Marcus! At her bedchamber door, at night? Margaret’s heart thumped in her breast. Surely he would not dare enter.
Candlelight flickered from under the door. Hushed voices echoed in the corridor—Marcus’s and a woman’s.
Nerves quaking, Margaret rose and tiptoed to the door.
“Yes, sir. Miss Macy’s home,” Joan said. “She’s gone to bed.”
Margaret knelt down and peered through the keyhole.
“Well then, Joan, there’s nothing to keepyoufrom...” Marcus’s voice grew muffled. As Margaret’s eyes adjusted to the flickering light, she saw Marcus pressing his face into Joan’s neck, as though to whisper in her ear... or kiss her. Margaret’s stomach roiled. She couldn’t see Joan’s face, but she saw Marcus capture the maid’s hand and begin to tug her down the corridor.
“There you are, Mr. Benton.” The low voice of Murdoch, their butler, interrupted the scene. “Your uncle requests your presence in the study.”
Joan pulled her hand free. Marcus muttered an oath and disappeared.
Releasing a breath she had not realized she was holding, Margaret climbed back into bed. Yet long after Marcus’s footsteps faded and the house was quiet, Margaret lay awake, unsettling images circling through her mind: Sterling and Marcus. Marcus and Joan. Miss Lyons and Lewis. Lewis and Nathaniel...
The last image she saw before sleep finally overtook her was Nathaniel Upchurch’s look of disgust shooting across the ballroom and scorching her skin.
In the morning, Margaret entered the breakfast room, startled to find Sterling Benton eating alone. She’d hoped to avoid him, waiting until he, an early riser, would normally have departed, while his wastrel nephew would no doubt still be abed.
Sterling sat stirring a cup of coffee, although she knew he added neither sugar nor milk. With his thick silver hair, chiseled features, and confident sophistication, she understood what women like Miss Lyons, like her mother, saw in him. Still, how stunned and nearly sickened she had been when her mother announced her engagement to the man a mere twelvemonth after Stephen Macy’s death.
Margaret forced a civil tone. “Good morning.”
He looked up, piercing her with his icy blue eyes. “Is it? You tell me.”
Margaret helped herself to a plate at the sideboard, more as an excuse to turn her back on him than eagerness for food. Finding herself alone with him, her appetite had fled.
“I take it you did not enjoy yourself last night,” he said. “I did not approve of your leaving alone.”
“I was not alone. I left with Emily Lathrop and her parents.”
“And you did not dance once, although I am certain Marcus must have asked you.”
Margaret knew any offer Marcus made—whether for a dance or marriage—was made at his uncle’s behest.
“I was not in the mood for dancing,” she said, thinking,since Lewis Upchurch never asked.
Sterling sipped his coffee. “You left before the most interesting part of the evening.”
“Oh?”
“Nathaniel Upchurch returned from the West Indies as wild as a heathen. He struck his brother, Lewis, without provocation in front of the entire assembly.”
Margaret had heard snatches of the argument and surmised there had been some provocation—at least in Nathaniel’s mind—but she remained silent.
So Sterling had not seen her come back into the ballroom. The thought that Sterling’s eagle eyes were less than perfect felt somehow comforting.
“Your mother tells me he once courted you,” Sterling continued.
Margaret blindly placed a muffin on her plate. “That was years ago, before he left England.”
“And you rejected his suit?”
“I did.”
“Very wise, my girl. Very wise.”
