Ambrose immediately closed his eyes and sagged again, feigning sleep. If someone had come to boot him, he wasn’t going to make it easy.
“Ah,” came a deep, masculine voice. “You’re still here. Good.”
If he hadn’t saidgood, Ambrose would have continued his playacting with impermeable perfection. But it was unexpected, and so he opened one of his eyes.
“Mr. Beck,” he said, his voice still raspy and pathetic.
Thaddeus Beck loomed in the sunlight, his huge frame blocking out most of the offending light as he frowned down at the interloper on his chaise. For such a big man, Ambrose thought he was rather more reasonable than he needed to be.
After all, if he were built like that, he’d simply slap people around until they did what he wanted.
“Sit up,” Beck suggested, turning to shrug his jacket off and walk behind the bar. “I’ll get you a glass of water.”
“Kind of you,” Ambrose answered, suddenly wary. “Where’s your wife? Or your … other wife?”
Beck paused, his hand halfway to lifting a glass, and looked sternly at Ambrose from across the room. “What?”
“I … don’t know which one you married,” he admitted with a shrug, then winced. “One of them, surely? One of them is your wife, right? Not the Irish one?”
Beck stared at him for such a long, quiet moment, blinking only once.
Ambrose wondered if he was about to get slapped after all.
“Hannah is my wife,” Beck finally said, creaking back into motion and setting the glass on top of the bar. “Ember—the Irish one—is my business partner. She is married to a barrister. You, I believe, are not married to anyone?”
“Well,” Ambrose said with a frown, shifting around in his seat. “Not yet. What are you saying, Beck? That I’m a spinster? Past my prime?”
Mr. Beck did not answer and instead made a noise in his throat as he turned for the carafe of water.
“I was asking,” he said as he poured, “if you were unwed. It seems you are. That is what I came here to speak to you about.”
Ambrose blinked, stunned for a moment by the pivot the conversation had taken. It was a little thump to the chest,something to stir up the deadened nerves that usually just huddled there in gray repose.
He didn’t mind it.
“You want me to marry someone?” he asked, reaching out an arm in an indication that Beck should pick up that glass of water he had just poured and walk it around the bar and over to the chaise like a good gentleman.
Beck narrowed his eyes.
Some of the water spilled when he snatched it up, but it seemed the gent did understand a bit of nonverbal communiqué.
“I wasn’t planning on marrying this week,” Ambrose said thoughtfully, taking the glass with a nod of thanks. He sipped some of the water, smacking his lips in approval at finally having some lubrication on his dry vocal cords. “Who’s on offer?”
Beck stood over him, and instead of bristling at the question, he did something far more unsettling. He chuckled.
This startled Ambrose enough that he scooted back on the chaise to get a better look at the man. He took a bigger gulp of the water. He wondered if he ought to have asked for coffee instead.
“My wife wanted to propose this to you, you know,” said Beck, flipping a chair from the faro table around and sitting on it. “She still might, if you decline my attempt. The thing is, Aster, I find something about you just familiar enough that I felt obligated to be the one to explain to you what you’d be getting into, because I’m entirely certain you are going to agree to it.”
Ambrose scoffed. “You think this is my first marriage proposal, Beck? I’ll have you know that the ladies are rabid withenthusiasm to marry any Aster. Add my cheekbones into the mix and they go quite feral.”
“This prospective bride is not feral,” Mr. Beck said, tapping his fingers on the edge of the table. “I cannot even promise you enthusiasm, to be completely frank.”
“Oh?” Ambrose lifted a brow, leaning forward, some of his white-blond hair falling into his eyes. “Then what does she want with me?”
Beck gave him half a smile, almost a pitying little thing. “Hannah said that last night you lamented that only children get governesses, and that you wished you had someone to tell you what to wear and where to stand and what time to eat and so on. Is that true?”
Ambrose frowned. “Of course it’s true. Doesn’t everyone?”
