Page 108 of A Very Bellamy Christmas

“Oh. Er, I don’t know. Do you have a preference?”

“The left.”

They changed sides.

Andrew gave a sigh of pleasure when he sat on the mattress. It was soft—perhaps too soft—but it was leagues better than the settee. Once he was fully reclined and covered, he turned to her. It was too dark for him to see anything but an outline.

“You can get in any time, Miss Martin.”

She barely depressed the mattress when she laid on the bed. Andrew felt something brush against his shoulder and then the bed shook as she jerked away.

“Lord Shelton!”

“Yes?” he asked mildly.

“You are not on your half.”

“My left shoulder is hanging off the mattress. If I move over any further, I will fall off the bed.”

She muttered something and again the bed shifted. This time, no part of her touched any part of him. A pity.

Andrew laced his fingers behind his head and stared up into the darkness overhead. Beside him, Miss Martin vibrated with tension. He frowned and turned to her. “Are you sure you will be able to slee—”

“I am fine.” The words sounded as if they’d been forced between clenched teeth.

He grinned. “You don’t sound fine. You sound—”

“I will be far more likely to sleep if you stop talking.”

He laughed. Not for the first time did the strangeness of the situation strike him. What could Kathryn have been thinking to organize such a stunt? She had done something similar at Chatham—locking the two of them together inside the armory, although not with the forethought and planning she’d employed this time. Thankfully they had only been sequestered for five or six hours and his cousin and the duchess had known it wasn’t Andrew’s fault, although he’d felt like an idiot for falling into her snare.

He had felt marginally better when she’d employed a similar trick on Fowler, trapping the two of them in one of Chatham’s hunting boxes, an episode that had lasted most of the night, far longer than his own incarceration with the vixen.

Lord only knew why she did such things. He smiled ruefully. It certainly kept life…exciting.

“My lord?”

He turned toward the motionless lump beside him. “I thought you were trying to sleep?”

“I am awake now.”

He chuckled at her accusatory tone and turned onto his side. “What did you want?”

The bedding shifted slightly, and he saw her small form propped up on an elbow, mirroring his pose.

“I cannot sleep.”

“Probably all that fruitcake you ate.”

“More likely that sherry.”

“You seemed to like the taste of it.”

“My father used to drink it.”

“Tell me about him.”

There was a long silence, and then, “Why?”