A Pernicious Fabrication (Beatrice Hyde-Clare Mysteries, #13)

by Lynn Messina

In recent weeks she had come to understand that he perceived her lack of confidence in herself also to be a lack of confidence in him, and while she did not entirely share the perspective, she could see how the emotional turmoil of her insecurities could begin to pall after so many months.

Ah, there it was, she thought, the misogyny she knew so well. It would not be a murder investigation without a healthy dose of male contempt.

She would never be so gauche as to cross the line into exuberant preening. What was its opposite? Subdued preening? Restrained preening? Preening inflected with a hint of morosity?