Tremont held the door for her, and Matilda passed into the quiet and warmth of his home. “That’s it exactly. I began to doubt the evidence of my own eyes, and keeping a vigilant watch over Harry became necessary, though by then, I had nothing left to steal. He had shaken me from my passive tolerance, though, and that was likely his objective.”

Tremont set aside the ledger he’d carried and unwrapped the scarf Matilda wore instead of a bonnet.

“And still,” he said, undoing her frogs, “you watched Merridew, because by the smallest shifts of expression, by the look in his eyes and the tilt of his head, you learned to know the sewer that passed for his mind. It’s a blessing all around that your husband no longer draws breath. Were I to meet him, I might have a relapse of violent impulses, and I am a dead shot.”

“You aren’t boasting.” Did Tremont ever boast? Matilda turned so his lordship could lift her cloak from her shoulders.

“I was told my father was a dead shot, and I felt it incumbent upon me to uphold his tradition. I later learned that he was only a good shot, and only with long guns, but because he’d been the earl, and he’d gone to his reward, his skills were embellished by fond remembrance. Others idealized him in memory, just as I did. Papa couldn’t manage a pistol to save himself, but my own skills extend to every sort of firearm.”

“Because when you set your mind to a thing, you never give up.”

“Because,” Tremont said, passing her his hat, “when practice is all that stands between me and an objective, even I can generally achieve the possible. Brilliance has been denied me, but persistence is my consolation.”

He spoke as if reviewing lecture notes. Tremont wasn’t lamenting a lack of mental agility, nor was he insulting himself. He merely reported what he believed to be true.

“Have you made a study of kissing, my lord?”

He paused in the act of hanging up his own cloak. “I beg your pardon?”

“Kissing.” Matilda audibly kissed the air. “Because if you bring to that endeavor the same focus you turned on your marksmanship, I must ask that we postpone our examination of the ledgers.”

The words surprised her. That was the old Matilda talking, the Matilda who’d disgraced herself and her father, who’d seen Harry Merridew’s glib charm as a suit of shining armor. The Matilda who’d yielded to impulse at the expense of common sense and decorum.

The Matilda who had caused so much trouble was stirring back to life, and she had apparently caught Tremont’s attention. He was smiling again, and this smile would have done justice to the most buccaneering pirate ever to storm a seaside castle.

Chapter Seven