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Here was this wealthy, strong, powerful man…and he was uncertain around her?

Olivia’s smile grew. “I know about Lord Salisbury’s campaign, and his speeches. I think it’s remarkable I actually agree with the Tory leader on something—he surprised me. Would you tell me about him?”

Hesitating only slightly, Alistair placed his tankard on the table, then drew his notebook forward. No, he drew it toward the hand she was touching. He maneuvered the notebook beneath his fingertips to hold it in place…so he wouldn’t have to move his hand out from under her fingertips?

I have never met him in person.

Ah, yes, of course. Alistair never went into Society. Had he been reclusive all of his life? That thought led to another. “Did you attend university?” she suddenly blurted out.

Yes, it was expected. It was not pleasant, but I made a few friends. You met Fawkes.

She remembered the quiet, handsome young man who had stood beside Alistair at their wedding, and said almost as little as her new husband.

Studying Alistair, she suddenly understood. Her fingers pressed against his skin. “You don’t want to give anyone else the chance to know you, that’s why you don’t go into Society!” When his brows drew in, she quickly shook her head. “No, that’s not what I meant. I meant…” How to salvage this? How to explain? “You do not speak. You think that will count against you if you ever had to stand in the House of Lords, or socialize at a ball, or play cards.”

The look he gave her was a cross between incredulous and pitying. He scrawled across the paper, “How CAN I stand and give a speech in the House of Lords?”

Ah.

“I’m sorry, Alistair,” Olivia whispered, wishing she’d managed to reign in her impetuous nature. “And I think you are doing wonderful things, armed only with your pen.”

He eyed her, his expression wary.

Waiting for her to mock him?

Never.

Somewhere in the last few days, this new husband of hers had earned her loyalty. Her respect. She still didn’t understand why he hadn’t sought out her bed, but she was coming to understand him in other ways.

He was kind, yes, and gentle. He cared about those beneath him—as evidenced by his letters, his campaigning, marrying someone like her.

It would be easy for a silly girl to lose her heart to someone as handsome and kind as him.

Luckily, she wasn’t a silly girl.

What do you want to know?

Olivia’s smile bloomed. “Everything! Tell me all about your campaigns! Tell me what Salisbury thinks! Tell me what the possibilities are to help the people in the East End!”

The night wore on. Alistair propped his elbow on the table, chin resting in his palm as he listened to her. The intensity of his gaze should’ve made her flounder, but instead she grew bolder, more excited to share her thoughts with him. There they sat—her in naught but a silk dressing gown, him with those glorious forearms on display—in a completely inappropriate, completely wonderful way.

They each finished their tankards, and poured another. She ate all of her Edam and Dunlop, then his as well—not because she was hungry, but because she didn’t want this strange conversation to end.

As a reporter, and then an editor, she’d had many strange conversations in many strange manners. But this was the first time she’d spent hours chatting with a person who could only write his answers.

She made him chuckle. He made her laugh—with only a twitch of his brow. Sitting here in the shadows, as the candles slowly burned down, she didn’t feel like a reporter and a source. She didn’t feel like a duke and a commoner.

She felt like friends.

Is this what marriage is supposed to feel like?

Chapter 11

A dinner? A dinner with his mother’s friends?

Bah.

Alistair hadn’t been able to talk her out of it. Well, to be fair, he hadn’t talked at all. But that morning he’d cornered his mother and glared at her until she’d relented and told him about the planned dinner for that evening. And then she’d had the audacity to poke him in the chest and tell him he would be attending.