Her father pushed a copy of the Morning Post across the desk with the tip of his finger. “This unwanted gift arrived at Drumlanrig on Christmas Eve.”

The pendulum of the case clock made a metallic clicking sound as it swung to and fro, emphasising the tense silence as she read the proffered article. The newly lit fire sparked in the grate, the damp coals causing smoke to billow into the room. Across from her, her father sat stony-faced, drumming his fingers on the blotting-pad. Reading the piece again, Margaret’s stomach churned as she struggled to make sense of the vile insinuations, the way the facts had been twisted to concoct a scurrilous, vulgar story that was untrue in all but the bare bones of it.

Though she had concluded, from the tone of the telegram summoning her, that her reunion with her parents was unlikely be a joyous occasion, Margaret had worked determinedly to keep her spirits up as she waited, rehearsing and refining her apologies, her explanation for her behaviour, and most of all her heartfelt resolve to embrace her fate. Never in a hundred years had she imagined she would be confronted with this. “I don’t know what to say,” she said, feeling sick to the pit of her stomach, “except that it is obviously a pack of lies.”

“Damned footman!” Her father hurled a brass paperweight in the form of a lion rampant at the fireplace. “Felt obliged to quit our service for the sake of his civic duty, indeed! The wretch was a sot with a taste for my burgundy! We should have had him clapped in irons when the extent of his pilfering was discovered, but instead we let him go on the understanding—as with all our staff—that he would keep his counsel about his time here. I’ve a good mind to have him tracked down and brought to book.”

“Walter, my love, calm yourself.” Mama picked up the paperweight and returned it to its rightful place, taking the chair beside Margaret. “To do so would only serve to generate yet more salacious gossip. What’s done is done. We must focus our thoughts on how best to repair the damage.”

Her father, however, was far from finished. “To have the Buccleuch name dragged through the mud like this is bad enough, but to add insult to injury, we received that rag in the Christmas post—from a concerned well-wisher! Ha!”

“Indeed, my dear,” Mama intervened, “but really, when you think about it rationally, this nameless person has done us a favour. If we had remained unaware—”

“Little chance of that! I’m told that blasted paper sells thousands of copies. What have we come to, that our press is permitted to make such unfounded allegations? This should cost the guttersnipe editor his job.”