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Farmers developed a sense of time rooted in the seasons and the progress of the sun across the sky. Not for them, the arbitrary movement of hands around a clock face, not when ripening crops and shifting temperatures marked the passing days according to the rhythms of creation.

Elias Brodie’s kisses held a hundred generations worth of patience, centuries of tenderness, and eternities of passion. Violet might have been an exotic garden, one Elias explored as if every nuance of her kisses—her sighs, the texture of her hair, the exact contour of her eyebrows and jaw—fascinated him.

He made it easy to be fascinated in return. Elias was built on beautiful physical proportions that Violet measured in caresses and embraces. He offered her gentle, relentless overtures and counterpointed them with an obvious and unapologetic rising of desire.

So this was seduction … This was what it felt like to be coaxed closer and closer to pleasure, and lured away from lists, schedules, and oughts.

“You’re good at this,” Violet said, as her braid went slipping down the center of her back.

“I’m enthusiastic about shared pleasures. You are too.”

His smile said he approved of Violet for enjoying his kisses, he applauded her accepting the challenge he offered.

“I’m not… I don’t get out much, Elias,” she said, drawing back. “A farmer needs every available hour of sleep, every spare dime, every free moment to keep the land happy and prospering. I’m a fifth-generation farmer. I don’t socialize often.”

Elias let her go, and damned if he didn’t start doing the dishes. “You’re also a woman, Violet. I’m not proposing a three-day bacchanal, and I don’t kiss and tell.”

That he’d exercise a little discretion mattered to her, though she wasn’t likely to cross paths with him ever again—another reason to indulge in what he offered. Violet unwrapped the dish towel from the wine bottle and accepted a clean plate from Elias.

“I doubt I’m your type,” she said.

He used his thumbnail to scrape a spot of cheese from the second plate. “You should be more concerned with whether I’m your type, assuming you have a type for a friendly encounter. These plates look hand-made.”

He did a thorough job washing dishes, not merely a rinse and a promise.

“My mother made them. I have only the two left.” Blue and white glaze with a flower-and-vine pattern around the rim. The plates were heavy, and didn’t really go with anything else Violet owned. “She made them the year I was born. Took a class when she got too pregnant to do much manual labor. I’ll sleep with you, Elias, but don’t expect much.”

He tackled the mousse bowls next. “Why will you sleep with me?”

Violet’s decision had been made in those moments when Elias had simply held her. He’d offered her time to consider options, and given her excellent reasons to trust him. He didn’t push. He didn’t wheedle. He didn’t bargain or make false promises.

“You respect me,” Violet said, the words effecting a sort of sunrise where her flagging energy had been. “And you want me. Both.”

She felt as if she’d solved a riddle, though maybe ten years later than she should have.

“I respect the hell out of you,” Elias said, passing her a squeaky clean bowl. “You work hard, take your responsibilities seriously, and genuinely care for your property. Respect is not the only reason I’m attracted to you.”

This foreplay without touching was enjoyable, but also more serious than it should have been. “I went to college, Elias. Had my share of rodeos. You don’t have to draw me pictures.”

“Will you dry that bowl or rub the glaze off? What is your degree in?”

Violet set the bowl in the cupboard. “Sociology, undergrad and a master’s. What about you?”

And why else did he want to spend the night in her bed? Thank God she’d changed the sheets earlier in the day.

Thank God the bed was made for once.

“I studied business at uni, and am considered well informed regarding the organization and operation of charitable establishments. I detect the patter of little paws on your back porch.”

“Good Lord, I nearly forgot to feed the pups. Silverware can go in the drain rack. Guys, I’m coming!”

Murphy woofed softly. And the next few minutes were absorbed with more of the odd domesticity she’d been sharing with Elias throughout the evening. He put away the leftovers while she fixed the dogs their dinners—some wet, some dry, some leftovers—and took their bowls to the fenced side yard off the sun room.

When she got back to the kitchen, Elias was checking his phone.

“Everything OK?”

“It’s the middle of the night back home. I was just scrolling through my email, of which there is plenty, but it can all wait until morning. Shall we to bed, my dear?”

With his burr, he could carry off that question—quaint, vintage, old-fashioned—and still make Violet’s insides dance. 

