him here. You must reason with him as well as you can.” Jane paused. “And while you’re at it, you must demand as much money from him as you require for the season, and then some. You have the moral high ground now, Margaret, and Frederick Burton-Smythe will not be able to deny you anything.”
Maggie’s note requesting Fred come and see her was taken round to his lodgings by a footman at half past four. The footman promptly returned with Fred’s reply: Mr. Burton-Smythe would do himself the honor of calling upon Miss Honeywell in half an hour.
By the time Fred arrived, Maggie had washed and changed into a fresh gown and put her hair into some semblance of order. She received him alone in the Trumbles’ drawing room, sitting composedly in a chair near the fire with a tea tray arranged in front of her.
“Margaret.” Fred executed a smart bow. It caused the lines of his coat to strain against the brawny muscles of his back. “I’d have thought you had the good sense to rest after your journey.”
Maggie had resolved to make an effort at civility, but at Fred’s words, she couldn’t refrain from a sharp retort. “You presume to lecture me on good sense?”
“You’ll never regain your strength if you don’t rest.”
“How can I rest, when the first thing I hear upon my arrival in London is that you’re engaged to fight a duel?”
Fred’s face turned a mottled red—a particularly unbecoming shade when contrasted with his copper-colored hair. “I needn’t ask how you heard such a rumor. Your friend Miss Trumble, no doubt.”
“Do you deny it?”
He pokered up, his broad, stocky frame as stiff and unyielding as Sir Roderick himself. “I shall not admit it or deny it. Indeed, I shall not say another word on the subject. It’s the height of impropriety to be discussing such things with you.”
“Oh, do stop acting like your father!” Maggie glared up at him. “And why must you loom over me in such a disagreeable fashion? Sit down for pity’s sake. Here. I shall pour you out a cup of tea, and then we’ll talk like a lady of six and twenty and a man of thirty instead of bickering like two half-civilized children.”
Scowling, Fred grudgingly did as she bade him. His expression slowly softened as he watched Maggie preside over the tea tray. When she held out a cup to him, his tea prepared just as he liked it, he took it from her with a complacent smile. “What a good little wife you’ll be.”
A flicker of temper sparked in Maggie’s chest. “To whom, I wonder?”
“Why, to me, of course.”
The flicker quickly kindled into a low, smoldering flame.
Fred drank his tea, oblivious to Maggie’s worsening mood. He was dressed in what she assumed must be considered the first stare of fashion here in London. Skintight pantaloons, gleaming Hessians, and shirt-points so high that they inhibited the movement of his thick neck. To Maggie, however, he looked no different from the surly, squarely built bully of her youth.
She disliked him intensely. And yet, in six months, she would have to consent to be his wife. Mrs. Margaret Burton-Smythe. Then, he would not only have rights over her fortune, he’d have rights over her body as well. The thought of it had caused her many a sleepless night these past months.
“I didn’t summon you here to talk about that,” she said tightly. “I summoned you here to discuss this duel of yours.”
Fred lowered his cup. “I can see you’re concerned. And I can’t tell you how much it gratifies me to know you care about my well-being. However—”
“I care about Beasley Park.”
“However,” he continued, unperturbed, “even if I were to engage in a duel in the morning, it doesn’t follow that I’ll be the loser.”
“How not? When, by all accounts, the man you’re dueling with is the most fiendish shot in all of Christendom?”
Fred’s condescending manner gave way to a flare of masculine indignation. “Oh, that’s what they’re saying, is it? And how might anyone know, pray? St. Clare has been on the continent for the better part of his life. I don’t recall anyone ever having seen him shooting at Manton’s.”
“If he’s been on the continent for most of his life, it’s because his father killed someone in a duel and they were forced to flee England. Dueling is in their blood, I hear.”
“No more than it is mine. My father fought two duels when he was a young man.”
“And