“No,” he lied. “We’ve only just met, after all.”
“I will need to know at some point,” she told him, “if I am to arrange all the drudgery, as you requested. I imagine you already have a date for the ceremony?”
He nodded. “I will bring it tomorrow, to your church. You may take custody of the cursed thing in perpetuity.”
“Why, thank you,” she replied, fluttering those dark lashes at him. “And I suppose I ought to ask, Sir Ambrose—”
“Don’t,” he groaned, rubbing his thumb over his brow.
She smiled again as she spoke, “—where will we be living? Do you have a home here in London?”
“A townhouse, yes,” he acknowledged with a little sigh. “It’s a dreary, dark thing, though. I’m afraid I only really use the parlor and the bedroom. You may turn it out how you see fit, if you feel the need.”
Her face shifted, a brightening there that he hadn’t seen before. She leaned forward, color rising in those very high cheeks.
Oh?
His mind tingled a little, filing away the shift—what had gotten her, at long last, to react properly.
“It isn’t far from here,” he continued, watching her. “I can take you after the church if you wish to begin your scheming straightaway.”
“How very romantic,” she breathed, as though she wasn’t dripping sarcasm like a second language. “Have you a staff?”
“Of a sort,” he said with a shrug. “I have Zeller. And he has people, I think? You may ask him tomorrow.”
“Zeller,” she repeated, as though his manservant was a famed institution, nodding along in understanding. “Very well.”
She paused, touching her chin as her eyes swam briefly out of focus, something immense and likely horrifying whirring into motion in that mind of hers as she considered what he’d said.
He was content, for the moment, just to watch it occur. He wasn’t entirely sure what he’d agreed to when he woke up on that chaise this morning, but he was beginning to suspect that it was going to upheave absolutely everything he held comfortable and reliable in his horrifying, silky-smooth existence.
His mother was going to be deeply distressed over this, he thought smugly. A wife with no name to speak of, a golden complexion, and an impatient demeanor was a potent trio of the things that likely kept her up at night in fear, when imagining the future her most wayward son might have in store.
It would at least balance out the knighthood, he thought.
Maybe.
He found himself staring at her lips again. They really were remarkably lush, almost pillowy in texture and a very pleasing shape, when they weren’t saying things that made him feel ridiculous.
It was enough to make him wonder what in the blazes of hell she was getting out of this arrangement.
Surely there were more competent husbands out there that Beck could’ve secured for this creature. Significantly more competent, even if they weren't quite as pretty as Ambrose himself.
Maybe this was ultimately just a gambit to get him to stop winning games at the Fox, night after night.
Surely not? He didn’tkeepthe money, did he? He wasn’t causing any lasting harm.
He frowned.
“If the townhouse requires major renovation, it will take some time to accomplish,” Vix said, so suddenly, it startled him. “I will require access to your home and to a budget to begin the process, if you are amenable, especially if I must outfit my own living quarters in a currently unused space.”
“Oh,” he said, blinking, trying to push away the frown. “Yes, all right. I can do that.”
“Wonderful,” she said. “Aren’t you going to finish your cake?”
He stared down at it, mangled and a bit squished under his spoon, the sugar creating a little footpath toward the edge of his plate.
“Oh, and on the matter of a dowry,” she continued as he lifted his spoon and poked at the remains of his cake slice, “Teddy will assemble one, of course, alongside a trousseau, but we will need a concept of what your expectations are in advance. This is new territory for the both of us, you understand.”
