Page 92 of Not Quite a Lady
Caroline found she had to give her borrowed mount clear instructions to follow suit. Chaffinch was far too well-mannered to take liberties but once the mare had hit her stride she proved to have a long, easy action and Lily was soon itching to gallop. But of course, to race a borrowed horse over unknown ground was just not possible.
‘Race?’ Jack called back over his shoulder. The big grey was working itself up into a lather of sweat where the reins touched its neck.
‘I should not, not riding your mother’s horse,’ Lily called back.
In answer, Jack circled round, came up alongside her and leaned over to slap Chaffinch on the rump. ‘Get up!’
‘Jack, for goodness sake.’ Lily tightened her grip and pushed her heel down in the stirrup as she urged an already excited mare after the hunter.
I’ll give him get up!
But despite her best endeavours the little mare could not catch the grey. Jack had reined in beside the river where it widened into a shallow ford before Lily was close enough to carry on berating him.
‘What would I have told you mama if the mare had put her foot in a rabbit hole?’ she demanded, jamming her hat down.
‘That her undutiful son had led you astray?’
He already has…
‘Anyway, I know there are no hidden dangers along that stretch. If we cross here I can take you up to the edge of the moors.’
‘This is very lovely.’ Lily twisted in the saddle to look around her as the horses picked their way across the river. ‘We have left Caroline and Mr Willoughby behind.’
‘The girls can chaperone her – at a safe distance.’ Jack chuckled. ‘I’d bet ten corves of coal that I’ll be greeting a future brother-in-law by lunch time.’
‘What is a corve?’
‘Corves are the containers coal is moved in underground,’ Jack explained.
Lily nodded encouragingly: she was actually getting him to talk about mining at long last.
‘A miner has his own, moved by members of his own family, so we can keep tally on who has mined what.’
‘And how much would that be in a day?’
She should have known better. Jack shrugged. ‘All depends. There, what do you make of the moors?’
The sharp slope of sheep-nibbled grassland flattened out into rolling, open country, patched green and brown and punctuated by occasional clumps of trees or thickets of scrub. Dotted across the vastness were flocks of sheep, like so many clouds on a green sky.
Lily stared. ‘There is an awful lot of it. I was expecting fields –how do you keep the sheep in?’
‘We do not have to, they know where they live.’ Jack grinned at her. ‘You really are a town creature aren’t you, Lily?’
‘I suppose I am: I never thought about it. We have never owned land you see, so countryside is just something one drives through. How do you know where your land stops? I can’t see any fences.’
‘There are none, and everything you can see is mine.’
‘All this?’ Lily turned in the saddle, looking back over the wide valley and the rising land on the other side. ‘And that way?’
‘Yes, as far as you can see.’
‘But that must bethousandsof acres.’
Jack nodded and pressed his heels into the hunter’s sides so that they began to approach a flock of sheep.
Lily eyed them nervously as they came closer. ‘Then why do you not sell some land to raise money for the mine?’ It seemed so obvious.
‘Sell? Sell Allerton land?’ Now what had she said wrong? Jack was staring at her as though she had suggested he walk naked down Piccadilly. It was obviously not just a bad idea, but an impossible concept.
