A Radical Arrangement by Jane Ashford

opinions ignored, but she could not imagine setting fire to a mill or attacking a constable as a result.
    Her expression must have mirrored her thoughts, for Keighley added, “I realize you don’t understand. So few do. It continually amazes me; it seems so obvious.”
    “Your own ideas are always obvious, seemingly,” she replied, a bit piqued. Did he think he was invariably right? “Do you ever listen?”
    He looked startled. “Actually, I do—quite often.”
    “But not to someone like me.” She gazed at him. His hazel eyes met her blue ones with bemused puzzlement.
    He sat back again and examined her carefully. Something had happened to the timorous, wearisome girl he had met at the Mayfields’ dinner. That girl would never have spoken to him so or stared so challengingly. Indeed, he was not certain any woman had ever fixed his eye in just that way. “What have you been up to?” he asked. “You have changed all out of recognition.”
    Margaret’s stare became perplexed, then her eyes dropped and some of her shyness returned. In her interest in the subject, and in Keighley’s very unusual opinions, she had almost forgotten who he was and where they were and why.
    “Can shooting me have brought out this new character?” he added, half teasingly. “If so, I hope it does not become fashionable.”
    She flushed, keeping her eyes on her plate.
    “Please do not retreat into your tedious former persona. I’m not certain I could endure it.”
    A spark of anger made Margaret look up.
    “That is better. Shall I insult you further? Will that make you speak?”
    “You are a dreadful man.”
    “Aren’t I?” he agreed cordially. “Perhaps you would prefer to insult me?”
    “I should greatly prefer it, but I am too well-bred to do so.”
    “Now where, Miss Mayfield, did you find that riposte? You must tell me. I would swear it was not in the head of the whining chit I met at your parents’ home. Or are you the most skilled dissembler in the realm? I don’t believe it. Something has happened to you.”
    Margaret considered him frowningly. What right had he to talk to her in this way? Yet she could not deny that he was right. She repeatedly astonished herself with the things she found to say, particularly to him, recently. Where did they come from? And what had happened to her? “I…I don’t know,” she stammered finally.
    Keighley regarded her with more interest than he had shown, or indeed felt, in the whole course of their acquaintance. “Do you not?” he said meditatively. “I wonder.”
    A silence fell. Margaret eyed her companion nervously, but he seemed lost in thought.
    “Tell me,” he said finally, “when we were talking just now, why were you so eager? What were you thinking of?”
    “I was interested in what you were saying.”
    “Yes?” he encouraged her when she stopped.
    “That is all.”
    “But have you never been interested in what someone was saying before?”
    “Well, of course I have, but…” Margaret paused. When her parents and Philip talked of the Corn Laws or other political issues, they never seemed as engrossing as when Keighley had spoken about them today. And it was the same when the Mayfields had political gatherings at the house. She had not, in fact, been interested in hearing them. She thought of other conversations—during the season or with her mother about household matters—and was astounded to realize that she had probably never been so caught up by a topic as she had been today. Why? She reexamined her memories. Philip and her parents made things so dull, and so did her mother’s friends whom she had met in London. Usually she had shut off her mind after two or three exchanges, and since few ever addressed her, she had spent most of her social encounters in a kind of dream. Margaret blinked. Perhaps she had spent most of her life in a dream. This idea was so unsettling that she shivered.
    “What is it?” asked Keighley, who had been watching her