Lady Cosgrove gasped louder but recovered quickly. “Mr. Turner,” she said, reaching out for Ash’s cuff. “Do listen to me. I know that you may believe that Lady Margaret has your best interests at heart, as she is some kind of a relation, if only a distant one. But if you intend to be a duke, you must not let yourself be guided so easily, not by one such as her. Take my warning to heart: she’s using you to punish me, because I kept my distance from her these past months. You know that any woman of good sense and decency would have done the same.”
No, Margaret had never been like Lady Cosgrove. For one thing, she had never been so stupid. Ash’s smile grew darker, and he looked at the woman. “I knew the instant Margaret spoke that she intended to use me as a weapon. What you fail to understand is this: I am her weapon to use.”
Margaret’s lungs burned. So much for not occasioning gossip. But she couldn’t fault him. She couldn’t reprimand him. She couldn’t even stop her own smile from spilling out, stupidly, over her face, the truth writ large for anyone to see.
