A Fool Again (7 page)

The pain in her voice was like another dagger. He couldn't bear it. “He wasn't worthy of you, Genevieve!” The truth of it burst from his chest.

“Don't tell me of his underhanded business dealings,” she said wearily, turning from him. He let her go without protest. “I was married to one of the most avaricious men in all England for six years. I can judge illegalities as well as the next person. Felton may sometimes walk on the far side of the letter of the law, but he doesn't engage in truly nefarious practices.”

It was true enough. “But he doesn't want you.” Genevieve laughed, and it wasn't a humorous sound. “He won't now, at any rate.”

“I mean it,” Tobias said fiercely. It was slowly dawning on him that he'd made the worst mistake of his life. By taking away Genevieve's ability to choose between him and Felton, he'd destroyed their marriage. Now she would always pine for that sleek bastard in a corner of her heart. The horror of it made his voice harsh. “I can show you,” he said.

“What do you mean, you can show me?”

She had turned her back to him and was leaning in the doorway now. The curve of her slender neck, just visible below the knot of her hair, made him ache with sudden desire. Beyond her the rain was still falling, softer and more quietly. All the boys had run home, and the huge Commons was inhabited by nothing but a few birds pecking at crumbs, heedless of the rain splashing on their beaks.

He didn't touch her. “I can demonstrate to you, clearly demonstrate, that Felton does not love you as you expect.”

“How? By giving me proof that he has a mistress?” she asked, not bothering to look back at Tobias. “I don't care.”

“What do you mean, you don't care?” he roared, whirling her about. “You don't mind having a husband with a mistress? And in our marriage? Shall we marry and I sally forth every Thursday night to spend the evening with a pretty little French minx, and you won't give a damn? Is that what you're telling me?”

Genevieve narrowed her eyes at him. “If you go off with some pretty French minx, I am quite certain that I can amuse myself!” she retorted.

Tobias opened his mouth to bellow and thought better of it. “You haven't answered my original point, which suggests that you know as well as I do that Felton hasn't the proper feeling for you.”

“He has, not that it matters now,” Genevieve said steadily. “He simply doesn't express himself in the boisterous manner that you do. He is a
gentleman.
”

“We'll see, shall we?” Tobias said.

Genevieve bit her lip. Tobias was obviously enraged, though what he had to be angry about when
she
was the one losing her fiancé, she didn't know.

“I can prove to you that your so-called gentleman doesn't give a fig for you,” he said curtly.

“Fine,” Genevieve snapped. “Fine! You do that. You can prove it to me this very evening, why don't you?”

“That might be a problem, as Felton expects to spend the evening with you,” Tobias said, shrugging on his coat. “Why don't we say tomorrow afternoon, at my hotel?” He looked around the hut. “I very much regret to tell you that our piglet will not be able to attend, as he made good his escape while we were otherwise occupied.”

Genevieve looked around the hut. “Oh, no! What will he eat?”

“He's a pig,” Tobias said. “He'll find something. Shall we be gone? The rain seems to have lessened.”

They tramped across the Commons side by side. The piglet was lost. Genevieve's shoes were ruined. That seemed all one to the fact that her life was ruined. Her elegant, beautiful little shoes were ruined, and her life was ruined, and now she was marrying a big brute instead of her sleek, sophisticated Felton.

Luckily the wind was tossing the oak trees, sprinkling them liberally with rain. And if warm drops mingled with chilly water on Genevieve's face, no one could possibly tell the difference.

N
aturally, Lucius Felton appeared in response to Tobias's note. Tobias had stowed Genevieve behind a screen, in the corner of his private sitting room at Symon's Hotel. Felton came in, wearing an immaculate gray jacket, fitted in such a way as to make his lean body look as polished as marble. Tobias thought for a moment about smashing his fist into Felton's jaw but bowed and waved him to a chair instead.

Felton took his time, the insolent bastard, strolling around the room and glancing at the furnishings. “I've never liked this heavy Egyptian style,” he said. “Thomas Hope has done England a great disservice, to my mind.”

