She'd expected some sort of jest in response, but nothing as frank as he'd given her. In an attempt to mask her red face, she bent and picked up his discarded clothes, shaking off dirt and dust before tossing them on the bedside.

"You would not wish it, I'm sure," she answered, trying—and failing—to hide her smile. "If you make me blush too often, it will lose its effect." She met his eyes then, a hand reaching up to touch at her auburn waves.

"I'll get their food and make some tea," she said, turning away to leave the room. She looked over her shoulder, her smile unmoved. "You sound like you need it." Jaw covered with stubble and his voice strained from hours of uninterrupted sleep, Bella found herself wondering whether he looked like early in the morning. (As if she'd ever get to see! It was a silly notion, but not unlike the ones that had filled her mind over the past week.)

Without waiting for a response, Bella hurried off into the kitchen to prepare the afternoon's work. She'd do laundry, today—she was sure of it. The curtains were beginning to dust over, and the rug she'd laid on the kitchen floor before was unrecognizable with the amount of dirt that had been stomped into it. For a man who hailed from a family firmly rooted in the middle class, he showed no desire to have as much as a housekeeper (... though she supposed she'd taken over that role, unofficially, over the past few months).

"Should I expect that you haven't eaten this morning?" she called from the kitchen, a quiet tsk tsk accompanying her words. "Or bathed, even?" When was the last time he'd bathed?

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