Shadows and Light

expenses,” Elinore continued, her eyes still focused on the terrace door. “And I’ll assist in paying any bills for the upkeep of the tenants’ cottages. But I won’t pay any bills for the upkeep of the town house in Durham, nor will I pay for any of your ... personal...
    expenses.”
    Meaning, if he took a mistress as his father had done, he’d have to pay for his own pleasure. Not that he thought much pleasure could be had from a mercenary creature like the woman his father had been bedding when he died. On the other hand, he couldn’t blame her for being mercenary. It had showed she
    ’d had a better understanding of his father than the other women the old baron had enjoyed.
    “It’s a generous offer,” he said. It stung that he had to accept it, but he was practical enough to know it would be a few years before the estate would recover sufficiently to pay all the expenses. “I thank you for it.”
    “Your father didn’t think it was generous.”
    “My father and I didn’t see eye to eye about a great many things,” Liam said sharply. “Your father gave you an independent income for your benefit, not for my father’s and not for the estate’s. You had, and still have, every right to do with it as you please. Willowsbrook should be able to support itself twice over. The fact that it can’t quite support itself is my father’s—and his father’s—fault, not yours.”
    After a long pause, Elinore said, “Would you like more tea?”
    What he’d like was a hefty glass of that whiskey, but he had the feeling they’d only chewed the edges of whatever she’d wanted to talk to him about. “Please,” he said, holding out his cup. He waited until she refilled both their cups. “Would you mind if I sold the town house in Durham?”
    “The estate and any other property is yours now, Liam. You may do with it as you please.”

    “Would you mind?” he persisted.
    When she looked at him, he saw a bitterness in her eyes she’d never allowed to show before. “There’s nothing in that place that I value.”
    No, there wouldn’t be, not when his father’s string of mistresses had spent more time there than she had.
    Well, that was one burden and expense he could easily shed. He’d write to his man of business and set things in motion to sell the town house and its contents.
    “Won’t you need the town house when you have business in the city?” Elinore asked.
    Liam shook his head. “I can rent rooms easily enough for the two times a year when the barons formally meet.”
    He felt a pressure building inside him, and he clamped his teeth to try to keep the words back as he’d done for so many years. Perhaps it was because the conversation was already difficult that he couldn’t hold it back anymore. “Why didn’t you leave him? He was a bastard, and you deserved so much better.
    Adultery is grounds for severing the marriage vow. You had income of your own, so you were never dependent upon him. Why did you stay?”
    “I had three reasons,” Elinore replied quietly. “You. Brooke. And Willowsbrook.”
    There was something about the way she said “Willowsbrook” that made him think she was talking about more than the estate.
    “You’re the baron now. You have authority and power, not just on the estate and tenant farms but over the villagers and the free landowners, as well. You can use that authority and power for ill or for good.”
    “I’m aware of that.”
    “How you act will set a precedent for the rest of the people here.”
    Liam snorted softly. “My father thankfully didn’t set much of a precedent.”
    “If he’d ordered that something be done, that order would have been obeyed. The squires and magistrates in each village would have seen it carried out.”
    Liam rested one hand lightly over his mother’s. “He still had to obey the decrees that the council of barons agree upon for the good of Sylvalan.”
    “The barons have the power to change the decrees or make new ones, regardless of what the rest of Sylvalan’s people want. And a baron can impose his will over the people in the county he rules no matter what the decrees say.”
    She looked pale and unhappy, and he didn’t know what she wanted from him. “To what use do you want me to put my new authority and power?” he asked gently.
    “I want you to protect the witches at Willowsbrook—the Old Place this estate took its name from generations ago when your father’s kin first came here to live and work