Minx

by Julia Quinn

  “I can’t imagine when that is,” Mrs. Simpson snorted, “since I’ve never seen you in one. Not even at church.”

  “How fortunate for me that the vicar is a most open-minded gentleman.”

  Simpy leveled a shrewd gaze at the younger woman. “How fortunate for you that the vicar is overfond of the French brandy you send over once a month.”

  Henry pretended not to hear. “I wore a dress to Carlyle’s funeral, if you recall. And to the county ball last year. And whenever we receive guests. I have at least five in my closet, thank you very much. Oh, and I also wear them to town.”

  “You do not.”

  “Well, perhaps not to our little village, but I do whenever I go to any other town. But anyone would agree that they are most impractical when I’m out and about overseeing the estate.” Not to mention, Henry thought wryly, that they all looked dreadful on her.

  “Well, you’d better get one on when Mr. Dunford arrives.”

  “I’m not completely daft, Simpy.” Henry chucked the apple core across the kitchen into a bucket of scraps. It fell squarely in, and she let out a whoop of pride. “Haven’t missed that bucket in months.”

  Mrs. Simpson shook her head. “If only someone would teach you how to be a girl.”

  “Viola tried,” Henry replied cheekily, “and she might have succeeded if she’d lived longer. But the truth is, I like myself just fine.” Most of the time, at least, she thought. Every now and then she’d see a fine lady in a gorgeous gown that fit her to perfection. Such women didn’t have feet, Henry decided. They had rollers—virtually gliding along. And wherever they went, a dozen besotted men followed. Henry would wistfully stare at this entourage, imagining them mooning after her. Then she laughed. That particular dream wasn’t likely to come true, and besides, she liked her life just fine, didn’t she?

  “Henry?” Mrs. Simpson said, leaning forward. “Henry, I was talking to you.”

  “Hmmm?” Henry blinked herself out of her reverie. “Oh, I’m sorry, I was just thinking about what to do about the cows,” she lied. “I’m not sure we’ve got enough room for all of them.”

  “You should be thinking about what to do when Mr. Dunford arrives. He did send word that it would be this afternoon, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, blast him.”

  “Henry!” Mrs. Simpson said reprovingly.

  Henry shook her head and sighed. “If ever there was a time for cursing, it’s now, Simpy. What if he wants to take an interest in Stannage Park? Or worse—what if he wants to take charge?”

  “If he does, it will be his right. He does own it, you know.”

  “I know, I know. More’s the pity.”

  Mrs. Simpson shaped the dough into a loaf and then set it aside to rise. Wiping off her hands, she said, “Maybe he’ll sell it. If he sold it to a local, you wouldn’t have anything to worry about. Everyone knows there’s nobody better to manage Stannage Park than you.”

  Henry hopped down from her perch on the counter, planted her hands on her hips, and began to pace across the kitchen. “He can’t sell. It’s entailed. If it weren’t, I daresay Carlyle would have left it to me.”

  “Oh. Well, then you’re just going to have to do your best to get along with Mr. Dunford.”

  “That’s Lord Stannage now,” Henry groaned. “Lord Stannage—owner of my home and decider of my future.”

  “Just what does that mean?”

  “It means that he’s my guardian.”

  “What?” Mrs. Simpson dropped her rolling pin.

  “I’m his ward.”

  “But . . . but that’s impossible. You don’t even know the man.”

  Henry shrugged. “It’s the way of the world, Simpy. Women haven’t brains, you know. We need guardians to guide us.”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”

  “I don’t tell you everything, you know.”

  “Just about,” Mrs. Simpson snorted.

  Henry smiled sheepishly. It was true that she and the housekeeper were much closer than one would expect. She absentmindedly twirled her fingers around a lock of her long, brown hair, one of her few concessions to vanity. It would have been more sensible to cut it short, but it was thick and soft, and Henry just couldn’t bear to part with it. Besides, it was her habit to wind it around her fingers while she was thinking hard about a problem, as she was doing now.

  “Wait a minute!” she exclaimed.

  “What?”

  “He can’t sell the place, but that doesn’t mean he has to live here.”

