It was Anne who reacted first. She let out a low cry and
stood up rather abruptly, then, as if surprised at finding herself on her feet, she moved quickly over to one of the window casements. She tried to make it look as if she’d gone there apurpose to check the view, but Jeremy knew better: The view from the Gold Drawing Room was a particularly uninspiring one in winter, revealing only the snow-covered moor along which Rawlings Manor was situated.
“Uh, yes,” Sir Arthur said uncertainly, his eyes on his daughter’s slim back. “Yes, Margaret is engaged. But …”
Jeremy sank down onto the chaise longue Anne had vacated, his eyes never leaving Sir Arthur. “Yes?” he asked, with a smile that, had Sir Arthur happened to notice it, might have given the older man pause.
“Well,” Sir Arthur said, with forced heartiness. “As you know only too well, Your Grace, Margaret has always been … headstrong. I think there are far pleasanter topics to discuss. Your adventures abroad, for instance. We’ve heard all about your brave heroics in India. And you simply
must
tell us about this, er, young woman, this Star of India—”
“Jaipur,” Jeremy corrected him. He stretched out his legs along the green velvet cushion and crossed his booted ankles, folding his fingers beneath his head. “And there really isn’t anything to say about her. There was some talk that she and I would marry, but that’s all it was. Talk. Right now, I’d like to discuss your daughter Maggie, if I might.”
“You—” Sir Arthur stared down at the duke confusedly. “Oh, dear. I really … I really must protest, .Your Grace. That is a subject … that is a subject—”
“That is a subject,” Jeremy drawled to the domed ceiling, “in which I have a keen interest. One might almost say a
vested
interest.”
Sir Arthur’s eyes, which were quite small, hidden as they were beneath the folds of his fleshy face, widened to their limits. Jeremy, if he hadn’t been harboring so much resentment toward him, might almost have felt sorry for the man. “But Your Grace,” he cried. “Perhaps you are not aware … no, I’m certain you cannot be aware … but Margaret has turned out to be rather a … disappointment … .”
“What?” Jeremy couldn’t help but laugh at the knight’s
embarrassment. “What could Maggie have possibly done to make you stammer so, Sir Arthur? Is there something the matter with this fellow she’s marrying? Is he a hurdy-gurdy man?”
“No, no,” Sir Arthur said. Reaching into his waistcoat pocket, the old man withdrew a handkerchief, which he then used to wipe his glistening forehead. For a man who moments before had been complaining of the cold, he seemed to have grown quite warm. “Nothing like that. You see, Your Grace, Maggie has chosen to make a mockery of all of us by parading herself about London as a … a …”
Jeremy widened his eyes in mock horror. “Good God! She’s joined the chorus line at the Vauxhall!”
“Stop it. Stop it this instant!”
Jeremy looked up, surprised. Anne Cartwright still stood by the window casement, but now she was facing him. Only she didn’t look like the Anne Cartwright he had known since his childhood, or even like the Anne Cartwright he’d seen just moments before. This Anne Cartwright was not pale. No, twin spots of color burned in her cheeks. And her eyes, which were not at all like her sister’s eyes, not a bit warm, not a bit good-humored, were cold … though Jeremy did not think he mistook the fact that tears glistened within them.
“You know very well what Maggie’s done,” Anne said in a trembling voice. “I should have known the minute you walked through the door, Jerry. I thought you might be up to something. But never in a million years would I have guessed it had something to do with Maggie.”
Her father, still confused, murmured, “Anne, dear, please! Do not shout so. Remember to whom you speak.”
“Oh, I know very well to whom I speak, Papa,” Anne said. “I am speaking to Jeremy Rawlings. Jeremy Rawlings, the hard-drinking, hard-fighting, hard-loving Duke of Rawlings, who cares for nothing but gratifying his own lascivious desires—”
“Now see here.” Jeremy sat up and swung his feet back to the floor. “I’m not saying all of those things weren’t true at one time, but it’s a bit unfair to judge me by the way I was five years ago. I’ve changed, you know. I’ve worked
bloody hard at it, too, and I think I deserve a second chance.”
