“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.
&nbs
p; There was one thing he had to say. “It’s a bed today, Genevieve, but tomorrow—”
She was arching up against him, her gown already around her hips as his hands worked sweet magic. “Tomorrow?” she gasped, trying to pull him down to her.
“Gretna Green tomorrow,” he growled at her, ripping her pantalettes. “Again. And we’re going all the way to Scotland this time.”
She didn’t care.
About the Author
Eloisa James is the author of nineteen award-winning romances. She’s also a professor of English literature, teaching in New York City, where she lives with her family. With two jobs, two cats, two children, and only one husband, she spends most of her time making lists of things to do—letters from readers are a great escape!
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By Eloisa James
WHEN BEAUTY TAMED THE BEAST
A KISS AT MIDNIGHT
A DUKE OF HER OWN
THIS DUCHESS OF MINE
WHEN THE DUKE RETURNS
DUCHESS BY NIGHT
AN AFFAIR BEFORE CHRISTMAS
DESPERATE DUCHESSES
PLEASURE FOR PLEASURE
THE TAMING OF THE DUKE
KISS ME, ANNABEL
MUCH ADO ABOUT YOU
YOUR WICKED WAYS
A WILD PURSUIT
FOOL FOR LOVE
DUCHESS IN LOVE
Copyright
This work is a collection of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
First published by Avon Books in November 2004 as a part of the anthology The One that Got Away.
“A Fool Again” copyright © 2004 by Eloisa James
ISBN: 0-06-054026-5
EPub Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780062076090
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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A Fool Again: A Novella Page 8