“Has he called on you here? Have you received him?”

There was no point in lying. It would be easy enough for Fred to discover the truth, if he didn’t know it already. “Yes. On both counts.”

His face darkened like a thundercloud. “I forbid it.”

“You have no right—”

“Try me,” he said. “You’d be hard-pressed to stay in London with no funds of your own.”

“Rubbish.” Her gaze locked with his. She refused to be intimidated. “You can withhold my money, but you have no control over my person. I can go where I like and see whom I like. I can marry anyone—”

“Marry him!” Fred launched from his chair. “You wouldn’t—”

“I might.”

“Margaret—”

“And pray don’t loom over me in that overbearing manner. You’ll give me a cramp in my neck.”

He reluctantly dropped back into his seat. “I won’t ask if he’s proposed to you, for I know full well he hasn’t. He’s made no secret that he’s courting Miss Louisa Steele.”

Maggie stared at Fred. For a moment, she wasn’t sure if she’d heard him correctly. St. Clare was courting Miss Steele? That beautiful porcelain doll of a girl Maggie had seen him with at the theater? The young debutante in the first bloom of her youth?

She shook her head. “I don’t believe it.”

“It’s true. He took her driving yesterday and escorted her to Lady Colchester’s ball that same evening. To hear tell of it, the pair of them were inseparable. Waltzing together, dining together.”

Maggie hadn’t attended the Colchesters’ ball. She was saving her strength for Lady Parkhurst’s ball on Saturday. It was to be a grand affair. Maggie’s first and only ball of the season, and one where she had hoped she might attempt a waltz with St. Clare. Then again…

He hadn’t called yesterday. And he hadn’t come today. Not yet. He hadn’t even sent his usual bouquet of flowers.

“Miss Steele is this season’s incomparable,” Fred went on. “Her father is the younger son of the Earl of Lindsey, which makes her more than suitable as a match for a viscount. The ton is already talking about her marriage to St. Clare. If he’s paying attention to you at all, it’s not because he wants to wed you. It’s because you’re—”

“What am I?”

“Come, at your age, you can’t expect—”

“I beg your pardon!”

“You’re six and twenty. If a man like St. Clare is paying attention to you at all, he can have only one thing in mind, and it’s not to make you his wife.”

“How dare you!” Maggie’s temper boiled over at last. “To make such insinuations. You don’t know anything about him.”