“Yes.”
He did not say anything more. Something quivered inside Matilda.
He had been… waiting for her to smile?
Oh God. She was in serious danger of beginning to like him.
On that chilling note, she decided an uncomfortable plunge into honesty was warranted. Perhaps if he shouted at her, she would no longer feel so soft and melty in the vicinity of her heart.
Of course, knowing her, if he shouted at her, she would likely feel all sorts of feelings, except they would not be in her heart, they would be between her legs.
“I should like to tell you,” she said, before she could think the better of it, “how I explained my absence to Spencer and Margo.”
Down swooped the scar on his cheek. That particular frown, she was beginning to learn, meant frustration mixed with confusion.
Good Lord, she had begun to catalogue the man’s looks of displeasure. She was mad in the head.
“Must you?”
“Probably not,” she said, “but I would like to. I have told them we are eloping to Scotland.”
Ashford emitted a choked sound.
Matilda paused, looking up at him through the pitiful screen of her own eyelashes.
His fingers twitched, but other than that, he did not move.
Was he consideringstranglingher? She tried to swallow, but her mouth was too dry.
“Why, in God’s name, would you tell them that we eloped?” Ashford’s voice was so wintry that Matilda felt frostbitten.
“It seemed eminently logical.”
“How—how is that—”
She waited, but he appeared to have forgotten how to speak. She pursed her lips and ticked off her reasoning on her fingers.
“First,” she said, “an elopement is a reasonable explanation for why I will be gone for several months. I did not want to tell them about the engravings. I am hoping to keep that part of the story as quiet as possible.”
A muscle tightened in his jaw.
Matilda kept talking, now rather more rapidly. “Second, I—er—told them we had eloped because I knew they would not spread the tale around. Margo—well, this may come as something of a shock, but Margo does not care for you.”
She darted another glance at Ashford. Disappointingly, he did not appear to be blushing this time.
“I know my sister. Margo will keep the information in the note I left entirely to herself, and she will convince our brother to do the same. She will not put it about that I have gone off with you because she will hope I might change my mind. When we return with Bea to London in the spring, I shall tell Margo that is exactly what happened. We reconsidered. We did not elope. Everything will go entirely back to normal.”
“Dear God,” he said. “I can think of about fifteen plans off the top of my head that make more sense than this. You do realize that? That you’ve chosen the most Byzantine approach possible to this situation?”
Matilda scowled. Perhaps she wasnotin danger of liking him. “You do not know my sister. She thrives on excitement. She will be filled with purpose, trying to keep all of this out of the public eye. French spies could not persuade her to give up our secrets. She will love it.”
She felt slightly less confident in Margo’s reception of her missive than she sounded, but shehopedthat was how Margo would feel.
Margo still enjoyed being a Halifax Hellion. Margo had always enjoyed it. She was so lighthearted, so filled with adventure—for heaven’s sake, her first reaction upon suspecting Matilda of a secret love affair was cloak-and-dagger subterfuge, rather than simple conversation.
Matilda loved Margo more than her own life, but she had never felt the same about their antics.
In fairness, she could admit that the last seven years had involved a great deal of fun. She had satisfied her curiosity about many facets of human behavior in a number of delightful and intriguing ways. But she had never taken the same pleasure in their exploits that Margo had. She had never looked at their pictures in the scandal sheets and been able to recognize herself.