“C’mon,” she said, taking his hand. “There are two bathrooms upstairs.”

Elias grabbed his backpack and came along peaceably. “I could do with a shower.”

The image of him wet, naked, and slick with soap had Violet nearly jogging up the steps. “Separate showers, I think. Quick showers. Three minutes, tops.”

Elias came to a halt outside the bedroom door. “Are you nervous, Violet?” The idea seemed to genuinely puzzle him.

“A little, but mostly…I don’t want to lose my nerve. A friendly encounter, you called it. A roll in the hay by any other name. A part of me still thinks I ought to know a guy better before I—”

Elias kissed her, a little smacker that let him snatch the conversation ball. “A friendly encounter can be memorable, and you’ll know me a whole lot better by morning.”

She wanted to know him better, which was stupid. He’d be back in Scotland before strawberry season was over, and then she’d miss him, which was stupider still. 

“Bathroom is down the hall to the left, help yourself to anything. Last one in bed’s a rotten egg.”

He sauntered off, backpack hanging off one shoulder. Violet took a minute to admire the view, then darted into her room, and shucked out of her clothes. The shower she took was more than three minutes, but not much more, and because she owned exactly one summer nightgown, her what-to-wear debate lasted only a moment.

Elias knocked on her door—she really would miss this guy—which gave Violet time to grab her hair brush and take up a place sitting cross-legged against the bed’s headboard. He wore his jeans, nothing else.

Not even a smile.

“I can brush out your hair for you,” he said, hanging his backpack on the bedpost.

“I have other jobs in mind for you. What do we do about protection?”

He rummaged in his knapsack then tossed a box of condoms on the night table. “And yes, they’re well within their expiry date. Any other questions, because if not, I have a few for you.”

Gracious days, he was a fine specimen. Broad shoulders, clean musculature, just the right dusting of hair across his chest. Oh, yes, Violet would miss him for a long, long time.

“We’re not talking about tabs and slots,” Violet said, unraveling her braid and angling her head to shield her face. “Parts is parts, Mr. Brodie. Please lock the door.”

This was why college students got drunk, because conversation under these circumstances was an exercise in inanity.

Violet finger-combed her hair free of the plait she’d put in sixteen hours earlier. The shower had left her hair damp enough to brush out without creating that oh-so-stylish porcupine-meets-light-socket coiffure.

“Who or what am I locking in or out?” Elias asked.

Violet hit a snarl as the sound of jeans being unzipped ripped across her composure. She wanted to look, and she wanted to dive under the covers.

I ’m being an idiot. “The dogs sometimes come in here, especially if there’s a thunderstorm.”

Elias prowled closer, his fly undone. He sat on the bed at Violet’s hip, brushed her hair back over her shoulder, and leaned in for a sweet, soft, nearly chaste kiss.

“The dogs are outside at their dinners,” he said. “Should I let them in?”

What dogs? “Please.”

“Violet?”

The kissing part was so easy, so lovely. Violet left off indulging herself to pull back an entire inch. “Elias?”

“I have a suggestion,” he said, fingering the neckline of her nightgown and scattering her last coherent thought. “I’ll tend to the dogs, and you can turn out the lights and scoot under the covers. You might consider taking off this fetching bit of pup tent, but you should know one thing about me first.”

Violet knew she liked him, respected him, and wanted him. Then too, he’d soon get on a plane, and what law said a hardworking farmer wasn’t entitled to a little frolic in spring?

“What should I know, Elias?”

He kissed her nose and pushed off the bed, shutting out the lights when he reached the door. “I’ll tell the dogs you wished them sweet dreams. I’ve recently discovered that a shy woman makes me hot, that’s what you should know.”

Violet’s arms were freckled, but the tops of her breasts were not. Elias wanted to kiss his way across the transition between the two parts of her—farmer and lady, and he wanted to throw his phone out the nearest window.

Jeannie had left two messages and sent three emails, all under the subject line, “Castle renovation,” and the last one marked urgent. Not good news.

Angus Whyte detested email, but then, he detested the telephone as well, preferring snail mail, of all the quaint eccentricities. His call was likely bad news as well.

Niall Cromarty, the cousin who’d thought opening the fourteen-thousandth golf course in Scotland was a fine idea, had also sent an email, as had Dunstan.

