Thank you for your continued support. I appreciate it.
I do not own Merlin or the characters, neither do I own Cold Hearted Rake.
I know I've said this was the last chapter, but there was actually one more after this.
However, I have decided to break up this chapter and make it two, so now there are two more left after this.
Sorry for the misinformation.
The instant that Arthur stepped off the train at Alton Station, he was confronted by the sight of his brother in a dusty coat, mud-crusted breeches and boots.
There was also a wild look in his eyes.
"Will?" Arthur asked in startled concern. "What the devil..."
"Did you sign the lease?" Will interrupted, reaching out as if to seize his lapels, then appearing to think better of it.
He was twitching with impatience, bouncing on his heels like a restless schoolboy.
"The London Ironstone lease. Did you sign it?" he asked.
"Yesterday," Arthur replied.
Will let out a curse, that attracted a slew of censorious gazes from the crowd on the platform.
"What of the mineral rights?"
"The mineral rights on the land we're leasing to the railway?" Arthur asked.
"Yes, did you give them to Hill? Any of them?"
"I kept all of them."
Will stared at him without blinking.
"You're absolutely sure?" he asked.
"Of course I am," Arthur replied. "Hill badgered me about the mineral rights for three days. And the longer we debated, the more exasperated I became, until I said I'd see him in hell, before I let him have so much as a clod of manure from Hampshire Priory. I walked out, but just as I reached the street, he shouted from the fifth-floor window that he gave in and I should come back."
Will leaped forward as if he were about embrace him, then checked the movement.
He shook Arthur's hand violently and proceeded to thump his back with painful vigor.
"By God, I love you, you pigheaded bastard!"
"What the devil is wrong with you?" Arthur demanded.
"I'll show you. Let's go."
"I have to wait for Simmons. He's in one of the back carriages."
"We don't need him."
"He can't walk to Hampshire from Alton," Arthur said, his annoyance fading into laughter. "Damn it Will! You're jumping about as if someone shoved a hornet's nest up your..."
"There he is!" Will exclaimed, gesturing to the valet, and motioning for him to hurry.
And as soon as Simmons reached them, they were off, with Will directing the route they must take.
At Wills insistence, the carriage proceeded to the eastern perimeter of the Priory, accessible only by unpaved roads, which drew Arthur's attention and curiosity, when he realized they were heading to the acreage he had just leased to Thomas Hill.
Eventually, the vehicle stopped by a field, bordered with a stream and a stand of beech.
The rough fields and hillocks swarmed with activity. At least a dozen men were busy with surveying equipment, shovels, picks, barrows, and a steam-powered engine.
"What are they doing?" Arthur asked, mystified. "Are those Hill's men? They can't be grading the land yet. The lease was signed only yesterday."
"No, I hired them," Will said, and pushed the carriage door open before the driver could reach it. He swung to the ground. "Come."
"My lord," Simmons protested, as Arthur made to follow. "You're not attired for such crude terrain. All that rock and clay...your shoes...your trousers..."
He regarded the pristine hems of Arthur's gray angora wool trousers with anguish.
"You can wait in the carriage," Arthur told him.
"Yes, my lord."
A heavily misted breeze blew against Arthur's face, as he and Will walked to a freshly dug trench marked with flags.
As they passed, a man with a barrow stopped and removed his hat, bowing his head respectfully.
"Your lordship," he said.
And Arthur responded with a brief smile and nod.
Reaching the edge of the trench, Will bent to pick up a small rock and handed it to Arthur.
The rock...which was more of a pebble...was unexpectedly heavy for its size. And Arthur used his thumb to scrape the dirt from it, uncovering a ruddy surface, banded with bright red.
"Ore?" he guessed, examining the pebble closely.
"High-grade hematite ore," Will replied, his tone filled with compressed excitement. "It makes the best steel and commands the highest price on the market."
Arthur glanced at his brother with sharpening interest.
"Go on."
"While I was away in London," Will continued, "It seems that Hill's surveyors did some test boring here. One of the tenants...Mr. Wotten...heard the machines and came to see what was afoot. The surveyors told him nothing, of course. But as soon as I learned of it, I hired a geologist and a mining surveyor to do our own testing. They've been here for three days with a rock-boring machine, pulling up sample after sample of that."
He nodded to the hematite in Arthur's hand.
Beginning to understand, Arthur closed his fingers around the hard lump of ore.
"How much of it is there?" he asked.
"They're still assessing. But they both agree, that a massive bed of banded hematite lies close to the surface, just beneath a layer of clay and limestone. From what they've observed so far, it's eight feet thick in some places, twenty-two feet in others ...and it extends for at least fifteen acres. All your land. The geologist says he's never seen a deposit like this, south of Cumberland."
