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former fiancée?”
    “Tomorrow. No, it’s already tomorrow. I would wed you this morning, Miss Montclaire, if you would do me the honor of accepting my hand.”
    The notion was preposterous, but a soft, warm what-if was wriggling its way into Margot’s thoughts. She could do this, she told herself, marry a charming Bedlamite for his money and position. She’d done more outrageous things in her life, for her brother’s sake.

Chapter Five
    Whoever asked, am I my brother’s keeper? should have asked Margot Montclaire Penrose first. Now the answer to her prayers for Ansel just might be sitting on the rickety pianoforte bench, if Lord Woodbridge was willing to take on this additional responsibility. The viscount was ready to wed a socially unwelcome bride, but Margot could not marry anyone not willing to welcome her brother. For an instant she thought of accepting his lordship’s lunatic offer, explaining about Ansel later and relying on Lord Woodbridge’s code of honor, but she had her own scruples. They were being honest, weren’t they? Even if the viscount was dicked in the nob, he deserved to know what else he was getting along with a wife. Margot needed to know that he would shoulder this weighty burden she’d been carrying.
    Convinced that he was serious about wedding her—the license alone must have cost him a fortune—Margot also decided that it was not fair to let his lordship go on thinking she was some totally ineligible female. “What if this marriage would not be such a total misalliance, my lord?” she finally asked.
    Galen had been giving Mademoiselle Margot time to decide, watching her weigh all the factors, certain that any rational female—if such a creature existed—would come to the correct conclusion. Now he was confused. “I don’t understand. The last I knew, young women who sing at Drury Lane are rarely granted vouchers for Almack’s.”
    Margot bobbed her head in acknowledgment of his polite phrasing of her circumstances. “Especially those whose mothers were unwed French opera singers who ran off to Italy to give birth.” That was the common assumption, as they both well knew. Trading on her mother’s famous name had been necessary for Margot to gain an audition, so she had never corrected the sordid story. “But what if my mother was legally married, and she and my father left England to escape the narrow-mindedness of my father’s family? And what if that family held an old and honorable title, a barony that eventually passed to my papa? Would I still be unacceptable enough to suit your purposes if I were Margot Montclaire Penrose, daughter of Baron Penrose of Rossington, Sussex?”
    “Intriguingly, my dear, like tossing more delicious crumbs to the rumor mills. We’ll have an easier go of getting you invited to the drawing rooms of the highest sticklers, where you would not want to go anyway, trust me. But you’d still be the Magnificent Margot of Drury Lane, the most sought-after female in Town, only now you’d have a fascinating background to go with your fame. May I ask what happened to your baron-father?”
    “He died shortly after returning to England to claim his inheritance. My mother had succumbed to a congestion of the lungs some years before.”
    “I am sorry. But what happened after your father’s death that left you penniless, taking to the boards to support yourself? Did the title revert to some vile distant relative who stole your dowry? My own heir presumptive is no great shakes, but at least I trust him to look after my sister.”
    “No, my brother Ansel inherited. He is only eleven now, though, and…sickly. My father’s younger brother was appointed guardian. He is not a kind man.” Margot was twisting at the blue ribbon that tied the high waist of her muslin gown. These were hard words to say. “I fear Uncle Manfred is an ambitious man, moreover, who does not have my brother’s best interests at heart. If Ansel should not survive to his