But she merely laughed as her family returned to the box.

Perhaps, he thought as the play resumed, his mother would talk her into the marriage. He hoped so.

There was so little time left to begin all over again.

The box that had been occupied by Turner and Norman and Caroline was empty, he noticed.

9

SIR Humphrey and Lady Dew had arrived from Shropshire on a rare visit to London. They had brought their granddaughter with them and were staying at Grillon's Hotel.

They had come primarily to spend some time with their son and bring his daughter closer to him. However, they were delighted to find that their old neighbors, the Huxtables, were in town and lost no time in sending invitations to them all to come for dinner in their private dining room at the hotel the evening after the theater visit.

Stephen was obliged to send a reluctant refusal, though he did promise to call upon the Dews another day. He had another engagement for that evening. But the others were free to go.

Margaret wished she were not. She had loved the Dews as neighbors and was quite eager to see them. But she also feared that Crispin would be at dinner too. Indeed, it was almost inevitable that he would be. She really did not want to see him again. She was still angry with him and upset and confused. She did /not/ still love him, and she did /not/ want to marry him. But even so… Well, she wished his wife had lived and he had stayed with her and their child in Spain. She had put that painful part of her life behind her, and it was disturbing to have it all resurrected again.

Lord Sheringford had told her she still loved Crispin.

He was /wrong/.

Nevertheless, she did send off an acceptance to her invitation.

In the meantime, though, she had agreed to take tea with Lady Carling in the afternoon. She could have walked or taken the carriage to Curzon Street, as she had pointed out to the earl last evening. But he had insisted that he would come and escort her there himself. He arrived earlier than she expected. "I am under orders to woo you in public, Miss Huxtable," he said after they had stepped out of the house, leaving Stephen standing in the hallway like a concerned and brooding parent. "We will walk to my mother's house by a circuitous route, then, and go through the park. It is a lovely day and there are bound to be crowds there even this early in the afternoon." "I daresay there will," she agreed, taking his offered arm. "I would have brought a curricle in which to convey you," he said, "except that I do not have a curricle, I am afraid. I really am quite impoverished, you see." "Walking is better exercise anyway," she said. "But am I now intended to feel so sorry for you, Lord Sheringford, that I will agree to marry you tomorrow if not sooner in order to restore your funds?" "/Do/ you?" he asked. "And /will/ you?" "No," she said. "Then I did not intend any such thing," he said.

Margaret smiled. "Had you seen Mr. Turner before last evening?" she asked as they walked in the direction of Hyde Park. "Since your elopement with his wife, I mean?" "No," he said. "Nor his sister either, since the evening before my planned wedding with her. The morning papers made the most of the almost-encounter, did they not?" "They did," Margaret said. It had been somewhat disconcerting to see her name in print for the second morning in a row. "It was noted that Mr.

Turner and Mr. and Mrs. Pennethorne did not return to their box for the conclusion of the play, that a perfectly well justified outrage drove them away from having to share a roof with a notorious villain. Are you sorry that you spoiled their evening?" "Not at all," he said. "If it /was/ spoiled, that is. Which I very much doubt. They probably enjoyed an hour or two of righteous and thoroughly pleasurable indignation over their supper." He handed a coin to the crossing sweeper as they crossed the road and then entered the park. "Is your heart so very hard, then?" she asked him. "I daresay it is," he said. "Life's experiences do that to a person, Miss Huxtable." "Harden the heart?" she said. "I hope not. I would hate to become a cynic merely because I could not take responsibility for my wicked actions." "Am I wicked, then?" he asked, looking down at her. "/You/ tell /me/," she said. "You are the one doing the wooing." The paths and carriageway were busy enough even though it was not yet the fashionable hour. Their appearance attracted noticeable attention, as though the /ton/ could not get its fill of looking at them. What did they expect to see, exactly?

What they saw was the Earl of Sheringford leaning his head closer to hers and looking very directly into her eyes as his free hand came up to cover hers on his arm. A deliberately intimate gesture? Well, she had asked for it. "Things are not always what they seem, Miss Huxtable," the earl said.

