‘Here,’ she said, pressing the remains of the loaf and the opened jar of jam into her hands in defiance of her husband, who was positively swelling with indignation.
‘My kitchen,’ said Madge, whirling back to him. ‘My jam. I made it. And you swore I could do what I wanted with the money I make from it.’
‘Ar, but I didn’t mean for you to—’
They didn’t wait to hear what the farmer hadn’t meant for Madge to do with her jam, but took off as fast as they could go.
‘What a charming scene of rustic marital bliss,’ said Gregory with heavy sarcasm as they made for the barn. ‘No wonder he came out here in a mood to shoot something.’
‘Here,’ said Prudence, thrusting the loaf and the crock of jam at him. ‘You are clearly one of those men who wake in a bad mood and need something to eat before you are fit company.’
‘It is no longer first thing in the morning,’ he replied, taking the bread and ripping off a hunk. ‘And it is all very well for you to complain of my mood when you have clearly been treated like a queen in that farmhouse kitchen while I,’ he said, dipping the bread into the open jam pot, ‘have been mucking out the cow byre.’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘I thought I could smell something.’
He glowered at her.
‘I hope you washed your hands.’
His glower deepened. ‘I washed not only my hands but my boots, my breeches and my hair,’ he said with his mouth full. ‘Under the pump.’
‘Oh.’ Well, that explained why his hair was wet. ‘I did the breakfast dishes,’ she put in, hoping to placate him.
‘Mrs Grumpy Farmer was clearly a decent sort of woman. Mr Grumpy Farmer did nothing but complain and berate me every time he came to check on my progress. And as for the disgusting state of that byre...’ He shuddered expressively. ‘No wonder he didn’t want to clean it out himself.’
‘Oh, dear. Well, I’m very sorry. Perhaps I shouldn’t have volunteered our services to Mr Grumpy Farmer with the Gun. I just thought it would be better than having to explain ourselves to the local law. When you started telling him what had happened to us it all sounded so implausible that I could see exactly why he wasn’t believing a word of it. Indeed, had I not lived through it I wouldn’t have believed a word of it myself.’
‘Hmmph,’ he said, spraying crumbs down the front of his waistcoat as he stomped across the barn to the mound of hay they’d slept on the previous night.
‘Um...’ she said, shifting from one foot to the other. ‘I can see how much you want your breakfast, but I really don’t want to linger here any longer than we have to. Do you?’
‘Your point?’ He raised one eyebrow at her in a way that expressed many things at once. All of them negative.
‘Well, you’re clearly going to need both your hands to deal with your bread and jam. So you won’t have one free to carry your valise. I was going to suggest I carry it, so we can make a start.’ She bent to pick it up. ‘It’s not very heavy,’ she said with some relief.
‘And it does have some of your things in it,’ he said, with a funny sort of glint in his eye.
‘Does it? What—?’ She suddenly had a vivid recollection of tossing her stays aside as she’d fled from his room. There were stockings, too. She hadn’t stopped to pull them on. And he’d put at least one of them in his pocket. But—why? It wasn’t as if they could be of any use to him. And he’d already proved that having only one stocking was of absolutely no use to her, either.
Sometimes men were a complete mystery.
‘Come on, then,’ he said, turning and heading out of the barn, leaving her to trot behind him with his luggage.
She supposed he was getting his own back on her for getting a decent breakfast while he’d been mucking out a cow byre. Because it certainly wasn’t like him to behave in such an ungentlemanly fashion.
Not that she could complain, though, could she? She’d offered to carry it, after all. And even if he’d argued that it was his job, as a big strong man, to do so, she would only have pointed out that she was perfectly capable of carrying a small bag for a short while. In a way he was paying her a compliment by taking her at her word and letting her do as she’d suggested.
Or so he would say if she dared say anything derogatory about the way he was striding ahead, enjoying the bread and jam, while she trotted behind him with the luggage.
They walked along in simmering silence past various farm buildings, heading for the track she could see winding across the fields, while he demolished the bread. When the last crust was gone he frowned into the jam pot, then stuck his finger in and swirled it round to get at the very last traces. When his finger was sufficiently loaded, he raised it to his mouth and sucked it clean.