“I thought perhaps we should discuss the issue more rationally,” Quill replied smoothly, turning the curricle into Hyde Park.

Hot rage was rising in Gabby’s throat. He had tumbled her around on the floor, and now he wanted to back out of the marriage? She was no idiot. He had decided to renege. Probably the tumbling had convinced him that he didn’t want damaged goods, as Lady Sylvia had put it. Well, she wasn’t going to make it easy for him. She managed to school her voice into calmness.

“Certainly. What in particular do you wish to discuss?”

“I feel that I should clarify what sort of a husband I will be,” Quill replied.

There it was: he was going to say that she deserved a better man, and therefore he was breaking off the engagement for her own good. There was nothing she hated more than a cowardly approach.

“Do go on.” After all, it wasn’t as if she had proposed to him. She would have been perfectly happy married to Peter. Still would be happy, Gabby thought savagely.

“A gentleman does not engage in the activities with which I fill my day, Gabby,” Quill was saying. “I have invested in several English firms, an activity that is anathema to my father, for example.”

Gabby felt a flush of triumph. He couldn’t use this as an excuse! “My father spends his days exporting goods to the Netherlands and China,” she said, her tone cool. “I was not raised to believe that a gentleman should spend his time dawdling about the streets waiting for his next meal to be served.”

Quill paused. He’d lectured himself all morning about the necessity to be absolutely truthful with Gabby regarding the various infirmities stemming from his horse-riding accident. To be blunt about it, he had to tell her about his postcoital migraines.

“I would like to be very clear about the outcome of the accident I suffered six years ago,” Quill said. Now that it had come to the point, he was remarkably reluctant to give her a real reason to back out of the engagement. “Doctor Trankelstein feels that I will always have a limp when tired, for example. I cannot dance. And there are other limitations—”

Gabby turned her beautiful eyes up to his. He felt a shock. Could they be flaming with anger? Surely not.

“Your limp does not concern me, Quill.”

He opened his mouth and she cut him off. “Neither do any other bodily ailments that ensued from your accident.” There! That shut him up, Gabby thought. But the persistent beast was continuing. He truly has changed his mind since the morning, Gabby thought with some pain.

“I feel obliged to warn you—”