Tobias could play this game as well as the next man. He walked over to stand next to Felton and smiled, the smile of an Indian snake charmer. “Genevieve tells me that I should furnish my house with the cabinetry of George Bullock,” he remarked. “Do you know of his work?”

“Spectacular pieces,” Felton said idly, inspecting a huge griffin foot that supported the screen behind which Genevieve sat. “Your grandchildren will squabble over who gets your washstand.”

Tobias turned briskly to the two seats next to the fire. “Whisker is now in my possession,” he said without preamble.

Felton drifted to a seat opposite him and sat down, delicately balancing a mahogony walking stick against his chair. “Ah, what a fortunate man you are,” he purred. “Let me see if I have this correct. You are starting your stables with Prudence, Nyar, Minuet, Smolensko, and Whisker? Impressive.”

“More than impressive,” Tobias said gently. “Those five horses represent the finest racing stock in all England.”

“True,” Felton admitted.

“I understand you had to shoot a mare at the Brighton Derby,” Tobias said, lashing on a bit of false pity. “Silk, from Ormonde and Angelica, am I correct?”

But a glance at Felton's eyes made Tobias close his mouth. That was agony that flashed across the man's face.

“I've had second thoughts about taking the horses to India,” Tobias said, watching Felton closely.

“They are unlikely to survive the trip,” Felton told him flatly.

“I am thinking of giving them to you.”

There was utter silence, broken only by the faint clatter of carriage wheels in the street outside. Tobias waited, willing Genevieve to keep silent in her corner of the room.

“I saw Genevieve Mulcaster for the first time quite accidentally,” Felton said, lifting his stick and staring at it as if looking for scratches. “I was investigating a colt in a nearby village. She had to do her own shopping in the village, you know. Mulcaster was too damn cheap to hire enough servants. I saw her, crossing the square.”

Tobias could see the picture in his mind. A dusty little English square, and then there was Genevieve, with her laughing face, her magnificent hair, and that glorious, lush little body. It seemed he had made something of a mistake. Perhaps Felton—

But Felton was shrugging. “I love her as much as I'm capable,” he said, putting his stick down. “But more and more I am persuaded that I am not capable of the emotion that Genevieve would wish to receive.” He looked at Tobias. “Might I point out that her affection for me may prove a problem for you?”

“Or it might not,” Tobias said.

“Perhaps you can convince her,” Felton said, with a wry twist of his lips.

And Tobias realized with a shock that under different circumstances, he'd quite like the man. Damn him to hell. “I shall do my best,” he replied noncommittally. “The horses will be sent to your stud tomorrow.”

“Perhaps you'll walk me to the lobby to discuss the matter?”

Tobias was a little surprised, but he closed the door behind them. He walked down the hallway as quickly as he could; if Genevieve was distraught by Felton's betrayal, he wished to comfort her. It couldn't be an easy thing for a woman to hear herself traded for five horses.

Felton stopped when they reached the ornate lobby of Symon's Hotel, with its high, arching ceiling and magnifi-cent Egyptian furniture. He paused for a moment to light a cheroot and then looked at Tobias, shaking back a lock of hair. “You might want to tell Genevieve that she oughtn't to wear perfume on days when she is playing spy,” he said.

Tobias stared into his heavy-lidded eyes. “You knew she was there.”

Felton blew out smoke. “I want the horses.” Then he looked at Tobias. “Don't fool yourself, Darby. I wanted her as well.” His voice was hard. “But”—he blew a cloud—“I believe she'll be happier with you.”

Tobias put out his hand. “I wish you well with those horses, Felton.”

“They'll have to do, won't they?” And he walked out the door into a blaze of sunshine, a slim figure in gray, swinging a polished cane and walking with a controlled prowl.

Tobias watched him go. Under different circumstances, he would more than just like the fellow. They would indeed be friends.

Then he turned. Genevieve was waiting.

