Burning Bright (Brambridge Novel 2) by Pearl Darling Page B

behavior. He was thankful to them for that.
    “Well, enjoy yourself and don’t eat too many of her cakes.”
    Tittering, the ladies drew hold of their skirts and primly mounted into the landau. Whilst Mrs. Sumner and his mother sat harmoniously together, his sister and Melissa leaned away from each other, far apart. The landau clattered down the drive, his sister casting him one long mournful look before turning away to face forward.
    It took James an hour to return to the Fountain Inn, gather his belongings and return. With heavy steps, he mounted the stairs to the east wing. Mold grew on the walls, and the Indian hangings had almost rotted away. In the room, the bed itself was still intact, although the sheets had not been made up for his arrival. They smelled musty and old, with indescribable stains across the pillows and coverlet.
    “There you are, old boy.” Edgar appeared at the door, dabbing a kerchief to his nose in an affected way. “Lovely room you’ve chosen.”
    James looked at him with incredulity. There had not been a hint of sarcasm in Edgar’s voice. He supposed that if he too had been living in a place for two years then he himself might not have noticed the changes around him. In the war when his friends’ hair went white with stress and shock, and the mud boiled around the tents and cannon, it was unnoticeable, because it was interminable. It just happened.
    James took a deep breath and coughed. “Edgar. What is going on?” He coughed again. Gods, but the dust got up the nose.
    Edgar looked at him with surprise. “What, old man?”
    His cousin’s affected speech and stance annoyed James.
    “I am the heir presumptive to the estate and yet when I went to the lawyer he told me I could not sign to look after it for the next six months. You had already done so. Apparently you have been running the estate effectively for the last two years.”
    “Quite right, too.”
    “All I see around me Edgar, is decay and ruin. The estate is going rotten. Where are the grooms, the staff? Why is the roof caving in?”
    “Are you trying to suggest that I have been doing a bad job?” Edgar stepped further into the room, revealing his cane which he twirled in his left hand.
    James eyed Edgar with alarm. He had never regarded Edgar as a physical threat, but the way he spun the cane expertly suggested hours of practice. He moved towards the window behind the bed where Edgar’s stick would have less room to swing.
    “No, I am merely trying to find out why they nominated you to the estate, and why the mine is doing so badly too.”
    And work out what else was going on.
    “Unfortunately we had a run of bad luck.” Edgar sat down heavily on the edge of the moldy bed, his stick finally resting still on the floor. He stood up again quickly, wiping the seat of his pristine breeches with disgust. “The market for stone from Brambridge has fallen through. We lost the contract to redo the apse on Exeter cathedral. An excellent friend of mine, the mayor of Exeter, told me that it had been noted that the blocks of stone we had sent them had split and weathered in the cloisters whilst they were waiting to hoist them into position.”
    James shook his head. The Brambridge stone was renowned. It had been mined since the Roman times. There was no way that it could suddenly start to weather badly. But once a rumor started, even an unfounded one, James knew they were hard to stop. Every business ran on reputation. If it could not maintain its contracts, then one by one they would disappear as buyers moved to other companies.
    “What about the crops?” he demanded. “The failure of the mine surely had nothing to do with that?”
    “It was the eruption of volcano, Mount Tamborra, wasn’t it?” Edgar’s lips turned down at the edges. “It’s changed the weather system completely. It was just too cold last summer for anything to grow.”
    James knew this to be true, certainly in the main body of Europe where the ground had