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there was a soft bank of grass instead, and the smell of flowers, and the irregular song of a bird who’d forgotten to go to bed on time.
    She was forgetting something too, but it didn’t matter at the moment, not when Tobias was, his hands were, and his leg...it felt so good that Genevieve arched up against it, shaking with longing for that feeling she so barely remembered, like a blaze of fire it was.
    He was talking, his voice was shaking too. “Sweet,” he was saying, “you’re so sweet, Genevieve. My Genevieve.” He moved his hand over her breast, and the mist slipped over her eyes again, just when she was about to stop him, so she pulled his head down to hers instead. She was burning, an ache spreading from between her legs, a fire that made her bite her lips before she demanded—begged—but he seemed to know. His hand was teasing at her breast, his thumb running over the silk of her bodice, caressing the soft skin just above her neckline. She twisted with an inarticulate protest. He was tormenting her, when all she wanted was that explosion, that passion and burst of light, that—
    His hand moved back to her breast again. A yearning moan flew into the night air like music to rival the nightingale.
    â€œWould you like to taste the honeysuckle, Genevieve?” he asked her. His voice was ragged with longing, but steady and controlled. He was brushing a flower across her hot cheek now, trailing its sweetness over her eyes, her lips.
    She opened her eyes reluctantly. Opening her eyes meant coming back to herself. Realizing the fact that she had once again played the part of the depraved hussy: What was it about Tobias Darby? Why did he inspire her to play such a wanton role?
    His eyes were black with longing. Carefully he took a flower and squeezed it against her lips. Her tongue caught the nectar, and then his mouth came swiftly down on hers to share the honeyed drop. “You see,” he told her, “one suckles the honey, Genevieve.”
    â€œI can’t do this, Tobias,” she whispered.
    â€œWe aren’t doing anything,” he said to her, thick eyelashes covering his eyes. “We’re merely kissing, Genevieve.” His hand lay innocently on the side of her breast, not moving, as if he thought she might forget what he had been doing. “I haven’t pulled down your bodice, for example.”
    â€œI should hope not!” she said, but her voice trailed away as he did just that.
    â€œOh God, Genevieve, you’re even more beautiful than I remembered,” he said hoarsely. Her breast was as luminous as the honeysuckles in the moonlight, plump and overflowing his hands, her nipple like a tender bud.
    Genevieve was struggling to make herself push him away. To reassert the fact that she was a dignified widow with—with dignity. Not the sort of woman who ran away with a man after knowing him three hours, not the sort of woman who could be seduced out in a garden. “You must think I’m nothing more than a light-skirt,” she whispered. “Did you come back because you thought that you could simply take me again—wherever you wished?” Her voice cracked.
    He froze as if she’d stabbed him in the ribs.
    â€œNo!” he said. “No!”
    She pulled up her bodice with one swift jerk and in a second she was on her feet and running back to the house, away from that scented garden and its promise of earthly delights. He caught her as she entered the ballroom door “Genevieve!” he said. “ Don’t think such a thing.”
    But Genevieve had noted the location of a ladies’sitting room off the ballroom, and she snatched up the lamp and darted in that direction. All Tobias could do was lean against the wall in the dark and curse himself. And then, once he could think rationally again, fetch her reticule and offer it to her.
    The lady who emerged some twenty minutes later was no hurly-burly girl