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She nodded.

He wanted to find a less bustling inn, and he wanted to remove her from the too-interested gaze of the man behind the newspaper. Every man’s intentions became suspect because he himself had thoughts he didn’t want to own about spending the night with Miranda. The best thing was to find decent lodgings and keep them both busy about the town, so that they’d fall fast asleep. But first, they had to get their story straight for a landlord. Landlords, Nate thought, were a far more suspicious lot than housekeepers or nannies.

It proved easier to find an inn than to agree on a story. Off the high street next to a sweet shop was a small brick-and-timbered inn with the modest rates Nate thought prudent. He bought Miranda a bag of peppermints and proposed a simple story. They were to be a Mr. and Mrs. Fulton making a trip to London to visit her mother, who’d taken ill.

“Why are we changing our story?” she wanted to know.

“Because we shouldn’t go spreading what we learned to strangers before we report to Captain Clare.”

She frowned and sucked harder on her peppermint. “You think anyone in this country town cares about our lost cousin?”

“People know Lady Penelope disappeared. We don’t want them thinking we know something we don’t.”

“Well, we could change the name of our relation and keep the story.”

He shook his head. She could be so stubborn. “Do you want to go on sitting in your father’s back room, or do you want the club to reopen?”

Her face crumpled, and she looked away from him. He didn’t know what he’d said to upset her. The truth was that she didn’t want to be his wife even in a fiction. He watched the customers go in and out of the sweet shop while he waited for the sting of it to fade.

After the peppermint had turned to chalk on his tongue, she spoke in a small tight voice. “All right then, I’ll do it.”

“Good,” he said. He hauled her up off their bench and hefted their bags.

Then she spoke again. “But,” she said, “you have to wait for me to be in bed, you can’t light any lamps, and you have to sleep on the floor.”

She was still his Miranda.

* * * *

Cassandra and Cordelia Fawkener’s female guests occupied the lilac drawing room after dinner. Lucy had had no word from Harry Clare since they’d parted the afternoon before. Her friends had given her little time to worry about Adam as they helped her prepare for her first London dinner party with a suitable gown and a new way of dressing her hair and a great deal of information about her fellow guests.

Now it fell to Lucy’s lot to sit on a pretty velvet settee in conversation with a Miss Sophia Throckmorton, a round-faced girl with enormous dark eyes, an equally impressive bosom, and a gown of such a deep gold it reminded Lucy of Mrs. Vell’s best mustard. Miss Throckmorton needed no encouragement to talk. In the quarter hour they’d spent on the settee, Lucy had learned everything she wished to know and more about the girl’s aspiration to snare a handsome, titled husband during the coming Season.

“I would not come to a party of such...persons except that our dear hostesses know so very many single men,” she confided with a hand on Lucy’s. “One must never neglect an opportunity to be seen by those who will praise one’s beauty to others.”

Lucy was far from certain that Cordelia or Cassandra would praise a girl who looked like a mustard pot, but she held her tongue. She had a suspicion that her friends liked to create a bit of drama at their parties. Nothing else in Lucy’s view could quite explain the evening’s mix of guests, a fiery MP who had his doubts about the creation of a Metropolitan Police Force, a young baron with radical political leanings, a couple who appeared to be frostily observing a public unity they were far from feeling, and all their dear friends from the Back Bench Lending Library.

The table had been lovely, the food delicious, and the service so attentive as to be nearly invisible, but Lucy had noted an almost gleeful exchange of glances between the two sisters whenever their guests grew heated or the MP thumped the table and made the ivory-handled knives bounce. She had heard Cassandra remark to Cordelia, “If we can’t have the Duchess of Richmond’s luck, we must make our own.”

For a time Lucy had enjoyed watching her fellow guests, but now under the steady barrage of Miss Throckmorton’s self-disclosure, she began to feel what a long day it had been and to wish that the captain had not disappointed her. She had been mistaken in trusting both his promise and his apparent interest in her. A womanly mistake her husband hunter’s guide said was not uncommon. Now she was as tired as she had ever been after a day on her feet at the inn. She straightened her spine and suppressed a threatening yawn as the drawing room door opened.

Lucy glanced at the door with the happy thought that the gentlemen would join them, the tea tray would soon follow, and bed could not be far behind. But only one gentleman entered the room, Harry Clare, looking startlingly handsome in fashionable black evening wear. He crossed the room to offer his hostesses a brief word and bow, and then, in his direct manner, he came straight to Lucy. She could not look away. Beside her Miss Throckmorton took up an ivory fan and plied it vigorously.

Harry bowed. “Miss Holbrook, I have a message for you from our mutual friend.”

“Oh, how is he? How did you leave him?”

“He’s very well. He’s with an old friend of mine. They have an understanding already.”

“Thank you,” she said. She felt the weight of the day’s worry slip away, and her heart or her vanity, she could not be sure which, whispered that he was interested after all. “Oh,” she said. “May I introduce you? Miss Throckmorton, Captain the Honorable Harry Clare.”

One brow went up.

“You see,” Lucy said, “I’ve learned something about you today.” Cassandra and Cordelia had explained that the captain was the second son of an earl. Without the uniform he seemed a different man from the one who had helped her yesterday.

He bowed again and took Miss Throckmorton’s hand briefly.

For a moment no one spoke. With an effort Lucy kept her seat. She wanted to rise and walk apart with the captain in defiance of all that was polite and rational.