It could all wait until morning—preferably late morning.

Elias set the phone on mute then used it to light his way through the darkened house. He called the dogs in—why were dogs such relentlessly cheerful beasts?—and closed up for the night. On impulse, he filled a glass of water and took it with him upstairs.

Outside Violet’s room, Elias took emotional inventory, knowing he was running on false energy. Casual sex had become a rarity at some point in the last few years, in part because Elias’s tastes had become more… refined?

Finicky? Or maybe he’d grown tired of being kilted arm candy. Violet was a departure from his usual encounter, and he was doubtless a few yards from her beaten path as well. Novelty had an appeal for them both, apparently.

He rapped on the door again, and waited for Violet’s permission to enter. Moonlight streamed in the window, and she was still sitting up in bed, her hair arranged in a long, loose braid over one shoulder.

Elias set the glass of water beside the box of condoms then crossed to stand in the moonbeams.

“I had an idea,” he said, unzipping his jeans the rest of the way. He turned to step out of them, which left him in black briefs. “I wondered if even a shy woman might enjoy the sight of her lover unclothed.”

Maybe that was Violet’s appeal. She was reserved, unlike the women Elias usually consorted with, and yet, Violet was both confident and competent in her own world. She knew chicken breeds by personality, coloring, egg production… practical information that Elias found charming.

He slid his briefs off and laid them with his jeans on a chair, then faced the bed.

“Moses in the bulrushes, Elias Brodie.” Violet might be blushing, but she was definitely looking. Elias stretched, his hands bracing flat on the bedroom ceiling. He was pleasantly aroused, and yet Violet had forbidden him to enter into the usual, “tell me what you like,” discussion. No tabs and slots, she’d said.  

“I have rules,” he said, climbing on the bed. “Maybe you do too?”

“Protection,” Violet replied, scooting to one side. “Every time, no matter what.”

Elias stretched out on his back, which was a moment of sheer bliss in itself. “Protection, of course, but in the event the protection fails, I’d like to be a part of any subsequent discussions.”

“Of course.”

The bed bore the fragrance of lavender, the sheets were cool, and Violet had put aside her pup tent, though she’d tucked the covers up nearly to her chin.

All was by no means right with the world, but the evening was off to a lovely start.

“My other rule is unenforceable,” Elias said. “I suppose that makes it more of a request.”

Violet slid down next to him, got an arm under his neck, and tucked her cheek against his shoulder.

“Let’s get the public service announcements over with. I have plans for you, Mr. Brodie.”

Elias was actually Lord Strathdee, when the occasion was formal. He’d pass that tidbit along some time when his cock wasn’t trying to steal all the blood flow from his brain.

“My request is that you don’t… that you give me honest responses. Don’t fake, Violet. A passing encounter this might be, but it can be a genuine passing encounter.”

“No faking,” she said, wrapping her fingers around his erection in an exquisitely snug hold. “I like that request, provided it goes both ways. Any more edicts, pronouncements, negotiating points, or final requests?”

How lovely her calloused grip felt. “Just one more request: Make love with me, Violet.”

She did better than that. She stroked Elias to a raging arousal, then kissed him as if she’d recently invented the undertaking and was trying to perfect her craft. Sweet, teasing, searing… all the while, Elias lay on his back feeling oddly unmoored from himself.

He was thirty-odd years old, had, to use Zebedee’s terms, frolicked with women on four continents—five now—and other than handsomely framed academic degrees, his sole accomplishment was looking good in a kilt.

Violet bit his earlobe. “Jet lag catching up with you?”

Years of it. He wrapped his arms around her. “Holding you feels lovely, Violet. You are a talented kisser.”

She was, in fact, a talented lover. Her touch had a presence, a sensitivity that made Elias want to roar and purr at the same time, made him want to lie still lest he do anything to distract her from her plundering, but also to rise over her and join his body to hers.

Perhaps hours of flying over water had turned him daft, but it needn’t have made him lazy.

Elias went exploring. With both hands, he learned the contour of Violet’s back, the flare of her hips, the muscular fullness of her backside. She was just the right combination of sturdy and shapely, fit and feminine.

All woman, all the time, everywhere. Her breasts were surprisingly full, and she liked—very much—having them caressed.