Anne went on as if she hadn’t even heard him. “Jeremy Rawlings, because of whom my parents were forced to send my youngest sister away to another
country
, in order to protect her from his wanton lust—”
“Now that’s quite enough.” Jeremy stood up, his jaw set. “First of all, my lust, wanton or otherwise, is none of your business, Mrs. Cartwright. And secondly, I proposed to your sister five years ago, and she turned me down, so I don’t care to hear any more about parents being forced to send their daughters to other countries because of me, when, frankly,
I’m
the one who was taken advantage of.”
“You
what
?” Anne cried breathlessly. Her father looked equally stunned. In fact, he was forced to sit down, quite heavily, on a tapestry-covered stool that creaked ominously beneath his weight.
“You heard me,” Jeremy said, as he stalked back and forth before the fire. “Now, you can despise me all you like. I don’t really give a damn. What I care about is how Maggie’s come out in all of this. Why, you people are treating her as if she were some kind of criminal, or something, when all she’s doing is what she loves.”
Anne blinked a few times. “You proposed to Maggie,” she said, appearing still to be in some need of clarification. “And she turned you down?”
“That’s right.” He stopped pacing and turned to face them. “Might I ask why that is so hard for you to believe?”
“But …” Anne had gone pale again. “
Maggie
? Duchess of
Rawlings
? No, sir. No. I cannot credit it.”
Jeremy set his jaw. “Well, you’re going to have to begin crediting it. Because I intend to marry her, as soon as I convince her to have me.”
Anne didn’t appear to have heard him. “If you two were to marry, I can assure you, Jeremy, she won’t stop painting … .”
“Nor would I ask her to,” Jeremy said. “Why should she? She loves to do it, and she’s good at it. Have you seen
any of the paintings she’s done recently, Mrs. Cartwright? They’re jolly good … .”
Sir Arthur cleared his throat. “It would be most unseemly,” he said. “Most unseemly. Disgraceful, even. Quite a bit more disgraceful than had you married the Hindu girl. I’m quite sure the queen would not approve.”
“What’s disgraceful,” Jeremy said firmly, “and what
I’m
quite sure the queen wouldn’t approve of, is the way you two are carrying on about it. I’m damned tired of hearing it, and I’m putting an end to it here and now.” Jeremy reached into his waistcoat and pulled out his pocket watch. “There’s a train leaving for London in exactly two hours. If there’s anything you need to pack for a night away from home, Mrs. Cartwright, I suggest you send one of my servants to fetch it now. The brougham will be leaving in half an hour.”
Anne stared at him. “What … what are you talking about?”
“We’re taking a trip to London, Mrs. Cartwright,” Jeremy explained patiently. “Your sister’s exhibition is opening tonight at her fiancé’s gallery on Bond Street. It would mean a lot to her if you and your father could be there, and so I’m going to see to it that you are.”
“This …” Anne exchanged astonished glances with her father. “This is insane! I am not going anywhere!”
“Yes,” Jeremy said quietly, putting away his watch. “You are.”
“I’m not!” Anne nudged her father. “Papa, tell him!”
“Well, Anne,” Sir Arthur said uncertainly. “He is the, uh, duke.”
“But he can’t do this!” Anne whirled toward her husband, who had sat up a little straighter in his armchair, but otherwise appeared to be doing nothing more than observing the proceedings with a look of keen interest on his face. “Alistair, tell him! Tell him he can’t do this!”
Alistair met Jeremy’s gaze, and must have seen the entreaty there, since his next words were, “I’m sorry if it pains you, love, but I’m afraid I agree with him. It’s high time you exercised some sisterly charity toward your youngest sibling.”
