“Something you would never understand,” she said, without a trace of bitterness. She did not begrudge him his self-possession. She envied it.

“That’s unfair of you,” he said with gentle accusation.

“I mean it as a compliment,” she replied, knowing he’d be unable to understand that as well.

One of his brows rose. “I shall have to trust you on it, then.”

“Oh, I would never lie about a compliment,” she said. “I don’t give them out willy-nilly. I think they should mean something, don’t you?”

“Even if the subject does not understand the meaning?”

She smiled. “Even then.”

He smiled back, a little wry thing involving just one corner of his mouth. But it was full of humor and maybe even a touch of affection, and for the first time in her life, Amelia Willoughby began to think that marriage to the Duke of Wyndham might be about something more than duty, something greater than rank.

It might turn out to be a most pleasant endeavor, indeed.

Chapter 9

It was probably a good thing that he’d still had rather too much liquor in his veins when Amelia came across him, Thomas reflected, because he hadn’t had the good sense to be mortified. And now—when the only remnant of his night of drunken excess was a pounding in his left temple (and a throb in the right)—he reckoned she’d already seen the worst and hadn’t gone off screaming. In fact, she seemed quite content to ride along in the carriage with him, gently scolding and rolling her eyes at him.

The thought would have made him smile, if the sudden bump in the road hadn’t sent his brain jostling against his skull—if indeed that were possible. He was not a scholar of anatomy, but this scenario seemed far more likely than what it felt like, which was an anvil flying through the window and impaling itself in his left temple.

As to why his right temple was pounding in a similar manner, he could only assume it was out of sympathy.

He let out an unattractive groan and pinched hard at the bridge of his nose, as if the pain of that might be enough to blot out the rest of it.

Amelia didn’t say anything, and in fact didn’t even look as if she thought she ought to be saying something—further reinforcing his newly arrived belief that she was a most excellent female. She was just sitting there, her face remarkably placid, given that he must look like death itself, ready to spew noxious substances all over her.

Not to mention his eye. It had looked rather vicious the night before. Thomas couldn’t imagine what sort of hue it had turned overnight.

He drew in a deep breath and opened his eyes, glancing at Amelia’s face around his hand, which was still doing its completely ineffective magic on his nose.