Page 39 of Kathryn

“I do not wish to run afoul of any rules, Your Grace.”

“It is far more likely that you want to know what rules are in place so that you can go about breaking them.”

Katie gave a startled laugh; her new husband had certainly taken her measure uncomfortably quickly.

***

A sharp but not unpleasant sensation squeezed Gerrit’s chest at the sound of her throaty chuckle. Laughter was something he had little experience with, and he could not recall the last time he’d found humor in anything. He had not believed he was missing anything in his life, but an odd sense of yearning seeped through him, making him wish that he could laugh with her.

Foolishness.

Gerrit’s new wife did not have the faux, tinkling laugh one heard so often at society events. Rather, it was a discordant squawk that made his lips twitch up at the corners.

“Are you smiling?” Kathryn asked, eyeing him with unnerving keenness.

“No.”

And then she laughed again, damn it.

“I think you are.”

Gerrit ignored her teasing and pondered the worrisome realization that she had intentionally flouted the dinner rule and yet he was fighting a smile. What the devil was wrong with him? Gerrit rarely found things amusing. Indeed, his lack of a sense of humor was one of the things that seemed to forever separate him from normal people.

So why was he tempted to smile?

“In future,” she said, pulling him from his uncomfortable introspection, “I will always be at the dinner table at eight o’clock, unless I am physically unable.”

“We eat at six o’clock when we are at Briarly.”

Her smile dimmed, and Gerrit suspected his abrupt reply was responsible. What else should he have said? Damnation! This sort of awkwardness was why he despised socializing.

“Briarly is the name of your estate?” she asked, and then drained a third of her wine in one swallow. It had not escaped Gerrit’s notice that she’d had four glasses of champagne at the wedding breakfast. Was his new wife a dipsomaniac?

He saw she was looking at him quizzically and recalled she had asked him a question. “Correct.”

Her dark auburn eyebrows rose incrementally, as if she was waiting for him to say more. When he did not, those fascinating lips of hers twisted into a taunting smirk. “Well, you needn’t bore on about it.”

Gerrit frowned. Was that sarcasm?

“Where is Briarly?” she asked after a moment.

“How is it that you do not know these details already? I told all this to my man, Court, so that he could pass it along to your dresser—her name is Stone, I believe.”

“Yes, Rebecca Stone.”

Why was she telling him her servant’s Christian name?

“And is that how you prefer to communicate?” she asked. “Through my maid and your valet?”

“What is the point in me seeking you out to share such mundane information?” he asked, genuinely confused.

“Mundane? You consider the subject of where we are going to live mundane? Besides,” she went on, “we barely have anything to talk about as it is, so I think the last thing we should do is pass along the few opportunities we have for conversation to our servants.”

She had a point. “Briarly is five miles from Lyme Regis.”

“I thought your country seat was Spenwood.”

“It is.”