“He was going to. Don’t blame him. I told him I would do it instead. I actually forced him to give me the tray.” She smiled slightly. “He would have had to fight me to hold on to it, and of course, he wasn’t going to do that.”
“Why did you do that?”
“I thought it would be nice for the two of us to eat breakfast together.” She put the tray down on the side of his desk, and for the first time, he realized that it had been arranged with enoughfood for two people. “I added my own plate,” she explained, seeing him noticing. “When I realized that you weren’t coming to the table, I thought I would come to you instead.”
“I’m not coming to the table because I’m busy,” he told her. “I’m working. I don’t have time to stop and socialize.”
“Well, what are you working on? Maybe I could be of some help to you?”
The funny thing was that if she knew what he was doing, she would certainly be able to help. She’d be able to explain to him exactly where every dollar had gone and why. But he couldn’t tell his wife that he was auditing her expenses, especially since he had been able to find nothing wrong.
“I don’t require any help,” he told her.
She sat down in the chair opposite his. “Well, maybe you could tell me about what you’re working on?”
“Why do you want to know about that?” he asked. “Don’t tell me you’ve suddenly taken an interest in finance.”
“I’ve always found finance interesting,” she said. “But no, what I’m really interested in is you, Leonard.”
“Me,” he repeated.
“You know something about me now,” she pointed out. “I’d like to get to know you a little bit better in return; that’s all.” She picked up a piece of toast and began to spread butter on it.
“Don’t do that,” he told her.
“Butter my bread? This is the way I like it.”
“Don’t act as if you’re staying. You’re not staying,” he said. “You’re going back to finish eating in the breakfast room. I need to be left in peace so that I can finish what I’m doing here which isn’t a matter I’m going to be discussing with you.”
She leaned over and tried to read the ledger. He slammed it closed.
“You can tell me,” she insisted. “If it’s about the affairs of the dukedom, you know, I’m going to have to oversee those things once you’re gone, so it’s for the best that I understand them, isn’t it?”
Was she kidding?“You’re not going to be overseeing anything,” he told her. “I’ll be managing my own affairs, just as I do now, but from my home in the country. You don’t need to learn how to tend to anything, Prudence. In fact, my study will be sealed against you once I’ve left the house.”
She stared at him. “You’re going to lock me out?”
“Well, I can’t imagine that asking nicely would have much affect with you, would it?”
“There’s no way you’d know,” she shot back, standing up. “You’ve never once asked me nicely for anything. All you do is give orders and then act surprised when they aren’t obeyed. You treat people like… like chess pieces you can move around. It’s like you have no understanding of the fact that a person might have desires independent of what you think is best.”
“Is this why you came to my study today?” he asked her. “You wanted to tell me all the flaws you find in my character?”
“I told you why I came here,” she said. “I wanted to get to know you a little better. I suppose that was foolish of me though. I shouldn’t have expected anything as simple as human decency. Not from you.”
She turned and hurried from the study, leaving both his breakfast and her own unfinished one on the desk in front of him.
Leonard felt a brief stab of guilt—had she really only intended to get to know him better? Had he driven her out over something as simple as that?
Why do I keep pushing her away?
But no. She shouldn’t have come into his study in the first place. A man had to have a place that was all his own, a place where no one else would disturb him.
That was why he was going to the country in the first place. He had to remember that. No matter what she did in the meantime, no matter how troubling her behavior was to him, he had made arrangements to leave so that he would have the comfort of solitude.
“Mrs. Mills, what on Earth is that unholy squawking sound?”
The housekeeper smiled faintly. “The Duchess is practicing her violin.”
