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It was both a gamble and a brazen lie. She wasn’t Lady Anna Margaret any longer, even though her card proclaimed her as such in raised letters on thick, creamy stock.
From behind Newton, Margaret could hear scraps of conversation wafting to her. They came from inside the house—murmurs, and then a peal of feminine laughter. Margaret recognized that high-pitched nervous giggle, ending on a snort. Her friend’s laughs were legendary. Margaret could imagine everything about the conversation Lady Elaine must be engaged in now—everything from the length of the visit (always long) to the number of times she would poke her head out of the room and call for more biscuits (often).
The butler cleared his throat, forcibly reminding Margaret that she wasn’t in the front parlor, partaking of tea.
“Lady Elaine,” he stated inflexibly, “is not at home to visitors.”
From the sound of things, Lady Elaine was in fact at home. With visitors.
Margaret looked the man in the eye and shook her head in disappointment. He didn’t blush—a man as well-trained as he would never show so much emotion—but after a few seconds, his gaze cut away.
“Newton,” Margaret said quietly, “you will at least deliver my card, and allow Lady Elaine to refuse me entry personally.”
Newton didn’t blink. He didn’t sigh. And most important, he didn’t move from his post, blocking the door. But his shoulders shifted—a tiny amount, not so much as to hunch. For him, it was a clear declaration of regret.
“How many times have you escorted me to Lady Elaine’s parlor? How many years have you known me?”
“Ma’am,” he replied, “you’ll have to take your card back.”
“No, Newton. It’s my lady,” Margaret corrected softly. “If you are going to refuse me entry, you will at least do me the honor of calling me by the title I was born with.”
Newton let out a pained breath. “My lady. I am not sure if I mean this as a compliment. You are the most politely relentless individual I have ever turned away from my mistress’s doorstep. Refusal does not deter you. Embarrassment does not stop you. What will work?”
“I’ll tell you what might work,” Margaret mused. “Perhaps you might refuse me entry. And perhaps we might converse about it, politely, with me out here, standing harmlessly on the step. You can continue to valiantly refuse. I shan’t raise a fuss, but because we are both polite, I might simply stand here and discuss the terms of my potential entry.”
Newton’s lips tugged down, in a hint of a scowl. “Terms of your entry? But your entry has no terms. You aren’t entering.”
She had only to wait just long enough. “Of course not,” Margaret sued. “But how am I not entering? Might I come in through the servants’ entrance?”
“Naturally not!”
“I don’t suppose I could crawl in through a window, left obligingly open.”
“Never.”
The tenor of that half-heard feminine conversation shifted in front of her, from murmurs to rustles.
“I suppose I am also not entering through the back garden, then.”
“N—” Newton started, but as he spoke, the parlor door behind him opened, and Lady Elaine poked her head out.
“Newton,” said the woman, “could you be a dear and—oooh.” As she spoke, Lady Elaine’s pale eyes fell on Margaret. For days, the woman had refused to see her. Margaret had wagered that it was because her friend lacked the personal fortitude to cut her to her face. Lady Elaine was, after all, a good sort of person. A bit silly, yes, and more than a bit frivolous. But she was sweet by nature. That she was unmarried at the age of twenty-five had more to do with her lack of dowry—and her very unfortunate laugh—than anything else. She was pretty enough, in a plump, soft way, and her lips rounded at the sight of Margaret.
Confronted with the sight of her friend for the first time in months, Elaine’s hand flew to her pale ringlets. “Oooh,” she repeated. “Margaret. My father has ordered me not to say another word on your brother’s behalf. He has quite literally ordered it.”
Margaret could almost see her friend’s italics, hanging in the air.
“It’s lucky, then, that I don’t wish to speak to you on my brother’s behalf. I wish to speak to you on mine. May I come in?”
Newton didn’t budge, and Elaine shook her head.
“I cannot allow it—although I wish I could. Newton has the strictest instructions. None of you are to pass through our doorway. I fear my father intends to side with that simply awful Mr. Turner, and he’s afraid that Turner, uncivilized brute that he is, will become horribly angry if he shows you any favor.”
“Mr. Ash Turner?” Margaret frowned. “Uncivilized? Are we speaking of the same man?”
He was not the one who kept her standing on the cold threshold, in this dank, unhealthy weather. He was, perhaps, not always conversant in the rules of etiquette. Nothing he ever said was quite within the bounds of propriety. But he’d not even blinked an eye when she hurled a ball of dirt at him.
But then, when he’d thought that Richard had harmed her, he had tossed her brother across the room. Perhaps there was a bit of the barbarian in him, after all.
Lady Elaine simply stared at her. “Really, Margaret. You’re the last person I would expect to be protesting the designation. He’s practically a commoner. He knows nothing of genteel behavior. Gentlemen, of course, would never do anything outré, but commoners have not been taught to control their emotions. They are simply incapable of tamping down their base urges. It’s bred into them.”
Margaret glanced at Newton, who absorbed this news without a flicker of an eyelash. She forbore from mentioning that the commonest
one among them was the only one who was not reacting emotionally.
“Let me set your mind at ease,” she finally said. “I haven’t come to ask you to cross your father. We’re women, Elaine. We don’t vote in Parliament. We don’t enter into successions. We know our place. I would never expect you to intervene on my behalf. I don’t believe I could have any effect on the outcome, in any event.”
Lady Elaine stared at her. “I suppose…well. You make a good bit of sense. What is it you want, then?”
“Why, the pleasure of your company.”
Lady Elaine laughed—that long string of wheezy chuckles, terminating in an indelicate snort. “Oh, Margaret. Even I am not such a goose as to swallow that tale.”
“I mean it, Elaine. I’ve missed you—silly goose that you are—all these months. I’ve missed your histrionics. Your gossip. Your friendship. I’ve even missed your ridiculous laugh. I miss all my friends, and I will not be banished to the country. Not now. Not any longer.”
“Oh, Margaret.” Lady Elaine raised the tips of her fingers to her lips. She gave her head a bit of a shake.
“I am a duke’s daughter. A duke’s bastard daughter, yes.” Margaret’s voice trembled, but she raised her chin high. “But I am his daughter nonetheless. No matter how the suit is resolved—no matter whether Mr. Turner prevails or is defeated—I want to be accepted again. I don’t expect to go everywhere. But I want more than I have now.”
As she spoke, Margaret knew the obstacle was insurmountable. She could as soon beat down the Tower of London with a feather duster as foist herself on to society. That didn’t mean she would give up, though.
But Elaine pursed her lips. “What do you want?”
