Tobias folded his arms behind his head and leaned against the headboard. He wore no nightshirt, and the quilt pooled low around his hips, revealing his bare torso. Did she avoid his gaze because of his undressed state? He should cover himself. It would be the honorable thing to do. Yet, she’d snuck into his room.Again. Honor, perhaps, had nothing to do with this. Besides, they were to be wed. She’d see his … everything soon enough.
“You, ahem, sleep without a nightshirt?”
“I do.”
“Fascinating.”
“Really? How so?” He couldn’t see if he’d made her blush in the darkness, but he rather hoped he had. “Maggie, I’m delighted you’ve come for a visit, but I am left pondering the why of it all.”
“Yes, of course.” She took a step closer to the bed. “Now that we are to be married, I really feel I must tell you something.”
“Ah. More secrets? And the perfect time to share them, too. Midnight in a bedroom.” He patted the bed beside him and smiled. Perhaps he could reciprocate. France didn’t have to wait till morning. If he told her now, he could prove the scowling Celia wrong and go to sleep with a lighter heart.
She climbed atop the bed and sat, pulling her knees up to her chest and gracing him with a hesitant smile. “I do have another secret,” she said, “but not from you. I would like to not have secrets between us. Can you promise that? I believe if we tell each other everything, we can find ways to help one another out.”
He nodded but his insides squirmed. Everything?
“You know my family is in financial ruination, and I have no dowry.”
He nodded.
“There’s more.” She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, then said in a rush, “I’ve been trying to save us. Through blackmail.”
Had he made a million guesses as to what secret she held so anxiously close, he would not have guessed that. A million responses flashed through his mind, and he discarded them all with one look at her pale face and the trembling fingers that reached into her banyan.
She pulled forth a notebook, the same one she carried, it seemed, everywhere. “You told me today that they don’t really see me, and you’re correct. No one ever sees me.” She flipped through the pages of the notebook until she found what she searched for. She handed it to him, open. “It’s why I’m so easily able to … collect information.”
Tobias read slowly, absorbing each and every name and word. Each one made him see her anew. But what kind of creature sat before him? His gaze hooked on one pair of names and their observed sin—a kiss behind the stables. He looked at her until she returned his stare.
Her eyes wavered with unshed tears. “Speak, please, Tobias. I would like to know your opinion of me. Now that you know.”
He closed the notebook and set it far from him across the bed. “Tom Priest and Henry Hardy. Did you ask them for money to keep their kiss quiet?”
She hid her face in her hands, and his heart disintegrated. She looked at him again, shaking her head, the tears finally falling down her face. “No! I could not. They seemed so very happy, and I didn’t want to break that. You see”—she dropped her gaze to her lap—“I’m rubbish at blackmail. I can’t seem to blackmail anyone I like or anyone I think should keep their secret, well, secret. I’ve only really tried once, but the man interpreted it as a marriage proposal.”
“Not the Mathematical Baron?”
She nodded.
Relief that she would not threaten the love of two innocent people rushed through him right like a cooling stream. But then the stream boiled. “Bloody hell, Mags! I’ve heard the worst things about him. He could have hurt you!”
“That’s why I did it in such a public place, so hecouldn’thurt me.”
“He could have waited and done it later.”
She blinked and rubbed away the tears that had pooled under her eyes. “I suppose he could have.” She fell sideways onto his bed and groaned into the mattress. “See! Absolute rubbish!”
She lay still as a corpse on his bed, and the largest, most consuming laughter he’d ever felt in his life grew to the size of a giant in his throat. No. He would not belittle her sincerity.
He pinched the laughter small and swallowed it whole. “You may be awful at blackmail, but you’re excellent at kindness, Lady Mags.”
“I am?” she whispered.
“Oh, quite. You’re like that story about the man in the forest who robbed from the rich and powerful to give to the poor. Only, you are the poor. You are no villain. You are doing what you think best to save the people you love most, though I’m not yet convinced they deserve it. And who do you go after as your only mark? A man known for dark deeds.”
She finally met his gaze. “I chose him because of that.”
“Of course you did.”
