Only...had Evie truly been ruined? No one knew of her daring escapade that night, save for the woman who dragged her into it—her Cousin Gerald's wife, Lady Flora Benedict—who was presently rusticating in the country following the mysterious, untimely death of her sister. Could Flora betray Evie without betraying herself? Would she?

Evie had no idea. She only knew she could not marry the Duke of Bradbury after his own brother had compromised her, albeit unwittingly.

Maybe no one else knew about it, but Evie did, and she didn't know how she could spend the rest of her life facing her husband's brother without recalling the wickedly sinful events of that night. If not for her clandestine encounter with Lord Gareth Armstrong, Evie might have been over the moon to learn she was going to marry a duke.

And she might have been just as thrilled that the duke was Bradbury, if not for her mother always flirting with him as if she schemed to make him her fourth husband. Or was it fifth? Evie had lost count by now.

"I do apologize, Miss Benedict. Clearly there's been a dreadful misunderstanding. I've always been aware that our late father arranged a betrothal for my older brother many years ago, to a young lady who would be about your age."

Hardly a young lady, Evie thought grimly. "So you assumed, when he told you we were soon to be related, that I was that yo—that lady."

Lord Gareth looked thoroughly dismayed. "Well, this is suddenly awkward."

Evie wondered if it was possible to have an encounter with Lord Gareth that wasn't awkward. What would happen if they met a third time?

"I'm sorry, Miss Benedict. It's just that my brother recently visited your ancestral home in Derbyshire..."

"So he did, but not for the purpose of courting me. He came to break some sad news to my cousin, Lady Flora, but she'd already departed for London."

Lord Gareth nodded as if he knew about that. "And he told me that after journeying all that way, he thought to stay a few days to better make his acquaintance with a certain lady."

"If the Duke of Bradbury better made his acquaintance with any lady in Derbyshire, than that lady was my own mother." Evie tried and failed to suppress a grimace.

Lord Gareth's face finally split into a smile. A wide one. And just when Evie didn't think there was anything to smile about.

But that wasn't the worst of it. The insufferable man burst into chuckles.

Ire flared within her. "Pray, what do you find so amusing, my lord?"

He could barely stop laughing long enough to answer her. "Are you suggesting, Miss Benedict, that my brother went to Derbyshire to pay court to...your mother?"

"Yes. I am," she responded in all seriousness, but it only prompted another spate of laughter from him.

She clenched her fists as she turned to storm back to the house without ever reaching that pergola, where she'd foolishly thought Lord Gareth might propose marriage to her.

Alas, he never would. Because he had no idea that he'd met her before—and duly ruined her. She realized now that even if she dared to remind him of that encounter, and inform him that she'd been the mysterious woman behind her mother's old Venetian mask, he'd laugh at that, too. He'd think she was mad. He'd likely assume that she heard the story from Lady Flora, and sought to insert herself into it so as to trap him into marriage.

"Miss Benedict, wait! Where are you going?" He wasn't laughing so hard now that he was calling her, but his voice still cracked with mirth.

She whirled around to glare at him. "You don't believe me."

"Not at all," he said, now somewhat sober as he caught up to her. "No, Miss Benedict, it's not that I don't believe you. I suspect you may have misinterpreted events."

"In what way? I was there. You were not."

"But surely you weren't privy to every conversation my brother had with yours, or even your mother."

"No, I wasn't," she reluctantly conceded. "But he did go strolling with my mother about the grounds while he was there. He certainly never went strolling with me. Yet you believe he's going to marry me."

"Did they wander off into areas where no one would see them?"

"No, I saw them all the while." Evie had made jolly certain of that. She'd furtively observed them from a distance, fearing all the while that Bradbury might kiss her mother. Or even that her mother might kiss Bradbury. Her mother was a walking, talking scandal, the main reason Evie despaired of ever marrying herself. The ton assumed she was just as scandalous as her mother.

Considering the night she first encountered Lord Gareth Armstrong, she had to admit their assumptions were probably justified.

"And did they do anything besides walk and talk?" he asked.

She shook her head, feeling foolish and miserable and wishing she could start afresh with him, as if they'd never met before today.

But they already had, a quarter of an hour ago in the ballroom. And Evie had bungled this meeting as badly as she'd mangled the first—even if she wasn't to blame.

"Don't you see, Miss Benedict? While he was there, my brother spoke to your brother about marrying you. He went strolling with your mother to discuss the matter with her, and maybe learn more about you."

