“The landlord ought to be commended for placing his promise to a lady above mercantile concerns such as planks and mortar.”

Quill answered Peter with such a mocking smile that Gabby had the feeling that the conversation would have disintegrated into a family quarrel had not Codswallop appeared with the next course.

After the meal Quill disappeared before she could question him, and it wasn’t until five o’clock when he sauntered—yes, sauntered—into the parlor and asked Gabby if she would care for a ride in Hyde Park. It took all her fortitude not to scream her profound irritation to the skies.

Instead, she managed a stifled “yes” and went to change her clothing.

Quill looked after his betrothed curiously. Did she seem just a trifle disgruntled? She appeared to be a moody sort of girl. Sensitive, they called it when women were cantankerous.

Peter leapt to Quill’s side and dragged him over to the windows, out of Lady Sylvia’s hearing. “Well?” he asked eagerly. “When are you going to ask her?”

Quill looked down at his brother. “What in God’s name did you do to your hair?” he asked. “Is that pomade?”

Peter almost stamped his foot. “As I said, when are you going to ask her? I thought you planned to do so at breakfast. I didn’t dare speak a word to Gabby all day. I am quite certain that she noticed my incivility.”

“I asked her this morning,” Quill said, staring out the windows. It was all he could do to maintain a casual tone. He felt like shouting it. Gabby—beautiful, luscious Gabby—had agreed to marry him. A crippled man. A silent merchant. A man who had given up fashionable company for the inelegant world of trade.

Actually, that was the problem that had absorbed him all day. She didn’t know what a bad bargain she was getting.

“Well?” It was Peter who was almost shouting.

Quill had spent the day wrestling with his conscience. “She will give me an answer this afternoon,” he said negligently, as if the most important conversation of his life was naught more than a simple yes or no.

“Oh, God, it’s all over,” Peter groaned, raking his hand through the locks that had taken Rinsible forty-five minutes and a quantity of pomade to arrange. “If she put you off, then she was trying to think of a way to let you down easily. I knew Gabby would never take you.”

“She seemed encouraging this morning,” Quill said, wrenching his mind away from a memory of Gabby’s throaty little moans.