The One That Got Away by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, Fiction, General, Historical
ISBN: 9780062097033
Publisher: Harper Collins
Published: 2011-05-10T05:00:00+00:00

LIZ CARLYLE lives in North Carolina with her romance-hero husband and three very fine felines. In her spare time, she supports various animal rescue organizations. Please visit her online at www. lizcarlyle.com, or write to her at [email protected].

A Fool Again

Eloisa James

Chapter 1

The Funeral Baked Meats

Awell-bred lady never ogles a man from behind her black veil, especially during her husband’s burial. But Lady Genevieve Mulcaster had acknowledged her failings in ladylike deportment around the time she eloped to Gretna Green with a bridegroom whom she’d met three hours earlier, and so she watched Lucius Felton with rapt attention throughout Reverend Pooley’s praise of her deceased husband—a man (said Mr. Pooley) who rose before his servants and even for religious haste, went unbuttoned to morning prayer. Felton looked slightly bored. There was something about his heavy-lidded eyes that made Genevieve feel thirsty, and the way he stood, almost insolently elegant in his black coat, made her feel weak in the knees. His shoulders had to be twice as large as her husband’s had been.

Recalled to her surroundings by that disloyal thought, Genevieve murmured a fervent if brief prayer that Heaven would be just as her husband imagined it. Because if Erasmus didn’t encounter the rigorous system of prizes and punishments he anticipated, he would likely be discomfited, if not sent to sizzle his toes. Genevieve had long ago realized that Erasmus wouldn’t hesitate to rob a bishop if an amenable vicar could be persuaded to bless the undertaking. She threw in an extra prayer for St. Peter, in the event that Erasmus was disappointed.

Then she peeked at Felton again. His hair slid sleekly back from his forehead, giving him an air of sophistication and command that Genevieve had never achieved. How could she, wearing clothes with all the elegance of a dish-cloth? The vicar launched into a final prayer for Erasmus’s soul. Genevieve stared down at her prayer book. It was hard to believe that she had lost another husband. Not that she’d actually gotten as far as marrying Tobias Darby. They’d only been engaged, if one could even call it that, for the six or seven hours they’d spent on the road to Gretna Green before being overtaken by her enraged father. She’d never seen Tobias again; within a fortnight she’d been married to Erasmus Mulcaster. So eloping with Tobias had been the first and only reckless action of Genevieve’s life. In retrospect, it would be comforting to blame champagne, but the truth was yet more foolish: she’d been smitten by an un-tamed boy and his beautiful eyes. For that she’d thrown over the precepts of a lifetime and run laughing from her father’s house into a carriage headed for Gretna Green.

Memories tumbled through her head: the way Tobias had looked at her when they’d climbed into the carriage, the way she’d found herself flat on the seat within a few seconds of the coachman geeing up the horses, the way his hands had run up her leg while she’d faintly—oh so faintly—objected.

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