by Julia Quinn
This time Dunford had no choice but to acknowledge that this creature was indeed running the estate. “I understand you’re in charge here,” he finally said.
Henry shrugged. “More or less.”
“Aren’t you a little, er . . . young?”
“Probably,” Henry replied without thinking. Darn, wrong thing to say. That would only give him an excuse to get rid of her. “But I’m really the best man for the job,” she quickly added. “I’ve been running Stannage Park for years.”
“Woman,” Dunford murmured.
“Excuse me?”
“Woman. The best woman for the job.” His eyes glinted with humor. “You are a woman, are you not?”
Henry, completely missing the fact that he was teasing her, blushed painfully pink. “There’s not a man in Cornwall who could do a better job than I do,” she muttered.
“I’m sure you’re right,” Dunford said. “Pigs notwithstanding. But enough of this. Stannage Park looks quite splendidly run. I’m sure you’re doing a good job. In fact, perhaps you should be the one to introduce me to the estate.” Then he let loose what had to be his most lethal weapon: his smile.
Henry tried very hard not to melt at the sheer force of his grin. She’d never had occasion to meet a man who was quite as much of a . . . of a man, really, as this one, and she didn’t like the way her stomach was fluttering one bit. He didn’t look the least bit affected by her presence, she noted with irritation, other than that he obviously found her quite odd. Well, he wouldn’t see her swooning all over him. “Certainly,” she replied smoothly. “I’d be happy to. Shall we start right now?”
“Henry!” Mrs. Simpson said, rushing over to her side. “His Lordship has just traveled all the way from London. I’m sure he’ll want to repair himself. He’ll be hungry, too.”
Dunford flashed them another one of those deadly smiles. “Famished.”
“If I had just inherited an estate, I’d want to see it right away,” Henry said loftily. “I’d want to know all about it.”
Dunford’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “To be certain, I do want to learn all about Stannage Park, but I don’t see why I cannot begin tomorrow morning after I have eaten and rested.” He turned back to Henry and inclined his head just a fraction of an inch. “And bathed.”
Henry’s face burned beet red as she realized the new Lord Stannage was telling her as politely as he could that she stank. “Of course, my lord,” she said in a glacial tone. “Your wish is, of course, my command. You are the new lord here, of course.”
Dunford thought he might throttle her if she inserted one more “of course” into her speech. Just what was she up to? And why was she suddenly so resentful of him? She’d been all smiles and welcomes just a few minutes earlier. “I cannot tell you how delighted I am to have you at my disposal, Miss Barrett. I’m sorry, er, Henry. And from your rather pretty speech, I can only deduce you are at my complete disposal. How intriguing.” He smiled blandly at her and followed Mrs. Simpson into the house.
Darn, darn, darn, Henry thought wildly, resisting the urge to stamp her foot. Why on earth had she let her temper get the better of her? Now he knew she didn’t want him here and would be suspicious of her every word and action. He was no corkbrain, this one.
That was her first problem. He was supposed to have been stupid. Men of his sort usually were, or so she’d heard.
Problem number two: he was too young. He wasn’t going to have any trouble keeping up with her tomorrow. So much for exhausting him into realizing he wouldn’t like it here at Stannage Park.
Problem number three, of course, was that he was quite the best-looking man she’d ever seen. She hadn’t seen too many men, that was true, but that didn’t diminish the fact that he made her feel like . . . Henry frowned. What did he make her feel like? She sighed and shook her head. She didn’t want to know.
Her fourth problem was obvious. Despite the fact that she didn’t want to admit the new Lord Stannage could be correct about anything, there was no way around the truth.
She stank.
Not even bothering to conceal a groan, Henry returned to the house and stomped up the stairs to her room.
Dunford followed Mrs. Simpson as she led him to the master suite. “I hope you find your rooms comfortable,” she was saying. “Henry’s done her best to keep the house modernized.”
“Ah, Henry,” he said enigmatically.
“She’s our Henry, she is.”
Dunford smiled at her, another one of those devastating combinations of lips and teeth that had slain women for years. “Just who is Henry?”
“You don’t know?”
He shrugged and raised his brows.
“Why, she’s been living here for years, ever since her parents died. And she’s been running the place for . . . let me see, it must be at least six years now, since Lady Stannage passed on, God bless her heart.”
“Where was Lord Stannage?” Dunford asked curiously. Best to find out as much as possible as soon as possible. He’d always believed that nothing could arm a man like a bit of research.
“Mourning Lady Stannage.”
“For six years?”
Mrs. Simpson sighed. “They were quite devoted to one another.”
“Allow me to assure myself that I understand the situation correctly. Henry, er, Miss Barrett has been running Stannage Park for six years?” That couldn’t be possible. Had she taken over the reins when she was ten? “How old is she?”
“Twenty, milord.”
Twenty. She certainly didn’t look it. “I see. And just what is her relation to Lord Stannage?”
“Why, you’re Lord Stannage now.”
“The former Lord Stannage, I mean,” Dunford said, careful not to let any of his impatience show.
“A distant cousin of his wife’s. She had no place else to go, poor dear.”