This was too much. "But does it not occur to you, my lord, that if the duke wished to learn more about his bride, he would go strolling with her, and not her mother? Not to mention that neither my mother nor my brother has said a single word to me about my marrying anyone, let alone the Duke of Bradbury."

"Of course not. They've been occupied since then with your brother's marriage," Lord Gareth replied, as if this should have been obvious even to a lackwit. "But now that he's married, that clears the decks, so to speak, for your own nuptials."

"He and Tabitha are leaving within the hour for Brighton."

"So they are. Then it will be your turn—provided, of course, that you catch that bouquet." His quick grin galled her. These were not circumstances under which she hoped to see his teeth, even if they were a complete set, fairly straight and gleaming white.

"He'd leave without saying a word about my marriage he seems to have arranged without even consulting me?"

"Only he didn't arrange it, Miss Benedict. Apparently, my father arranged it with your father when you and Bradbury were children."

"He couldn't have. Your father? Not with my father." Not unless the arrangement was part of a gambling debt Evie's father owed to Lord Gareth's. "My father was the younger brother of the previous Earl of Tyndall, and—"

"Then mayhap the previous Earl of Tyndall arranged it with the previous Duke of Bradbury. But even if the current earl leaves for Brighton without informing you of your pending betrothal, be assured your mother will. I must say, I'm rather surprised she hasn't told you already. Nothing excites a mother more, I've heard, then the prospect of her daughter marrying a duke."

"That still doesn't make sense," Evie countered. "The previous Earl of Tyndall had a daughter of his own, whom he betrothed to—to—oh, I can't remember now, except she ended up eloping with someone else meant for a cousin on her mother's side, who in turn married someone else entirely."

"Maybe my brother was her original betrothed," Lord Gareth surmised. "And when she eloped with this other lord, you became next in line to marry my brother."

Evie stood frozen in disbelief. Could it possibly be true? Over the years, she'd had almost no contact with her cousin, Lady Lydia Benedict, who was betrothed at birth to one lordling, only to elope with another. Lydia's mother, Evie's Aunt Cordelia, had only recently taken up residence in the dower cottage at their ancestral home, where she planned to spend the rest of her life trying to live down the shame of it all, or so she claimed.

Evie to marry the Duke of Bradbury! It couldn't be true. Why, it was too good to be true.

And even if it was, it couldn't happen. Not after what transpired between her and his brother who stood before her now, delightfully oblivious to the impediment.

Of all the rotten luck!

"Ladies and gentlemen!" called the butler from the doorway. "The bride and groom are about to depart, and the new Countess of Tyndall will be tossing her bouquet to all maidens."

Once again, Lord Gareth offered his arm to Evie. "Shall we? You surely don't wish to miss it, Miss Benedict."

As she allowed him to escort her back inside, she told herself it was only a silly superstition. If by some remote chance she happened to catch the bouquet, it didn't necessarily mean that marriage to the Duke of Bradbury was inevitable. Besides, she'd never caught a bouquet in her life. Her mother, already married several times, stood a better chance—and was even more likely to marry a duke than Evie.

Spinsters crowded into the cavernous front hall as Evie's new sister-in-law, Tabitha, stood high on the curving staircase next to Ross, holding up her bouquet and scanning the shrieking flock below as if searching for one particular person.

That person, Evie knew, was herself. Tabitha had told her she would try to aim the bouquet at Evie. But that was before Evie learned she was to marry the one man in the world that only she knew she could never marry.

Feminine arms galore shot up, hands waving, fingers fluttering. Evie pushed through the crowd till she could no longer move, standing directly beneath the enormous crystal chandelier suspended over the center of the front hall. Younger chits glowered at her, as if a spinster of five and twenty had no business doing whatever was necessary, however desperate and superstitious it might be, to land a husband. As if she presented an insurmountable obstacle to their limited dreams.

Men never had to deal with this sort of nonsense. They could always do as they pleased.

Her eyes met Tabitha's. Tabitha smiled and tossed the bouquet toward Evie, who barely managed to get even one hand into the air as the chits jostled her.

Not that it mattered, for the bouquet landed somewhere in the chandelier over Evie's head. Most of the girls screamed and scurried back in one massive, circular crush, as if they feared the whole thing—the chandelier, not the bouquet—was about to crash down on them.

Instead, the bouquet slipped through the curved arms and dangling prisms and spun down in flames to the floor at Evie's feet.

Before she could even react, Lord Gareth rushed over and stomped out the burning bouquet.

She couldn't help thinking there was something strangely fitting and portentous about this.

But what, if anything, could it portend?

She sighed in plaintive resignation. "I suppose I should be grateful that my mother didn't catch it."