“Well, you got away with it, gel,” Lady Sylvia said after the throngs of visitors had trickled to nothing and the room finally emptied. “Thanks to Her Grace. That girl is a right ‘un, I’ll tell you that.”

The door opened once again and Gabby’s heart jumped into her throat. Here she was, besieged by trouble, and she kept being distracted by memories of Quill’s hungry kisses and the way he groaned in his throat when she—She took a deep breath.

But it was Peter, not Quill, who entered. Gabby could barely meet his eyes. What would Peter think of her if he knew what she had been doing with his brother? She was jilting him. She was going to humiliate him in front of the entire ton, given that he introduced her to all his friends as his fiancée only the night before.

She wanted to die of mortification. Even more strongly, she wanted to burrow into the fierce warmth of Quill’s arms and remember why she was doing such an unladylike and scandalous action as marrying her fiancé’s brother.

The thought made her shiver again. In fact, what with one memory and another, she had spent the entire morning with a feverish pulse, and ill humor was beginning to creep over her.

Quill entered the dining room just as the rest of the family was sitting down, so Gabby assumed that he had not spoken to Peter. And yet, by halfway through the meal, the tension between the brothers was so clear that Gabby changed her mind.

The group was idly discussing a large fire that had destroyed a brew house and a public house in Argyle Street, suspected to be the work of a disgruntled patron of the public house who was refused a meat pie.

“There are two questionable items in the tale as it stands,” Gabby pointed out. “The first is the unlikelihood that a public house would refuse to give anyone a meat pie, and the second is that, in such an unlikely event, a customer would care enough to actually burn the premises. Why not simply buy a pie from another establishment?”

Quill’s eyes rested on her with something warmer than the appreciation one might show for a logical point. Gabby frowned at him in a warning that he ought to be more reserved with his attentions.

Peter was vigorously defending his account. “Apparently there was only one meat pie left, and the landlord had promised to save it for the Watch, or rather, for the Watch’s wife.” He smiled at Gabby and said, just a trifle ponderously, “We ought not to censure given that the recipient of the meat pie was a fair woman.”

Quill snorted. “Troy burned for the love of a beautiful woman. Are you saying, Peter, that London would have been well lost in order to satisfy the appetite of the Watch’s wife?”