She pursed her lips into a little frown, clearly wanting to confront her foreman as quickly as possible. Sam pitied the man, who could have had no idea what he was getting himself into when he so rashly angered her.

“You could leave a note here, for your driver,” Sam coaxed. “You could be in town and yelling at the man inside of twenty minutes.”

“I have no intention of yelling,” she told him, very much on her dignity.

“Informing him, then,” Sam said.

“Oh, fine,” she said, and, frowning even more, continued with gritted teeth. “I mean, I thank you for your kind offer, and will gladly accept it.”

“Think nothing of it, my dear Mrs. Webster,” Sam said, chuckling. The day was turning out even better than he’d hoped.

Alva didn’t know what had possessed her, getting into the man’s buggy. A tiny voice told her it knew exactly why she’d gotten in; she suppressed it violently. She’d seen everything she needed to at Liefdehuis; he offered her a faster way back into town. That was all. It was … efficient.

There had been an instant, when he handed her up and she’d come within inches of his broad, broad chest, that hadn’t been efficient at all, of course, but she had gotten through it just fine. Physical reactions had betrayed her once; she’d since come to realize they were harmless, so long as one kept them carefully controlled and, most important, separate from one’s emotions.

It wasn’t the flicker of heat that worried her. It was that she … liked him. When they spoke she wanted to linger, to say one more thing, to hear what he would say in response. He made her want to laugh. That made him dangerous.

So why, why, had she gotten into the buggy? It wasn’t efficient. It was foolhardy.

She sidled a little farther away from him, although the bench wasn’t very wide and she couldn’t manage more than about a foot’s separation.

“I asked my maid where he lived,” she said, keeping her voice polite and impersonal. “She said to look at the Blue Stag Inn during the day.”

“Drunk?” The word was free of judgment, simply the question of a scientist gathering information.

“I don’t think so,” Alva said, and the memory tugged at her sense of humor. “Apparently his wife kicks him out of the house every morning, whether he’s got work lined up or not. Says he gets in her way.”

Sam chuckled. “Ought to build himself a laboratory,” he said. “That’s where my mother sends my father when he’s irritated her.”

She knew she shouldn’t ask. Why was she so interested? She wasn’t going to ask. She wouldn’t—“Your father’s a scientist, too?”

He looked at her with a little crinkle between his brows. “I assumed you knew,” he said.