Free At Last Comes Love by Mary Balogh

therefore never expected to have to seek employment. I do believe I would make an abysmally inept coal miner even if I felt inclined to try my hand at it. I must marry, you see. And in almost indecent haste. My grandfather, I feel compelled to add, believes it will be impossible. He plans to turnWoodbinePark over to my cousin, his next heir after me, on his birthday unless I am respectably married before then.”

    Margaret stared at him, speechless. He was serious.

    “What have you done,” she asked him, “to incur such wrath? The punishment seems unusually cruel if it is just that you have procrastinated in choosing a bride.”

    “I chose a bride five years ago,” he told her. “I was happy with my choice. I was head over ears in love with her. But the night before our wedding I eloped with her brother's wife and lived in sin with her—since the husband would not divorce her—until her death four months ago.”

    Margaret stared at him, transfixed. Yes. Oh, yes, that was it. Five years ago. It had happened just before she came toLondon for the first time with Stephen and her sisters, all of them new to Stephen's title and their life in the heart of the ton . The scandal was still being talked of. She had thought that the Earl of Sheringford must be the devil himself.

    This was him ?

    His eyes were fixed on hers. His dark, angular face was filled with mockery.

    “My grandfather doubtless wishes,” he said, “that he could simply make my cousin his heir and cut me out of everything that is his. It cannot be done, of course, but he can make me very uncomfortable and very miserable indeed for the rest of his life.”

    “Are you not ashamed ?” she asked him, and then felt the color flood her face. It was an impertinent question. What had happened was none of her business. Except that he wanted her to marry him in fourteen days or fewer just so that he could keep his income.

    “Not at all,” he said. “Things happen, Maggie. One adjusts one's life accordingly.”

    She could think of nothing to say in response. She could ask a thousand questions, but she had no wish whatsoever to hear the answers. But why had he done it? How could he not be ashamed?

    She was saved from the necessity of saying anything at all.

    “Your newly betrothed swain is approaching to claim his dance,” the earl said, looking beyond her again. “It is as well, Maggie, is it not? I have shocked you to the core. I shall take the liberty of calling upon you tomorrow and hope I will not find the door barred against me. I have so very little time in which to find someone else, you see.”

    She had not even noticed the one set of dances ending and the next beginning to form. But when she turned her head, she could see that indeed the Marquess of Allingham was approaching.

    “This is my set, I believe, Miss Huxtable,” he said, smiling genially at her and acknowledging the Earl of Sheringford with the merest nod of the head.

    “Oh, yes, indeed.”

    The Earl of Sheringford stood up when she did. He took her right hand in his even as the marquess was extending one arm, and raised it briefly to his lips.

    “I shall see you tomorrow, then, my love,” he murmured before nodding to the marquess and walking away—and out through the ballroom doors.

    My love?

    The marquess raised his eyebrows as she set her hand on his sleeve.

    Margaret smiled at him. There was no point in trying to explain, was there? She owed him no explanation, anyway.

    But really…

    My love.

    He had eloped with a married lady the night before his planned wedding to her sister-in-law.

    Could any gentleman be further beyond the pale of respectability?

    And he wanted her to marry him.

    He would indeed find the door barred against him if he should have the effrontery to come calling tomorrow.

    Could any day—any evening—be stranger than this one?

    5

    MARGARET felt very embarrassed as she danced with the Marquess of Allingham. She would have felt