No, indeed. She half smiled. "Meaning that you are not wicked after all?" she said. "You did not really abandon the bride you professed to love? You did not really run off with another man's wife and live in sin with her for five years? We all know that gossip can err, but can it err to quite such a degree?" "I did not love Caroline by the time I abandoned her," he said, "though that fact in itself did not excuse me for doing so. I daresay nothing did. And Laura Turner was very willing to run away with me, a fact that did not at all excuse me for taking her, I suppose. I daresay nothing did. Yes, Miss Huxtable, I must concede that by your definition of wickedness I am doubtless very evil indeed." He curled his fingers about hers as an open barouche of ladies bowled past, and moved his head a fraction closer. "By /anyone's/ definition," she said. "If you will." Constantine was cantering toward them with a few other gentlemen, all of whom Margaret knew. They reined in and stopped for a few moments to exchange greetings. All of them called the earl /Sherry/. Gentlemen, it occurred to Margaret, forgave far more easily than ladies did. Perhaps they envied a man who did as he pleased and thumbed his nose at society – and hurt other people in the process. "Margaret," Constantine said, fixing her with a very direct look. "Your fame grows with every morning paper. May I join you and Sherry on your walk?" "Thank you, Constantine," she said, "but we are on our way to take tea with Lady Carling." "And I promise most faithfully, Con," Lord Sheringford said, "to chase away any wolves who take it into their heads to try to devour Miss Huxtable on the way." Constantine gave him a hard look before riding off with the other gentlemen. "It must be gratifying," the earl said, "to have so many people willing to champion your person against any and all villains." "It is," she agreed. "But I warned you it would happen." "Is it," he asked her, "why you decided to receive me yesterday instead of having Merton send me packing? Is it why you did not dismiss my offer out of hand when you /did/ see me? And why you invited me to the theater last evening and agreed to take tea with my mother this afternoon? Is it simply /because/ all your champions are set against your allying yourself with me? Are you a secret rebel, Miss Huxtable?" She was beginning to believe that she really must be. The notoriety she had garnered during the past two days should have horrified her sufficiently to send her into full retreat. Instead … Well, here she was, /almost/ enjoying herself. "I find myself unwilling to reject you only because the world and all the evidence tell me that I ought," she said. "I must be grateful to the world and all the evidence, then," he said, "and a secret rebel who insists upon forming her own opinions. But what more evidence do you need to convince you that you would be better off being a spinster for the rest of your life than allied with me?" "I am not even sure," she said. "But you have faced the hostility of the /ton/ – you are facing it now – with a certain dignity. Does that mean anything in your favor? I do not know." "Perhaps it means that I am without conscience," he said, "or desperate enough to grovel at any cost." "Yes," she agreed. "Or perhaps it means that there is more to know of you than just a few bare facts from five years ago. I know two things that you once did. That is all. I really do not know /you/ at all, do I?

And that is the whole point of these two weeks of courtship – getting to know who you really are, that is." "I believe," he said, "you are attracted to me, Miss Huxtable, and are looking for a way to rationalize a desire to marry me." "You may believe what you choose, Lord Sheringford," she said sharply. "But neither a reluctance to take unsolicited advice from the rest of the world nor any personal attraction I may or may not feel toward your person would impel me into doing something against my character or principles. Marrying you would seem an extremely … /unprincipled/ thing to do. And you have said nothing so far that would make it seem less so.

You have made no attempt to excuse your past behavior, and you have made no effort to show me how… reformed you are now." He had turned them while she spoke onto a narrower path, one that led toward a grove of ancient oak trees. It was less crowded than the main path they had just left. "Enough public wooing for now," he said, dropping his free hand to his side again and lifting his head to the vertical. "The past cannot be changed, Miss Huxtable. Or excused. And if it can be excused, or at least partially explained, then I choose not to offer excuses or explanations to a virtual stranger, which is what you are to me. If you become my wife, then I will perhaps attempt to put before you facts that the world will never know and would neither believe nor care about if it did. But you are not my wife yet, or even my betrothed. If you choose to marry me, you must choose me as I am." "That is not fair at all," she said. "How can I make a judgment about you if I do not know all the facts?" He drew her off the path when they were among the trees, and they wound their way among tall, thick trunks until they could see down onto the wide lawns of the park stretched below them. He released her arm and propped one shoulder against a tree, crossing his arms over his chest as he did so. "Tell me," he said, "about your relationship with Major Dew. Everything.