Minx (4 page)

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 frightened 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."

"And is he still at Stannage Park?" Dunford wondered if perhaps she had a lover tucked away somewhere. It seemed likely enough. She was, as they had decided, an unusual young woman. She had flouted convention enough already; how much difference would a lover make?

"Oh, no. Billy married a girl from Devon and moved away. I say, you're not asking me all these questions just to be polite, are you?"

"Absolutely not." He grinned devilishly. "Of course I do hope I'm being polite nonetheless, but I really am quite interested in you." And he was. Dunford had always been interested in people, had always wondered what made the human race tick. At his home in London, he often stared out the window for hours, just watching the people go by. And at parties he was a brilliant conversationalist, not because he tried to be, but because he was usually genuinely interested in what people had to say. It was part of the reason why so many women had fallen for him.

It was, after all, somewhat uncommon for a man to actually listen to what a woman had to say.

And Henry certainly wasn't immune to his charms. It was true that men did listen to her every day, but they were people who worked for Stannage Park, in effect worked for her. No one besides Mrs. Simpson ever took the time to ask after her. Slightly flustered by Dunford's interest, she hid her unease by adopting her usual cheeky attitude. "And what about you, my lord? Did you have an unusual upbringing?"

"As normal as could be, I'm afraid. Although my mother and father were actually somewhat fond of each other, which is rather unusual among the ton, but other than that, I was a typical British child."

"Oh, I doubt that."

"Really?" He leaned forward. "And why is that, Miss Henrietta?"

She took another healthy sip of her wine. "Please do not call me Henrietta. I detest the name."

"But I'm afraid that every time I call you Henry, it brings to mind a rather unpleasant school chum at Eton."

She shot him a jaunty grin. "I'm afraid that you'll just have to adjust."

"You have been giving orders for too long."

"Perhaps, but you obviously have not been accepting them for long enough."

"Touché, Henry. And don't think I haven't noticed that you managed to sidestep explaining why you doubt I had a typical upbringing."

Henry pursed her lips and looked down at her wineglass which, paradoxically, was still quite full. She could have sworn she'd drunk at least two glasses. She took another sip. "Well, you're not exactly a typical man."

"Is that so?"

"Indeed." She waved her fork in the air for emphasis before drinking a bit more wine.

"And how am I atypical?"

Henry chewed on her lower lip, dimly aware that she had just been cornered. "Well, you're quite friendly."

"And most Englishmen aren't?"

"Not to me."

His lips curved wryly. "They obviously don't know what they are missing."

"I say," she said, narrowing her eyes, "you aren't being sarcastic, are you?"

"Believe me, Henry, I have never been less sarcastic. You are quite the most interesting person I've met in months."

She scanned his face for signs of duplicity but found none. "I believe you mean it."

He bit back another smile, silently regarding the woman sitting across from him. Her expression was a delightful combination of arrogance and concern, slightly clouded by tipsiness. She was waving her fork in the air as she spoke, seemingly oblivious to the morsel of pheasant dangling perilously off the end. "Why aren't men friendly to you?" he asked softly.

Henry wondered why it was so easy to talk to this man, whether it was the wine or just him. Either way, she decided, the wine couldn't hurt. She took another sip. "I think they think I'm a freak," she finally said.

Dunford paused at her bald honesty. "You're certainly not that. You just need someone to teach you how to be a woman."

"Oh, I know how to be a woman. I'm just not the kind of woman men want."

Her speech was risqué enough to make him cough on his food. Reminding himself that she had no idea what she was saying, he swallowed and murmured, "I'm sure you're exaggerating."