“Ah. How generous of them. Well, thank you for showing me to my rooms, Mrs. Simpson. I think I’ll take a short rest and then change for supper. You do keep country hours here?”
“It’s the country, after all,” she said with a nod. Then she picked up her skirts and left the room.
A poor relation, Dunford thought. How intriguing. A poor relation who dressed like a man, stank to high heaven, and had Stannage Park running as smoothly as the most posh London household. His time in Cornwall certainly wouldn’t be dull.
Now, if he could only find out what she looked like in a dress.
Two hours later Dunford was wishing he hadn’t wondered. Words could not describe the sight of Miss Henrietta Barrett in a dress. Never before had he seen a woman—and he had seen many women—who looked quite so . . . well, wrong.
Her gown was an irritating shade of lavender with far too many bows and fripperies. In addition to its general ugliness, it was also obviously uncomfortable because she kept tugging awkwardly at the material. Either that or the dress simply didn’t fit her, which, Dunford noted upon closer inspection, it didn’t. The hem was a bit too short, the bodice slightly too tight, and if he didn’t know better, he’d swear there was a small tear in the right sleeve.
Hell, he did know better, and he would swear the dress was torn. Put plainly, Miss Henrietta Barrett looked a fright.
But, on the brighter side, she smelled quite pleasant. Almost like—he sniffed discreetly—lemons.
“Good evening, my lord,” she said when she met him before dinner in the parlor. “I trust you settled in nicely.”
He bowed graciously to her. “Perfectly, Miss Barrett. May I commend you again on this smoothly running household.”
“Call me Henry,” she said automatically.
“Everybody does,” he finished for her.
Despite herself, Henry felt a laugh welling up in her throat. Good God, she’d never even considered that she might come to like the man. That would be a disaster.
“May I
escort you in to dinner?” Dunford inquired politely, offering her his arm.
Henry placed her hand on his elbow as he led her into the dining room, deciding there was no harm in spending an enjoyable evening in the company of the man who was—and she had to remind herself of this fact—the enemy. After all, she wanted to lull him into thinking she had befriended him, didn’t she? This Mr. Dunford didn’t strike her as a numskull, and she was fairly certain that if he even suspected she was trying to get rid of him it would take half of His Majesty’s army to eject him from Cornwall. No, better just to let him reach his own conclusion that life at Stannage Park was not quite his cup of tea.
Besides, no man had ever offered her his arm before. Breeches and all, Henry was still too much of a female to resist his courtly gesture.
“Are you enjoying yourself here, my lord?” she asked once they were seated.
“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.
“Tell me about yourself, Henry,” Dunford said.
She blinked, as if suddenly waking up from a rather languorous dream. “Me? There isn’t very much to tell, I’m afraid.”
“I rather doubt that, Henry. You are rather an uncommon female.”
“Uncommon? Me?” The last word came out as a squeak.
“Well, let’s see. You obviously wear breeches more than you do dresses because I’ve never seen a woman look less comfortable in a gown than you do tonight . . .”
She knew it was the truth, but it was unbelievable how much it hurt to hear him say it.
“Of course, it could just be that the gown does not fit you properly, or that the material is itchy . . .”
She brightened a bit. The dress was four years old, and she had grown considerably during that period.
Dunford held out his right hand as if he were counting off her eccentricities. His middle finger stretched out to join his index finger as he said, “You run a small but, from the looks of it, profitable estate and apparently have done so for the past six years.”
Henry gulped and silently ate her soup as another one of his fingers shot out.
“You weren’t f
rightened or even the least bit put off by what I can only describe as the most immense animal of the porcine variety I have ever seen, a sight that would send most of the women of my acquaintance into vapors, and I can only deduce that you are on a first-name basis with said animal.”
Henry frowned, not quite certain how to interpret that.
“You have an air of command one usually sees only in men, and yet you are feminine enough not to cut your hair, which, incidentally, is quite beautiful.” Another finger.
Henry blushed at his compliment but not before she wondered if he were actually going to start in on his other hand.
“And finally . . .” He stretched out his thumb. “. . . you answer to the unlikely name of Henry.”
She smiled weakly.
He looked down at his hand, now splayed out like a starfish. “If that doesn’t qualify you as an uncommon female, I really don’t know what would.”
“Well,” she began hesitantly, “perhaps I am a little odd.”
“Oh, don’t call yourself odd, Henry. Let others do that, if they insist. Call yourself original. It has a much nicer ring to it.”
Original. Henry quite liked that. “His name is Porkus.”
“Excuse me?”
“The pig. I am on a first-name basis with him.” She smiled sheepishly. “His name is Porkus.”
Dunford threw back his head and laughed. “Oh, Henry,” he gasped. “You are a treasure.”
“I will take that as a compliment, I think.”
“Please do.”
She took a sip of her wine, not realizing she had already drunk more than usual. The footman had been assiduously refilling her glass after nearly every sip. “I suppose I did have an unusual upbringing,” she said recklessly. “That is probably why I am so different.”
“Oh?”
“There weren’t many children nearby, so I didn’t get much of a chance to see what other little girls were like. Most of the time I played with the stablemaster’s son.”