  Mrs. Simpson narrowed her eyes. “I’m not certain I understand your meaning, Henry.”

  “We just have to make sure that he absolutely, positively doesn’t want to live here. Chances are it won’t be difficult. He’s probably one of those soft London sorts. But it certainly couldn’t hurt to make him slightly, er, uncomfortable.”

  “What on earth are you thinking of, Henrietta Barrett? Putting rocks in the poor man’s mattress?”

  “Nothing so crude, I assure you,” Henry scoffed. “We shall show him every kindness. We shall be politeness personified, but we shall endeavor to point out that he is not suited for country life. He could learn to love the role of absentee landlord. Especially if I send him quarterly profits.”

  “I thought you poured the profits back into the estate.”

  “I do, but I’ll just have to split them in half. I’ll send half to the new Lord Stannage and reinvest half here. I won’t like doing it, but it will be better than having him in residence.”

  Mrs. Simpson shook her head. “Just what exactly are you planning to do to him?”

  Henry twirled her finger in her hair. “I’m not certain. I’ll have to give it some thought.”

  Mrs. Simpson looked over at a clock. “You’d better think fast, because he’ll be here within the hour.”

  Henry walked over to the door. “I’d better wash.”

  “If you don’t want to meet him smelling like the great outdoors,” Mrs. Simpson retorted. “And not the part with flowers and honey, if you know what I mean.”

  Henry shot her a cheeky grin. “Will you have someone fill a bath for me?” At the housekeeper’s nod, she dashed up the back stairs. Mrs. Simpson was right: she smelled rather unsavory. But then, what could one expect after a morning overseeing the construction of a new pigpen? It had been messy work, but Henry had been glad to do it—or rather, she admitted to herself, to supervise it. Getting knee-deep in muck was not exactly her cup of tea.

  She stopped suddenly on the stairs, her eyes lighting up. It was not her cup of tea, but it was just the thing for the new Lord Stannage. She could even bring herself to get more actively involved in the project if it meant convincing this Dunford fellow this was what country lords did all the time.

  Feeling much enthused, she bounded up the rest of the stairs to her bedroom. It would be several minutes before the tub was filled, so she picked up her hairbrush and walked over to the window to look out. Her hair had been pulled back like a pony’s tail, but the wind had whipped it into snarls. She untied the ribbon; it would be easier to wash detangled.

  As she pulled the brush through her hair, she stared out over the green fields surrounding the house. The sun was just beginning to set, tinting the sky like a peach. Henry sighed with love. Nothing had the power to move her as these lands did.

  Then, as if timed just to spoil her perfect moment, something glinted on the horizon. Oh, God, it wasn’t . . . It was glass, glass from a carriage window. Damn and blast—he was early. “Stupid wretch,” she muttered. “Deuced inconsiderate of him.” She glanced back over her shoulder. Her bath wasn’t ready.

  Pressing closer to the window, she peered down at the carriage that was now rolling down the drive. It was quite elegant. Mr. Dunford must have been a man of some means even before inheriting Stannage Park. Either that or he had wealthy friends willing to loan hi
m a conveyance. Henry stared at the scene quite unabashedly, brushing her hair all the while. Two footmen dashed out to unload the trunks. She smiled proudly. She had this house running like clockwork.

  Then the carriage door opened. Without realizing it, she moved even closer to the glass of her window. A booted foot emerged. A rather nice, manly boot, Henry observed, and she knew her boots. Then it became apparent that the boot was attached to a leg that was every bit as manly as its footwear. “Oh, dear,” she muttered. He wasn’t going to be a weak sissy. Then the owner of the leg hopped out, and she saw him in his entirety.

  She dropped her hairbrush.

  “Oh, my God,” she breathed. He was beautiful. No, not beautiful, she corrected, for that would imply some sort of effeminate quality, and this man certainly had none of that. He was tall, with a firmly muscled body and broad shoulders. His hair was thick and brown, slightly longer than was fashionable. And his face . . . Henry may have been looking down at him from fourteen feet up, but even she could see that his face was everything a face ought to be. His cheekbones were high, his nose straight and strong, and his mouth finely molded with a slight wry quality to it. She couldn’t see what color his eyes were, but she had a sinking feeling they would be filled with shrewd intelligence. And he was much, much younger than she’d expected. She’d been hoping for someone in his fifties. This man couldn’t be a day over thirty.

