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thing to say.
    “Are you daft? A plate? How could you be so cavalier?”
    Well, his intentions had been gentlemanly. Apparently he’d missed the mark. And badly. It would seem her intentions were to sit there and harangue him for his deplorable treatment of Alexandra.
    It was no less than he deserved.
    “So?”
    Nathan arched a brow.
    A beleaguered sigh escaped Olivia. “So what do you have to say on it?”
    “Nothing that would earn your understanding, Olivia.”
    Her jaw set resolutely. “No, you are probably right on that score. Lady Olivia,” she added, almost as an afterthought.
    He dipped in head. “Again, my apologies, Lady Olivia.”
    An uneasy silence descended, the two of them sitting their eyeing each other warily. Reaching for his cup, Nathan found it empty. He set it aside and drummed his fingertips distractedly on the tabletop.
    Olivia eyed them with no small amount of annoyance. “Must you do that?”
    Faced with Olivia’s icy displeasure, he brought them to a sudden stop. The palpable tension urged him up and out of the hostile dining room. Yet the alternative, finding a recently wed, blissfully happy relative of Alexandra’s, nauseated him. So he opted to remain there, seated next to his feisty adversary.
    An adversary who at the moment was stretching her neck and perusing the elaborate spread on the sideboard, before directing her attention to his untouched dish of baked eggs and toast and gingerbread.
    “That is the last of the gingerbread.” Her tone was accusatory.
    A quick look at the sideboard confirmed her findings.
    Wordlessly, he shoved the plate over towards Olivia, who eyed it with a blend of longing and reluctance.
    “Take it,” he urged.
    Olivia snatched it and nibbled an edge. “I took it, but only because you don’t deserve it.”
    “I do not disagree on that score.”
    Even with the table as a barrier, he still heard her stomping a foot under the table in frustration. “You aren’t supposed to be agreeable to everything I say. And you certainly shouldn’t be giving the last gingerbread treat to me.”
    For the first time since he’d scratched the bloody wager down in the books at White’s, Nathan smiled. Olivia didn’t wait for him to speak.
    “I don’t believe a man such as you is even capable of love.”
    Nathan flinched. Now that hurt. For all the mistakes he’d made, for his betrayal of Alexandra, he had never for one moment ceased to love her with such depth that it frightened him with its intensity. The moment he’d seen her stamping through Lady Williams’s card room, her face etched in agony, Nathan had felt the only part of him that resembled something good wither and die in his chest. He had been the monster to inflict a pain deep enough to harden the perpetual smile in her eyes.
    “Well, what do you say to that?” Olivia pressed, jerking him to the moment.
    “I’d say I would agree with you on most scores today with the exception of that charge. I loved your sister. I still do.”
    Olivia’s mouth fell gaping open. “I don’t believe you.”
    So now he was a liar. Which in thinking on it, Olivia was correct there as well.
    She continued. “I am certain there are many good, honorable gentlemen out there, men who will give freely of their heart. You, sir, are not one of those men. I can no longer sit here and converse freely with you.”
    A servant rushed forward and pulled her seat out. She climbed from it as regally as if she were the lady of the manor and stormed from the room.
    Nathan stared several moments at the open doorway and noted when Olivia cautiously reappeared. Clearing her throat, she glided back towards the table and snatched the partially eaten gingerbread up. “I still say you do not deserve the treat.”
    With that, she took her exit.
    And confirmed his road to winning Alexandra back was going to be an arduous one, indeed.

“What kept you, gel?”
    Alexandra tried not to jump at the question barked across the Duke of Danby’s