His voice turned husky.
"It's easily worth a half million pounds, Arthur."
Arthur had the sense of reeling backward, even though he was standing still.
It was too much to take in.
He gazed at the scene without really seeing it, his brain striving to comprehend what it meant.
The soul-crushing burden of debt that had weighed on him, ever since he'd inherited the estate...would be gone.
Everyone at Hampshire Priory would be safe.
Liam's sisters would have dowries large enough to attract any suitors they chose.
There would be work for the men of Hampshire, and new business for the village.
"Well?" Will asked expectantly, as Arthur's silence stretched out.
"I can't trust that it's real," he managed to say, "Until I know more."
"You can trust it. Believe me, a hundred thousand tons of stone is not going to vanish from beneath our feet."
A slow grin blossomed on Arthur's face.
"Now I understand why Hill tried so hard to obtain the mineral rights."
"Thank God you're so stubborn," Will said.
And Arthur laughed.
"That's the first time you've ever said that to me."
"And the last," Will assured him.
Turning in a slow circle to view their surroundings, Arthur sobered, as he glanced at the woodlands to the south.
"I can't let the estate's timber be razed for furnaces and forges," he said.
"No, there's no need for us to mine or smelt. The hematite ore is so pure, we'll only need to quarry. As soon as it's taken from the ground, it can be transported."
Completing the circle, he caught sight of a man and a small boy walking around the rock-boring machine, viewing it with great interest.
"First an Earldom," Will was saying, "Then the railway lease deal. Now this. I think you may be the luckiest sod in England."
However, Arthur's attention held on the man and little boy.
"Who is that?" he asked.
Will followed his gaze.
"Ah. That's Wotten. He's brought one of his sons to see the machine."
Mr. Wotten bent with his torso parallel to the ground, and the little boy climbed onto his back.
Hooking his arms beneath his son's legs, the young farmer stood and carried him across the field, as the boy clung to his shoulders, laughing.
And Arthur watched the pair as they retreated into the distance.
The sight of the child summoned an image to the forefront of his mind...Gwen's blank face, limned in fire glow, as she told him there would be no baby.
Which left him with a puzzling feeling of emptiness.
It was only now that he realized, he had assumed she would be pregnant...which would have left him no choice to marry her.
Having lived with that idea in the back of his mind for a fortnight, he had become accustomed to it.
Well, that wasn't quite accurate.
Shaken, he brought himself to face the truth.
He'd wanted it.
He'd wanted the excuse to make Gwen his in every way.
He wanted his baby inside her.
He wanted his ring on her finger, and every marital right that it conferred.
He wanted to share every day of the rest of his life with her.
"What are you worrying about?" Arthur heard his brother ask.
Arthur was slow to reply, as he tried to retrace the steps that had led him so far away, from everything he'd always thought he was.
"Before I inherited the title," he said dazedly, "I wouldn't have trusted either of us with a goldfish, much less a twenty-thousand-acre estate. I've always shunned any kind of responsibility, because I knew I couldn't manage it. I'm a scapegrace and a hothead, like our father. When you told me that I had no idea how to run the estate and I was going to fail..."
"That was a load of bollocks," Will said flatly.
Arthur grinned briefly.
"You made some valid points." Absently, he began to roll the hematite between his palms. "But against all odds, it seems that you and I have managed to make enough of the right choices..."
"No," Will interrupted. "I'll take no credit for this. You alone decided to take on the burden of the estate. You made the decisions that led to the lease deal and the discovery of the iron deposits. Has it occurred to you, that if any of the previous Earls had bothered to make the land improvements they should have, the hematite bed would have been discovered decades ago?
You certainly would have found it, when you ordered the drainage trenches dug for the tenant farms. You see, Hampshire Priory is in good hands...yours. You've changed hundreds of lives for the better, including mine. Whatever the word is for a man who's done all that...it's not 'scapegrace.'"
Will paused.
"My God, I can feel sincerity rising in my chest like a digestive disorder. I have to stop. Shall we go to the house for you to change into some field boots? Then we can return here, talk to the surveyors, and have a walk around."
Pondering the question, Arthur dropped the pebble into his pocket, and met his brother's gaze squarely.
One thought was paramount...none of this mattered without Gwen.
He had to go to her at once, and somehow make her understand that during the past few months, he had changed without even being aware of it.
He had become a man who could love her.
God, how madly he loved her.
But he had to find a way of convincing her, which would not be easy.
On the other hand...he wasn't a man to back down from a challenge.
Not any longer.
He glanced at his brother and spoke in a voice that wasn't quite steady.
"I can't stay," he said. "I have to go back to London."
Stay safe!