“Oh!” Anne blinked at him tearfully. “How could you, Alistair? How
could you
?” Flinging a hand over her mouth to stifle a sob, Anne lifted her hem and ran from the room. Her father looked after her in alarm.
“Oh, dear,” he said. “I suppose I should … I suppose I should …”
“Yes,” Jeremy said with a sigh. “Go after her, Sir Arthur. Just make sure she’s ready to go at half past the hour.”
“As you wish, Your Grace.” Sir Arthur hurried from the room, but not before he’d mumbled a number of incoherent apologies.
As soon as the door had closed behind the old man, Alistair, in the armchair, began to applaud slowly. “Well done, young man,” he declared, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Well done! Couldn’t have done it better myself had I tried. You ought to follow your uncle’s example, and take up a seat in the House, with
your
diplomatic skills.”
Sensing he was being mocked, albeit gently, Jeremy shrugged. “Well,” he said. “At least I didn’t have to use the pistol.”
After Augustin, who did not take sugar in his coffee, stirred a third cube into his cup, Maggie finally burst out with, “Won’t you tell me what’s wrong?”
Augustin looked up from the tablecloth, startled. “
Pardon, chérie?”
“It can’t be good for our digestion,” Maggie said, a little more gently than she’d spoken before. “Eating under this cloud of gloom you seem to have brought with you. Can’t you tell me what’s wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong,
chérie,”
Augustin said, with so much syrupy condescension that he actually reached out and patted Maggie’s hand, which was resting on the table beside her cup and saucer. “Nothing is wrong at all.”
But he was lying. Maggie knew good and well that he was lying. He had been speaking to her in that same patronizing tone all afternoon, first at the gallery and now at the tea shop. He still couldn’t look her in the eye, and he hadn’t chastised her when she’d ordered a slice of cake with her tea, as he normally would have, since Augustin felt strongly that dessert ought only be consumed after a meal, not in place of one.
This man, Maggie thought, cannot possibly be a murderer. What was it then, that was upsetting him so? Could he, Maggie wondered, have found out about Jeremy? But how? She knew perfectly well that the fact that she’d lost her virginity didn’t show … well, except maybe to Berangère. So how
could Augustin know? Jeremy surely hadn’t told him. Maggie knew Jeremy too well to suspect that he might have bragged to Augustin. To do so would have been beneath Jeremy’s dignity. Shooting Augustin would have been preferable to Jeremy than admitting to him that he’d deflowered his fiancee … .
Was it possible that
Berangère
had told him? Maggie swallowed a mouthful of cake and nodded distractedly at the waitress who asked if the young lady would like more tea. Maggie had told no one else, so if anyone had spilled the truth to Augustin, it could only have been Berangère. But why would Berangere have done such a thing? For what possible gain?
Because she wanted to help. That had to be it. Berangère, in an attempt to help Maggie make the right decision about her future, had told Augustin the truth about Maggie and Jeremy. Of course. Hadn’t Berangère said “
Leave Augustin to me
?”
The more she thought about it, the more convinced Maggie became that this was the reason behind Augustin’s strange behavior. Berangère had told him about Maggie’s night of passion with Jeremy. And as Augustin was much too polite to bring up the subject, Maggie thought it only fitting that she should do so herself.
“Did you,” she began hesitantly, “happen to run into Berangère last evening after you left me?”
Augustin dropped his coffee cup.
Fortunately, it landed in its own saucer, and didn’t break, though its contents did slosh over the side and spill onto the white tablecloth. A number of other patrons glanced their way, distracted by the noise, and Maggie, who’d observed Augustin’s reaction with openmouthed astonishment, thought to herself,
Oh, no! She told him! I’ll kill her. I’ll just kill her. Why couldn’t she have left it to me?
Augustin dabbed at the wet spot on the tablecloth with his napkin, then lifted the square of linen to his lips and dabbed nervously at the corners of his mouth, as well. “How … how did you know?”
Maggie smiled sadly. “Just a guess.”
