Jonathan and Amy by Grace Burrowes

quite fetching in your present location, and given how we comported ourselves in that location not twenty-four hours past, you might consider placing your person elsewhere.”
    Miss Ingraham?! “You want me to leave?” The possibility that Jonathan would not want her if she were engaged to another had haunted her since she’d heard Nigel’s awful pronouncement.
    â€œLeave?” Still he made no move to approach her. “I was rather hoping…” He glanced around the room. “May I be honest?”
    â€œHonesty would be appreciated.” She steeled herself for a polite tongue-lashing about women who fled engagements and frolicked under false pretenses.
    â€œI was thinking, Miss Ingraham, that you might remove to the settee, where I could take the seat beside you without risking—” Another sigh. His gaze fell on Amy’s face, his expression somber. “If I might be very honest, I was rather hoping you might let me hold you.”
    She flew across the room into his arms, lashing her own around his waist. “I am not engaged to Nigel. I cannot be engaged to Nigel.” She repeated what had become her private prayer over and over, her face pressed to Jonathan’s chest.
    His hand settled on her hair. “Amy, please don’t cry.”
    She did not oblige his request. While he walked her to the bed—not the blighted settee—she accepted his handkerchief and his physical support.
    â€œI cannot fathom what Nigel is about.” She dabbed at her eyes with Jonathan’s linen, the lavender scent of it soothing. “He leaves my sisters and me to eke out an existence on the edge of poverty for years, then comes strutting around condescending, as if… Oh, I could just slap him, Jonathan. Him and his infernal mama.”
    â€œI am more relieved than you know to hear this.” Jonathan murmured these words against Amy’s hair, and the very sound of his voice calmed her further. “When you were so standoffish at the stream today, I began to wonder, and then when you did not come up to the nursery…”
    She reached for his hand. “You declined to walk in the garden.”
    â€œI did not want Deene’s lady to haul his perishing lordship out for a breath of fresh air along with us.”
    So they’d both been in an agony of uncertainty. This comforted Amy a very great deal, but not quite enough. “Jonathan, what am I to do?”
    â€œYou’ll not marry that buffoon.”
    â€œBut he spoke as if there were documents.”
    â€œThen we’ll demand to see them.” He sounded not simply resolute, he sounded as if he relished the whole idea of brangling with Nigel.
    â€œJonathan, you must be careful. Nigel has a nasty streak.”
    â€œThis is about money, Amy. I’m almost sure of it. When it comes to money, trade, and dirty business, I have a nasty streak too.”
    In contrast to the ferocious undertone in his voice, his hand on Amy’s back was gentle.
    She let her head rest on his shoulder and put his handkerchief aside. “How can you know money is at the root of this? Nigel thought I went into service to indulge my independent nature. Even if I had—which is an absurd notion—that doesn’t explain why he let poor Hecate and Drusilla languish without any dowry at all.”
    â€œAll the more reason to conclude the man is eyeing his exchequer.”
    â€œOr his mama is. She’s a dragon.”
    â€œThen you will allow me to slay your dragons, but can we please be more comfortable while we discuss the particulars?”
    â€œYou want to remove to the settee?”
    â€œNo, my dear. I want to remove your clothes.”
    He’d brought his arms around her, and at his words, the last of Amy’s anxiety abated to a manageable level. “There’s more we need to discuss, Jonathan. My sisters must be informed of these developments.”
    â€œWe’ll