“Elias, about that protection?”

Hell, yes. “The protection sitting on the night table?”

“The protection I’m ready for you to put on—right now—that protection.” 

He got his mouth on her nipple, and she took to sliding her lady bits over his gentleman bits, until the boundary between plunderer and plundered blurred wonderfully.

“Now, Elias. Please.”

He reached for a condom without taking his mouth from her, not as a display of any particular skill, but because Violet was delectable, and he didn’t want to let any part of her go, ever.

She took the condom from him and sat back. “I can do this part, if you want me to.”

She wanted to. Elias’s shy, temporary neighbor was as passionate about her lovemaking as she was about her chickens and strawberries and vegetables. The secret to her touch, he realized, was that she enjoyed getting her hands on him.

“I want you to,” Elias said. “But take your time.”

Who knew if they’d end up in bed again? Tomorrow, Elias would be mired in emails and phone calls, and then Monday began a round of meetings with real estate attorneys. At some point an electrician would have to be fitted into the schedule, and—

A combination of resentment and sadness filled him. All that busyness and productivity could not possibly be as important or precious as making love with Violet, and yet, a castle that had been crumbling for centuries did not repair itself.

“You’re dressed for the party,” Violet said, tossing the torn foil onto the nightstand. “Now what?”

She had no artifices, no technique—only passion and honesty. Elias nearly loved her for that.

“You’ve been in the driver’s seat enough for the present,” he said, sitting up. “Get comfortable, Violet. The wild rumpus is about to begin.”

She wiggled onto her back, her smile approving and shy in the moonlight. “That’s from a children’s story.”

“It’s from the bottom of my heart, too,” Elias said, positioning himself over her on all fours. “You seem to enjoy a bit of kissing.”

If she’d been enthusiastic before, she was positively fiendish now. Her ankles locked at the small of Elias’s back, and her hands went a-Viking over every inch of him.

“And here, I thought you were shy,” he muttered, nudging his way into bliss.

“I’m reserved. That’s dif—oh, Elias Brodie. I can’t… That’s….” A great, eloquent sigh went out of her, and Elias knew from what she didn’t say that joining their bodies pleased her as much as it pleased him. Some part of him rejoiced to be with her this way, not simply to get his ashes hauled, but to be intimate with Violet Hughes.

“You all right?” Elias whispered, pushing deeper.

“I’m…” Another soft exhalation breezed past Elias’s ear. “Talk later.”

He spoke to her in easy rhythms and soft kisses, in occasional pauses to marvel at the pleasure, and to catch his breath. Violet let go with all the glory of a healthy female yielding to nature’s greatest joy, and she held Elias so tightly his own satisfaction threatened to swamp his self-restraint.

All three times.

“I’ll be sore if I don’t stop being so greedy,” Violet said, brushing her hand over Elias’s flank.

He felt that caress in wonderful, too-long-neglected places. “You sound pleased.” She sounded smug, satisfied, and happy—with herself, with him, with life.

“I’m acres past pleased. I forgot how good lovemaking can feel, or maybe it hasn’t felt like this before. I’m babbling. I’m happy-babbling. Yum.”

She kissed him witless, then kissed him beyond witless, until the pleasure took him, tossed him high, and left him in a panting, contented heap at her figurative feet.

“Lovely,” she said, kissing his cheek. “Lovely, lovely, lovely. No wonder Scotsmen wear nothing under their kilts. Your womenfolk probably won’t hear of it.”

Elias did not want to move, but being a gentleman wasn’t entirely a matter of holding doors. He extricated himself from Violet’s embrace, tended to the practicalities, then returned to the bed and spooned himself around her.

“Thank you,” he said, kissing her shoulder. “I can take myself back across the road if you’d like to sleep in peace for the rest of the night.”

“Don’t you dare run off now, Elias Brodie.  The fun and games are delightful, but the cuddling matters too.”

Mattered a great deal, in the right company. Elias drifted off, happy to oblige a woman who had her priorities in such fine order. His last thought was a wish that Violet could buy his property from him. She might not be able to offer as much as a developer could, but with her own farm as security, she might be able to pay enough to cover the castle renovations.

