“I’m here on business.” True enough.

“What business?”

“This and that.”

“Estate business?”

“I’ll be attending to whatever’s on my study desk while I’m here.”

“But you’re here for some other reason?”

He could sense agitation building beneath her words; his instincts were awake, alert, and suspicious. His mission here was to be open, overt not covert. For once there was no reason he couldn’t cheerfully tell all, yet the very last person he’d expected to tell first-if at all-was her.

But if she was asking, then his most direct way forward was to tell her, and see how she reacted. Yet he wanted quid pro quo-what the devil was she doing traipsing about the countryside at midnight, let alone dressed as a male? And why the hell was she there and not at her home, Wallingham Hall, a mere four miles away? Come to that, why wasn’t she in London, or safely married and living with a husband? Oh, yes, he definitely wanted answers to all those questions, which meant the distance between them wasn’t going to work. If she lied…if he couldn’t see her face, her eyes, he might not pick it up.

Unhurriedly, he stood; his gaze on her, he walked, as unthreateningly as he could, to the bed and propped one shoulder against the post at its end. Her gaze hadn’t left him; he looked down into her eyes. “I’ll tell you why, exactly why I’m here, if in return you’ll explain to me why, exactly why you’ve arrived here at this hour, dressed like that.”

Her grip on the edge of the bed had tightened, but otherwise she hadn’t tensed. She stared up at him for a finite moment, then looked at the door. “I’m hungry.”