"Well, I suspected you," he pointed out, smiling slyly over his soup. It was true enough that young women often needed a 'cover' for being clever, at least if they wanted to be marketable in the same way that other young ladies were. The prevailing wisdom was that men ought to look for a woman who was pretty and accomplished and well-bred, but not particularly intelligent. When he and Miss Dempsey had met, however, she must have either given up feigning vapidity or she'd never been very good at it in the first place. Either way, he was glad.

And with that they had moved beyond the soup course; the servants cleared bowls and brought out the entree. Well, for all the turmoil at least they'd managed to avoid utter catastrophe through the first course — that was something.

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