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rhododendron, late tulips, and clematis twining over trellises. Color also dotted the more formal perennial borders, which were just coming into bloom. Beyond the garden a smooth expanse of green park extended all the way to the treeline. All this, but one small portion of the Abbey grounds.
    I considered the miniature railway that had brought me from the station, the Mono, the stone-walled workshop with machines that hummed and clanked and whirred, sounding the arrival of a great scientific age. An age, where even women might find a place outside their roles as wives and mothers.
    I considered Julian Stonegrave . . . and shivered. If I had met him in the drawing room for the first time, clean-shaven and properly dressed, I would have thought him strikingly handsome in a dark, shivery way. Intriguing? Without doubt. Of romantic interest? That too.
    But I had met him in monster guise, dirty, bearded, and with what I now recognized as a carnal gleam in his eye. I was his, he knew it. The product of an inventive, unconventional household, the perfect wife for an inventive, unconventional baron.
    Except his bride was afflicted by that insidious disease, naivety. And th at even worse disease , ignorance.
    My fists clenched. I snapped the draperies back in place.
    Just as the horse-mad set invested heavily in breeding stock, Rochefort had risked a considerable amount of money to buy my bloodlines. Not so much the duke, an earl, and a bishop on the family tree, but with an eagle eye on the creative genius of my father, which had begun to show in me by the time I was four. Not that I claimed to rival my father, but there was little doubt I’d bred true. And mixed with the Stonegrave bloodline . . .
    Josiah Galsworthy sired no fools. I could actually feel the heat draining from my blood, the angry flush from my cheeks. Returning to the comfortable chair in front of the fireplace, I contemplated my problem with a return of common sense, a trait I’d frequently been told I had in abundance. Well, someone had to. It was definitely not Papa’s forte.
    All this could be mine.
    I would have access to an extraordinarily fine workshop.
    I would have a husband who understood the joys of “tinkering.”
    I would have a husband who had bought me.
    I would have a husband who had exhibited the good sense to procure a wife of intelligence with interests similar to his own. Now that sounded better!
    I would have a husband who ruled the roost—I had few doubts about that. As single-minded about his work as Papa, but not as malleable. I might have seen very little of my guardian, but about that I had no doubt.
    I sighed, once again glaring at the innocent coal grate. Cupboard love. I had not thought myself so shallow. But, in truth, Rochefort was the very devil of a man. Ruggedly handsome, dynamic, intelligent. A woman might be willing to yield the reins to such a man. Occasionally, that is.
    A surprise thought penetrated my guilty contemplation of the baron’s assets. If I hadn’t been so shocked by his pronouncement, I might have had the presence of mind to realize a fiancée had every right to smooth salve on his burns. Which I should have done under any circumstances. It wasn’t like me to be so faint-hearted.
    I was across the room, digging in my trunk before I could stop and think about what I was doing. If Rochefort had gone to bed, then I was too late, for tracking a gentleman to his bedchamber was as forbidden as running naked down Bond Street. But if he was still up . . .
    I found the salve Mrs. Jenkins had concocted to soothe the many scratches, scrapes, and burns that occurred in Papa’s workshop. Back to my bedchamber, a quick peek in the mirror. Unfortunately, black was not my best color, and the strain of this long day showed in unnaturally pale skin and lines on my forehead and beneath my eyes that looked as if they weren’t going away any time soon. My blue eyes reflected doubts I refused to consider. Carefully, I patted my