Page 120 of The Marriage Method

Her heartbeat quickened.

“It’s the only rational response to recent events,” he said. “Amstead has commandeered you since our arrival. No husband worth his salt would stand idly by without demanding equal time.”

Nell could think of nothing suitable to say in reply. She’d suspected Miles wasn’t happy with her having spent so many hours out of his company this evening. It seemed she hadn’t been wrong.

Unless he was simply offering the most likely excuse.

How was she to guess? Her new husband was difficult to read at the best of times, but since entering their bedchamber he’d betrayed scarcely any emotion at all. He’d been silent and still, watching her with a peculiarly measuring look. As though he were a very large predator determining the most efficient way to dispatch its prey.

Nell tightened her arms around herself. She was suddenly conscious of the closeness of the room. And of the presence of the bed. A quiver went through her that had nothing to do with the sinking temperature outside.

“Yes, well…That sounds like an excellent plan,” she said.

With that, she abruptly went to the small dressing table near the window. She took a seat on the padded bench in front of it.

Miles didn’t follow her. He went to the end of the bed. She couldn’t tell what he was doing there. Undressing, very probably. There was the sound of fabric brushing fabric as he removed his jacket, and the whisper of cloth as he unknotted his cravat. He’d worn an elegant black evening suit for dinner. It was the handsomest she’d ever seen him.

She began withdrawing the hairpins that secured the thick roll at her nape, dropping them one by one into the porcelain pin jar on the table. Her hand wasn’t as steady as she’d like. “You’re not really bothered about Lord Amstead insisting on my company, are you?” she asked at last.

“Irritated,” Miles said. “I’ve had to spend half the day watching him salivate over you, and seeing you smile at him in reply.”

Nell half turned in her seat, forcing herself to look at him. He was in his shirtsleeves, his cravat loose at his neck and his coat tossed over the end of the bed. “They weren’t genuine smiles,” she informed him.

“I know they weren’t,” he said.

Her brows lifted in question.

“Your mouth was closed,” he said. “When you mean it, you show your teeth.”

A surge of embarrassment went through her. That he should notice that!

She turned back to the dressing table, grateful that the only looking glass was a minuscule one on a small silver stand. She had no desire to see how fiercely she was blushing. “My teeth aren’t my best feature,” she said stiffly.

“According to whom?” he asked.

Nell removed another pin from her hair. “Anyone with eyes.”

She’d damaged them when she fallen from the tower. Her front tooth was only crooked, but she had lost some at the back. They’d been shattered when she hit the ground, along with her hip and thigh.

“You have a beautiful smile when you mean it,” Miles said.

Her hand stilled as she loosened her rolled coiffure.

“When you don’t, as well,” he added. “But I prefer your genuine smiles.”

She huffed. “I don’t know why.”

“Because they’re real,” he said. “And because they’re mine.”

The words provoked a strange trembling in the pit of Nell’s stomach. She gave him an uncertain glance.

His mouth ticked up briefly at one corner. “But not only mine, sadly. It was Shadow who received the first of them.”

Nell remembered. It had been in Miles’s office, the day they’d met, a mere moment before the little tabby had plunged beneath Nell’s skirts. “I didn’t think to guard myself,” she said. “I wasn’t trying to beguile you at the time.”

“Weren’t you?” Miles crossed the room to join her.

Nell’s blood warmed as he came to stand beside her. He removed his cuff links one at a time, placing them down on the dressing table.