He liked that idea. Liked the notion that a property of his could pass into her capable hands rather than be turned into cookie cutter yards separated by privacy fences and privet hedges.

Maybe Violet would like the idea too.

Elias Brodie was a perilously generous and talented lover. Had Violet met him ten years earlier, she would have been ruined for most of those self-important college boys and their equally clueless grad school successors. She’d awoken to the caroling of the robins in the pre-dawn gloom, and to Elias kissing her nape.

What a lovely way to start the day, and then Violet’s morning had grown lovelier still.

She was dozing blissfully when Elias returned carrying a tray with three steaming mugs. His hair was damp and he smelled of lavender soap, suggesting he’d grabbed a shower while the coffee brewed.

“I didn’t know if you took tea or coffee in the morning,” he said, nudging the door closed with his foot. “I brought both. The dogs are fed and sniffing around the side yard. I didn’t see any cats.”

Violet struggled to sitting, though her hair wasn’t cooperating. At some point in the middle of the night, Elias had unraveled her braid and teased her with—

Maybe she’d dreamed that part?

“Good morning,” Violet said, tucking the sheets under her arms. Elias wore a pair of blue turquoise board shorts.

Violet wore an idiot grin.

“I’m a tea drinker in the morning,” Elias said, sitting on what had been Violet’s side of the bed before she’d scooted over to wallow in sheets warmed by his body heat. “Black first thing in the day, green tea in the afternoon, herb concoctions in the evening. I didn’t know how you preferred yours.”

For a man who’d been God’s gift to a single lady farmer an hour ago, he was studying a plain mug of tea almost bashfully.

Violet added milk and sugar to hers, and wished she had the next eternity to get to know Elias Brodie better.

“I don’t care for coffee,” she said, “but I’ll resort to it during lambing season, or when the tractor has turned up contrary the day before the combine is supposed to come through. Needs must when the devil drives.”

Elias set his mug on the nightstand, among the foil wrappers left over from their lovemaking. “How are you, Violet Hughes?”

Dandy came to mind.

“Half in love with you,” Violet said, setting her tea aside and curling along his side. “Don’t get your manly commitment phobias in a bunch. I can fall half in love with a seed catalog or a freshly stacked mow full of first-cutting hay.” She hadn’t though, not for a long time.

Elias’s arm settled around her shoulders, the embrace so natural Violet would have started purring if she’d been able.

“Only half in love? My technique is in want of polish, apparently. I can claim a similar affliction where you’re concerned. You are a wondrously passionate woman.”

If Elias Brodie had manly phobias about anything, they were apparently kept in check by a roundtrip plane ticket, damn the luck.

“What are you passionate about?” Under no circumstances would Violet pass up an opportunity to cuddle with a man who’d brought her hot tea and fed her dogs without being asked. Her mood was beyond rosy, and thank God and the Farmer’s Almanac, the hay needed another day to dry.

The day’s plans included changing the oil in the tractor, scrubbing out the sheep’s water trough, sweeping the hay mow in preparation for the wagonloads coming off the field…

And eighteen other pressing, important, demanding chores Violet couldn’t recall when Elias was tracing her eyebrows with one finger.

“You ask about my passions, but I haven’t many. I’m decent at any number of peculiar sports—skeet shooting, for example, polo, shinty, curling—and I like fast cars and the smell of engines. I enjoy seeing a charitable institution thrive if it has a true sense of vocation—many don’t—and I’m competent in several languages. That’s not unusual where I come from. I’d have to say Brodie Castle is about all that qualifies as a passion.”

He sounded as if this was a recent realization and not a particularly happy one.

“My dad was the same way,” Violet said. “He could fix anything with his hands, played a mean harmonica, knew Beatles trivia inside out, could shear the most ornery sheep without a nick, and could predict the weather ten days out with 90 percent accuracy, but all he cared about was this farm.”

And his family. Violet had taken years to figure out that for her father, caring for the farm amounted to caring for the family and for humanity as a species.

Elias pulled her closer, close enough to kiss her temple. “This was your father’s castle. I wish Zebedee had been a bit more respectful of the family seat, and not quite as avid about collecting his single malts. I suppose every one of the earls of Strathdee has inherited something of a work in progress.”