“I … I just don’t know how it happened,” Augustin was saying, to his lap. He was still perfectly incapable of looking Maggie in the eye.
Maggie reached across the table to pat his hand, as he’d patted hers just moments before. The gesture was pathetically inadequate, but what else could she do? She said the first thing that came into her head. It was not part of the speech she’d rehearsed. “Augustin, I’m so very, very sorry … .
Augustin did lift his head then. He fastened a grateful gaze on Maggie’s face and murmured,
“Vous êtes vraiment angélique.
…”
Maggie blinked at him. “Augustin, really,” she whispered. “I’m anything
but
angelic.”
“But you are!” He seized her hand and held it in a desperate grip in both his own. “What other woman would be so forgiving, so magnanimous? I am truly the luckiest man alive!”
“Forgiving?” Maggie echoed. “What have
I
to forgive? / should be the one asking
your
forgiveness.”
“No,” Augustin cried, lifting her hand to his lips and showering it with kisses. “No, I am the one who sinned. Sinned against my love! And she said you would not understand. But you do understand! And you forgive! Oh, my
Marguerethe
! Truly, I do not deserve you, dog that I am … .”
Maggie, startled, yanked her hand out of his grip and stared at him across the table. “What are you talking about?
Who
said I wouldn’t understand?”
“Why, Berangère, of course.” Augustin smiled at her tremulously. “She told me not to tell you, that you wouldn’t understand, but I told her she was wrong. There is no woman in the world like my
Marguerethe.
None so forgiving, none so understanding … .”
Maggie stared at him. “Just for the purpose of clarification, Augustin,” she said, “precisely
what
is it I am being so understanding about?”
“Why, my indiscretion,
chérie.”
Augustin blinked at her. “Last night.”
Maggie slumped back in her chair, stunned, though not
unpleasantly so.
Berangère
?
Augustin
had slept with
Berangère?
“You do understand, don’t you,
chérie
?
”
Augustin spoke rapidly and in an urgent undertone that she could only just hear above the clink of spoons in teacups, the low murmur of the other patrons’ conversations, and the click-clack of the waitress’s high-heeled boots. “After I left you so sadly indisposed last evening, I felt in need of a bite to eat, and so I went to the Vauxhall … a bit loud for my tastes, but I was feeling, I admit, a bit glum. Well, who should I run into there but Berangeère, who was also alone. I invited her to dine with me,
naturellement
—”
“Oh,” Maggie said, with a nod, since it seemed as if he’d paused for her approval.
“Naturellement.”
“Well, we had a lovely meal, and with it some champagne, and then a little more champagne … I suppose we had a little too much champagne, because the next thing I knew, Berangère said she had broken the lace to her slipper, and would I mind escorting her back to her flat so that she could replace it. I, of course, as a gentleman, could not allow her to travel so far alone, not so late at night, and so I said yes, and then when we arrived at her flat, she opened another bottle of champagne she happened to have, and—”
“Oh,” Maggie said. She felt something she could not exactly describe. It was as if an enormous weight had been lifted, not from her shoulders, as she’d sometimes heard people say, but from her heart. “I see.”
The corners of Augustin’s mouth were twitching, but evidently not with humor, since his next words were as impassioned as any he’d ever uttered.
“But it didn’t
mean
anything,
Marguerethe!
I was a fool. I had had too much to drink, and you know Berangère, she’s a lovely, vivacious woman—”
“Oh, yes,” Maggie said. She was having trouble controlling the corners of her own mouth, but for entirely different reasons. “I know Berangère.”
So
this
is what Berangère had meant by
taking care
of Augustin! Good Lord! Maggie ought to have known, of course. Berangère had seduced Augustin! And if Maggie
wasn’t mistaken, Augustin looked as if he’d enjoyed every minute of it. Surely that was part of this great guilt he was feeling. He had betrayed his bride-to-be, and he had
enjoyed
it!