S
he wasn't crying. She was sitting in the very seat that Felton had deserted, twisting a lock of hair in her fingers. She looked up when he entered the room. To his utter relief, she didn't seem hysterical or heartbroken.

“How are you?” he asked.

“All my life, I've been tossed back and forth between men like a delectable sweet. Why should I feel any different now that I have discovered just how much the sweet is worth in horseflesh?”

Tobias's heart sank. He sat do wn opposite her.

“I should like to go home now,” Genevieve said in a cold little voice. “Unless you would like to take further advantage of your marital rights, or should I call them premarital rights?” She waved her hand toward the closed door leading to Tobias's bedchamber.

“Am I such a bad bargain, then?” he asked. “I told you that Felton didn't have proper feeling for you. But I do have that feeling for you, Genevieve. And you feel for me as well, whether you wish to admit it or not.”

She looked at him, and he couldn't read her expression. “I am struck by what excruciatingly bad taste I have,” she said conversationally. “First you, and then Felton. Both of you utter muckworms. How could I be so unlucky?”

“Muckworm is a harsh term,” Tobias said, controlling his temper with an effort. “I'm sorry if you didn't care for my offering Felton the horses. I wanted you to see what kind of man he was.”

“Oh, I'm not talking about that,” she said with a sharp little laugh. “I consider your true nature to have been exposed the morning after we eloped, the morning when you did not arrive to ask my hand in marriage.”

“Isn't the relevant point that you married another man?”

“
I
had nothing to do with it,” Genevieve said with brutal precision. “You took me in a carriage to Gretna Green without having the common sense to evade my father, took my virginity in the carriage, and then failed to stop my ensuing marriage to Lord Mulcaster.”

“I apologize for not having the forethought to avoid your father,” Tobias said, carefully controlling his voice. “It was the first elopement I had arranged, and I didn't know much about the route.”

“You should have asked someone!”

“I believe that I was not thinking rationally at the time.”

“You had been drinking!” Genevieve spat. He looked so
innocent,
and yet he was the worst kind of rakeshame.

“All evening,” he agreed. “I was jug-bitten.”

She was starting to feel shaky. “Otherwise I suppose you would never have thought of such a thing as to elope with me,” she said, trying for a dignified tone.

“Likely not,” he agreed. He folded his arms over his chest.

“Well, it's nice to have clarified that bit of information,” she said bitterly.

“Would you have eloped with me?” he asked.

“I did so, didn't I!” she snapped.

“But you were muzzy as well,” he reminded her. “All that champagne...I doubt you would have eloped with me had you not been imbibing champagne, Genevieve. We were both inebriated.”

“I was not inebriated. I have naught to blame my bird-witted behavior on except youth and stupidity.”

“You seem to have embroidered the occasion in your memory, but I have no difficulty remembering that I scarcely knew you from Adam and a few hours later was scrambling down a country lane planning to flee to Gretna Green.”

“You knew me! We'd known each other our whole lives.” All those days when she'd dressed carefully, spending hours combing her hair and dreaming of the unpredictable, beautiful boy next door, and he would say that he scarcely knew her? “You must be joking!” she cried, more furious than ever. “My father was your parents' nearest neighbor from the time you were eight years old until your father lost his house.”

He shrugged. “Of course I know that fact. And I'd seen you occasionally. But I did not know
you,
Genevieve. Not until I met you at that musicale.”

Genevieve could even remember the first time she saw him. It was the Whitsuntide Fair, and Tobias was twelve years old. Right in the middle of a play put on by the village children, Mrs. Briglet sprang from her chair with a piercing shriek because he'd tucked a hedgehog into her reticule. Genevieve had worshiped him from the moment she watched him dash from the square, laughing madly as his father howled after him, “Devil's Spawn!” Tobias Darby was the opposite of everything Genevieve had ever known, growing up in her quiet, passionless house, and being raised by an elderly father who was fond of her, although easily tired by her over-boisterous nature, as he called it.

