CHAPTER 8
Three days was, Temperance had decided, the appropriate length of time to go without Harper.
Though, it was not as easy to avoid him as she had expected. He seemed to turn up in the most unexpected of locations. She was in the library when he found her, buried deep in the pages of a book.
“Miss Hosmer,” he said.
“Your Grace,” she said to her book. She heard him move further into the room.
“I need to speak with you about the Caldwell dinner,” he said. “It is on Thursday and we have been invited as a party, which means we must…”
“What time?” she interrupted him midway, which seemed to surprise and irk him both.
“Eight o’clock.”
“I’ll be ready.” She turned a page.
“There will be several guests whose acquaintance it would be useful for you to make. I have been told that Lord Fenwick will be attending, and he is most suitable.”
“I’m sure he’s very suitable,” she said pleasantly. “Thank you for telling me.”
She felt, rather than saw, the pause that followed this. And then eyebrows knitted together.
“You have no questions?” he said.
“About Lord Fenwick?” She considered this with the air of someone giving it genuine thought. “No, I’m sure you’ll tell me what I need to know when the time comes. You’re very thorough about these things.”
She turned another page. She had not absorbed a word of the last paragraph, but the turning of pages was its own kind of communication and she was communicating it clearly. She wanted to give him the impression that she could be the least bothered by anything that he was saying.
In a twisted way, it felt the only way that she could establish somewhat of an upper hand.
Harper moved around, but did not leave the room. Meanwhile, she kept pretending to be engrossing in her book.
“The household accounts for March have a discrepancy,” he said. “In the column for incidental expenses and I wanted to ask you about it.”
“Mrs. Peel will know,” Temperance said. “She manages the household ledger, and I can ask her to speak with you directly if you’d like.”
“I would have expected you to have some knowledge of running the household.”
“I’m sure you would.” She turned a page. “Mrs. Peel is very capable, and you’ll find everything is accounted for.”
And there was silence again, and she could almost hear him struggling to fill it. Which was not something that was rather typical of him.
At least she was having somewhat of a reaction on him.
“The east lawn,” he said. “I’ve asked the groundskeeper to begin work on the drainage issue near the back wall. I wanted you to know in case the noise is unbearable.”
“That’s very considerate,” she said. “Thank you.”
“It might disturb the dogs.”
Huh.That part surprised her the most out of everything. Since when was he concerned about the well-being of her dogs?
“They don’t mind noise,” she said. “Biscuit will sleep through anything and Midge minds her own business when she’s in the garden. Peabody dislikes sudden loud things but if there’s warning he adjusts.”
She had said more words in that sentence than in the entire preceding conversation, and she said them to the book, in the same even tone she had been using for everything, and she felt with a quiet certainty that she could not have justified that the man on the other side of the room was finding this considerably more aggravating than he would have found her at her most combative.
Good, she thought.
