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“Just the ones you’ve shot, or the ones to whom you’re betrothed?” He continued unbuttoning the waistcoat.

“Well, you wouldn’t need nursing at all, had you not insisted on following me about London. I hardly need a protector. I’ve been managing on my own for months.”

He spread the edges of the waistcoat and tugged the lawn shirt free of his trousers, turning to present his side for her inspection. “All the more reason for me to worry as you seem indifferent to your safety.”

Viv peered at the place he’d bared in the folds of white lawn, where smooth, pale skin covered the ridge of his ribs. He was neatly made, his flesh taut and spare, nothing like the feminine softness she was used to seeing. She concentrated on the wound. His valet had not changed the dressing, and the edges of the plaster curled up around the place she’d shot him. She took a step closer, nerving herself to touch him. There was no sign of redness or swelling. With her fingertips she smoothed the plaster back into place, pressing against warm flesh and solid bone. She did not think he breathed. She needed him talking, sparring with her. She stepped back. “I suspect you worry more about the proprieties.”

“That, too, but a man can’t be indifferent to the safety of his betrothed.”

“You like saying that word, don’t you?”

“Does it bother you?”

“For a man who passed his newly returned ring from one woman to another on the same afternoon, you seem remarkably attached to the idea of our…connection.”

“Merely doing my duty.”

“You needn’t worry. I am perfectly capable of protecting myself from danger.”

“It’s the danger to the gentlemen of London, I fear. You see I’ve worn burgundy today.” He waited until she met his gaze. “I’m sure this waistcoat can handle bloodstains.”

“You are absurd. I’m not going to shoot you again. The danger is that our betrothal will be exposed as a sham. The Strydes delight in bringing people down. Scandal is their …meat.” She stepped back to let him restore his clothes to rights. “What we need is a signal between us.”

“A signal?” He turned away.

For a moment the only sound in the room was cloth sliding against cloth. Viv swallowed, suddenly conscious of the intimacy of those little rustlings. She liked how he was constructed, how the easy elegance of his clothes revealed his form. She had not been embarrassed to examine his wound. Nursing, after all, was a woman’s province. Only now did she feel she had overstepped some boundary. She dragged her mind back to the problem of a signal. “More like a code, a word you can say, or I can say, when the other is getting us into dangerous conversational waters.”

“What do you mean?” He turned back to her, his hands working the waistcoat’s tiny buttons.

Viv’s gaze narrowed to his hands. Her brain took a little nap. She had hardly slept, trying to see a way out of their sham betrothal. Now she could not remember why it had seemed so important. When her brain woke again, he was watching her, and she remembered what she had been about to say.

“We need a signal for moments like the one when you produced your duke, like a parlor conjurer pulling a dove out of an empty hat. Shouldn’t I, as your betrothed, know about the duke, who, according to your account, provided me with a copy of The Spanish Brothers?”

“Ah, good point.” He looked anything but worried. “You’d best tell me your story, then. Leave nothing out.”

“As you should tell yours to me.”

“Ladies first.”

Viv meant to resist him, to make him tell his story, but the landlord returned with a waiter. A little bustle ensued of setting covered dishes on the table and pouring drinks. The ordinary was a baked sole with roasted potatoes and a green pea soup. The mingled scents of still-warm loaves and freshly brewed coffee filled the little room. When the inn people withdrew, they ate in silence until Viv decided she must start the conversation.

“Very well. I’ll go first, though there’s little to tell. My father died at Waterloo on the day I was born. He was Lieutenant Richard Bradish of the 95th, and he died defending La Haye Sainte. Needless to say, his family found a living girl-child a poor substitute for a dead hero. My mother kept to her mourning couch at my grandparents’ estate until obliged to seek sympathy for her style of grieving elsewhere. We changed house often until she met an invalided navy man, Captain Frank Pennington. They married, settled in Weymouth, and quickly produced my four half-sisters. As making a low income go a long way is not my mother’s greatest strength, my sisters and I have become…resourceful.”

She watched his face for signs of judgment or pity, but he seemed to regard his fish with more interest than her story.

“What are your sisters’ names?” he asked.

It was not what she expected. “Pippa, Charlotte, Anne, and Eliza. Anne and Eliza are twins.”

“And how did you come to be in Lady Melforth’s employ?”

“Nearly two years ago, my aunt Louisa, my father’s youngest sister, took me to stay in Bath for a time as her companion. We met Lady Melforth, who had returned to England for medical treatment for her injured foot. At first, she thought the waters at Bath might serve, but soon found she required a London physician. Her relations, the Strydes, insisted that she hire a companion, and she asked my aunt if she could spare me, and I was hired. I consider myself most fortunate.”

He put down his fork and took a swallow of coffee, as if he’d not been listening at all.

“Waterloo.”

“Waterloo?” She didn’t follow.

“That must be our signal.” He lay his napkin on the table.

“What? We’re supposed to bring up Waterloo whenever there’s a risk of exposure? How are we to do that?”

“Simple. Suppose Mrs. Stryde wants to know something about your impression of the duke and you feel trapped.”

“Yes?”

“You say the duke collects Waterloo prints, and I take over. Or suppose I’m confused as to which of your four sisters, Pippa or Charlotte, is keener about playing the pianoforte, and I ask—”

“—is Pippa the musician or the mad historian, always going on about Waterloo?”

He grinned at her, his eyes full of merriment. He was enjoying their situation. He was not the one who might be exposed and sacked. “It’ll work, won’t it?”

At that moment the landlord returned to ask whether they required anything else. Mr. Larkin rose instantly and excused himself to deal with the bill. As he stepped through the door, the landlady appeared to show Viv to the necessary, and she collected her things. It was all done in the most gentlemanly of ways, but he had not told her his story. Viv knew she’d been outmaneuvered.