There was a sudden impact of bodies, soft and then jarring, followed by a startled gasp. His glass crashed into his chest, then down to the floor, where it splintered into pieces at his feet. A splash of chilled wine bloomed down his front like a bloodstain, wine dripping off his fingers. This was an embarrassment he would not brook.
He looked down, aghast, breath leaving him in a sharp hiss, before turning his gaze up at the perpetrator of the crime. She was staring at him with wide eyes. Her rosebud mouth had contorted in shock, but also in anger.
Anger...? Alexander almost laughed at the thought. She was the one who’d walked into him,and from the look of things, was none the worse for wear despite the violence of her mistake. Helooked at her through the cloud of his annoyance, feeling the eyes of nearby guests fix on them. Buthereyes that concerned him most of all: blue-grey, familiar...
Too familiar.
CHAPTER 3
Margaret had been so happy to escape London and her mother that she hadn’t considered the consequences of returning to the place where her father was known best. Helena and Jane had told her to prepare herself in the carriage, but Margaret – naive, diplomatic Margaret – had assumed the worst she would encounter were a few words of pity. Wiltshire was her home. Things wouldn’t be like in London.
On that account, she was right.
When the master of ceremonies had announced her party at the doors, the Pembroke name ripped through the crowd, causing all the nearby guests to turn abruptly toward them. Margaret froze, feeling like she was in some sort of warped reality. What had she done to earn such frightened looks from the people she had known all her life?
She turned to whisper to Jane. “Am I imagining things, or...”
“Or is everyone looking at us?” Helena completed her scan of the room. “I mean,reallylooking at us. Anyone would think we had just brought in the plague.”
Margaret tried not to take that personally, swallowing hard as the whispering started. The sound of her father’s name being hissed was unmistakable, her own name alongside it.
“It is lunacy, utter lunacy, and we should treat it thusly,” Jane said, sucking in her cheeks and hurrying the girls forward. “Looking at you as if?—”
“As if they will lose their own respectability too, just by being in my presence,” Margaret murmured, a cold sweat breaking out on her forehead. “Perhaps this was a mistake.”
“Nonsense, Margaret. There can be no backing down now.” Jane stopped in her tracks, smiling facetiously at a passing gentlewoman whose mouth was hanging open in shock. “Allow me a moment to work my magic and ready the room for you. Logic – and if not logic, then good manners – will prevail.”
She nodded encouragingly and took off in a blur of magenta silk. Helena looked sideways at Margaret and said, “When has it ever?” She scoffed and pulled Margaret away, leading her toward the drink table while Jane warmed the room for them.
It would take a blistering wildfire to unfreeze this lot, Margaret thought, refusing the goblet of punch Helena handed her. Her stomach was doing somersaults, and vomiting punch all over the assembly room floor wasn’t going to help matters. Helena wasundeterred, thrusting a wafer into her hand. Margaret nibbled at it pathetically as Helena pressed forward, keeping to the walls until they found a relatively quiet corner.
“Look on the bright side,” Helena said with forced levity, elbowing Margaret in the ribs. “At least Baron Faversham is nowhere to be seen.”
Margaret groaned and dropped her wafer, discarding it in a nearby potted plant. The mention of Faversham did not have the intended effect, and she hung her head to take in a few deep breaths. Helena tried her best to calm her, talking about the anthology she had abandoned back at home. Between comparisons of William Cowper to Lord Byron, Margaret started to feel a modicum of relief.
But that would only last so long. Not two minutes later, she heard something that made her blood run cold.
Two men were standing behind her. Maybe they had always been there, maybe not. At present, they were discussing her father’s disappearance like the results of a horse race, and Margaret couldn’t ignore them even if she had tried.
“The man is dead,” one of them said flippantly. “Loaded pockets with stones... Long walk towards France... Not a great loss...”
The image he conjured made her stomach churn all over again. She wished now that she had been in possession of a drink – would have turned around and thrown it right in his face. Her sadness and fear slipped away, giving way to a hot anger.It raged inside her with nowhere to go, until she couldn’t stop herself from turning around and letting that wretch know exactly what she thought of him...
Except he chose that moment to turn as well, and whether she had a drink or not didn’t matter, becausehedid.
The rest was history.
“What have you...” The man cut himself off, looking down at himself. His formerly pristine cream vest was ruined. He looked up at Margaret, and she watched as recognition sparked in his eyes.
Margaret’s breath hitched. He was Alexander Somerton, the Duke of Langley – the man who had snubbed her so badly two years ago that she had taken herself off the marriage mart altogether. Neither of them spoke for a beat as the surrounding guests turned to look at them, the sound of glass shattering having suddenly drawn their attention.
The duke wasn’t alone. The man beside him was Viscount Simon Stockton, a friend of a friend whom Margaret had met once or twice in London before her life had irreparably changed. He smiled like this was the funniest thing in the world to him, beaming as he examined Margaret from head to toe.
“Miss Pembroke,” Simon said to break the silence, glancing amusedly at Alexander. “You are here and not in London? What a... surprise. We were, in fact, just talking about you.”
“I know – you and everyone else,” Margaret said through gritted teeth, the better part of her decorum evaporating like the wine. “But at least the other gossips had the decency to keep the volume of their slandering to a minimum. You were speaking loudly enough for assembly rooms, Herbert, Shakespeare, and Cradock to hear what you thought, I am sure.”
Her unfettered response stunned Simon. He turned haplessly to the duke, who by now had recovered from his shock and was clearly looking for an apology. She remembered his type: proper, perfectionist, the coldest gentleman she had ever met. He was still disarmingly handsome, taller than most men, with dark hair and hazel eyes. An almost perfect appearance, except for a ruggedness he tried desperately to conceal, inherited from his French mother. Oh yes, Margaret had heard everything about the Duke of Langley’s bastard history. His past had been blemished by a scandal just like Margaret’s, which made him a hypocrite for talking about her as well as a wretch.
