It was already too late, though.

Stephen was striding toward them across the ballroom, looking uncharacteristically grim, his eyes fixed upon Margaret. "Stephen," Katherine said as he came up to them. "Whatever is the matter?" He spoke directly to Margaret. "Meg," he said, "I do not know who on earth introduced you to that fellow. Whoever it was deserves to be shot. But that is the least of our worries. The most ridiculous rumor is spreading and we are going to have to move quickly to quash it. It is being said that you and Sheringford are /betrothed/." "Oh, Stephen, no!" Vanessa exclaimed. "But how very ridiculous!" Katherine said, laughing. "No one will take it seriously, Stephen." Margaret stared at him, speechless.

Elliott and Jasper must have heard what Stephen had said. They both turned away from their group. "I'll draw his cork for this," Elliott said. "What does he think he is up to?" "It would be more to the point," Jasper said, "to draw the cork of the joker who began the story. It was hardly Sherry himself, as he left the ball half an hour ago. Do you know who /did/, Stephen?" It was Margaret who answered him. "I fear it must have been Crispin Dew," she said, and not for the first time that evening she felt on the verge of fainting.

There was that quite unmistakable buzz in the ballroom that always accompanied the spreading of the newest salacious rumor. And a quick glance about the room confirmed Margaret in her fear that it was indeed she who was the subject of that rumor. Far too many eyes were turned in the direction of her group to be normal. /"Dew/?" Stephen's voice was like thunder. "Why the devil would he start any such rumor?" He did not even apologize for his language – and no one in the group thought to demand an apology. "I fear it was something I said," Margaret said. But that was clearly not explanation enough. She drew a deep, somewhat ragged breath. "I introduced the Earl of Sheringford to him as my betrothed." "You /what/?" Elliott asked very quietly.

The others stared at her as if she had suddenly sprouted a second head. "I also told him no one else knew yet," she said. "It was a /joke/. It was … Well, it was something I said impulsively and would have corrected later when I dance with him." To say she felt foolish – as well as a number of other uncomfortable things – would be a massive understatement.

The buzz of excited conversation about them had not abated. "But what," Katherine asked, "did Lord /Sheringford/ have to say about such an extraordinary announcement, Meg?" Margaret licked lips that were suddenly dry. "It was he who suggested it," she said. "And he wants to make it real. He wants to marry me. But it is really all nonsense and best forgotten." This whole evening seemed like a ghastly nightmare. She would be fortunate if they did not haul her off to Bedlam before the night was out. "Which may be easier said than done," Jasper said, bowing to her and extending a hand for hers. "You are attracting a great deal of attention, Meg, especially as Sherry has absconded and cannot take his half share. Come and dance with me again. And smile. Katherine and I will escort you home afterward, and the others may remain to dispel the rumors as best they can." Margaret set her hand in his. "This is so very ridiculous," she said. "Most gossip is," he said. "It can also be very tenacious." "Where is Dew?" Stephen asked grimly, looking around the room. "I'll break his damned neck for him." "Tomorrow will be time enough for that," Elliott said. "We do not need you confronting him here to add to the general delight, Stephen. Dance with Vanessa, if you will. And do watch your language in the presence of my wife and sisters-in-law. Katherine, may I have the pleasure?" And Margaret danced with Jasper for a second time and smiled at the light, amusing banter he kept up throughout. It was truly awful to be the main focus of attention in the room, especially when she knew she had brought it on herself.

But how /could/ Crispin have done this to her? She had never known him to be openly spiteful.

She was going to have to wait out the gossip with all the patience she could muster, she decided later as she rode home beside Katherine in Jasper's carriage. It ought not to take too long once the /ton/ realized there was no basis to the rumor. And then she was going to settle back to her old respectable life even if it meant being a spinster and Stephen's dependent for as long as she lived.

Margaret went to bed that night before Stephen returned home. She even managed to sleep fitfully between spells of agonized wakefulness in which she remembered every secret she had poured out to that black-eyed, grim-faced stranger who had once abandoned his bride and eloped with a married lady and lived in sin with her until her death. And there were the wakeful spells in which she remembered introducing him to Crispin as her betrothed.

And Crispin had gone and told the whole world!

She even slept later than usual in the morning. Stephen was up before her. He had already breakfasted and left the house, the butler informed her when she asked.

He had left his place at the breakfast table untidy. The dishes had been cleared away, but the morning paper had been left open and bunched in a heap beside where his plate had been. Margaret went to fold it up neatly but first let her eyes rove over the topmost page. It was the one always devoted to society gossip.

And there was her own name, leaping off the page at her as if it had legs and wings.

She bent closer to read, her eyes widening in horror.

Miss Margaret Huxtable, the journalist had written, eldest sister of the Earl of Merton, had been seen sitting in scandalous seclusion in a remote alcove of Lady Tindell's ballroom the previous evening tГЄte-Г -tГЄte with that very notorious jilt and wife-stealer, the Earl of Sheringford, whom the writer had reported seeing skulking about town a few days ago. And when confronted by a friend, who had approached in order to rescue her from scandal or even worse harm, Miss Huxtable had boldly presented the earl as her /betrothed/. The beau monde might well be asking itself if the lady was quite as respectable as she had always appeared to be. The reporter might humbly remind his readers of what had befallen her younger sister two years ago… Margaret did not read any further. She closed the paper with trembling hands, as if she could thereby obliterate what it said. A bad dream had just turned into the worst of nightmares.

She sat down shivering and remembering how the spreading of vicious and almost entirely untrue gossip had forced Kate into marrying Jasper two years ago.

History was not about to repeat itself with her, was it?

Oh, surely not! Such catastrophes did not happen twice within the same family.

Whatever was she going to /do/?

Duncan very much doubted that Miss Margaret Huxtable was a gossip – especially at her own expense and on the topic of her meeting with him. It must have been the military officer with the peculiar wet-sounding name and the red hair, then.

For gossip there was.

It was his mother who alerted him. She actually appeared at breakfast the morning after the Tindell ball, albeit well after Sir Graham had left for his club and just as Duncan himself was about to rise from the table. He knew she had been at the ball, though he had not been there long enough himself to see her. "Duncan," she said as she swept into the breakfast parlor, still clad in a dressing gown of a pale blue diaphanous material that billowed and wafted about her, though her hair had been immaculately styled and he suspected that her cheeks were rouged, "you are up already. I scarcely slept a wink all night. I feel quite haggard. But you were not in your room when we arrived home last night, you provoking man, and so there was no talking with you then. I did not hear you come home. It must have been at some unearthly hour. /Do/ tell me if it is true. Can it /possibly/ be? /Are/ you betrothed to the Earl of Merton's eldest sister? Without a word to your own mother? It would be a splendid match for you, my love. Your grandfather will be quite reconciled to you if it /is/ true. And that will be a very good thing as Graham has been grumbling and complaining, the silly man, that you will be living under his roof for the rest of our lives. Not that he does not love you in his own way, but … But speak up, do, Duncan, instead of sitting there silently as though there were nothing to tell. /Are/ you betrothed?" "In one word, Mama," he said, hiding his surprise and signaling the butler to fill his coffee cup again, "no. Not yet, anyway, and perhaps never. I danced with the lady once last evening, that is all." "That is /not/ all," his mother protested. "Miss Huxtable presented you to someone – I cannot for the life of me remember who – as her betrothed.