Would she feel faint? Penny? Would she enjoy carrying his children?
He hadn’t even asked her to marry him yet. He told himself he was foolish to imagine he knew any woman’s mind, let alone hers, well enough to predict her answer, yet after last night he felt unreasonably confident. And ridiculously buoyed by the mere thought of her carrying his child.
Almost distracted enough to forget the revelation he’d had in Lady Carmody’s sunken garden. But not quite.
He pulled up in the stable yard, gave the reins to a groom, and handed Penny down. They waited for Nicholas to join them, then walked together to the house.
“That wasn’t as bad as I’d feared,” Nicholas said. “At least their curiosity wasn’t morbid—more that they simply wanted to know, to be reassured they had the facts correct and weren’t falling prey to mere rumor.”
“Indeed.” Penny glanced at Charles as they entered the house. “Now—why did we have to leave just then?”
He met her gaze, then looked at Nicholas. “Could we have a word with you in the library?”
Nicholas blinked. “Yes, of course.”
He led the way. She followed with Charles, wondering; once she’d focused on him, she’d realized he was tense. Annoyed, but not at her.
What had Nicholas done?
Nicholas led them into the library. Charles stood back and let her precede him, then followed and closed the door. Nicholas had gone to the large desk; he sat in the chair behind it.
Charles steered her to one of the chairs before the fireplace. “Sit down,” he murmured.
She did.
He didn’t. He paced to the hearth, turned, and looked at Nicholas.
Nicholas looked back at him, his diplomat’s mask very much in place. The conviction Nicholas had done something she hadn’t noticed grew.
When the silence had stretched as far as it could, Charles said, his tone hard and harsh, “Just tell me this. You aren’t, by any chance, setting yourself up as a target here, are you?”
Nicholas’s expression didn’t change, but his pallor was so pronounced that the slight flush that rose to mantle his cheekbones might as well have been red flags. “I have no idea what you’re suggesting.”
Charles looked at him, then shook his head. “I hope you lie better when negotiating trade treaties.”
Stung, Nicholas replied, “When negotiating trade treaties I deal with diplomats.”
“Indeed, but I’m not a diplomat, and it’s me you have to deal with here.”
Nicholas sighed and closed his eyes. “What I do is none of your concern.”
“If what you do has any connection whatever to the murderer of Gimby Smollet and Mary Maggs, it’s very much my concern.”
“I have no more notion than you which of those five is the murderer, or even if it is one of those five.”
The words were weary, but definite.
Penny broke in, “Just what did he do?”
Charles glanced at her, exasperation in his eyes. “He waltzed back and forth before their noses as if daring the murderer to come after him.”
Penny looked at Nicholas. “That wasn’t wise.”
“None of this was ever wise,” Nicholas returned.
She and Charles both picked up the allusion to something beyond the immediate subject.
“I know the caliber of this man,” Charles said. “Believe me, you don’t want to tangle with him.”