  Henry groaned. This was going to be much harder than she’d anticipated. She was going to have to be very crafty indeed to fool this one. With a sigh, she reached down for her hairbrush and walked back to her bath.

  As Dunford was quietly inspecting the front of his new home, a movement in an upstairs window caught his eye. The sun was glinting off the glass, but it appeared to be a girl with long, brown hair. Before he could get a better look, however, she’d turned and disappeared into the room. That was odd. No servant would be standing idly by a window at this time of day, especially with her hair unbound. He wondered briefly who she was, then let the thought drift from his mind. He’d have time enough to find out about her; right now he had more important things to attend to.

  The entire staff of Stannage Park had assembled in front of the house for his inspection. There were about two dozen altogether—a small number by ton standards, but then Stannage Park was a fairly modest home for a peer of the realm. The butler, a thin man named Yates, was taking great pains to make the process as formal as possible. Dunford tried to humor him by adopting a slightly austere manner; it seemed to be what the servants expected of the new lord of the manor. It was hard to suppress a smile, however, as maid after maid bobbed a curtsy in his honor. He had never expected a title, never expected lands of his own or a household to go with them. His father had been a younger son of a younger son; God only knew how many Dunfords had had to die to put him in line for this inheritance.

  After the last maid had bobbed down and up, Dunford returned his attention to the butler. “You run an excellent house, Yates, if this introduction is any indication.”

  Yates, who had never acquired the stone-faced facade that was a prerequisite among London butlers, flushed with pleasure. “Thank you, my lord. We do try as hard as we can, but it’s Henry we have to thank.”

  Dunford raised a brow. “Henry?”

  Yates gulped. He should have called her Miss Barrett. That’s what the new Lord Stannage would expect, him being from London and all that. And he was Henry’s new guardian, wasn’t he? Mrs. Simpson had pulled him aside and whispered that particular tidbit in his ear not ten minutes before. “Umm, Henry is . . .” His voice trailed off. It was so hard to think of her as anything but Henry. “That is to say . . .”

  But Dunford’s attention had already been captured by Mrs. Simpson, who was assuring him that she had been at Stannage Park for over twenty years and knew everything about the estate—well, at least about the house—and if he needed anything . . .

  Dunford blinked as he tried to focus on the housekeeper’s words. Dimly, he sensed she was nervous. That was probably why she was rattling on like a . . . like a something. What, exactly, he didn’t know, and what was she saying? A flash of movement in the stables caught his eye, and he allowed his gaze to wander in that direction. He waited a moment. Oh, well, he must have imagined it. He turned back to the housekeeper. She was saying something about Henry. Who was Henry? The question formed on his tongue and would have rolled off his lips if a giant pig hadn’t suddenly exploded out through the partially open door of the stables.

  “Holy, bloody . . .” Dunford breathed, unable to complete his curse. He was mesmerized by the sheer ludicrousness of the situation. The creature was hurtling across the lawn moving faster than any pig had a right to. It was an enormous porcine beast—surely that was all one could call it—this was no ordinary swine. Dunford had no doubt it would feed half the ton if taken to a proper butcher.

  The pig reached the assembly of servants, and the maids shrieked, running in every possible direction. Stunned by the sudden movement, the pig stopped, raised its snout, and let out a hellish squeal—and then another, and another, and . . .

  “Will you shut up!” Dunford commanded.

  The pig, sensing authority, didn’t just shut up—it actually laid down.

  Henry did a double take, impressed in spite of herself. She had dashed downstairs the minute she saw the pig emerge from the stables, and had arrived in the front drive just as the new Lord Stannage was trying out his new lordly imperiousness on barnyard animals.

  She ran forward, forgetting she hadn’t managed to take that bath she knew she needed, forgetting she was still garbed in boys’ clothes. Dirty boys’ clothes.

