Page 45 of Better Off Wed

“Whyever did you cut off all your lovely hair?”

“Because it’s eminently practical,” Laura said, smiling as she tucked the last curl into place. For one thing, it was much easier to disguise beneath a wig. “And fashionable.”

But most of all, because my papa forbad me to do it.

“If you say so, milady,” agreed Dinah doubtfully. Her hands not needed for the arrangement of Lady Sterling’s hair, she was busying herself with tidying the few items in the dressing room. She plucked up a gentleman’s shirt to shake it out, and several sheets of paper fluttered to the floor. “Oh, dear.”

Laura turned and held out her hand for them, and the maid obliged without obviously trying to pry into their contents. When Laura glanced down, she discovered that Dinah would have seen very little, even if she had studied them for an hour. The small pages, folded together, were covered with the bold strokes of a masculine hand, columns of letters and numbers that appeared to have been copied from The Noble Game of Chess, with a few emendations.

W.

p c e 4

g f 3

f c 7?

B.

p e 5

d b c 6

f c 5

And so it went, down the rest of the page and onto the next.

Though she could make neither heads nor tails of the changes, she was so absorbed in the effort, she did not realize they were no longer alone until Dinah dropped into a deep curtsy. “Good morning, milord.”

“I’ll assist my wife from here,” Jeremy told her in a gruff voice. “You may go.”

Dinah scampered past, then hesitated on the threshold of the open doorway between the dressing room and the bedchamber. “Shall I—shall I bring the breakfast tray, milady?”

“Thank you, Dinah.” She darted a glance toward Jeremy. “In a quarter of an hour?”

At his brusque nod, the girl was gone, leaving Laura at liberty to study Jeremy’s glower. As his discarded linen and the folded notes had made plain, he must have returned at some point after she had fallen asleep, though she was certain he had not returned to their bed. He was fully dressed now, and in his own clothes, which had been sponged and pressed by Thornton’s valet. She would have said he looked perfectly respectable, if not for the smudges of shadow beneath his eyes, which somehow made his scowl fiercer still, and the unshaven state of his jaw, which made him look like a ruffian.

A very handsome ruffian.

“I did not think you would snoop,” he said, snatching the notes from her fingers.

“Those papers weren’t exactly hidden. Dinah found them when she picked up the shirt you wore last night,” Laura said, and went back to fidgeting with her hair for something to do with her hands. “I don’t know what you imagine you have to be angry with me about. It’s not as if anyone can read the things. It’s like they’re written in some kind of—”

Her speech slowed as she neared the end of the sentence, and though the word code never passed her lips, all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place behind it. The cookbook. Captain Addison of the British army. A game of chess.

“You’re a spy,” she breathed, more to herself than him as she spun about on the dressing table stool to face him.

He opened his mouth to deny it, then crumpled the papers in his hand and sagged against the door frame. “Apparently not a very good one.”

“Because I figured it out?” She shook her head. “You mustn’t expect to be able to keep such things from your wife.”

“Laura.” Again that half-pleading, half-scolding note. He crossed his arms over his chest and squared his shoulders, as if steeling himself for whatever she might say next.

She thought she’d cured herself of last night’s unwelcome attraction to him. But she had to admit there was something unexpectedly appealing about a handsome man with an unshaven jaw leaning in a doorway.

Gripping the edge of the dressing table, she got to her feet and took a hobbling step toward him. “You might as well tell me the rest while you help me into the other room.”

He didn’t immediately move to pick her up and carry her, for which she was at first grateful. She didn’t trust herself to be able to hold those inconvenient feelings at bay while wrapped in his arms and cradled against his chest.