Her rage grew. “What a pretty picture,” she said cuttingly. “You meet a young lady at a musicale whom you claim to barely know. You are intoxicated, and she the same. You dash out into the night, hire a carriage, and take off for Gretna Green. You manage to deflower her
twice
—”

“You can't deflower someone twice,” he put in. But he wasn't amused.

“You—you take a moonstruck girl and, and take your pleasure twice in a moving vehicle, and then once her father appears, you decide to travel to India, without even bothering to make a formal appeal for her hand. You, sir, are a blackguard! Worse than your father, in fact!”

He was suddenly very white. “How could I have made an appeal for your hand? You married Mulcaster.”

“Don't tell me a barefaced lie!” she cried. “If nothing else, you owe me the truth! On second thought,” she added bitterly, “why don't we omit the flummery? I quite understand that your conscience has been bothering you. Well, it needn't. I am a respectable widow, thanks to Erasmus having the kindness to marry me after you soiled me. I have a jointure, and no need for a husband.”

“But I have need of you, Genevieve. And it wasn't a soiling.” He looked straight into her beautiful eyes, choosing his words carefully. “Am I understanding you correctly—”

“Perhaps I might ask the first question,” she interrupted. “Perhaps you could explain why you never came for me, after my father intercepted our carriage.” Tobias may look as blameless as a buttery cake, but he was precisely what her father had labeled him: a brazen-faced Lothario, who'd taken what he wanted and abandoned her. “My father would have allowed us to marry, given what had occurred between us. Yet you never came.” The memories of her father's rage on discovering that she had been wanton enough to lose her virginity in a carriage would never leave her memory.

“By the time I woke up, you were married,” he said, his jaw set.

She snorted. “What did you do? Turn into Sleeping Beauty? Erasmus and I were married only after the banns had been read three weeks in a row. And during that time— that time—” But her voice caught, and she refused to show emotion.

Something flashed across his face and he was on his feet. “Three weeks? Did you wait
three weeks
to be married, Genevieve?”

She blinked and looked up at him. “Of course. The banns had to be read, and even if Erasmus had been a generous man—which he wasn't—he wouldn't have taken me if I had been in a delicate condition.”

He turned and slammed his fist into the wall next to him. “I had no idea, Genevieve.” The anguish in his voice echoed around the room. “Your father's coachman nearly knocked my brains out, if you remember.” He swung back to face her, and his face was livid with rage.

“It seems extremely unlikely to me that your recovery took three weeks,” she said, standing up and moving so as to put a small table between them.

“I awoke the following afternoon.”

“Well,” Genevieve said with an edge, “that left you exactly two weeks and six days to remember my existence. But instead you decided to make a long-anticipated trip to India, ignoring the deflowered girl waiting for you. Or perhaps your excuse is that you were so drunk that the whole evening vanished from your memory?”

“I woke to a message from your father.” He walked toward her with the lethal gaze of a Bengal tiger.

Genevieve reached backwards and felt her way around another small table, keeping her eyes on him. Who knew what he might do? “Indeed?” she murmured, edging toward the door. “And what did my father say?”

“Your father informed me that he had long planned your marriage to Erasmus Mulcaster, and that Mulcaster was obtaining a special license to marry you immediately. He said, Genevieve, and I quote:
‘By great good fortune, Mulcaster has agreed to marry her immediately even though you debauched her.'
And by the time I woke up, Genevieve, you were married to Mulcaster.”

“I was not!” she said shrilly.

“I believed your father.”

Genevieve stared at him, forgetting about making her escape. “My father was eminently trustworthy,” she said. “Why on earth should I believe you?”

“I can't pull the note out of my pocket.” His jaw was set. “It's the truth. What did your father tell
you?
”

“That if you made an offer for my hand he would strongly consider the proposal, even during the time the banns were being read. I waited—” She looked away. “You never came, and then we heard that you were gone.”

“Your father was a busy man,” Tobias said, looking tired. “He wrote my father as well, and forgave my father's debts to him on the condition that I leave the country and not return for at least ten years. To spare your feelings, should we happen to meet.”

