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tomorrow?”
    Victoria cleared her throat, lowering her hands from where she’d draped them over his shoulders. “I’m going shopping tomorrow with Lucy Havers and Marguerite Porter.”
    “A drive in Hyde Park on Saturday, then.”
    “I have an engagement.” She ducked out from under his arms, making a show of straightening her hair.
    He lifted an eyebrow, wondering whether the engagement was with Lord Marley. “I am getting the distinct impression that you don’t want to be seen with me.”
    Hesitation glinted in her eyes. “I still think we may be taking this too seriously,” she offered. “Perhapseveryone will come to their senses in the next week, and we won’t have to go through with this silly business.”
    “Perhaps they will. But you will go driving with me on Saturday morning.”
    She lifted her chin. “Or you’ll do what?”
    An unbidden smile touched his mouth. Challenging him wasn’t exactly the best way to be rid of him, but she would discover that soon enough. “As I told you last night, a kiss is only the beginning of a seduction. The next step is much more…interesting.”
    Before she could comment on that, he swept a bow and pulled the door open again. “I’d best inform my family that I’m getting married. Until Saturday, my lady.”

Chapter 3
    “H a, ha! Sin!”
    Christopher Grafton bolted down the stairs of Drewsbury House and flung his arms around his brother. Sinclair returned the embrace, holding his younger brother tightly for a long moment before he released him again. A knot he hadn’t realized he carried loosened in his chest. He’d lost one brother, but he’d been able to return before anything happened to Christopher. And nothing would happen to him now.
    “It’s good to see you, Kit,” he said, grinning as he stepped backward. “You’ve grown a foot.”
    “At least a foot. I’d been hoping I was taller than you now, blast it.”
    “Christopher has your grandfather’s height,” a female voice said from the morning room doorway. “I’m surprised you recognized him after five years.”
    Sinclair’s heart jolted, and his sense that he was dreaming left. Now it was real. Now he was home. Slowly Sinclair turned to face the voice. “You haven’t changed a bit, Grandmama Augusta. I would recognize you anywhere,” he drawled.
    Augusta, Lady Drewsbury sipped the cup of tea sheheld in her hands and eyed him over the rim. “Of course I’ve changed. I’ve lost a grandson.”
    “Grandmama,” Christopher chided, flushing to the roots of his dark brown hair. “He’s just come back. Give him a moment to breathe before you pounce.”
    Her slender shoulders rose and fell with the breath she took, while her keen blue eyes remained on Sinclair, assessing him. He wondered what she saw. This was what he had dreaded on returning to London—not the mess he’d been forced to make of his reputation, or even the prospect of ferreting out Thomas’s murderer with the trail two years old, and well-covered to begin with.
    No, more than anything else he had dreaded facing his grandmother with no explanation he was free to give her for his god-awful behavior over the past five years, and especially for the past two. “No worries, Kit,” he said smoothly, those same five years the only thing that kept his voice steady. “Don’t spoil our grandmother’s fun. No doubt she’s been plotting her speech for ages.”
    “Sin,” his brother murmured.
    “I did have a speech,” she agreed, her tone as calm as if she were discussing the color of his coat. “Now that you’re finally here, though, I can’t see that it would make any difference. You disappointed me, Sinclair. I have since lowered my standards for judging your behavior. As Christopher said, you’ve returned. Come and have some tea.”
    He bit back his cynical response to the insult as unfair. Sin shook his head. Of all the yelling and weeping and name-calling with which Augusta might have greeted him, her quiet