At Last Comes Love by Mary Balogh

know that he was not a suitable acquaintance, he said. That worried your sister, and she would have gone to you herself if Moreland had not advised against it. I went instead. I hoped to draw you away from him without creating any sort of scene—I thought perhaps you would welcome a chance to escape if you already knew about him or would be grateful once you learned the truth. But instead you told me you were betrothed to him. What was I to do then?”

    “Obviously,” she said, “there was only one thing to do, and you did it. You told everyone in the ballroom.”

    “I confided in two of my fellow officers,” he admitted. “They are my friends and I trust them. I asked their opinion on whether a man who had known you all his life as a neighbor and friend had the right to interfere in your life to the extent of trying to persuade you to break your engagement.”

    “You have not known me all my life,” she said. “You have not known me at all for the last twelve years, Crispin.”

    … as a neighbor and friend … Those words had stung. Had there been nothing else between them as far as he was concerned?

    “Meg,” he said, “Sheringford is a scoundrel of the first order. He ought not even to have been there last night. I doubt he had been sent an invitation. You cannot possibly be serious about marrying him. Break off the engagement and marry me instead.”

    “What?” Her eyes widened.

    “No one will blame you,” he said. “Indeed, everyone will applaud your good sense.”

    “In choosing to marry you ?” she said.

    He flushed.

    “You would have married me once upon a time,” he said. “If your father had lived, we probably would have married long ago. Nothing much has changed since then except that we are both a little older.
    And except that you are lovelier now than you were then.” He smiled.

    “And that you have been married in the meanwhile,” she said. “And that you have a daughter.”

    “Who needs a mother,” he said softly. “Meg—”

    But she held up a hand and he stopped.

    He was asking her to marry him. After all this time, after all that had happened, he expected her to marry him? After the terrible embarrassment he had caused her last evening?

    But she would not allow her attention to be diverted from the main issue.

    “It was one of the other officers who spread the news of my betrothal last evening, then?” she asked. “Is that what you are saying, Crispin?”

    “It was not intentional, and it was certainly not malicious,” he said.
    “I was ready to rip him apart this morning after hearing all the gossip last evening and reading the papers this morning. But he was as concerned as I. He merely mentioned what I had told him to his cousin when he spoke with her after leaving me—in strictest confidence, of course. He had wanted her opinion.”

    And so stories, rumors, gossip spread as surely as a wildfire did after a single spark had caught alight. The cousin had told someone else in confidence, and that someone else …

    Well.

    “I am so very, very sorry, Meg,” he said. “I realize it must be distressing to you to have your betrothal made public before you had even had a chance to break the news to your family—and presumably before Sheringford could apply formally to Stephen for your hand.
    But there would have been gossip sooner or later, you know, if your brother and sisters had been unable to talk you out of such an ineligible connection. It was not to be avoided. Sheringford is a social pariah, and justifiably so. I really do not understand how you can have listened to an offer from him, let alone accepted one. Meg—”

    “Your apology has been made,” she said, interrupting him. “I assume that was your reason for coming here this morning, Crispin. You will excuse me now. I was on my way to call upon Nessie when you arrived.”

    “Meg,” he said, taking another step toward her, “don't marry him. I beg you. You will be miserable. Marry