Gabby swallowed. “Yes, thank you.” Her voice sounded oddly breathy. She accepted a glass of sherry and took such a large swallow that her glass was virtually emptied in one gulp. The liquor burned its way comfortingly down her chest. Quill looked faintly surprised, but refilled her glass.

“I received a letter from Lady Sylvia that might interest you,” he remarked.

“Oh? What does she say?”

“The travel has done Mother good and she is less lachrymose, to use Lady Sylvia’s phrase. And they met one of Peter’s university friends in Switzerland, Simon Baker Wollaton, who has come to Greece with them. Apparently, Wollaton is quite amusing.”

“That’s good,” Gabby said faintly. She made herself walk away from him. It wasn’t clear whether he had even noticed that her hair was unbound. If so, he hadn’t flickered an eyelash. She walked at random over to a bookshelf and stared blindly at a copy of Herbert Bone’s The London Perambulator.

“This book looks interesting,” she said, her throat tight, touching the volume with one finger.

Quill loomed up at her shoulder. “Not a scintillating read,” he commented.

“Lud!” she exclaimed. “I didn’t even hear you coming.”

“Well, here I am.” He leaned his forearm against the bookshelf. His arm was bronzed against his white linen sleeve. “Here I am,” he repeated softly. “The puzzlement is that…here you are.”

Gabby raised an eyebrow. Now that she was face to face with Quill, her apprehension was trickling away. Nerves, she thought. Naught more than nerves. “And why shouldn’t I be here?” she asked, looking at him provocatively through her lowered lashes.

He shrugged. His eyes were hard, with a questioning gleam.

Yet Gabby felt more sure of herself every moment. Even her hair had miraculously transformed from a bushy thicket to a silken, sensual screen. She reached up and pulled some of it forward so that it hung over one breast.

When his jaw tightened, Gabby mentally noted the small victory.

“The question is,” Quill said meditatively, “why my chaste wife has unexpectedly left off her blacks and dressed herself like Bathsheba about to leap into the bath—although I remember quite clearly that the said wife has no interest in marital pleasures.”

Gabby swallowed. His reference to Bathsheba was more apt than he realized, given her plans to disrobe. Obviously it was time for the gown—time to lose the gown, rather. She gave a little twist and a shrug of her shoulders.

Nothing happened. Silk remained firmly anchored over her nipples.

“Gabby?” Quill’s voice had taken on a sardonic tone.

“It was tedious upstairs, by myself,” she said quickly. She surreptitiously wriggled her shoulders again.

Quill’s eyes softened. “You know we cannot have a public life yet, Gabby. But in a very few months our mourning period will be over and we can go into society.”

“Yes, I know.”