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of this equation had to come to the same conclusion for this to work, because she would never agree to marry him otherwise.
    And that idea didn’t startle him or trouble him in the least. He’d been bandying about in his head for weeks, and his only worry had been that Theo wouldn’t be what he’d remembered and what he’d discovered about her had been incorrect. And that she wouldn’t feel the same pull between them that he did.
    Slowly he lifted his head again, looking down at her oval upturned face with her closed eyes, long lashes, and soft, parted lips. Hopefully that kiss had done at least something to convince her that they belonged together. If it hadn’t, he’d lost before he’d barely begun.
    Her eyes opened, light green with a thin rim of brown around the edge of the iris. Lovely eyes. Eyes he could imagine gazing into for a very long stretch of years to come.
    “You know,” she said, her voice a touch breathless, “you may not be as objectionable as I first thought.”
    “I’ll call that progress.” And that remained the crux of the problem, as well; he liked her already, but she hadn’t yet decided how she felt about him. Particularly since in her mind he hadn’t come to Devonshire with her in mind at all.
    She grinned. “You’re an optimist.”
    “I suppose I am.” He smiled back at her, mentally crossing his fingers and sending up a prayer to whomever might be listening. “But there’s one more thing you need to know. I’m not the only one tired of the mob of females and the parade of fox hunts. My father expects me to marry by the end of the year. If I don’t, he’ll find someone for me and see that I do so, anyway.”
    That particular conversation had likely been the least friendly one he’d ever had with his father, but he did understand the old marquis’s reasoning. And he wanted Theodora to understand it, as well. “He lost a son two years ago, Theo. He’s worried about losing another, and about his...legacy, I suppose it is. He wants to know that everything’s been set to rights.”
    She furrowed her brow. “And those other house parties with the half dozen foxes?”
    Geoffrey shrugged. “I couldn’t very well refuse. And I suppose I was looking. But I’ve been comparing every female I meet to one lady. To you.”
    “Based on two very brief conversations?”
    It didn’t quite seem the time to admit that he’d been interrogating everyone he could find about her. Not if he didn’t wish to send her fleeing. “Not only that. But I need to know if you think you could – if you would at least consider the idea of...of me, I suppose.”
    “A few days to decide the course of the remainder of my life? That’s quite daunting.”
    “And not very romantic,” he agreed, wishing he’d foregone the other visits and come to Beldath earlier. That he hadn’t wasted so much time, and that he had more of that same time to convince her of what he’d known for a certainty the moment he’d spied her again by the stream, bedraggled and spattered with mud. “But there is some saying or other about the longest journey beginning with a single footstep. Everything begins somewhere. Perhaps we begin right here.”
    She sent him a thoughtful smile that seemed to have sunlight at its edges. “Perhaps we do.”

Chapter Five
    T HE SUN WAS the merest sliver over the western hillside when Theodora and Geoffrey returned to the manor house garden. She almost attempted to convince herself this was all a dream, but that would have meant waking up to realize that Geoffrey had come to Beldath in pursuit of Belle after all, and that she was the matrimonial choice only for men who needed money.
    Geoffrey held her hand as they passed the autumn roses, every press of his fingers against hers sparking warmth and wonder. The cynical part of her, the one that knew how ill she showed in public, couldn’t help pointing out that her enthusiastic reaction to his pursuit was simply because she’d never