A Lord for Olivia by June Calvin Page A

eyes.
    The effrontery of the man! Looking at her as if he were undressing her! Olivia touched her heel to her horse androde toward Aunt Lavinia, who sat upright in the gig beneath a wide umbrella, avidly following events.
    Lavinia studied her niece’s expression carefully. “Will they win, do you think?”
    â€œI pray not.” Olivia compressed her lips tightly.
    â€œHe is very handsome, is he not? And very well set up.”
    Very well set up. You might say so! Olivia blushed and turned to study the vast acres of uncut hay beyond the little tableau. Only two workers were scything, all she could spare this morning. Somehow she must get it all cut, dried, and into the barn or made up into haycocks before the halcyon weather changed.
    â€œLivvy, dear?” Her aunt interrupted her worried thoughts. “Do you mean to keep your bargain? For I do believe Lord Edmund would be a very good influence on Jason.”
    â€œA good influence? The man is a gamester. Do you forget that if he had faced any other young man the other night, he would likely have taken every dime his victim had to wager? He is a penniless n’eer-do-well, a fortune hunter, a. . .” Olivia spluttered, her indignation outrunning the charges she had to lay against Lord Edmund.
    â€œI think you are being unfair. Look, Jason has managed to load his wagon. Will you keep your bargain, dear?”
    Olivia turned back, grimly noting the truth of her aunt’s observation. Jason’s load sat slightly off center, but it rose fully as high as Lord Edmund’s. “Yes, I will, if they win, which I by no means concede. After all, they must yet take their loads up Partridge Hill. Doubtless they will both spill out there, as the others did yesterday.”
    As they headed for the barn, Olivia rode behind them, followed by Lavinia in the gig. Behind them trooped the workers and an assortment of children, all laughing and talking loudly. They knew there was a wager being played out, though they had no way of knowing what the stakes were. Some of the men made their own bets on the outcome, to Olivia’s vexation. My brother and Lord Edmund have set a very bad example today, she thought, then remembered with a guilty twinge her own role in the affair.
    The road to Partridge Hill rose slowly but steadily from the flat meadowland near the Sparrow River to the relatively high ground of a small bluff midway up the side of the valley. Her father had placed storage and cattle barns here, safe from the occasional flood.
    Thinking of her father, she forgot to watch closely what was happening in front of her. A shout, quickly followed by a deluge of hay, caused her horse to shy and then stumble. She managed to pull it up just as her brother tumbled from his perch. He began cursing most colorfully until his diatribe was drowned out by most of the remaining load on his hay wain. He quickly disappeared from sight under the golden cascade.
    At Jason’s shout, Edmund turned his head just in time to see the younger man’s hay separate along the fault line created when he had tried to balance his off-center load. He watched the boy slide from sight. So much for marrying Olivia, he thought, then consoled himself: That rose has thorns.
    He called down to one of the gamboling boys beside the wagon, to see if Jason was okay.
    â€œHe be well enou’ to say more’n what he ought,” the lad responded. And indeed, Edmund could hear Jason’s swearing quite clearly, and frowned at the notion of the same sounds reaching the ears of the women and children. Before he could move to put a stop to this unseemly display, though, Jason’s voice fell silent.
    Seeing that Jason had survived his fall, Edmund decided to continue on to the barn, mindful that his own load was very much the product of an amateur, and might follow the same path as Jason’s if he continued to defy the laws of gravity by stopping on an incline.
    It