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“In the meantime,” said Dalton, “I’ll need you to draw up a list of suspects. Anyone you can think of who would have any reason to hold a grudge against you.”
“Ah.” Nick scratched his head. “That could be a long list.” He wasn’t always popular with the gentlemen he stole courtesans away from. Or with creditors. Or... It would be a long list.
“About the wager,” Patrick said. “I believe that since Sir Alfred is a baronet, and your father a duke, you may be able to involve the Crown if you wished to have the debt of honor nullified. But it will require some petitioning and may be a lengthy process.”
Nick sighed. “Sir Alfred was right. I don’t want to subject the duke to a long public trial. He’s growing more confused every day. He thinks his orchids whisper secrets to him as he tends them.”
“Which leaves you only one option.” Dalton raised his glass. “To Miss Tombs.”
“Do you know she tried to convince her parents I had brewer’s droop and couldn’t father an heir? She was trying to rid herself of me.”
Patrick laughed. “I do like Miss Tombs.”
“I think Thea was rather hoping you might marry the girl, Patrick,” Dalton said.
Patrick sputtered over the rim of his whiskey glass. “Excuse me? She’s quite odd, isn’t she? Always nattering on about some obscure subject.”
“She’s not odd so much as refreshingly forthright.” Why did Nick immediately want to leap to her defense? She’d insulted him, lied to him, and done everything in her power to repel him... and somehow ended up completely charming him.
And not just because of her delectable dimples, or her lithe curves.
She’d kept him guessing at every turn with her clever twists of mind and that bawdy sense of humor. And she’d been so very responsive to his kiss. There was fire beneath that prim façade; he’d stake his life on it.
In short—Miss Tombs was his favorite kind of trouble. An intelligent woman who would match him in wits and sensuality... and then leave him in peace.
“She only agreed to marry me because she wants to travel to India and restore some ancient manuscript to a library. She speaks six languages, you know. She’s been translating a fragment of some dry, dusty book from Sanskrit to English.”
“And so the last one falls,” Dalton intoned with a knowing smile.
“I haven’t fallen,” Nick protested. “I’m merely taking a detour. She’ll be gone soon enough. Wed her, bed her, and be rid of her is what I—”
“Ah,” Patrick interrupted, making a strange slashing motion with his finger against his throat.
“—agreed to,” Nick finished. “I wasn’t even planning on going through with the nuptials when I wooed her, until I—”
“You might want to stop talking now, Hatherly,” Dalton said in a strained voice.
“Why?”
“Because she’s standing right behind you.”
Nick jumped out of his chair and dropped his whiskey glass.
Damned if Miss Tombs wasn’t standing in the doorway of the library, flanked by Dalton’s wife, Thea, and his friend James’s wife, Charlene.
All three ladies had thunderclouds in their eyes.
Miss Tombs’s face was white, her aquamarine eyes huge, and her full lips compressed into a severe line.
“What are you doing here?” Nick blurted.
“Leaving!” She tossed her head, spun on her heel, and ran away.
“Alice,” Nick yelled, racing after her. “Alice, wait!”
