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that you can take advantage of me!”
    â€œI would never do such a thing, Genevieve.”
    â€œI would prefer that you address me as Lady Mulcaster,” she announced.
    And then she swept ahead of him up the stairs, so she didn’t see the way his eyes lingered on her curves. The Grecian tunic was delightful from every angle; the clinging silk left nothing about Lady Mulcaster’s curvy little figure to the imagination.
    Tobias swallowed and followed her up the stairs. Of course, she wasn’t loose, this girl of his. She was just Genevieve. And Genevieve could no more say no to him than she could marry that weasel she’d been kissing. She just didn’t understand that yet.

Chapter 4
In Which Genevieve Takes Lessons in Horticulture
    â€œT his is lovely!” Genevieve said as she wandered around the dining room. “I’ve never seen wallpaper in this precise shade. Isn’t it apricot?”
    â€œSomething like that,” Tobias answered. He was following her with an Argand lamp, holding it up so that she could look at the walls, and he could look at her. Her hair was far more lovely than the walls. Apricots and sunflowers, all mixed together with a bit of cream. And her face was just as adorable as he remembered, especially her gray-green eyes. They’d been passionate but naive when she was a girl. Now that passionate interest was tempered by a tantalizing hint of reserve.
    â€œOf course, you need furniture,” she continued. “There’s a cabinetmaker, George Bullock, in Tenterden Street who has some beautiful pieces.”
    â€œI have some furniture following from India, as well as rugs, tea caddies, that sort of thing.”
    â€œHow wonderful! My friend Carola has a glorious rug from India, all jeweled colors like a cashmere shawl.”
    â€œI’m hoping my wife will direct a refurbishing,” he said, following her into the ballroom.
    â€œYour wife?” she asked. “But you must acquire some furniture. One doesn’t find a wife overnight, you know.”
    Doesn’t one? Tobias thought, watching her sweet round bottom as she leaned over and tugged at the tall windows that lined the ballroom.
    â€œDo these open?” she asked.
    â€œThey lead to the garden,” he said, moving up next to her and twisting the handle sharply. It swung open into the night, and a rush of perfume came with it.
    â€œWhat a delicious smell!” Genevieve cried.
    â€œHoneysuckle opens at night.” He didn’t say that it was the garden that made him buy the house. He missed the lush beauty of Indian flowers.
    Genevieve danced out of the doors into the night, and To-bias knew in that instant that she hadn’t changed, not a single inch of her. She may have acquired the elegance of a très-grande dame, but she still had the exuberance that had sent her into a carriage with him at age eighteen. He would never forget seeing her for the first time. It was at a pestilently tedious party that his father had insisted his three sons attend, because he owed Genevieve’s father so much money. Darby Senior had owed everyone within fifty miles of their house substantial sums. “If one of you could marry the chit of the house,” his father had told them, “we’d be in the clover.”
    Tobias had figured that comment was really directed at Simon, his elder brother. Simon was his father’s heir, and already more polished and elegant than any gentleman their side of London. Whereas he and Giles were rough-and-tumble lads who scarcely knew their way around the ballroom. They were naught more than younger sons of a hardened gambler who always lost. Who would want either of them?
    She had. He’d walked into that party prepared to endure twenty minutes of turgid conversation, except there was a girl standing near the piano, and she looked at him. Genevieve was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his life. It took him