In the Land of the Long White Cloud

the stew beforehand, but she was running late and only just managed to swap her riding clothes for a house dress before the family gathered for dinner. In principle, Gwyneira considered all this changing of clothes wholly unnecessary. Gerald always wore the same clothes to lunch that he wore when supervising the work in the stables and pastures. Lucas, however, preferred a stylish atmosphere at mealtime, and Gwyneira did not wish to fight. Today, she wore a lovely bright blue dress with a gold border on the skirt and sleeves. She had halfway straightened her hair and put it up with a comb into some sort of decent hairstyle.
    “You look charming today as always, my love,” Lucas remarked. Gwyneira smiled at him.
    Gerald eyed her hair, pleased. “Like the purest turtledove!” he said happily. “So, we’ll soon be looking forward to some little ones, eh, Gwyneira?”
    Gwyneira did not know how to respond to that. They wouldn’t fail for lack of effort. If what they did in her room at night was how you became pregnant, then all should be well.
    Lucas, however, blushed. “We’ve only been married a month, Father.”
    “Well, one shot’s enough, isn’t it?” Gerald said, booming with laughter. Lucas seemed embarrassed, and once again Gwyneira did not understand what was going on. What did shooting have to do with pregnancy?
    Kiri now appeared with the serving bowls, putting an end to the embarrassing conversation. As Gwyneira had taught her, the girl placed herself properly to the right of Mr. Warden’s plate and served the master of the house first, then Lucas and Gwyneira. She performedcapably; Gwyneira found nothing to criticize and returned Kiri’s imploring smile when the girl finally took up her position dutifully next to the table, ready if called.
    Gerald cast a disbelieving eye over the thin yellowy-red soup, in which were floating cabbage and hunks of meat, before exploding: “What the devil, Gwyn? That was first-class cabbage and the best mutton on this side of the globe! It cannot be so damned hard to make a decent stew out of that. But no—you leave everything to this Maori brat, and she makes the same thing out of it that we have to gulp down every day. Teach her how to do it, if you please, Gwyneira.”
    Kiri looked hurt, Gwyneira insulted. She thought the soup tasted quite good—if, admittedly, a bit exotic. What spices Moana had used to achieve that flavor were a complete mystery to her. As was the original recipe for mutton cabbage stew that Gerald so obviously cherished.
    Lucas shrugged. “You should have looked for an Irish cook instead of a Welsh princess, Father,” Lucas said mockingly. “It’s obvious that Gwyneira did not grow up in a kitchen.”
    The young man coolly took another spoonful of stew, whose flavor did not seem to bother him either, but Lucas was not much of an eater anyway. He only looked truly happy when he could return to his books or his studio after meals.
    Gwyneira tried the dish again and attempted to remember the taste of Irish stew. Her cook at home had rarely made it.
    “I believe it’s made without sweet potatoes,” she told Kiri.
    The Maori girl frowned. Apparently, she could not imagine any dish without sweet potatoes.
    Gerald roared irritably. “Of course it’s made without sweet potatoes. And you don’t bury it to cook it or wrap it in leaves or whatever else these tribal women do to poison their masters. Make that clear, if you don’t mind, Gwyn! There must be a cookbook around here somewhere. Maybe someone could translate that. They were pretty quick about doing it for the Bible.”
    Gwyneira sighed. She had heard that Maori women on the North Island used underground or volcanic sources of heat to cook their food. But Kiward Station had nothing of the sort, nor had she ever observedMoana or the other Maori women digging cooking pits either. But the cookbook translation was a good idea.
    Gwyneira spent the afternoon in the kitchen with the Maori Bible, the English Bible, and Gerald’s late wife’s cookbook. Yet her comparative studies met with limited success. In the end she gave up and fled to the stables.
    “Now I know what ‘sin’ and ‘divine justice’ are in the Maori language,” she told the men, thumbing through the Bible. Hardy Kennon and Poker Livingston had just returned from the mountain pastures and were waiting on their horses, and James McKenzie and Andy McAran were cleaning their saddles. “But the word for ‘thyme’