Control.com - Nerds in Control

So I would like a chip/embedded code (in which case I would just buy the processor and upload the code)to create a modbus master, from which I can collect the data from a modbus slave (a power meter which speaks modbus RTU). Ideally the output would just be some holding register which could be read by another DSP chip (it's not going anywhere near a higher level network).

I believe that I need a master to interrogate the slave. Essentially I just want to send to the chip the power meter's function code, and receive the meter's value of that fn. (i.e. skip around all the timing issues and ADU, PDU, clock development time).

I'm sure this is a silly question, as hundreds of ppl spend all day making custom implementations, but is there a straightforward product to relieve me of this task? (I'm new to this, and this seems intimidating)