Regency Surrender: Passion And Rebellion. Louise Allen

she said diplomatically. ‘Is there gravy on the cake, too? No. Oh, well...’ she sighed as she lifted it out and set it to one side ‘...I suppose I can bear to eat it without.’

      ‘Now look here,’ snapped her husband. ‘I had the devil of a job to get hold of this little lot. You wouldn’t believe the haggling I had to do.’

      ‘I’m very grateful,’ she said soothingly. ‘This is the makings of a true feast.’ It really was. She’d been worrying, ever since he’d set off in such a hurry, that he’d come back with all sorts of ridiculously inappropriate things. But in the event, the only thing he hadn’t got quite right was the method of bringing everything home.

      ‘I shall have no qualms about sending you shopping in future.’ Although she might hand him a shopping basket rather than let him snatch up a game bag, as if he was going out shooting.

      ‘Shopping,’ he cried indignantly, planting his fists on his hips. ‘That was not shopping. That was...foraging.’

      ‘I see. Well, in that case, I have to say I am impressed by your foraging skills. In fact, I think you would make a good soldier.’

      He would certainly look good in a uniform. All that scarlet cloth stretched across his broad shoulders, with a sword dangling from his slender hips to complete the very picture of masculine perfection....

      ‘A soldier, eh?’

      ‘Yes.’ She sighed, dragging herself out of a brief vision of him pulling a pistol from his belt and shooting some random marauder. ‘Actually,’ she said with one part of her mind while another was seeing him metamorphosed into the captain of a ship, his hair tousled by an Atlantic gale rather than his restless fingers, ‘I think you could be anything you set your mind to.’

      * * *

      Anything he set his mind to? No, surely she didn’t mean anything. Oh, he had total confidence he could rise to any form of physical challenge. He was a crack shot, a bruising rider and a long-standing member of the Four-in-Hand club. But nobody, in his entire life, had ever expressed any faith in his ability to put his mind to work. And so far, surely, he’d demonstrated he was a total dunce when it came to organising anything. Even with the help of his lists, he’d overlooked several important issues that any man who exercised his brain occasionally would have thought of before he set off into the winter weather with a brand-new bride in tow.

      Yet she was looking at him as though he’d just done something remarkable. As though he really did have it in him to accomplish...anything.

      He stood quite still, basking in the completely novel sensation of having a female look at him with wholehearted admiration.

      Totally unwarranted admiration, as far as he was concerned. If he hadn’t made such a mull of opening up Mayfield, he wouldn’t have had to go out on the foraging expedition in the first place.

      She’d come to her senses before long. End up wishing him elsewhere, the way everybody always did, eventually.

      She lowered her eyes to the spread on the table. Just as though she’d sensed him bracing himself against the day it happened.

      ‘I think—that is, I hope,’ she said, darting him the kind of look from under those dark lashes that made him catch his breath, ‘that you will be pleased with what I have been about today, as well.’

      ‘I’m sure I shall,’ he said. As far as he was concerned she could have been sitting in front of a fire toasting her toes all day, after looking at him the way she’d just done, merely because he’d managed to rectify one of the blunders he’d made.

      But he couldn’t help wondering what kind of treatment she must have been used to, if it took so little effort to get her to look at him as though he was some kind of...hero...stepped straight out of the pages of a romance novel.

      Not that he’d ever read any, but a lot of girls seemed to do so, then spent hours sighing over characters with odd names and complaining he wasn’t a bit like any of ’em.

      ‘I went exploring,’ she said. ‘And I discovered that all the rooms in the part of the house that used to be let out are in very good order. It looks as if those caretakers of yours have kept them in readiness for tenants to come in at a moment’s notice. So I lit a fire and aired the mattress in the one I liked best,’ she said with a slightly defiant tilt to her chin, as though expecting him to object. ‘And I ironed the damp out of some sheets I found in a linen closet and made up a bed.’

      ‘That’s wonderful news.’

      ‘Oh. I am so glad you don’t mind which room we have tonight,’ she said with evident relief. ‘Indeed, there are so many in a state of near readiness that if you don’t like it you can soon choose another....’

      ‘No, no, I shall be glad to sleep in a real bed tonight, thank you.’ He went to her, seized her hand and kissed it. She really was a treasure. ‘And I don’t care which room you picked. I told you this is your home as much as mine. You must do whatever you like in it. But,’ he added, ‘don’t you see what this means? After the window came away in my hand last night I was beginning to think the whole place had fallen into ruin while I wasn’t paying attention. But now I can write to Lady Peverell and tell her that Julia can come here as soon as she likes. I can get her safely out of that man’s reach before he has a chance to—’

      He shot a look at Gilbey, who was folding up the sack, with the wooden expression of a servant who was listening to a conversation not meant for his ears.

      ‘In fact, I think I shall go and write immediately. Gilbey, instead of hanging around in the kitchen, you can make yourself useful by riding down to the post with it as soon as I’ve written it.’

      ‘Yes, m’lord.’

      * * *

      Mary sat blinking at the swirl of dust that eddied across the kitchen floor after he’d slammed the door on his way out.

      He’d been a bit like a whirlwind himself. Breezing in, delivering his mound of booty, then dashing off to his next task. She couldn’t stop smiling as she pottered about the kitchen. The more she learned about her husband, the better she liked him.

      * * *

      She liked him even more when he turned up for supper on time, praised her cooking to the skies and then tried to prevent her from doing the dishes.

      ‘I thought I’d made my views on that sort of thing plain,’ he growled when she started to carry a stack of plates to the scullery.

      ‘Yes, you did,’ she said. ‘But if the Brownlows aren’t going to return until the twenty-eighth, every useful surface will be covered with dirty dishes by then. It wouldn’t be fair to them to have to come back to that sort of mess.’

      ‘It would serve ’em right for sloping off just when I particularly wanted ’em here.’ He scowled. ‘And if you don’t want the working surfaces cluttered, why don’t you stack the dishes on the floor?’

      ‘I could do that, I suppose,’ she said with a shudder. ‘If you want the house invaded by rats.’

      ‘Point taken,’ he said. ‘Dishes need to be done. But I won’t have you doing them. I made you a vow.’

      For one moment she thought he was going to order Gilbey to do the dishes for her. But then, to her amazement, he stood up, removed his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves.

      ‘I shall need instruction,’ he said, as he strode into the scullery.

      He meant to do the dishes himself?

      Well—she’d always thought that it was a man’s actions that revealed his true nature. And after seeing him literally roll up his sleeves to perform such a lowly task, she would never make the mistake of suspecting he was anything like her father, ever again.

      ‘Not that it can possibly be all that hard,’ he said airily. ‘I’ve never met a scullery maid yet with anything approaching half a brain.’