“Bess, dear, look who has come to see you!” said her mother, beaming. “Mr. Gresham, may I present my daughter, Elizabeth?”

For a moment, Elizabeth was simply too taken aback to speak. Her mother was introducing her to Gresham as if they had never even met. Gresham rose to his feet and came toward her, smiling charmingly.

“Miss Darcie,” he said, holding his hand out to her. She gave him her hand, numbly and without even thinking. He bent over it and brushed it gently with his lips. “How delightful to meet you, at last. I was told that you were very beautiful, but in all honesty, I must confess that the reports I had received simply had not done you proper justice.”

“Is he not utterly charming?” said her mother, with a smile Elizabeth could have sworn had a malicious touch. “So well spoken, and so handsome, too! Is he not everything you could have hoped for?”

Utterly confused, Elizabeth looked from her mother to Gresham and back again. “Mother, you speak as if Mr. Gresham and I had never met.”

“Oh, do I?” her mother replied, innocently. “You mean to say you have?”

“I am quite certain I would have remembered, madame,” Gresham said, with a smile.

Elizabeth frowned. This was not making any sense at all. She could not understand why her mother was acting as if the events of the previous day had never happened. Or why Gresham was acting that way, for that matter. She had no idea what he was up to, but she was not going to have any of it.

“Then you must have an exceedingly short memory, Mr. Gresham,” she replied, stiffly.

Now Gresham frowned, infuriatingly. “I beg your pardon,” he replied. “I am fairly certain that we have never met. Perhaps you have mistaken me for someone else?”

She stared at him with disbelief. “We were at the Theatre only yesterday,” she said. “Could you have forgotten that already?”

Gresham stared at her with incomprehension. He glanced at her mother, as if seeking confirmation of Elizabeth ’s assertion.

“ Elizabeth is having her little jest,” Edwina Darcie said, with a smile.

“Ah,” said Gresham, as if he understood, though clearly, he did not understand at all. He still looked faintly puzzled.

“Jest?” said Elizabeth. “Mother, whatever do you mean? There is no jest. You were right here when Mr. Gresham’s invitation arrived yesterday by messenger!”

Now Gresham looked thoroughly confused. “Invitation? Messenger?” He shook his head, looking bewildered. “Am I missing something? I sent no messenger, nor invitation.”

Elizabeth ’s mouth opened, but no sounds would come out. She was simply too stunned to speak.

“Now, you see, Elizabeth?” her mother said, with a smug tone. “This is what happens when you dissemble. You have been caught out. As the saying goes, oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”

“I fear that I do not understand any of this at all,” said Gresham, looking lost.

“ Elizabeth concocted a bit of a tale for us yesterday,” her mother said. “A drama, as it were. And a most complex little enterprise it was, too, even to the hiring of a messenger and coach! My goodness! Such an elaborate deception! Her father will be quite taken aback when he finds out. It seems he was completely taken in. As, indeed, was I. You see, she was having a bit of fun with her parents, Mr. Gresham. Her very gullible parents.”

Elizabeth caught her breath. “Mother! You think that I…?” She could not even go on.

“You see, Mr. Gresham,” her mother continued, “ Elizabeth is quite a clever girl, with a most sprightly, irrepressible, and independent spirit.” Her mother, to Elizabeth ’s chagrin, actually simpered. “She gets it from her mother, I suppose. Oh, the apple truly does not fall far from the tree, as they say. She had some foolish notion that she did not wish to subject herself to the most honorable and eminently sensible tradition of an arranged marriage, you see. In this regard, I must accept part of the blame, I fear, in that I… out of all the best intentions, you understand… had prevailed upon her father to engage for Elizabeth a tutor to instruct her in the finer points of appreciation of the arts. The young man we had engaged seemed most erudite and capable, but apparently he somewhat exceeded his commission and filled our daughter’s head with all sorts of romantic nonsense from the sensualist poets… why, I blush even to say it!”

“I quite understand, madame,” Gresham replied, nodding. “I know the sort of thing of which you speak. These poets are quite the fashion now amongst the glittering gentlemen at court. They all go about enraptured over their productions. ‘Tis rubbish, really. Utter rubbish.”

“I see that you are a discerning gentleman, Mr. Gresham,” Edwina Darcie said. “So then, perhaps you will understand how, being young and impressionable, Elizabeth came away from her instruction with the notion that a proper marriage was not one in which the practical considerations of estate and family and mutual suitability prevailed, but one in which the woman was swept away by the passions of romantic love! And so, when she discovered that our families had agreed upon a match of eminent sensibility and benefit for all concerned, she devised, it seems, a little stratagem to make her father and myself believe that you, her prospective husband, did not desire the marriage to take place, because you had found her totally unsuitable! Can you imagine such a thing?”

“Mother!” Elizabeth said, with shock. “Are you accusing me of having made the whole thing up?”

“Well, now, Elizabeth, ‘tis pointless to keep up the pretence,” her mother said. “We have Mr. Gresham here to testify to what he did or did not do, and to what he did or did not say. I mean, really, Elizabeth, ‘tis one thing to have a man see that his wife-to-be possesses wit, imagination, and resourcefulness, but ‘tis quite another to have him believe that she is foolish, willful, and stubborn!”

Elizabeth was speechless. She stared at Gresham, who gazed back at her with seeming innocence, and she could not believe he had the nerve to stand there duplicitously and pretend that their meeting had never taken place. It was unconscionable! She did not know how to respond or even what to think. His presence was not only inexplicable, after everything that he had told her, but he was, by failing to admit the truth, essentially making her out to be a liar. And… to what end? What could his motives be?

“A beautiful young woman with her whole life before her certainly cannot be faulted for feeling some trepidation under such circumstances,” Gresham said, in an oily, placating, condescending tone. “After all, we had never met. I could easily have been some monstrously appalling fellow, ill formed and of a hideous aspect, unschooled in the proper social graces, and intemperate by disposition. I trust, however, that I shall be able to dispel any such concerns and ease her mind on these accounts.”

He smiled at Elizabeth and gave her a slight bow, and in that moment, she wanted nothing quite so much as to kill him. Except she could not, of course, and saw that any further insistence on her version of the story would be fruitless. Her own mother did not believe her and her father certainly would not. He would be furious beyond all reason at the thought that his own daughter had deceived him and had so very nearly upset all of his plans.

What was she going to do? It was unbelievable that such a thing could happen to her. Gresham was a monster. What in God’s name did he intend by this? Now there would be no way she could convince her parents that it was he who was the liar and not she. She had no proof. Only her word against his.

And suddenly, it came to her.

“Drummond!” she said.

“I beg your pardon?” Gresham replied.

“Your servant, Drummond! You do have a servant named Drummond, do you not?” Elizabeth said. “Or was that also something I imagined?”