Allendale inclined his head. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking. His expression was inscrutable, his gray eyes cold as hoarfrost. “So long as we understand each other.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Maggie paced from the marble fireplace to the tall damask-curtained library windows and back again, her arms folded at her waist. It had been hours since Fred had called on her in Green Street. Long, anxiety-filled hours during which Jane had persuaded her to exercise patience.

Patience!

Every instinct within Maggie had told her to leave at once for Grosvenor Square. To find St. Clare and to tell him everything. But Jane had warned against it.

“Your recklessness will only expose the both of you to further censure,” she’d said.

It was sound advice. Reasonable and wise. It was also deeply infuriating. Maggie wasn’t accustomed to inaction. And in the present circumstances—

“I’m certain he’ll come to you, Margaret,” Jane said from her place on the library sofa. A leather-bound book lay open at her side. “If you will but wait a while longer.”

“And if he doesn’t?” Maggie had no sooner posed the question than the Trumbles’ butler materialized at the door carrying a silver salver. A calling card lay upon it.

“Who is it, Olmstead?” Jane asked

“Lords St. Clare and Mattingly, ma’am,” he said. “Shall I show them in?”

Maggie stopped where she stood on the thick Aubusson carpet. She shot an anxious glance at Jane.

“Yes, do.” Jane rose from the sofa to smooth her pale green day dress. “And have Carson bring in the tea tray, if you please.”

“He’s brought Lord Mattingly with him,” Maggie said. “I wonder why?”

“For me, obviously.” Jane smiled slightly. “He’s meant to distract me from my duties as chaperone. Not that my role has made one jot of a difference in this affair.”

Maggie sighed. Jane wasn’t deaf to the gossip that had begun swirling about town. Much more of it and it would begin to reflect on her. Maggie was her houseguest after all.

A rather poor one, at that.

She felt a flare of guilt for putting her friend in such a precarious position. “Oh, Jane. What a trial this all must be.”

“It’s rather an adventure, truth be told.” Jane moved to stand next to Maggie. “But you must take care, my dear. At present there are only whispers about the pair of you, but it wouldn’t take much to instigate a full-blown scandal. Not now that the papers are on the scent.”

“I know that,” Maggie said.

Lord St. Clare appeared a moment later, with Lord Mattingly close behind. The pair of them were as impeccably dressed as always, looking as though they might have come straight from a strut on Bond Street or a promenade in the park during the fashionable hour.