She raised her eyebrows. "I was not? Yet I collided with you when attempting to dash from the ballroom in ungainly haste," she reminded him. "Because you were chagrined, even humiliated," he said, "and because you had spotted your faithless lover and remembered that you would not after all have a fiancГ© to dangle before him. When Allingham came to claim his dance with you, you showed no symptoms of a woman whose heart he had just shattered." "I am relieved to hear that," she said. "Major Dew came here this morning to beg me not to marry you. He offered to marry me instead." "And?" He raised his eyebrows. "And I said no," she told him. "And yet," he said, "you still love him." She looked consideringly at him. "Do I?" she said. "You seem to know me better than I know myself, Lord Sheringford. But you would marry a woman you believe to be in love with someone else?" "You would not be happy with him," he said. "Because he has a weak chin?" She raised her eyebrows again. "Because he loves /himself/ more than he loves anyone else," he said. "Such men do not make good husbands." "But you would?" she asked him. "I am not in love with myself," he said. "Or with you." The corners of her mouth lifted in a slight smile. "Are you always so honest?" she asked him. "We lie," he told her, "in order to persuade the world and ourselves that we are something we are not – usually something far better and more flattering than what we really are. I have no wish to deceive myself, and others already believe they know me very well indeed." "And /do/ they?" she asked him. "Are you defined by what you did five years ago?" "You must confess," he said, "that there is nothing much worse a man can do than abandon his bride on her wedding day – except perhaps to run off with her married sister-in-law instead." "Why did you do it?" she asked him. "I suppose," he said, "because I liked the one woman better than the other and was willing to take what I wanted and be damned to the consequences." "And yet," she said, "you told me last evening that you were head over ears in love with your bride. Are your feelings so fickle? And do you always take what you want?" He ignored the first question and thought about his answer to the second. "What I want is not always available for the taking," he said. "Do you want /me/?" she asked.

But she held up a hand again before he could answer. "You claim always to tell the truth," she said. "Tell it now, Lord Sheringford. As you said a short while ago, there is still time for you to find a different bride. Despite everything, there is bound to be someone out there who will be only too happy to marry an earl and future marquess. Do you want /me/?" He scorned to look away from her, and she would not look away from him, it seemed.

Would he prefer someone younger, someone quietly biddable, someone who would be pathetically grateful to him for marrying her, someone who would be content to be bedded and impregnated and otherwise ignored?

Someone too timid to protest the presence of an illegitimate child in her home – and one her husband doted upon?

With such a woman he could be almost free.

Except that he would always suspect that he had broken her spirit – about the worst thing any man could do to any woman.

Margaret Huxtable, he suspected, would be a constant challenge. A woman of unquenchable spirit. A constant thorn in the flesh. A constant … "Yes," he said abruptly, "I do." "I am going to ask a difficult thing of you, then," she said. "You must feel free to refuse my request. You owe me nothing, you see, since what happened last evening was entirely my fault. I cannot marry a stranger.

I know that we must marry – if we /do/ marry – within the next thirteen days. However, a marriage by special license can be performed at a moment's notice, can it not? It does not call for a great deal of planning. I will marry you on the last possible day, Lord Sheringford, provided we both wish to marry when the time comes. The difficult thing for you, of course, is that if you agree with this demand, you will be wagering everything upon my ultimately saying yes. And I may well not do so. I certainly will not marry you only to rescue you from having to earn your own living until your grandfather passes away." "And in the meantime?" he said. "In the next twelve days?" "Privately, we will get to know each other," she said, "as well as any two people /can/ become acquainted in such a short time. And publicly you will court me. If you walk away today after refusing to agree to this condition, I shall not feel a moment's embarrassment. I shall live down the gossip with the greatest ease. But if I were to rush into a marriage with you during the next day or two, then I would be more than embarrassed. I would be humiliated. The /ton/ would dream up a dozen reasons for my ungainly haste, none of them flattering. If you wish to marry me, Lord Sheringford, then you will pay determined, even ardent, court to me, and you will risk everything for me – including your beloved home and income." He pursed his lips. He might very well grow to dislike this woman, he thought again – indeed, he was almost sure he already did – but he could not stop himself from respecting her.

She was a power to be reckoned with.

It was indeed a great risk – far more than she realized. She might reject him at the last moment. It was even possible that she was deliberately leading him into a trap on behalf of all abandoned women. She looked as if she might well be the crusading sort. "I must warn you," she said, "that everyone who knows me – and even someone who does not – is horrified to find that I would even /consider/ marrying you. They will keep on trying to persuade me against you – and they will be barely civil to you." "Who is the someone who does not know you?" he asked. "Mrs. Pennethorne," she said. "The lady you abandoned." Ah. "She came here this morning," she said, "and begged me not to court misery by marrying you. She is very lovely. I am not surprised that you once loved her – though not more than her brother's wife as it turned out.

You /are/ fickle." "So it would seem," he said. "Do you still wish me to court you now that I have admitted that damning fact?" "Yes," she said, "since you have not made the mistake of pretending to have fallen in love with /me/. I believe it would be an interesting experience to be wooed by London's most notorious villain. And I have little to lose. If I decide at the end of it all that I cannot marry you, I will be hailed as something of a heroine." Her lips curved slightly at the corners again, and he could not decide if she was a woman with a sense of humor or a woman whose heart was as cold as steel. He rather suspected the latter. "I shall woo you, then, with persistence and ardor," he said, "on the assumption that you are giving serious consideration to marrying me in thirteen days' time." "I will be attending the theater this evening," she said. "I will be sitting in the Duke of Moreland's box with the members of my family.

Shall I inform them that you will be joining us there, my lord?" Daniel into the lions' den. Or into the fiery furnace.

She stood, and he got to his feet too. Presumably he was dismissed. He bowed to her. "I shall see you this evening, then," he said. "It is a pleasure to which I shall look forward with some eagerness … Maggie." This time that suggestion of a smile lurked in her eyes as well as at the corners of her mouth.

Perhaps she /did/ have a sense of humor.