Page 133 of The Marriage Method

He was surprised into a hoarse laugh. “Do you mean to say that—”

“I seduced you,” she informed him.

Miles’s chest rumbled on another low chuckle. “Did you indeed, my darling?”

Nell kissed him, smiling, her words a velvet whisper against his mouth. “And I’d do it again.”

• • • • •

Dinner that evening was very different from the previous evening’s meal. Instead of demanding that Nell join him at the head of the table, Amstead enlisted Lady Belwood to act as his hostess. It was she who sat beside him, and she who received the bulk of his attention.

Such that it was.

From what Miles could see, her ladyship enjoyed none of the warmth Nell had received from their host, and less than half the amount of his smiles. Baron Amstead’s mood had altered considerably since returning from whatever business he’d had with his butler. His eyes were harder, his spine stiffer, and his demeanor lacking its characteristic bonhomie.

On more than one occasion, Miles observed him looking down the table at Nell. She’d been placed beside Miles this evening, to his great relief. A seating arrangement that wouldn’t have occurred at a larger house party. Husbands and wives never sat next to each other as a rule. But here, with only four women at table, exceptions to that rule had been allowed.

“It’s bad news, I assume,” Nell murmured to him as she speared a roasted potato with her fork.

Miles turned to look at her. His heart briefly lost its rhythm, just as it had when she’d emerged from their room in her evening finery. He couldn’t blame Amstead for staring. In her elegant blue silk dinner dress, her flaxen hair arranged in a rolled bandeau, Nell somehow managed to look even more beautiful than she’d been yesterday or the day before.

Or perhaps it was only his view of her that had changed. He was no longer merely mad for her. No longer smitten and desperate. He was a man in love.

“Probably,” he said.

“He’s been flashing looks at me all evening,” Nell whispered. “Do you suppose he’s heard that I’ve been engaging in gossip about his sister?”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Miles replied quietly. “It may be nothing.”

Amstead narrowed in on them from the top of the table. “I won’t have it,” he announced. “All of us bachelors present, and Quincey flaunting his newlywed bliss in our faces.” His words were edged with a good-natured humor that didn’t meet his eyes. “For God’s sake, man. Haven’t you the decency to pretend indifference to your own wife?”

The other gentlemen at the table laughed, and the ladies tittered. Teasing newlyweds was a time-honored tradition in fashionable society.

“Impossible,” Miles said.

“As it would be for any man,” Radford chimed in gallantly. “Given the inducement.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Quincey are abandoning us all tomorrow to go for an intimate drive to Fairbend Mill,” Amstead said. “They desire to be alone.”

More titters and laughter.

Miles held Amstead’s gaze. There was something ominous under the man’s show of affability.

“Were I a miserable old cur like my father, I would object,” Amstead said. “Fortunately for the pair of you, I’m a romantic.” He stood abruptly, raising his glass. “To true love!”

The others obediently lifted their glasses, echoing his toast. “To true love!”

Nell’s shoulders tensed. Miles tensed, too, recalling that fateful moment at Mrs. Pritchard’s Gentlemen’s Establishment when Nell had brazenly introduced herself as Penelope Trewlove.

Perchance Amstead’s toast was a coincidence. Many a married couple had surely been feted with the same two words.

But Miles had been a reporter too long to trust coincidence. When it came to discerning the truth of a situation, his gut was a far more reliable indicator. And in that instant, his gut told him that, sometime between the moment Amstead had left them in the gallery and the moment they found themselves in now, their host had discovered exactly who they were.

34

Nell entered their bedchamber ahead of Miles, her blood still simmering with apprehension. Lord Amstead had been all politeness to them for the rest of their meal and during the tense game of whist that followed. He’d instigated no quarrels and made no outright accusations. Even so…

Miles closed the door after her. “Pack your things,” he said. “We’re leaving.”