Genevieve couldn't think of anything to say. She'd spent seven years thinking that Tobias had simply left the country without giving her a second thought. Seven years of thinking him a degenerate. Seven years of thinking about the importance of finding an honorable, gentlemanly man like Felton. An odd feeling was rising in her chest—could it be joy?

“I didn't know,” he said quietly. “I swear to God, Genevieve, I didn't know. I thought you were married off to that old man. There was many a time in the last seven years when I cursed myself for not snatching you away with me, married or not. But I never thought that your father might have lied to me about the special license.”

Genevieve leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. Her hands were trembling, so she spread them against the wallpaper and tried to think logically. “Why would my father do such a thing? I know he was enraged with me—”

Tobias was there, standing just before her. His lips brushed over her cheek, and his hands took hers. “Perhaps he thought it was for the best. But I have destroyed it all, haven't I?” he said, and the anguish in his voice caught her heart. “I was stupid enough to believe your father. And I've been just as stupid now, taking you away from Felton. I know how you feel about him.
He
knows how you feel. You heard him!”

“I suppose so,” she said, struggling to clarify her thoughts. Felton seemed a million miles away and quite unimportant, given the fact that Tobias was—was
her
To-bias again.

“I haven't been entirely honest with you,” he said, taking her shoulders in his large hands. “Felton asked me to walk him to the lobby because he cares for you, Genevieve. He knew you were in the room all the time. He could tell from your perfume that you were behind the screen. But he played it as if he didn't know.”

“Why on earth would he do that?” Genevieve said, her eyes flying open.

“I believe he thought that I loved you more than he did. He knew that I'm enthralled to you.” And then he took both her hands and brought them to his mouth. “The last time I asked you to marry me, Genevieve, I was jug-bitten and young and incredibly stupid. But I knew I loved you.”

A smile was growing in Genevieve's heart, the kind that bloomed and didn't die for years.

He kissed her hands. “I wasn't so stupid. I loved you then, and I love you even more now. Will you, Genevieve? Will you marry me again?”

But Genevieve's heart was so full that she couldn't speak. Her eyes filled with tears, and his hands tightened on hers.

“If you don't wish to, Felton would marry you and— God, I was wrong about this, Genevieve—he wants you. Really wants you. He's just more of a gentleman than I am.”

But she didn't want to talk about Felton. She turned her face and captured his mouth, and it was her tongue that caressed his lips, and his mouth that opened to her entreaty, and she who spoke into the sweetness of their kiss. “I don't want a gentleman, Tobias. I want you, my first husband.”

He kissed her then, and she melted against him, her heart, her whole body straining to be part of him.

“Are you sure, Genevieve?” he asked hoarsely. “Oh God, I didn't mean to leave you!”

“Yes,” she said simply.

But he had to say something important, so he didn't let her kiss him again. “I know you've become alarmingly elegant, Genevieve, and you play a respectable widow very well—”

“Because I
am
one, except when you're around!” she inserted.

“That's just it,” he said, capturing her face in his hands and looking into her eyes. “We're the wild ones, Genevieve. You and me. We belong together. Felton would bore you to tears, and you would drive him to distraction. Our marriage is about passion, Genevieve.” He stopped and kissed her, so fiercely and so lovingly that she almost wept. “Your marriage to Felton would be about little more than propriety and genteel behavior.”

She had her arms twined around his neck, and she was pressing against him in a way that no proper matron would do. “I love you, Tobias,” she said, her eyes glimmering with tears. “I don't want Felton. I want you—it's always been you.”

And finally he pulled her close, kissing her ruthlessly until they were both breathing quickly and shaking, and then he said, hoarsely, “This time, we're going to a bed, Genevieve.” He swept her up in his arms but she couldn't stop kissing him, even on the way to the bedchamber, so he almost stumbled against a wall and finally had to stop and kiss her so senseless that she couldn't interfere as he walked into the chamber.