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Michael grimaced. “Surely a bit of conversation over a pint won’t cause you any permanent damage. Think of this as courting, if it helps, but without all the tedious etiquette, sweaty palms, and bad poetry.” He winked. “You needn’t answer anything that makes you uncomfortable. I only wish to know you better. Perhaps a less formal address is in order. May I call you Gwen? I’d suggest you call me Michael, but I fear that could lead to awkward mix-ups with the other Michael in your life.”

He wrinkled his nose in accordance with the part he was playing, then continued. “The problem of too many Michaels has been a lifelong aggravation for me. Among the more memorable instances, I was sent up to the headmaster in place of the far more troublesome Michael at school, who thought it clever to place a frog in our teacher’s inkwell.”

“I believe I can safely distinguish between the two Michaels,” she drawled.

Michael flagged down the barmaid and ordered another round. A little alcohol never hurt the odds when compelling a bit of honesty from a person. As she couldn’t possibly weigh over nine stone, two pints should more than suffice.

“Michael, then,” he agreed, offering his most charming smile.

Four pints of ale… four pints, and Michael’s tongue felt puffy, his head fuzzy, and his bladder uncomfortably full. Gwen, however, remained alert, bright eyed and spry as a hare.

Through his fumbling attempts to garner insight, the sole morsel he’d pried from her was that she’d harboured no desire for a first marriage and would flee at an enthusiastic sprint should another man foolishly offer for her. Well—that, and the folly of trying to out-drink Gwen Bevans.

For her part, she had no difficulty plucking bits of information from him, as though he were a goose and she was gathering down to fill her pillows. “Did your father not wish for you to join the family business alongside your elder brother—Gabriel, was it?” Gwen asked, leaning forward on her elbows to rest her cheek in her hand.

How the hell had they wound up here?

Christ, that cheek looked soft.

“Not that you explicitly said as much,” she continued while Michael searched the knot of questions for a thread he could safely tease free. “But it seems as if your family has quite a large expanse of land to manage. Plenty enough to keep two sons occupied, surely.”

Michael blinked dumbly at her. “My father passed away just before I reached my majority. I couldn’t flee Devonshire fast enough. All those sheep and miles of… Nothing.” He dropped his gaze to his glass and shook his head. “Gabriel was always better suited to that lifestyle, anyway.”

Michael needed to bring this little interrogation to a close, resuming again when he was clearheaded enough not to carve his family crest into the table with an eating utensil. He’d nearly referred to his father by his title, for Christ’s sake.

“If Gabriel is more similar to your father,” she began, “then I suppose you take after your mother?”

A wry smile twisted Michael’s lips. “Gabriel bears no resemblance in character to my father beyond caring for our land, and even that he goes about far better than my father ever could. As for me, I am so unlike my mother that she cannot bear to be in my presence, and the feeling is entirely mutual. In all the ways that matter, my parents were cut from the same cloth, while Gabriel and I are as different as chalk and cheese. We share a name, little else.”

“What’s he like… Gabriel, that is?”

Oh, well played, Gwen.

Having just declared Gabriel entirely unlike himself, whatever qualities he ascribed to his brother, he was essentially assigning the opposite traits to his own character. Clearly he could strike compassionate, loyal, and honourable off the list, the characteristics that best described his brother.

“He is…” Michael scrambled for a word, any word that was both true of Gabriel and not damning to himself in reverse. “Eloquent,” he settled on. “Diplomatic and kind.”

Oh, well done, Michael.

Kind… A virtue so universal as to be meaningless, claimed by both saint and scoundrel in equal measure. He might as well have declared his brother possessed a set of lungs… and that he, by contrast, preferred his gills—and was also, presumably, the household brute.

“He’s also a devoted family man, deeply attached to his wife and children.”

Yes. That was safe enough.

“Do you not wish to marry, or is it his sense of devotion that differs from your own nature?” she asked a little too sweetly.

Gwen probably didn’t deserve the half-hearted glare he shot her. He’d, after all, seen the trap laid and still stumbled directly into it like the inebriated fool he was.

She met his disgruntled frown, then laughed, warm and husky. The sound shivered beneath his skin, resonating through his body and filling all his empty spaces like a cat’s purr.

Yes, it was definitely time to go.

“Remind me never to drink with you again,” he grumbled, then lifted the glass to his lips, waiting for the last dollop of foam to trickle onto his tongue.

They’d lingered long enough that the dinner crowd had begun drifting in from the day’s labours. He would need to engage an ostler to move his trunks to the boarding house, having sent his own carriage and driver back to England along with his valet—a perhaps overly hasty decision prompted by the sight of Gwen in the pit. It had seemed a wise choice at the time. Michael had assumed she would be more easily won over by an ordinary man she could relate to than a gentleman who looked the part.

But over the last several hours, the way her eyes lingered appreciatively over the appearance he had so carefully cultivated had him questioning, rather pointlessly, whether he’d made the right choice. If she was attempting to conceal the fact that she enjoyed looking at him, she was doing a rather poor job of it.