DRESSED IN A DEMURE MORNING gown of pale-blue muslin, Margaret hesitated outside the door of her father’s study. It was almost exactly a year since she had been hauled over the coals in this very room prior to her exile, and six months since her second lambasting on her return from Dalkeith. How immature and naive she had been. This time she had to be calm, logical, coherent. Knocking on the door, she entered without waiting for permission.

“Margaret!” Her father was seated at his desk, pen in hand, an account book open on the blotter in front of him. “What do you want? I’m extremely busy.”

“Good morning, Your Grace. May I?”

As she took a seat in front of the desk, the duke continued to stare down at his accounts. “Well?”

“Killin informed me that he intends to call on you after Princess Helena’s wedding.”

“Ah!” The pen was set down. The frown disappeared. “I hope you appreciate how fortunate you are to be given a second chance. Killin . . .”

As her father launched into a familiar-sounding litany of Killin’s many attributes, Margaret stopped listening. The duke’s hair was receding, she noted. He had combed it forward in an effort to disguise the fact, but the effect was to make it look as if he was wearing a hat. His mutton-chop whiskers were no longer bright red but ginger tinged with grey. His eyebrows were wildly curling and untidy, in need of a trim, and there were hairs sprouting from his nostrils. He was not omniscient and he wasn’t infallible. He was merely a man set in his ways who must be persuaded to view his recalcitrant daughter in a fresh light.

“Your Grace!” Margaret felt sick. Her hands were shaking. She laced them tightly together, digging her nails into her palms. “I have come to inform you that I am not going to marry Killin,” she said firmly. “I have tried. You cannot fault me for lack of effort, but I simply cannot persuade myself that we are suited. I cannot sacrifice myself to a marriage that would make me and, I am convinced, my husband, too, quite miserable. I know this is the last thing you want to hear, but it’s far better that you hear it now than later.”

Forcing herself to look into her father’s eyes, however, she quailed. A long, fraught silence followed. While her calves itched with the urge to flee, a tic in her father’s cheek made his whiskers twitch. Hopefully, his silence meant he was digesting what she had said. It meant he had listened, she told herself, which was a start.

“How dare you.”

She flinched but refused to drop her gaze. “I am entitled to have a say in this matter, you must see that.”

“What I see is that you have done a damned fine job of deceiving me and your mother into believing you had reformed.”