Well, Maggie would help convince him that perhaps this wasn’t quite the end of the world … on the contrary, it might be the start of something much more agreeable than his relationship with Maggie.
“Are you telling me, Augustin,” Maggie inquired gravely, “that you made love to Berangère, but that you felt nothing for her?”
“No,” Augustin said quickly. “No, I did not mean … not
nothing.
I only meant that … Perhaps, if you and I had not met, Berangère and I—” Augustin shook his head, as if trying to wake himself from a particularly delectable dream. “But that cannot be.”
“Really?” Maggie placed her elbow on the table and rested her chin in her hand. “Why?”
Augustin stared at her as if she were demented. “Because I have pledged myself to you,
Marguerethe!”
“You would still marry me,” Maggie asked, “though you are in love with another?”
Color, quite an extraordinary amount of it, rushed into Augustin’s cheeks. “I did not say … I did not mean …”
Maggie, feeling a sudden flood of warm feelings toward him, reached out and took Augustin’s hand with a gentle laugh. “I am teasing you, Augustin. I’m sorry. I couldn’t resist. We are such good friends, you and I, that teasing you … well, it comes naturally. More naturally, I’m afraid, than …” She lowered her eyelids. “Than other feelings.”
“Ah,” he said. “So that is the way it is.” When she felt brave enough to lift her gaze, Maggie saw that Augustin did not look particularly crushed, only a little dispirited. “We are to be only friends, then, you and I?”
She tightened her grip on his hand. “Don’t you think it would be best, Augustin? I don’t think it’s enough, really, for a husband and wife to simply be … fond of one another. Like brother and sister.”
“My feelings toward you were hardly brotherly,
Marguerethe,”
Augustin said, with a rueful sigh. When Maggie, embarrassed, attempted to draw her hand from his, however, he seized it, and held on tightly. “But I cannot fault you for admitting that for you, it was not the same. You were always very honest with me,
Marguerethe.
You told me from the beginning that you were not in love with me. I had thought that with time … but now I see such a thing would never have been possible. A woman like you could never love a man like me—”
“Now you’re simply being ridiculous,” Maggie said sternly. “You know very well you have a great deal to offer the
right
woman. I just didn’t happen to be she.”
“Perhaps not.” Augustin looked wistful. “But …”
“But … ?” Maggie gazed curiously at him from across the table. “But what?”
He shook his head, as if trying to rid himself of an unwanted thought, and abruptly released her hand. “It is nothing,” he said. “It is only that … Do you think … Is it possible that Berangère … ?”
Maggie had to bite the inside of her lip to keep from smiling too broadly. “That’s a difficult question,” she said, trying to sound thoughtful. “It would take a good deal of manipulation on your part, Augustin, to win over Berangère. Still, she isn’t a foolish girl. I’m quite certain, with the right incentives, she might come around to the idea.”
“Incentives,
Marguerethe?”
Maggie smiled. “She’s very fond of money, Augustin.”
“Ah, I see!” Augustin brightened considerably. “And I have a good deal of it.”
Maggie laughed. “Yes, you do. Perhaps if you throw enough of it in her direction …”
“I shall shower her with gifts,” Augustin declared. “Jewels and furs and flowers!”
“I think,” Maggie said with a grin, “that you have determined exactly the way to Berangère’s heart.”
“As you say. Still, I wonder …” He looked at her fondly. “What of
your
heart,
chère Marguerethe?
I know it has not been broken by this foolish confession of mine. But I would like to see you happy. This duke of yours … for I
know that it is he, and not I, that you have always loved … can he make you happy?”
Maggie, startled, uttered something flippant by way of reply. But later, in the hansom cab Augustin hired to take her home, she repeated Augustin’s words to herself. What
about this
duke of hers?
Could
he make her happy? Remembering the night they’d passed together, she believed he could … very easily. And not just in bed, either.
But could
she
make
him
happy?