Page 78

“Yes.” She crossed her arms, mirroring his pose, and nodded at the baskets. “Those are honeybees, aren’t they? I believe the study of honeybees is referred to as apiology.”

Ah. He hadn’t expected that. She could sense his eyebrows rising another notch, but she rushed into speech before he could say a word. If he asked her another question, she’d have to answer him, and that simply wouldn’t do.

“They, ah … they’re …” Why couldn’t she recall a single fact about honeybees, for pity’s sake? “They have a queen,” she blurted. “There’s a honeybee queen, then the worker bees who, er … do all the work, and then the drones, who … who …”

Oh, no. What did the drones do? “They, ah … they …”

“The drones mate with the queen. That is their sole purpose.”

“Er, yes, of course. I remember now,” she mumbled, her cheeks heating. The less said about bee mating rituals while she was alone in a conservatory with a strange, masked man, the better. “I confess I didn’t know they lived in baskets.”

“It’s not a basket. It’s a skep.”

A skep? She’d never heard of such a thing. “I see. The bees live inside of it, I presume?”

“Yes. Each skep holds a single colony of bees. They attach their honeycombs to the walls and ceiling of the skep, and the queen lays her eggs inside.”

“Does she, indeed?” She edged closer, taking care to keep a wide berth between herself and the man. It wouldn’t do to get too close, particularly while his face was shrouded with that menacing face covering, but she rose to her tiptoes to get a better look at the skeps over his shoulder. “It seems a bit of an awkward place to do it. How does she manage it?”

Silence, and for far longer than was comfortable.

At last, he spoke. “Do you really wish to know?”

“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t, sir.” Really, she was starting to lose patience with him.

“The queen squeezes her body into the honeycomb cells, lays a single egg, and then repeats the process a single cell at a time.”

“I see. How many eggs can a queen lay before she expires of exhaustion?” Honestly, why was it always the females who had to do all the work?

“A healthy queen can lay up to two thousand eggs a day.”

“Two thousand! Why, how marvelous she is! I had no idea bees were so fascinating.”

He let out a derisive snort. “I don’t know many young ladies who find them so.”

Goodness, he was rude. No wonder the duke hid him in the conservatory. “I’m not a young lady.”

“No? How strange. Because you look very much like a young lady to me.”

Her distinctly shabby clothing indicated otherwise, but this man, whoever he was, didn’t seem to know the difference. For pity’s sake, what sort of man couldn’t tell a servant from a lady?

“You’re mistaken, sir.” She had been a young lady, once upon a time, but she was a servant now, and if the past two years had taught her anything, it was that those two things were not the same. “In any case, I don’t see how you can tell what I look like with that covering over your face. Why, I might be a kangaroo, for all you know.”

“I doubt that. Kangaroos are native to Australia. This is Scotland, madam.”

“Still, you can’t possibly know for certain unless you—”

“Very well.” Without warning he swept the hood from his head, stepping away from the skep as he did until he was only a few paces away from her. “There. Is that better?”

Better? Hardly. It was a great deal worse, because she wasn’t prepared for the face that emerged from behind the mask. If he intended to startle her, he’d done a good job of it. It was terribly disconcerting to find such a face as that hiding behind that dreadful mask.

He had smooth olive skin, an angular jaw with a hint of dark stubble that matched the untidy mop of dark hair on his head, and a pair of bright green eyes peering curiously at her from behind an elegant pair of silver spectacles.

There was no use denying it. He was handsome.

Quite the handsomest man she’d ever seen. His eyes alone were enough to tongue-tie the most collected of young ladies, or they would have been if he hadn’t been glaring at her with such narroweyed suspicion. Why, he looked as if he imagined she was about to snatch up his baskets and run away with them.

“Ah, just as I expected.” He offered her a slightly awkward bow, but there was a hint of amusement lurking at the corners of his lips now. “You’re not a kangaroo at all, but a young lady, just as I suspected.”