Violet sat up to take a sip of her tea, though she didn’t want to leave the bed. This was what a morning after ought to be like—a lovely, cuddly, extension of the previous night’s intimacies, not an awkward parting that both parties intended to be permanent.

She paused, the mug half way to her mouth. “Did you just tell me you’re an earl?”

“Elias, Earl of Strathdee, at your service, not that that title means anything.”

The sun was clearing the ridge to the east, bright streaks banding the white coverlet. The light was clear, suggesting the humidity would stay low for the rest of the day, which was a gift to every farmer in the valley who had hay down.

“The title is part of you,” Violet said, rather than admit to a goofy pleasure at having gone to bed with what had to be one of very few earls on the face of the earth. “I suspect the title is wrapped up in your castle too. I own only part of this farm. My mom owns the rest.”

Elias stretched out his arm, a silent invitation for Violet to resume her place at his side. She complied, reveling in the sheer bliss of a day starting out with affection and companionship rather than hard work and worry.

And loneliness. Mustn’t forget the loneliness that no chickens, dogs, or quilting projects could ever address.

“Where is this mother of yours, Violet?”

“In Florida with husband number three. He’s a big improvement over husband number two, but if I want to see my mother, I go there. She loved my father, she did not love this farm.”

“That was Zebedee. He loved the family, right down to the drooling babies and contrary aunties, but not so much the family seat. He loved me, too, so I won’t criticize him for leaving me a castle to put to rights.”

How many men spoke this easily of love? “You loved him,” Violet said, thinking of her father. God-damned lousy business when a farmer dropped over from a heart attack. “He raised you?”

“The Brodie heir is traditionally sent off to a properly snobbish public school—boarding school, you’d call it—so off to boarding school I did go. Headmaster called me into his office one day and said I was to leave school a few weeks ahead of the other boys. I was overjoyed. Most of the other lads were English, and I hadn’t really made friends among them. Then Headmaster told me my uncle was waiting for me in the chapel. One look at Zeb’s face and I was certain nothing in my life would ever be the same.”

Elias’s voice held compassion for that young boy, and also for the man who’d ended up raising him.

“No wonder you’re attached to your castle. It stood for security and stability when you needed them most.”

He wrinkled his nose. “Possibly, but castles are also magic, if you have any imagination. I used to lie in the great hall on my back, hoping to hear the voices of the ghosts. Zebedee claimed he saw the first earl and his lady in a passionate embrace upon the parapets one night last summer. He said the lady’s smile put the stars to shame. Zeb was very fond of his wee dram, mind, and we’ve had many a wedding at the castle of late.”

And Elias had been very fond of his uncle. 

“Tell me about this castle.” Violet could picture him in his great hall, tricked out in his kilt for some cousin’s wedding.

“A properly maintained castle is bloody expensive,” Elias said, his finger wandering along Violet’s collarbone. “Thank the heavenly powers the roof is mostly sound, or there’d be no limit to the cost of the repairs. As it is, I was wondering if you’d like to buy my farm. All proceeds of sale will go toward keeping Clan Brodie out of the wet for the next two hundred years.”

Violet had been considering whether the remaining condoms on the night table ought to be consigned to a happy fate when something in Elias’s tone caught her attention.

“So you came here with intent to sell the Hedstrom property?” He hadn’t exactly said, had he?

“I came here to see if it can be sold, and if so, how. I’m not competent to manage a farm in these latitudes, and neither was Zebedee. Did you know our alpacas were stolen?”

Unease trickled through Violet’s rosy mood. “You can’t sell that farm to just anybody, Elias.”

“Of course not,” he said, kissing her temple. “I’ll only sell it to somebody with a vast fortune and a pressing need for a tax dodge. It’s a pretty patch of ground. I was honestly hoping you might make an offer.”

He sounded… hopeful. Not even apologetic.

Violet was off the bed and across the room. “Do you always talk business in bed, Elias?” she asked, pulling a green cotton sundress over her head. She’d plucked from her closet the sort of comfy dress every woman ought to have for lazy summer mornings at home.

This morning had just lost its quotient of comfy.

“You’re upset.” Elias had sense enough to leave the bed himself, and even to scoop up the detritus of their protection and pitch it in the waste basket.

