Page 17 of The Farmer Has a Wife

Tommy sniffed. “Be happier if I had cake, but yeah, I suppose so. Careful you don’t get lost, though. I’ve heard these posh places have entire wings.” He thought for a second, then clarified, “I don’t mean the flying kind either.”

IT OCCURRED TO Danni, as she drove up the endless driveway, that she might not entirely have understood just what her marriage was buying. She’d known that the house was going to be posh, known that it was going to be big. She hadn’t imagined that it would give Downton Abbey a run for its money.

Brewster Manor was a beast of a house.

It had wings on wings, and columns and ivy and grounds, and probably, Danni thought, an entire army of staff. She pulled up in the forecourt and gaped at the place. Tommy was right, she’d have to be careful. If she got lost in there, it might be weeks before anyone found her. There were probably mummified bodies of servant girls who’d turned left inside of right inside cupboards.

“Bloody hell,” she muttered, as she got out of the car. “Whathave I gotten myself into?”

At any other house, Danni would have gone around to the kitchen door. But given that here, that would include a hefty hike around some rather overgrown looking grounds, she satisfied herself with marching up to the big front doors and then looking around for anything that might be construed as a bell.

Scaffolding towered over her, shading the door enough that she couldn’t identify a bell. She was was just steeling herself to knock when there was a loud crack from above.

She jumped back just in time as a large brick tumbled from the scaffolding, almost braining her.

“What the hell?” she yelped.

“Bugger,” said a man in a hard hat, peering down at her from the scaffolding. “You alright?”

“Just about,” she said, as he climbed down to meet her.

“House is a bit temperamental,” he said, wiping his hands on his trousers. “You looking for Her Majesty?”

“You mean Eleanor?” Danni asked in amusement.

“Yeah, that’s the one.” He extended a hand. “I’m Samson. Head builder. Don’t suppose you’re the new wife, are you?”

Danni shook his hand. “Heard about that, have you?”

“Might have done,” Samson grinned. “Seems like a sensible idea to me. Can’t be doing with all this old-fashioned business about needing a husband to run a house. Think things’d probably all go a lot smoother with two wives, to be honest. A husband’d probably just get in the way.”

“Probably,” agreed Danni.

Samson sniffed. “Come on then, I’ll show you around, if you like.”

She’d been expecting Downton Abbey glamor to match the outside of the house, and was sorely disappointed when Samson pushed open the front door. Alright, the tiles on the floor were nice, but everything else was covered in dust cloths and plastic.

In fact, the inside of Brewster Manor was an absolute disaster.

“Just getting started,” Samson said. “Gonna get worse before itgets better, to be honest. We’ve got the roof to do, the masonry, and most of the electrics were put in in the last century, so we’ll be doing those as well.”

“Bloody hell,” Danni said, looking around.

“Plumbing’s alright though,” he said, as though that made up for everything else. “Still, we’re going to be knocking a lot of things down so we can put a lot more things back together again, if you know what I mean?”

They stepped over piles of broken tiles, trying not to inhale too much dust, as Samson rattled off long lists of what needed to be done in each room.

Danni whistled low. “And Eleanor’slivingin this?”

Samson shrugged. “Surviving might be a better word. I told her that she should go to a hotel, but she won’t. Don’t think it’s that she doesn’t trust us. She seems alright with my men being here. Think it’s more that she doesn’t want to. Not that I blame her. It might be a while and no one wants to live in an anonymous hotel for long, do they?”

Danni nodded in agreement. “But no one should be living in a death trap either,” she said.

“You’re preaching to the choir,” said Samson. He pointed down a long corridor. “If you go down there you’ll come to the kitchens. You should find Her Highness around there somewhere. Just give a shout if you can’t and someone’ll hear you.”

“You sure?” Danni asked. “I don’t want to get lost in here.”

Samson laughed. “I count everyone in and out and we send a search party for the stragglers once a week on a Wednesday, so don’t worry.”

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