It irked her that he was so smoothly evasive and so blasé about the fact that he was clearly here on some clandestine mission. Then again, what did she expect? That they would trust each other because they had been joined in the biblical sense? That they would sit over a fire and trade secrets, hold hands, and stroke each other’s hair?

Lord Iceberg was back and in fine form…or perhaps he’d never left. He had kissed her and taken her as though she’d been the air he needed to live, but she had rocks in her brain if she thought he’d ever go soft. The man was frost through and through.

And a gifted deceiver.

She didn’t need to see him to know that his impenetrable face would give away nothing, with falsehoods falling so naturally from his lips. He lied as easily as he breathed. It was by default of his occupation, of course, no matter his calm, mocking denials. Bronwyn swallowed a puff of laughter. It wasn’t as if he would have readily admitted such a thing. She wouldn’t. If he guessed who she was—if anyone guessed—life as she knew it would be over.

So what was she so peeved about? Trust went both ways.

As a covert operative, one had to be ready to hide the truth and cover one’s tracks at every turn. Even from curious friends or nosy sisters-in-law. Bronwyn had become quite adept at deceit herself. She had lied about this trip, about a nonexistent sick aunt, about where she was going and who she was. About everything. Discomfort filled her. Her grandfather, the late Duke of Ashvale had always told her that once a person told a lie, all their truths became suspect.

Even the poet Lord Byron had called a lie the truth in a masquerade.

Bronwyn suddenly wanted to take the folded report with his initials from her pocket and wave it in the duke’s face as indisputable proof of his profession. But then she would have to explain how she came to have a confidential piece of correspondence on her person in the first place, and wouldn’t that be a pickle? Hullo, guess what, sir? I’m a spy, too. Let’s do the secret handshake and swap stories!

“Why were you in that tavern?” she asked instead. “Were you following me?”

“McGillin’s,” he replied. “Best cottage pie this side of the Atlantic, apparently. Can’t beat a good pie, my Uncle Bucky always said. Kidney pie, apple pie, fruit pie, mince pie. Pie is the true key to a blissful existence.”

“Stop saying ‘pie,’” she snapped.

“You don’t enjoy pie?”

“I hate it,” she said, blood boiling. “Answer the question. Why were you on that ship? You didn’t come to America for the pie.”

“Maybe I did come…for the pie.”