Page 68 of The Marriage Method

Flack had brought in a box of questionable meat pies he’d procured from a street seller.

Miles’s gaze fell to Absalom and Virgil. The former was a long-haired white cat with only one eye—the remnant of an injury he’d suffered during his days as a brawling tom in Fleet Street. The latter was a short-haired gray with a wise, owllike little face. “I see you’ve made new friends in my absence.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Nell replied. “I believe it’s the fire that’s drawn them here, not me. Though they have permitted me to pet them.”

“A triumph,” Miles said. Like all his rescued cats, Absalom and Virgil didn’t trust humans easily.

“I looked in on Shadow as well,” she told him. “She accepted a dish of cream, but she still won’t allow me to touch her.”

“Give it another week,” Miles said. He had seen it often enough with street cats. They needed to gain confidence in their surroundings. To trust that they’d be safe. Until they did, the best thing for them was quiet and consistency.

Miles hoped it would prove the same for Nell. Whatever had prompted their marriage, he wanted her to feel at home here.

“What time did you return from the Royces’?” he asked.

“Their carriage set me down an hour ago.”

“And you came in here rather than retire?” He studied her face. “I trust you weren’t waiting for me.”

Nell’s busy needle finally stilled. A troubled line etched her brow. “I didn’t realize it then, but…perhaps I was.”

Miles’s heart thumped heavily. He went to the sideboard on the opposite side of the room. It was, like most of the furniture in the house, large, dark, and more functional than fashionable. Yet more evidence of Charles Pelham’s tenure. The former editor in chief had been an unrepentant bachelor.

Setting down his stack of papers, Miles lifted one of the decanters. The documents slid to the polished surface of the sideboard in a disorganized heap, revealing Cowgill’s notebooks, along with multiple old issues of the Courant that Miles had brought home for further study. “Would you like a glass of brandy?” he asked.

“No, thank you.”

He promptly returned the decanter to its place. If she wasn’t going to have a drink, then neither would he.

She rose from her chair behind him, the rustle of her petticoats and crinoline as recognizable to him now as the velvet-edged tones of her voice. “I learned several things today,” she said.

He turned. “So did I.”

She looked at him expectantly, her shapely figure silhouetted in the glow of the firelight.

Miles leaned back against the sideboard. Given his unruly feelings, it was wiser to keep a bit of distance from her. He could think clearer then. Just. “I went through the death notices in the paper. I discovered that the late Lord Amstead died on the nineteenth of March.”

Her brows lifted. “The first date recorded in Mr. Cowgill’s notebook?”

“Exactly.”

“And the second date?”

Miles shook his head. “I read all of Cowgill’s columns from March. The second date has no relation to any of them as far as I can tell. There’s no evidence he was ever at Northwick Hall. The only party he attended in Hertfordshire this year was at a place called Bricket Lodge, owned by a wealthy tradesman by the name of Jefford.” He paused, adding, “Cowgill did mention Lord Amstead, however. It was in his column the week after Amstead’s father died.” He reached into the half-spilled stack of papers and extracted the copy of the Courant that contained the column. He crossed the well-worn red-and-gold carpet to give it to her. “It’s here.”

Nell stepped forward. Her bare fingers brushed his as she took the paper. Miles’s pulse surged dangerously. If Nell was similarly affected, she didn’t show it. She skimmed Cowgill’s column in the candlelight, reading the relevant passage aloud. “A Hertfordshire lord is on the ascent, and not before time. Your humble correspondent hears that the vertically inclined gentleman was growing impatient to assume the title.” Her eyes lifted to his in question. “Vertically inclined?”

“Ambitious. Eager. Possibly something more.”

She handed the paper back to him. “The late baron was three-and-seventy. I suppose his son had been waiting a long time to inherit.”

“Impatiently waiting, according to Cowgill.”

Nell frowned. “Do we know how his father died?”

Miles returned the paper to the stack of documents on the sideboard, his blood still thrumming with heat. He ruthlessly refocused his attention on the matter at hand. “Succumbed in his sleep, apparently, after a decades-long battle with heart trouble.”

“So, his demise was not unexpected.”