It was a pleasant surprise to discover that he was after all a man of tender conscience. Perhaps more than usually so. He had pitted his conscience against the whole of his world five years ago. "I will marry you if you still wish to marry," she said. "But only /if/.

You must not now feel that you are obliged to wed me only because you made me an offer which I have accepted. /If/ you wish to marry, then I will marry you. I will take a chance on the future." He had opened his eyes though he had not moved his head. He was looking steadily back into her own eyes. His looked very black. His face looked very severe and angular in the darkness. A few days ago she might have been frightened. "I wish to marry you," he said. "I would ask only one thing," she said, "and this I beg of you as a great favor. Allow me to tell my family what you have told me tonight – Stephen, Vanessa and Elliott, Katherine and Jasper. I would stake my life on their honor and discretion, on the fact that not one of them will say a word to anyone else without your express permission. But I really cannot bear to have them believe that I am marrying an unconscionable villain. I cannot bear their puzzlement and pity. And I cannot bear that they will dislike and despise and avoid you for the rest of our lives." He sighed. "They will think just as badly of me, Maggie," he said. "Moreland will, at least. And Merton. Probably your sisters too." "No, they will not," she said. "No, /they will not/." He lifted one hand and set his knuckles lightly against one of her cheeks. "It must be wonderful," he said, "to be so innocent, still to have such faith in the world." She leaned her cheek into his hand. "If I were to lose faith in my own family," she said, "I might as well be dead." He dipped his head toward hers and kissed her. His lips were warm, soft, moist, and moved over her own, parting and deepening the pressure as one arm came about her shoulders and the other tightened about her waist.

Oh, she liked kisses without ferocity, she thought – just as he raised his head. "You wish to marry me, then, Maggie?" he asked. "And by the same token bed with me nightly?" He was, she realized, waiting for an answer. It was a good thing he could not see the color of her cheeks. "Yes," she said. And an aching weakness between her thighs assured her that she was not lying. Yes, she wanted to bed with him. Nightly. She did not love him any more than he loved her, but … Oh, but she wanted to be /married/ to him. She found him strangely attractive. She wanted to go to bed with him.

She verbalized the admission in her mind and felt breathlessly wicked.

But it was not wicked. She was going to be his wife. "Kiss me, then," he said. "I just /was/ kissing you," she protested. "No, you were not," he said. "You were holding your mouth relaxed for my pleasure, just as you did yesterday afternoon in the park. I do not want a passive, submissive woman. There are too many of those in the world, forced to it by the demands of their menfolk. /My/ wife will not be one of them. If you wish to marry me, if you wish to bed with me on our wedding night and every night thereafter when we are both in the mood for sex, then kiss me now as if you mean it." And the thing was that he was neither joking nor teasing. His face and his voice both attested to that fact.

Just as he had not been joking or teasing at the Tindell ball when he had offered her marriage within a minute or two of colliding with her.

He was not someone, then, who took kisses as if it were his right to do so. "Kiss me," he said softly. "We are on the /street/," she reminded him. "And everyone in the neighborhood is either asleep or still out carousing," he said. "There is not a single light in a single window.

And if there is a Peeping Tom behind one of the darkened ones, he is having lean pickings tonight. We must be almost totally invisible beneath this tree. Maggie, you are either a coward or you do not wish to kiss me. And if it is the latter, then you do not wish to bed with me either and therefore do not wish to marry me." She laughed. "Which is it?" he asked.

She gripped his upper arms, leaned forward, and set her lips firmly to his. She was instantly more fully aware of the hardness of his thighs against her own, of his broad chest pressed to her bosom, of the wine flavor of his mouth and the warmth of his breath.

His lips remained still and passive against hers, and after a few moments she was at a loss. She drew back her head. "Oh, dear," she said, "I suppose you are demonstrating the way /I/ was kissing /you/. I am so sorry. It is just, you see – " His mouth covered hers again, and she leaned deliberately into him and burrowed the fingers of one hand into the back of his hair beneath his tall silk hat, angling her head slightly as she did so and parting her lips, moving them over his, touching his lips with her tongue and then venturing within them until his arms tightened about her and he sucked her tongue into his mouth while his hands slid downward to spread over her buttocks and half lift her against him.

