Minx

"Very much so, although it has only been a few hours." Dunford dipped his spoon into his beef consommé and took a sip. "Delicious."

"Mmm, yes. Mrs. Simpson is a treasure. I don't know what we'd do without her."

"I thought Mrs. Simpson was the housekeeper."

Henry, sensing an opportunity, schooled her face into a mask of earnest innocence. "Oh, she is, but she often cooks as well. We haven't an extensive staff here, in case you hadn't noticed." She smiled, fairly certain he had noticed. "More than half of the servants you met this afternoon actually work outside the house, in the stables and the garden and such."

"Is that so?"

"I suppose we ought to try to hire a few more servants, but they can be terribly dear, you know."

"No," he said softly, "I didn't know."

"You didn't?" Henry replied, her brain working very, very quickly. "That must be because you have never had to manage a household before."

"Not one as large as this, no."

"That must be it, then," she said, a trifle too enthusiastically. "If we were to hire more servants, we'd have to cut back in other areas."

"Would we?" One corner of Dunford's mouth tilted up in a lazy smile as he took a sip of his wine.

"Yes. We would. As it is, we really don't have the food budget we ought to have."

"Really? I find this meal delicious."

"Well, of course," Henry said loudly. She cleared her throat, forcing her voice into a softer tone. "We wanted your first night here to be special."

"How thoughtful of you."

Henry swallowed. He had an air about him, as if all the secrets of the universe were locked up in his head. "Starting tomorrow," she said, amazed that her voice sounded perfectly normal, "we'll have to go back to our regular menu."

"Which is?" he prodded.

"Oh, this and that," she said, waving her hand to stall for time. "Quite a bit of mutton. We eat the sheep once their wool is no longer good."

"I wasn't aware wool went bad."

"Oh, but it does." Henry smiled tightly, wondering if he could tell she was lying through her teeth. "When the sheep get old, their wool gets...stringy. We can't get a good price for it. So we use the animals for food."

"Mutton."

"Yes. Boiled."

"It's a wonder you aren't thinner."

Reflexively, Henry looked down at herself. Did he think she was scrawny? She felt a strange sort of ache—almost like sorrow—and then brushed it aside. "We don't scrimp on the morning meal," she blurted out, unwilling to give up her favorite sausage and eggs. "After all, one needs proper nourishment when one breaks one's fast. And we need our strength here at Stannage Park, what with all the chores."

"Of course."

"So it's a good breakfast," Henry said, cocking her head, "followed by porridge for lunch."

"Porridge?" Dunford very nearly choked on the word.

"Yes. You'll develop a taste for it. Never fear. And then dinner is usually soup, bread, and mutton, if we have any."

"If you have any?"

"Well, it's not every day that we slaughter one of our sheep. We have to wait until they're old. We do get a nice price for the wool."

"I'm sure the good people of Cornwall are ever grateful to you for clothing them."

Henry schooled her face into a perfect mask of blank innocence. "I'm sure most of them don't know where the wool for their garments comes from."

He stared at her, obviously trying to discern if she could possibly be that obtuse.

Henry, uncomfortable with the sudden silence, said, "Right. So that is why we eat mutton. Sometimes."

"I see."

Henry tried to assess his rather noncommittal tone but found she couldn't read his thoughts. She was walking a fine line with him and she knew it. On the one hand she wanted to show him he wasn't suited for country life. On the other hand, if she made Stannage Park out to be an understaffed, mismanaged nightmare, he could fire the lot of them and start from scratch, which would be a disaster.

She frowned. He couldn't fire her, could he? Could someone get rid of a ward?

"Why the long face, Henry?"

"Oh, nothing," she replied quickly. "I was just doing a bit of mathematics in my head. I always frown when I do mathematics."

She's lying, Dunford thought. "And what, pray tell, were your equations concerning?"

"Oh, rents and crops, that sort of thing. Stannage Park is a working farm, you know. We all work very hard."

Suddenly the long explanation about food took on new meaning. Was she trying to scare him off? "No, I didn't know."

"Oh, yes. We've quite a number of tenants, but we also have people who work directly for us, harvesting crops and raising livestock and such. It's quite a bit of work."

Dunford smiled wryly. She was trying to scare him off. But why? He was going to have to find out a bit more about this odd woman. If she wanted a war, he'd be happy to oblige, no matter how sweetly and innocently she disguised her attacks. Leaning forward, he set out to conquer Miss Henrietta Barrett the same way he'd conquered women across Britain.

Simply by being himself.

He started out with another one of those devastating smiles.

Henry didn't stand a chance.

She thought she was made of stern stuff. She even managed to say to herself, "I am made of stern stuff," as the force of his charm washed over her. But her stuff obviously wasn't that stern because her stomach somersaulted, landed somewhere in the vicinity of her heart, and to her utter horror, she heard herself sigh.