Page 4 of Pleasantly Pursued

Once the footmen left and silence descended on the kitchen again, Cook looked at me and screwed her brown eyebrows together. “You still have flour on your face.”

“I will clean it off.” Outside, perhaps, after I had the chance to gather my belongings . . . if I could bring myself to leave her.

She looked at the soup-encrusted pot and the smattering of other dishes waiting to be cleaned. “Aye, once you’ve cleared this mess.”

“Of course, Cook.” It was to be expected. Cleaning the dishes was hard, time-consuming, and the least favorite of all my duties. My finer upbringing displayed itself most egregiously in my incompetent scrubbing of pots.

Cook left me to tend to the dirty dishes while she sipped her tea at the long table, then took herself off to bed. She walked with the slow gait of a woman who had been too much on her feet for far too many years.

The meal upstairs had long since ended and I was alone now—the only time I was able to completely relax, despite the mountain of dirty dishes looming before me. Mr. and Mrs. Fuller never required anything after dinner, and their meals—for a genteel family—were blessedly without fanfare. That had the potential to change if Benedict intended to remain for long. In my fortnight of employment here, I’d yet to work a dinner where the Fullers had anyone to dine—until tonight.

I looked to the ceiling and scowled.

Whyhimof all people? Why did Benedict Blockhead Bradwell have to ride past the garden the precise moment I was in it? I could not appreciate fate’s intervention here. But stranger still was the man’s stubborn insistence on bringing me home with him. Despite his mother, Lady Edith, taking me in and giving me a home when I had first returned to England, she had no legal obligation to me. When my mother died one year after my father’s death, I was sent immediately to my uncle, who had turned me around and sent me to my godmother’s house—Lady Edith. She’d taken me in and given me a family and a home, but she had no responsibility for me. No, the only person with any claim on me was my legal guardian, Uncle Northcott, who hardly cared where I was or how I was managing. I was alone in the world, making my own way in the manner I wanted to.

I shoved a bowl into the basin with too much zeal, and sudsy water splashed over my face. It dripped from my cheeks onto my apron in globs, the water mixing with the residual flour on my skin and forming a soapy paste. The dark windows and quiet kitchen proved the late hour, and I was grateful not to have an audience. Footmen had already come and gone, delivering the meal’s dirtied dishes and taking themselves off to bed.

I filled a fresh bowl of water from the pump and dipped a clean rag in it, meticulously working to scrub off the pasty goop. What was I doing here? Whom was I trying to fool? I wasn’t cut out for kitchen work. A proper genteel husband was not an option for me, and a decent husband—perhaps a farmer or a shop owner—would never be obtained in the belly of the Fullers’ house.

A shadow darkened my peripheral vision. Benedict leaned lazily against the wall, and my inner defenses immediately rose, as if my body itself was preparing for the impending battle.

My shoulders tightened, and I slipped into an awful rendition of a low-born accent. “You should not be down here, sir. If you have a request from the kitchen, you ought to ring the bell.”

“It would appear strange if I rang for help and requested that the kitchen maid be brought to me, would it not?”

I sent him a withering glare. “It would hardly matter, for I would never come to you.”

“You would deny a guest in your master’s house? Is it not a servant’s objective toserve?”

I swallowed the disgust rising in my chest. And to think at one point I’d actually had something of atendrefor this man. Repulsive. “What do you need, Benedict?”

Surprise passed over his face, followed swiftly by relief. “We’re to drop the facade, then?”

“It is obvious that you know who I am. I’ve gone to great lengths to hide, so it feels a rather cruel trick of fate that you’ve stumbled upon me. What is less obvious is why you remain. Except I realize how much you take delight in vexing me.” I dropped my voice. “Never mind. Perhaps your reasons for not leaving me in peace are clear, after all.”

He straightened, ignoring my quip. “I did not stumble upon you, Thea. Or, rather, Idid, but only after searching all over the blasted countryside. My search led me to Brumley nearly a week ago, but finding you was another matter.”

He’d beensearchingfor me? That could not be true.

I returned my attention to scrubbing the dishes. I needed to continue working or I would be in the kitchen all night. “You expect me to believe that you have put forth effort to findme?”

“It is the truth. Though you needn’t be so suspicious. I did not do so out of the goodness of my heart.”

“Well, of course not. You would need to possess one of those first.”

Benedict shook his head and rubbed a palm over his face. “I deserved that. You must know I regretted my harsh words from the garden as soon as they left my lips. I have been searching for you for months, following all manner of tips from your friends and acquaintances that led to dead ends, and I have been ready to give up.”

Guilt slithered into my stomach and coiled, tightening it, and I bent my focus to scrubbing a particularly crusty soup tureen. In all honesty, I had not realized anyone would care about my absence enough to require such searching. Anyone except Lord Claverley, of course.

I stilled, looking up into Benedict’s blue eyes. “Who sent you?” If he mentioned his cousin by name, I would be sorely tempted to splash this soapy water on him.

“No one.”

“But you said—”

His blue eyes focused on me, though he seemed to deliberately remain casual in his bearing. “I did not look for you out of the goodness of my heart, but no one sent me. My mother has been worrying herself ill since we received word from Mrs. Moulton that you left her school. Mother did not understand why you couldn’t seek the refuge you needed with her, and though she is too well-mannered to say so aloud, I’m certain she blames me for it.”

If that was true, Lady Edith would not be entirely wrong. But that was not the whole of it. I cleared my throat. “In that case, your motives were far more selfish than you let on. As usual.”

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