“You are staring at your fork as though it owes you a personal apology.” She cut a precise slice of ham. “I thought perhaps that was your version of enjoyment.”
“It is my version of restraint.”
“I see.” She lifted her eyes to his—and then, smoothly, performed a small transformation that he suspected was intended to appear to the room as the soft, private look of a woman adoring her husband. Her expression did not changedramatically. It was subtle—a slight softening, the faintest curve at the corner of her mouth, a quality of attention that suggested she found him wholly absorbing.
It was, he recognized with some irritation, deeply convincing.
“You are very good at that,” he said.
“I told you. When you grow up with a horde of siblings, you learn to perform emotions on demand.”
“And what emotion are you performing at present?”
“Devotion,” she said simply. “You are my love match, Tristan. Do keep up.”
“Mm.” He turned so that his shoulder angled toward her—a gesture that would read, to the room, as the instinctive leaning of a man who wished to be near his wife. Two could, evidently, play at this. “And should I look—devoted, in return?”
“Ideally.” She took a small sip of her wine. “Though I will confess, from what I have observed of you thus far, devoted may be something of a stretch.”
“What would you suggest as a more natural register?”
“Interested,” she said, after a moment’s consideration. “Interested, I think you can manage. You are, at minimum, interested.”
“I am,” he agreed. “Comprehensively.”
He watched her absorb that. The faintest color touched her cheekbones.
“That will do,” she said, with brisk composure.
“Or,” he said, setting down his fork, “I could simply do what Flynn has apparently been observing me do for the past quarter of an hour.”
She glanced at him sidelong. “Which is?”
“Look at you,” he said, entirely straightforwardly, “as though I am thinking about…” He paused, in the manner of a man selecting his words. “The event of the evening.”
The color in her cheeks, which had been faint, became rather less faint.
“That,” she said, after a beat, “might be a littletooconvincing.”
“On the contrary,” he said. “That is precisely the right pitch. A man does not look at his new wife and think about Parliament.” He reached over and, for the benefit of whatever portion of the table might be watching, lifted her hand from where it lay beside her glass and pressed his thumb briefly to the inside of her wrist—the same wrist he had held in the church, the same betraying pulse he could feel now, quick and unsteady beneath the thin kid leather. “He looks at her and thinks about his wedding night.”
She held very still.
“And if you would like to know,” he continued, in the same quiet, conversational tone, “precisely what I am thinking about, I would suggest it is this: that gown has been refitted once in haste, and I intend to take considerably more time with the reverse process.”
“Your Grace?—”
“Tristan.”
“Tristan.” She retrieved her hand. She did it without haste, and without any visible outward disturbance, and only the small, precise breath she drew gave her away. “You are incorrigible.”
“I have been called worse.” He picked up his fork again. “But you will admit the effect is convincing.”
She turned to look at him then—full on, without the performance of softness or devotion, simply looked at him the way she had looked at him in the church when he had raised the veil, with that same clear, assessing, undaunted gaze.
She swallowed visibly. “It is,” she said, quite steadily. “Very.”
He felt it somewhere below his ribs. Filed it underproblems for later, and returned to his breakfast.