  “So sorry, my lord,” she muttered, offering him a tight smile before leaning down and grabbing the pig’s collar. She probably shouldn’t have interfered, should have let the pig get bored of sitting on the ground, should have laughed when it came forward and did unspeakable things to the new Lord Stannage’s boots. But she took far too much pride in Stannage Park not to try to salvage the disaster in some way. There was nothing in the world that meant as much to her as this smooth-running estate, and she couldn’t bear that someone might think that free-roaming pigs were a common occurrence, even if that someone were a London lord of whom she heartily wanted to be rid.

  A farmhand ran up, took the pig from her, and led it back to the stables. Henry straightened, suddenly aware of the way every last servant was gaping at her, and wiped her hands on her breeches. She glanced over at the darkly handsome man standing across from her. “How do you do, Lord Stannage?” she said, curving her lips into a welcoming smile. After all, there was no need for him to realize she was trying to scare him away.

  “How do you do, Miss, er . . .”

  Henry’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t realize who she was? No doubt he’d been expecting his ward to be a trifle younger, a pampered and spoiled young miss who never ventured out of doors, much less ran an entire estate. “Miss Henrietta Barrett,” she said in a tone that said she expected him to recognize the name. “But you can just call me Henry. Everybody does.”

  Chapter 2

  Dunford raised a brow. This was Henry? “You’re a girl,” he said, realizing how stupid he sounded even as the words left his mouth.

  “Last time I looked,” she said cheekily.

  Somewhere in the background someone groaned. Henry was fairly sure it was Mrs. Simpson.

  Dunford blinked a few times at the bizarre creature standing in front of him. She was wearing a pair of baggy men’s breeches and a serviceable white, cotton shirt which, if the number of muddy streaks on her person were any indication, had recently been serviced. Her brown hair was unbound, freshly brushed, and flowing down her back. Rather beautiful hair it was, very feminine and somewhat at odds with the rest of her appearance. He couldn’t quite decide if she was attractive or merely interesting or if she might even be beautiful if she weren’t wearing something qui
te so shapeless. But there was no way he was going to make a closer inspection anytime soon because the girl smelled decidedly . . . unfeminine.

  Quite honestly, Dunford didn’t want to get within three feet of her.

  Henry had been wearing eau de piglet since morning and had grown quite used to it. She saw the new Lord Stannage frown and figured he was probably reacting to her rather unorthodox attire. Well, there was nothing to do about that now, thanks to his early arrival and the giant pig’s untimely appearance, so she decided to make the best of it and smiled again, wanting to lull him into thinking she was pleased to see him.

  Dunford cleared his throat. “Forgive my surprise, Miss Barrett, but—”

  “Henry. Please call me Henry. Everybody does.”

  “Henry, then. Please do forgive my surprise, but I was told only that someone named Henry was in charge, and so naturally I assumed . . .”

  “Pay it no mind,” she said with a wave of her hand. “Happens all the time. It often works to my advantage.”

  “I’m sure it does,” he murmured, discreetly taking a step away from her.

  She put her hands on her hips and squinted across the lawn at the stables to make sure the farmhand was securing the pig properly. Dunford watched her surreptitiously, thinking there had to be another Henry, that this girl couldn’t possibly be in charge. For God’s sake, she didn’t look a day over fifteen.

  She turned back to him with a rather sudden movement. “This is not a common occurrence, I have to say. We’re building a new pigpen, and the pigs are in the stables only as a temporary measure.”

  “I see.” She certainly sounded as if she were in charge, Dunford thought.

  “Right. Well, we’re about halfway done.” Henry grinned. “Famous that you arrived when you did, my lord, for we could use another pair of hands.”

  Somewhere behind her someone coughed, and this time she was certain it was Mrs. Simpson.

  Fine time for Simpy to get an attack of conscience, Henry thought, mentally rolling her eyes. She smiled again at Dunford and said, “I’d like to see the pigpen done as soon as possible. We don’t want a repeat of this afternoon’s unfortunate incident, do we?”