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"Dunford?"

He blinked and looked up Alex was apparently trying to ask him a question "Yes?"

"I asked," Alex repeated, "if Henry has given you similar cause for alarm in recent weeks"

"If you don't count her continued adventures with the beehives of Stannage Park, then she has been the soul of dignity and decorum"

"Really?" E," Henry replied, not daring to glance at Dunford "All I did was reach in and pull out a bit of honeycoet yourself stung by a hundred angry insects"

"Did you really put your hand into a beehive?" Emma leaned forward interestedly "I should love to kno to do it"

"I should be forever in your debt," Alex interjected, directing his words at Henry, "if you would endeavor never to teach er," Henry said quickly "Dunford likes to exaggerate"

"He does?" Alex asked, raising his brows

"He was very anxious," she told hiets very anxious"

"Anxious?" Emma echoed

"Dunford?" Alex asked at the very sa," Eested there could be no other possible alternative

"Suffice it to say," Dunford cut in, eager to ed to take ten years off my life, and that is the end of the subject"

"I suppose it will have to be," Henry said, looking at E, "as he has ain"

"He did? Dunford, how could you? Even Alex hasn't been that beastly"

If her husband objected to the iht be a little beastly, he o down in history as theman in Britain, Emma, I did not forbid her to eat honey" Dunford turned back to Henry "I merely made you promise not to procure it yourself, and frankly, this conversation has grown tedious"

Emma leaned toward Henry and whispered in a voice that could be heard clearly on the other side of the table, "I have never seen hiood?"

"Very"

"Ely casual

"Yes, Dunford?"

"It is only ood manners and the fact that you are a lady that preventyou to shut up"

Henry looked frantically at Alex, positive that he was about to call Dunford out for insulting his wife But the dukethat h, for he hadn't taken a bite in several ood manners, indeed," Emma replied tartly

"It certainly cannot be the fact that you are a lady," Henry said, thinking that Dunford hing at what ht have been perceived as an insult to Emma "Because he once told me to shut up, and I have it on the best authority that I ah so violently that Dunford felt compelled to whack hi for an excuse to do so