She didn’t.
I have to give her credit for that. She’s formidable. Very strong. And I suppose that is a good thing because it means she’ll handle it well when the time comes for me to leave her on her own. It means I won’t have to worry about how she’s doing.
Of course, I might have to worry aboutwhatshe’s doing.
He cleared his throat. She obviously wasn’t going to answer him, so he would have to move along with his point. “I see that you’ve made some amendments to our household finances,” he noted.
Her eyes widened slightly, almost imperceptibly, and Leonard suppressed a smile. She hadn’t known what he was going to say, but now that she did, it was clear that she had anticipated trouble. Perhaps she hadn’t realized he would catch on to her actions as quickly as he had.She isn’t used to people who are a match for her, but I am.
She recovered quickly and nodded. “That’s true,” she told him. “I did do that.”
“And may I ask why?”
“Well, all I did was increase the pay of the staff by a very modest amount.”
“I’m aware of what you did. I didn’t ask you what you’d done, did I? I asked you why you had done it. Are you able to provide an answer to that question?”
“You gave me a budget,” she said. “My understanding was that I was free to do whatever I liked with that money.”
“Within reason.”
“Is paying my staff not reasonable?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Your staff?”
“They will be, won’t they, once you take your leave?” she asked. “I mean, I know that you’ll continue to pay them from the usual fund that is set aside for that, but I’ll be the one they serve day in and day out, and surely, if I feel they deserve a little more for their efforts, that is a fair decision for me to make. Don’t you agree?”
“My staff have always been fairly paid,” he told her. “Better paid, in fact, than many people in similar positions. Is it your intention to imply otherwise?”
“It’s not my intention to imply anything at all,” she said coolly. “But if I have money, and if I’m truly allowed to do what I like with it, this shouldn’t be a problem. You should take no issue with my supplementing what the staff is paid.”
“Is it some kind of test?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you doing this out of a desire to see how I’ll react to it?”
“Of course, I’m not.” She folded her arms and raised her eyebrows. “Though, since you put it that way, I don’t quite know why you are reacting like this. Is it aproblemto increase what people are being paid by such a small amount?”
“The problem is that, whatever you may think, these people work for me,” Leonard said. “I hired them. I brought them into this house. It’s true that they will be spending more time with you than with me once I leave for the country, but that does not mean that you take over their contracts. They still work for me. If you wanted to make changes to something about the way they are compensated for their work, the proper thing would have been to speak to me about it—and that’s what I expect you to do in the future if you want to make changes like that.”
“Well, you didn’t set restrictions when you gave me my allowance,” she said. “If there was something you didn’t want me to do with that money, it was your responsibility to tell me that.”
“I would have thought you would know you shouldn’t make changes to the way I run my household without talking to me.”
Prudence sighed. “Don’t be ridiculous, Leonard.”
Leonard set his fork down slowly, hardly able to believe what he was hearing. “Have you forgotten who you’re speaking to?”
“Of course, I haven’t,” she said. “I’m speaking to my husband. I’m speaking to the man who told me that I would have all the rights and privileges of a duchess if I agreed to marry him. Well, isn’t it one of the privileges of a duchess to manage her own household? It is my household, Leonard. It’s yours, yes, but it’s minetoo. If I want to pay my staff a bit more than you might have chosen to give them, surely that’s a decision I am authorized by my position to make. Or do you truly feel that I should have to ask you before doing anything at all, as if I myself were a member of your staff instead of your wife?”
“I didn’t say that. You shouldn’t put words in my mouth.” He glowered at her. She was impossible.
“What you said was that I had overstepped my bounds and that to ensure I wouldn’t do that again, you wanted me to check with you before doing anything at all,” she told him. “And you also told me that you’re going to be leaving for the country soon. Surely, you can see the impossible position that puts me in, Leonard. If there are specific things you don’t want me to do, you will need to make note of them because once you’re gone, I won’t have the ability any longer to talk to you about every single idea that enters my mind, so either I’ll be forced to do nothing at all with my finances or else I’ll have to try to figure it out for myself.”
“Well, I don’t want you interfering with what I pay my staff.”
She sighed. “Is it really such a problem? Does it really matter this much? It’s hardly an increase at all, just a little extra per week. Isthe real problem that they’re going to know it came from me, and you don’t want that?”