He was ready for her. Oh, dear God, he was … She drew firmly away from him. "Frightened?" he murmured. "Yes," she said. "And also aware that we are on the street even if we /are/ invisible to Peeping Toms." "The voice of reason," he said, brushing his hands over his clothes and stepping away from the tree trunk. "But you need not be afraid, Maggie.

We may be marrying for all the wrong reasons – though I am no longer sure what /right/ reasons there can be for matrimony – but we can still expect pleasure from our union. It is obvious that pleasure is within our grasp." "Yes," she said, and she saw the flash of his teeth in the darkness. "Are we going to remain here forever? Soon we will be sending down roots to join the trees." He offered his arm, and they resumed their walk home to Berkeley Square. "Tomorrow," he said, "I shall take you to meet my grandfather, if I may.

It may be rather like ushering Daniel into the lions' den, I am afraid, though he will have no reason to turn his wrath upon /you/. The day after I will have an announcement of our betrothal appear in the morning papers." It was all very real indeed now. "Yes," she said. "That will be satisfactory." "And then," he said as they came to a stop outside the doors of Merton House, "I shall purchase a special license and we will decide upon a suitable day for the nuptials. I believe there will be ten or so among which to choose." "Yes," she said. "I am not sure you answered my question. /May/ I tell my family what you told me tonight?" He hesitated. "Yes," he said, and leaned forward to kiss her briefly on the lips before raising the door knocker and allowing it to fall back against the brass plate. "At least after the announcement is made you will be able to thumb your nose at the likes of Dew and Allingham." "A marvelously mature thing to do," she said. "And marvelously satisfying too," he said. "/If/, that is, you wish to do so. Be very sure." "I am," she said. "I /did/ love him, you know, and there is still pain where he once occupied my heart. But the pain is caused by the realization that he was never the man I thought him to be and that he has not grown into the man with whom I could be happy spending the rest of my life." "But I am?" he said softly. "With you I have no illusions," she said. "You will not allow me to have any. You do not pretend to be what you are not, and you do not pretend to tender feelings you do not feel. On that foundation we can build a friendship, even an affection. That is my hope, anyway. It is what I will attempt to make of our marriage." The door opened before he could reply, and under the eagle gaze of Stephen's butler he raised her hand to his lips and bade her a good night.

And so she was betrothed, Margaret thought as she stepped inside the house and made her way toward the staircase with a firm stride quite at variance with her feelings. To a man for whom conscience and personal honor meant more than reputation or law or church or peace of mind.

She could love such a man.

Certainly she admired him – perhaps more than she had admired anyone else in her life.

Was /that/ why she had made the abrupt decision to marry him when she had promised herself to take all the time she was allowed?

Or was it as she had said to him outside a couple of minutes ago? Was it that with no promises, no illusions, no veil of romance, she could dream of an honest relationship that could be shaped into something meaningful and satisfying?

She felt rather like weeping by the time she reached her room. She dismissed her maid and threw herself across her bed fully clothed and did just that.

For no reason that she could fathom.

14

"DO you suppose, Smith," Duncan asked while his valet was helping him into his coat the following morning and ensuring that his shirt and waistcoat beneath it did not suffer so much as one crease as a consequence, "that when one has lived a lie for a number of years one is incapable of telling the truth ever again?" Smith, not satisfied with his handiwork, hauled the coat higher on the right shoulder and stood back to take a critical look. "When one has lived the truth most of one's life," he said, brushing the coat vigorously to remove the last stubborn spot of lint, "one is still capable of telling lies. I suppose the matter works both ways, m'lord." "Hmm," Duncan said. "Reassuring. You have finished with me?" "I have," Smith said. "She will take one look at you and swoon with delight." "Really?" Duncan said. "That would be a miracle. She has already informed me that I am neither handsome nor particularly good-looking." Smith looked at him sidelong as he put away the clothes Duncan had recently discarded. "It is no wonder you are worried about telling lies, then, m'lord," he said, "if you have found such an honest woman." Duncan was still chuckling as he closed the dressing room door behind him and made his way downstairs.