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Her father had taught her the rule before she was seven years old, dealing her in at the green baize table while her mother believed them at backgammon. The first rule, before the odds, before the bluff, before luck loves the bold and all the rest of the handsome nonsense that had ended in an empty house and a ship to Boston. The only rule, he had said, tapping the pack against the baize, that a player breaks exactly once.

“Whatever you hold, poppet, however it burns you … One never shows one’s cards.”

She had held hers flat against her chest for weeks. Through a deathbed, a funeral, a betrothal, and a wedding. And this morning, she had shown them beyond revocation.

And the toast was not yet cold, and the whole table was playing her hand for her.

CHAPTER 7

Ophelia came down to breakfast with three opening gambits prepared and a fourth in reserve. That was two more than she had ever needed for any gentleman of her acquaintance.

Gambit the first: the weather. Even a fence post could be brought to remark upon rain, and Hartleigh had rain to spare. It had tapped her window half the night, soft and without end, until she had stopped listening for a break in it.

Gambit the second: the estate. A man newly come into a barony must have opinions on drains, or tenants, or whatever it was that made landed gentlemen frown so over their post.

Gambit the third: his horse. There was not a man in England who could not be made to talk about his horse.

She would not think about the fourth unless matters grew desperate.

When she reached the breakfast room, the park was doing what it always did in weather like this. Green gone dull under a gray drizzle. Mist lying along the meadows as if it had nowhere to be, and was in no hurry to get there. Lady Archer was already talking. Ophelia knew it before she was fully through the door.

“… and I said to the rector, of course it must be quiet, everything quiet, but a wedding is a wedding, and after such a year …” Lady Archer’s hands had left her toast and were waving in the air, a small figure in her blacks at the middle of the table. “Ah! Ophelia, my dear. Chocolate. Sit by me.”

Her own mother sat opposite, buttering toast, and letting the talk go by her.

And at the head of the table sat the difficulty.

Lord Archer rose when she entered. He did that. He would give her no words if he could help it, and no expression that told her anything, and not the smallest crumb of what he was thinking. His manners came in first and stood up anyway. “Lady Archer.” A bow of the head.

“My lord.”

There. Very likely that was her ration for the morning.

She took the chair beside Lady Archer. The chocolate pot was hot under her fingers. She used it as cover and looked at him properly. It was a vexing truth that her betrothed was the handsomest problem she had ever been set. The navy coat made it worse. His shoulders needed no help from a tailor. They were built on the scale of the doorframes. Buckskins. Top boots. Dressed to ride out, then, the moment he could decently escape the table. His cravat was tied high, higher than fashion asked, snowy and severe, and thin silvery lines against the deep campaign tan, climbing toward the cheekbone. She had taught herself not to stare at it. By now she did not have to teach herself. It was simply his face.

He glanced up. The gray light from the windows lay full across him, and Ophelia, reaching for the chocolate, stopped.

His eyes were blue. She had known that. She had entered it in her private ledger the very first day, along with tall as a church door and talks less than one. The morning light split the word in two. The right eye was blue the way the sea was blue. The left was not. Slightly darker. Slightly grayer. Two blues that did not belong to the same person.

A trick of the light, surely?

She poured her chocolate. The cup warmed her palm. She looked again.

It was not the window.

How had she never properly marked it? But then, he so rarely looked at anyone long enough to be studied. He was looking at her now. Or aiming himself in her direction, at least, as if he already knew she meant to talk at him.

He was quite right.

“It rains again, my lord,” said Ophelia, and deployed gambit the first.

“It does.”

Two words. Yesterday’s average had been one. At this rate of increase they would achieve a full sentence by Sunday.

“They say the lanes toward the village are all but swimming. I hope it will not spoil your ride to the farms.”

“No.”