man in Britain whom she trusted less than Michael, it would be her greedy, immoral, and unscrupulous employer.
Chapter Ten
Cornwall
1817
Present Day
Benna stared across the table at the cold-eyed stranger across from her. The earl didn’t even look like the same man as a moment earlier.
His full lips twisted into an unpleasant smile. “Since you appear to be at a loss for where to start, let me assist you. What is your name?”
She said her real name out loud for the first time in years. “Benna.”
“Benna,” he repeated flatly, the word dripping with disbelief. “What kind of name is that?”
She almost laughed. She lied all the time and people believed her without blinking; here she was telling the truth, and—
“Fine. It hardly matters.” He pushed away from the table and strode over to the fire, staring out the window into the blackness.
Benna got to her feet and turned toward the door.
“Where the devil do you think you’re going?”
She stopped and turned. “I assumed you wanted me to leave, sir.”
“You assumed wrong. Sit,” he ordered sharply.
Benna sat.
“I trusted you—brought you into my home and exposed my family to you—I think I deserve some answers, don’t you?”
Benna flinched at his accusatory tone. “What do you want to know?”
“How much of what you’ve told me about yourself is true?”
“Most of it.” That was true enough when it came to her past work history. But the personal information? Well …
“Why?” he demanded.
“Because it was the only way I could get work.”
“A smart woman like you? I don’t believe you.”
Benna didn’t blame him. “It might help if I could go back a way, sir.”
“I am in no hurry,” he said, the words heavy with sarcasm. “Do you want a drink?”
The offer surprised her. She bloody well would. “Please, sir.”
He went to the tray with the brandy on it. “Ring the bell and have them clear dinner away.”
Benna was grateful for the ten-minute distraction.
By the time the servants had removed the crockery and fed the fire, she’d regained her composure. He only knew her gender, not her identity. He was right: she was intelligent. She could—somehow—make this situation work in her favor.
He took the chair across from her. “I’m listening.”
“What I told you before about my father was true—he was a schoolteacher. I lived with him until I was not quite fifteen. After he died our landlord offered to marry me—”
“At fourteen?” he interrupted, revulsion on his handsome features.
Nice touch, my dear—build some sympathy. It seems I taught you some guile, after all.
Oh yes, Benna knew how to lie well enough. Indeed, she hardly knew what the truth was anymore.
“When I refused to marry him, things became unpleasant.”
I learned that from you, too, Geoffrey.
But there was no answer from her phantom companion on that subject.
“Not only did our landlord make me leave our house, he also made the situation in our village, er, untenable. I had little money and even less time to decide what to do. My father hadn’t managed to save much and most of what he had went for the burial expenses and various debts.”
To her surprise, there was sympathy in his gaze. “As a doctor I have, unfortunately, witnessed similar scenarios—sans the unscrupulous pedophile landlord—more than once after a male provider died.” He looked slightly less severe. “I know it is not easy to be an orphan, far less to be a female orphan.”
Shame flooded her at how quickly he believed her.
“Go on,” the earl prodded.
“My father believed in, er, self-sufficiency, my lord. We didn’t have enough money to employ either cook maids or other servants, so we did for ourselves. We took care of our cottage for a reduction in rent. As for my experience with horses, we kept a cob and dogcart and I learned early on that I had a way with livestock.”
“I still don’t see how all this led you to impersonate a man.”
“It just seemed safer to pretend to be a boy, especially after what I’d experienced with our landlord.” She shrugged. “I often wore my father’s castoffs to do heavier work and when I tucked my hair under my hat I was frequently mistaken for a boy. My height seemed to be the only thing people noticed about me.”
Benna could see by the faint flush on the earl’s normally pale cheeks that he was thinking that he’d been fooled by the same thing.
“Good Lord,” he said, his beautiful brown eyes widening as something occurred to him. “Did Stephen Worth find out about you? Is that why you left