SUPPER PASSED IN AN AGONY of polite conversation. She was wearing the dress that had caused a scandal, but Quill showed no signs of recognizing it, and she had never felt less attractive in her life. When Quill requested the salt salver, she had to gesture to a footman rather than hand it to him. She was afraid that the climax of her little performance would come far too soon and enliven the servants’ evening rather than her husband’s.

Precisely at nine o’clock, Quill finished a last bite of lemon tart. “I am afraid that it is time for me to retire to my study, my dear,” he said, with the studied politeness that passed for marital intimacy between them.

She gulped. “Perhaps I shall visit you later in the evening, Quill?”

He looked startled. “Of course,” he agreed after an infinitesimal pause. “I am happy to greet you at any time, naturally.” His lips pressed the back of her hand for the merest moment and he was gone.

Gabby wandered upstairs with no real location in mind. Once in her room she drifted to the dressing table. Most of her hair was still neatly plaited into a coronet. With a sudden thought, she started pulling out hairpins. Quill liked her hair. Perhaps if she took it down, it would help her act seductive.

Because she didn’t feel seductive. Never mind what Sophie had said. She felt overly plump and unattractive, a woman whose husband had threatened to go to a concubine.

When she had taken all the pins out, Gabby worked her fingers through the braids and let her hair fall in great rippling golden-brown sheaves down her back.

Thankfully she encountered no servants in the hallway, nor on the stairs leading to the floor below. Gabby knocked lightly and pushed the door open.

Quill was sitting at the far end of the long room, white sleeves pushed up around his elbows to protect his cuffs from ink. An oil lamp burned on the table, casting a warm light that made his hair shine with burgundy tints.

He looked up and instantly rose. “How nice to see you,” he murmured, quite as if he hadn’t said good night to her a mere fifteen minutes earlier.

Gabby felt a pulse of despair. Quill sounded as uninterested as a man married for twenty years. He would likely yawn if her breasts popped free of her gown. Still…what else could she do? She walked toward him across the room, consciously forcing her hips to sway, dip and sway, as she walked. Her hair felt like a bushy curtain. It likely made her look five times rounder than she already was, Gabby realized with a sense of horror.

“May I offer you a glass of sherry? Or ratafia?” He gestured toward a sideboard.