She was not quite sure whether she was in the middle of a rapturous dream or a ghastly nightmare. All she did know was that suddenly, with only one day's warning, she was betrothed to the man she had loved passionately and hopelessly for six years. Her mind could still not grasp the fact as reality. When Papa had warned her the day before that Richard Adair, Earl of Brampton, was to come the next day to pay his addresses to her, Margaret had felt a sick lurching of her stomach. How had her father discovered her feelings? What sort of a sick joke was he playing on her?

And when she had sat across from the earl that afternoon, she had had to use all her willpower to put into practice the training of her youth-to sit quietly poised before him, not betraying her feelings by so much as a tremble in her hands or a softening of her lips. But she had had to look up at him now and again to convince herself that he really was there. She had not needed the evidence of her eyes when he had taken her hand in his. All her feelings had come to the fire and she had had great difficulty controlling her voice when his lips had brushed her hand for a brief moment.

Margaret had had a quiet childhood and a strict upbringing. Her father was not a wealthy man. He had kept his family at his estate in Leicestershire most of the time, taking them to London only occasionally. Her mother was a quiet and sober woman; she had instilled these virtues in her daughter. When Margaret's only sister had been born seven years after her, Margaret had been expected even more to set an example as the older sister. And she had learned her lesson well. No one knew, except perhaps Charlotte, who loved her sister so deeply that she saw beyond the outer facade, that Margaret was a woman with passion and deep feelings, who longed to be gay and adventurous. All signs of the real Margaret were fiercely repressed.