“I’m… I was hoping you weren’t here to sell that pretty patch of ground. I was hoping you might see that it’s worth keeping.”

Max Maitland would be all over that farm by sundown if he knew Elias was short of cash.

Elias stepped out of his shorts and fished a pair of black briefs from his backpack. “Zebedee kept it, though why I’m not sure. He was no kind of farmer, and neither am I. Won’t you enjoy having some neighbors for a change?”

Unease escalated to dread, even as Violet grieved to watch Elias preparing to dress for the day. She’d never see his like again, and almost wished she never had.

“What do you mean, Elias? Neighbors—plural?”

“You’re across the road from eight hundred arable acres and not a soul dwells there,” Elias said, facing her without a stitch on. “Wouldn’t a sign of human life every once in a while be some comfort, Violet? Somebody to visit with at the mail boxes?”

“I visit plenty.” Every two weeks at the Feed and Seed, also at the fire hall’s quarterly pot lucks.

Unless the tractor was on the fritz, some ewe was ailing, or the accounting was behind again.

“What aren’t you telling me, Violet?”

Elias was absolutely unselfconscious about being naked in the morning sun, suggesting he’d been in a state of undress around more than a few women. The briefs went on, followed by his jeans, though he didn’t bother to fasten the snap.

“I’m telling you, Elias Brodie, that your farm has some of the best ground in the county, if not the state. You have nothing less than class two soil over there, and most of it’s class one. You have two surveying oaks in your woods—virgin trees hundreds of years old. You won’t find two surveying oaks on the same property anywhere else in Maryland—I’d bet my sheep on it. You said it yourself, a farm is a castle, and that makes you its steward. Don’t sell that property. I can manage it for you, make it turn a profit even.”

Elias came closer, his expression solemn. “If you had to choose, between my property and yours, which one would you protect?”

Abruptly, he was not the affectionate, generous lover from the previous night, but a man who spoke several languages, drove fast cars, and played sports Violet had never heard of. He was out of her league—an earl—a wealthy man who tinkered with charitable corporations in his spare time.

“What sort of question is that, Elias? It’s not like the English are going to come sailing up the Potomac to reprise the battle of Bladensburg.”

“When was the last time you took a vacation, Violet? When was the last time you drove away from this place without worrying about your sheep, your chickens, your profits, your fences?”

Her blog, her produce swap, her wood pile, her cats, her finicky tractor, her everything.

And her valley, when Max Maitland was loose without supervision. “I’m not saying I’d manage your place for free.”

Elias passed Violet her mug of tea, cold now.

She wanted to toss it in his face. “Thank you.”

“I’m in a cash squeeze, Violet. Paying a manager to look after the place, waiting on rents, sinking money into the buildings, purchasing another herd of alpacas or goats or sheep or whatever doesn’t make business sense.”

Violet sank to the bed. “How bad is your cash squeeze?”

Elias sat beside her, though he’d be within his rights to keep his finances entirely to himself.

“Very bad,” Elias said. “The castle will get what I can spare it, but Zebedee also invested in family businesses. One cousin owns some sort of art dealership, and Zeb had open contracts with him. Another cousin owns a golf course of all the albatrosses, and now he’s expanding it. Yet another is a potter, and her business has good and bad years. Jeannie’s husband walked out on her leaving her with a new baby and a newer mortgage. They all leaned on Zeb, and he never let them down or expected them to pay him back.”

“And they’re family,” Violet said, an enemy she could not combat. “You can’t turn your back on family. Let’s get some breakfast.”

Elias remained on the bed, while Violet pushed to her feet. She smoothed his hair back—god damn, she would miss him—and would have bolted for the door except he took her hand.

“I wish I could give you that farm,” he said, kissing her knuckles. “Property should be held by people who care about it.”

Violet wanted out of the bedroom, where she’d been so foolishly happy. “Promise me you won’t sell that farm to a developer, Elias. It’s good ground, and you’ll get a fine price for it if you keep it under cultivation. You think I’m passionate about this farm, but I’m passionate about all farms.”

He dropped her hand and rose. “I can’t promise you not to sell to a developer, Violet. I haven’t the luxury of waiting for an agricultural buyer to come along. I’m sorry.”

He kissed her forehead and snagged his backpack. Violet beat him out the door.