind the first woman you’ve truly fallen for, imprisoning yourself in a tower of debt for the sake of a pile of rocks, ruining Violet’s valley—”

Jane kissed Dunstan about two seconds before Elias would have smacked him. “Sweetie, Elias needs cheering up, not a litany of regrets.” 

“If he stays here and farms the land, he’ll be a lot cheerier,” Dunstan countered, kissing her back. “Though he might not smell as lovely. The castle isn’t going anywhere, except possibly to the bottom of the loch.”

The kissing and cuddling didn’t bother Elias as they had a week ago. Dunstan had fallen, and Jane had caught him by the heart.

And Dunstan was, in his lawyerly, Scottish way, trying to cheer Elias up by inviting some friendly violence.

“What bothers me most,” Elias said, “is that when I leave here, Violet will be working her farm, as her family always has, but Maitland will have an 800-acre toehold right across the road. Even if he doesn’t go after Violet’s farm next, he’ll build up all around her, until she can’t possibly qualify for the conservation easement.”

The weekend had been spent sprucing up Violet’s property in hopes the insurance company would be placated. The stonemason had said cosmetic effort alone would put the barn to rights, but replacing windows on an entire farmhouse would cost thousands.

“Violet will never sell to Maitland,” Dunstan said.

The crickets chirped, the fireflies drifted, and Elias contemplated how much sorrow could fit into two syllables. He might well never see Violet again, never hold her again, never make love with her again. 

All of that hurt like hell, but hurt was a fact of life. Worse than the hurt was the sense of abandoning Violet with the enemy setting up camp on her very door step—and at Elias’s invitation. Come spring, Maitland might claim her gas tank had leaked into the soil, or her sheep had gotten loose on his property. Her dogs might turn up missing or injured.

If Maitland had committed arson, he had no scruples. Maitland didn’t strike Elias as stupid enough to set a fire in broad daylight when anybody could have driven by, though.

“Elias, can’t you commute from Scotland?” Jane asked. “Dulles Airport is handy, and Dunstan describes you a frequent traveler. Just pop over every couple months, beat Dunstan at chess, keep in touch with Violet? Even farmers get some down time over the winter. Maybe Violet could do New Year’s in Scotland.”

“Elias hates to fly over water,” Dunstan said. “Not that anybody should blame him.”

“I hate to fly, period,” Elias said, “but one copes. Violet claims the last crops can come off as late as November, December is for accounting, and the lambs start coming in January. What she’s not saying—what she doesn’t have to say—is that a relationship with the man who betrayed her valley doesn’t interest her.”

“She’s interested,” Jane said, stifling a yawn. “She watches you the way I used to watch Dunstan when he had a case before mine. His closing arguments were… Well, I paid very close attention.”

“Let’s turn in,” Dunstan said, rising and drawing Jane to her feet. “And you can hear a closing argument from me of a different sort.”

In Scotland, the newly married cousins would never have flirted like this before Elias. His failed engagements, his upbringing in the home of a bachelor uncle, his history, his work, everything had set him apart. Odd, that Dunstan, the one who’d wandered the farthest, made Elias feel like a cousin again.

“You going to bed?” Jane asked.

“Soon,” Elias replied. “I have some thinking to do.”

Dunstan cuffed him on the back of the head. “Think all you like, and it won’t change a thing. This is not a problem you can think your way through.”

“Dunstan, leave him alone,” Jane said, leading her husband by the hand.

“Yeah,” Elias said, reciprocating the blow. “Leave me alone or wee Jane will turn you over her knee.”

“You see before you a man sustained by hope.” Dunstan saluted and let his wife lead him away.

The two of them wafted into the house on a cloud of marital bliss, while Elias shut off the porch light, and took up a seat at the top of the porch steps.

Summer nights in Damson Valley were alive in a way Elias hadn’t experienced in Scotland. Night birds, bats, and droves of insects filled the air, while small animals skittered through the underbrush. The humidity lent every scent more weight, so that mown grass, woods, and baskets of petunias all perfumed the darkness.

Wallace butted his head against Elias’s arm, then climbed into Elias’s lap. The cat was a comfort, but no substitute for a hand to hold, or someone to love.

“Why is it, cat, that I feel more satisfaction from cleaning Violet’s gutters than from saving a lovely old castle?”

The weekend had been educational, and gratifying. Mowing a field for Violet, changing the oil in her tractor, piling up the cut tree limbs for next year’s firewood had felt relevant, real. Not like sitting around a conference table and brainstorming a new mission statement for an organization that needed a heart far more than it needed a catchy slogan.

“And I’ll leave Violet here, with the worst possible threat building his empire directly across the road from her farm. Maitland is apparently well connected, determined, and ruthless.”

Wallace dug his claws into Elias’s thigh hard enough to hurt, just as Maitland would dig his claws into Violet’s valley—if Elias gave him the opportunity.