Wanted: Mail-Order Mistress. Deborah Hale

feelings all churned up, Bethan spun away from Simon Grimshaw, only to find his housekeeper standing in the wide, arched entry. Ah-Ming looked calm and composed, as if she hadn’t heard a word of the bristling exchange between them.

      “Dinner is ready.” The housekeeper bowed. “Cook has prepared a fine feast in my lady’s honour.”

      “Thank you, Ah-Ming,” Mr Grimshaw replied. “We will be along shortly.”

      The servant bowed again, then padded away.

      “You must stay and eat.” Mr Grimshaw didn’t sound the way Bethan had expected—outraged or disapproving.

      “Is that an order?” Keeping her back to him, she flung the words over her shoulder.

      “More a sort of…plea.” He sounded almost amiable. “There will be no living with Cook if he went to all that trouble for nothing. One of the other merchants might finally succeed in hiring him away from me and that would be a domestic disaster.”

      While Bethan was deciding how to reply, he added, “You see, servants are not without power in my house.”

      She steeled herself against the hint of wry humour in his tone. “All right, then. But only because the food smells so good and because I don’t want to hurt your cook’s feelings. And I have one condition.”

      “What might that be?”

      “I don’t want a nice meal spoiled by carping and quarrelling. If you can’t say something pleasant to me over dinner, don’t say anything at all.”

      “Agreed,” Mr Grimshaw replied after a moment’s hesitation. “You could have driven a much harder bargain than that, you know.”

      He walked around to stand in front of her. “I admit I had doubts about your suitability. But you are wrong to assume I intend to send you back. I fear we got off on the wrong foot today. Is it too late to put that behind us and start again?”

      His firm, determined lips spread into a smile that came and went as swiftly as a flash of summer lightning. Like a bolt from the blue, its potent force jolted Bethan’s heart and made her breath catch.

      Simon Grimshaw wanted to give her another chance? Didn’t she owe him the same after the way he’d come to her rescue? Besides, while she chafed at criticism, she had never been very good at holding a grudge.

      “It can’t be too late already, can it?” She returned his sudden, fleeting smile with one of her own that blossomed more slowly but lasted longer. “We should give it at least a week before we decide we can’t stand each other.”

      Her quip coaxed a bark of rusty-sounding laughter from him. “I agree. We should not become sworn enemies on the strength of anything less than a week’s acquaintance.”

      “Can we start over properly, then,” she proposed, “and pretend like I just arrived in Singapore this minute?”

      He nodded. “An admirable suggestion.”

      “I’m pleased to meet you at last, Mr Grimshaw.” She thrust out her hand. “My name is Bethan Conway.”

      “Allow me to welcome you to Singapore, Miss Conway.” Instead of shaking her hand, as she’d expected, Simon Grimshaw bowed over it. Lifting her fingers, he grazed them with his lips as if she were some elegant lady. “Or may I call you Bethan? I think I might be allowed that familiarity under the circumstances. Don’t you?”

      The velvet brush of his lips sent a strange warmth tingling up her arm. When she tried to speak, her voice came out husky. “You may call me whatever you please.”

      He straightened up. “And you are welcome to call me by my given name, if you would care to.”

      The turnabout between them, in the few minutes since she’d entered the room, was enough to make Bethan quite dizzy. “Thank you…Simon. I think I would.”

      His name sounded so appealing, spoken in Bethan’s clear, lilting voice—almost like an endearment.

      She was a most unusual woman in Simon’s experience, so forthright in her manner. She didn’t say one thing while meaning another, then expect him to guess what was on her mind. And when he’d made an effort to put things right between them, she’d accepted without sulking, wiping the slate clean to begin afresh. Perhaps Hadrian had made a better choice for him than he’d first thought.

      “We have a lot of getting acquainted to do.” He offered Bethan his arm. “Tell me, how was your voyage from England? Not too great an ordeal, I hope.”

      “Not at all.” She tucked her hand into the crook of his arm, a sensation he had not experienced in a very long time. “It was a great adventure! The seas were rough at first and the lads from Durham were sick as dogs, poor fellows. But as we sailed further south and the seas grew calm, they got better. They all complained it wasn’t fair, me not being ill a minute. But who would have looked after them if I’d been seasick too?

      “I loved the smell of the ocean and the rocking of the waves,” she continued as they entered the dining room and Simon held out her chair. “I’m glad your house is near the sea so that I’ll still be able to hear it. Though I never expected the place to be so big and grand!”

      “This villa is a far cry from our first quarters in Singapore.” Simon rounded the table and took a seat across from her. “Hadrian and I, and our third partner, Ford, built our first house out of timber with a palm-thatched roof.”

      That was one part of his past he didn’t mind revealing. “Until recently, no one was allowed to own land or erect permanent buildings, because it was feared the Dutch would invade or the government would order us to leave. Once we got word that a treaty had been signed to make Singapore a British possession, there was a great scramble for land and a building boom. Hadrian was a canny fellow to have invested some of our profits in a brick kiln.”

      Simon caught himself. “Forgive me. I meant to find out more about you. Instead I am boring you with all this talk of business and politics.”

      Carlotta had often chided him and his partners for continually turning dinner conversation towards their two favourite subjects.

      “Don’t stop on my account. I want to learn all I can about Singapore.” Bethan’s rapt expression assured him her interest was genuine. “It sounds like such an exciting place with so much going on. How many ships stop here in the course of a year?”

      Before he could answer, Ah-Ming padded in and set shallow bowls of steaming soup before them.

      Bethan seemed to forget her question as she inhaled deeply. “This smells very good. What kind is it?”

      “My favourite—turtle.” Simon sipped a spoonful of the broth, relishing its hearty flavour.

      “I’ve never had that before.” Bethan seized her spoon and began to consume the soup with the sort of gusto some English ladies might have considered unmannerly.

      But Ah-Ming beamed with approval.

      “Mmm.” Bethan set down her spoon at last with a sigh of satisfaction. “That tasted even better than it smelled. I feel sorry for people who don’t like to try new things. They don’t know what they’re missing.”

      “You should have been here a few months ago,” said Simon. “One of the Chinese merchants hosted a banquet of all their rarest delicacies. Shark fin and bird’s nest soups. Rashers of elephant tail in a sauce of lizard eggs. Stewed porcupine in green turtle fat.”

      Bethan’s eyes grew wider with every dish he mentioned. He kept expecting her make a sour face at the thought of eating such outlandish foods. But her expression conveyed fascination rather than distaste.

      “The highlight of the banquet,” he concluded, “was a dish of snipes’ eyes, garnished with a border of peacocks’ combs. I was told it cost two hundred Spanish dollars. That’s almost fifty pounds.”

      “I