Read Wanted: Mail-Order Mistress for Free Online Page B

nest soups. Rashers of elephant tail in a sauce of lizard eggs. Stewed porcupine in green turtle fat.”
    Bethan’s eyes grew wider with every dish he mentioned. He kept expecting her make a sour face at the thought of eating such outlandish foods. But her expression conveyed fascination rather than distaste.
    “The highlight of the banquet,” he concluded, “was a dish of snipes’ eyes, garnished with a border of peacocks’ combs. I was told it cost two hundred Spanish dollars. That’s almost fifty pounds.”
    “I could feed myself for years on fifty pounds!” cried Bethan. “Here now, you aren’t hoaxing me to see if I’m daft enough to believe you? When I first got to Newcastle from Wales, the other servants used to have great fun doing that.”
    The miserable rascals, having a jest at the expense of an inexperienced girl! The rush of indignation he felt on her behalf surprised Simon.
    “You should take some unlikely stories with a grain of salt,” he advised her as Ah-Ming removed their bowls and served a dish of Bengal mutton. “But I wouldn’t hoax you, I promise. You can ask anyone who attended the banquet. There was even a report of it in the newspaper. The snipes’ eyes weren’t bad, as a matter of fact. A bit like caviar without the fishy taste.”
    Bethan cast him a puzzled look and it occurred to Simon that she’d probably never tasted caviar…perhaps never even heard of it.
    “Mutton should be familiar to you if you lived in Wales.” He steered the conversation back to her again. “What part of the country do you hale from?”
    Bethan took a bite of meat, rolling her eyes appreciatively. “I’ve eaten plenty of mutton in my life, but none as tender as this. I come from a little village up north on the River Aled. It’s as different from Singapore as can be—nothing but hills and sheep and lots of snow in the winter. What about you? Have you always lived in the Indies or did you come here from England?”
    The silvery sparkle of interest in her eyes made Simon answer, in spite of his resolve to guard his privacy. “I grew up north of Manchester, in the Ribble Valley.”
    It was a harmless enough scrap of information, yet it stirred up more memories that he preferred to forget. Bethan Conway had an unfortunate knack for doing that.
    “Your village does sound very different from Singapore,” he continued before she could ask him another question. “What made you leave it to come halfway around the world?”
    Bethan almost choked on the bit of meat she was trying to swallow. But a cough and a sip of ale got it down.
    When she was able to speak again, she replied, “I was looking for a change, I suppose. Some place new and exciting, in the middle of things.”
    Ah-Ming set another dish before them.
    “This isn’t like anything I’ve seen before.” Bethan inhaled the mouth-watering aroma rising from the savoury jumble of food.
    “Something else new that I think you’ll enjoy,” said Simon. The prospect of introducing her to all the novelties of Singapore appealed to him. “It’s one of Cook’s specialties—rice with duck, yams and shrimp.”
    “Oh, my,” breathed Bethan after she’d savoured her first mouthful of the spicy-sweet-salty dish. “This must be what they eat in heaven!”
    Simon nodded. Had Cook added some new, secret ingredient to his duck rice tonight? It tasted even better than usual. Or was it Bethan’s contagious enjoyment that made him feel as if he, too, were tasting it for the first time?
    “When my mother died,” she continued between bites. “I had my own way to make and there was nothing more to keep me in Llanaled. I decided it was time to see the world and really live my life rather than letting it pass me by.”
    Surely she didn’t expect him to believe she’d made such a long, perilous journey and sacrificed any hope of a respectable future in a naïve quest for adventure? Simon sensed Bethan was concealing something from him. The way she