Книга - Forbidden

Forbidden
Nicola Cornick


Scandal isn't just for rogues, as the daring women in USA TODAY bestselling author Nicola Cornick's scintillating new series prove….As maid to some of the most wanton ladies of the ton, Margery Mallon lives within the boundaries of any sensible servant. Entanglements with gentlemen are taboo. Wild adventures are for the Gothic novels she secretly reads. Then an intriguing stranger named Mr. Ward offers her a taste of passion, and suddenly the wicked possibilities are too tempting to resist….Henry Atticus Richard Ward is no ordinary gentleman. He’s Lord Wardeaux and he is determined to unite Margery with her newfound inheritance by any means—including seduction and deception. But when the ton condemns the scandalous servant-turned-countess and an unknown danger prepares to strike, will Margery accept Henry's protection in exchange for her trust?










Nicola Cornick’s novels have received acclaim the world over

‘Cornick is first-class, Queen of her game.’

—Romance Junkies

‘A rising star of the Regency arena’

—Publishers Weekly

Praise for the SCANDALOUS WOMEN OF THE TON series

‘A riveting read’

—New York Times bestselling author Mary Jo Putney on Whisper of Scandal

‘One of the finest voices in historical romance’

—SingleTitles.com

‘Ethan Ryder (is) a bad boy to die for! A memorable story of intense emotions, scandals, trust, betrayal and all-encompassing love. A fresh and engrossing tale.’

—Romantic Times on One Wicked Sin

‘Historical romance at its very best is written by Nicola Cornick.’

—Mary Gramlich, The Reading Reviewer

Acclaim for Nicola’s previous books

‘Witty banter, lively action and sizzling passion’

—Library Journal on Undoing of a Lady

‘RITA


Award-nominated Cornick deftly steeps her latest intriguingly complex Regency historical in a beguiling blend of danger and desire.’ —Booklist on Unmasked


Dear Reader,

Welcome to Forbidden, the sixth and final book in the Scandalous Women of the Ton series! Forbidden is a rags-to-riches story featuring Margery Mallon, maidservant to so many of the previous scandalous women.

When Margery discovers that she is heiress to the richest earldom in England, she is swept from her drab existence into a world of unimaginable luxury, with beautiful clothes, glittering jewels and the most handsome men in the country begging to marry her. But the one man she wants is Henry, Lord Wardeaux, the man whose inheritance she has stolen and whom she can never trust. Margery and Henry’s passionate love story unfurls against a backdrop of elegant country houses and fashionable Ton balls, but can the Cinderella from the back streets of London ever find true happiness? Featuring all the previous characters from the Scandalous Women series, Forbidden is a fairy tale I had such great pleasure in writing and I hope you enjoy it too!

Best wishes,






Nicola Cornick




Author’s Note


In the Peerage of Great Britain, there are a dozen titles that can be inherited in the female as well as the male line. The earldom that Margery will inherit is one of these.

Tarot cards are used to foretell the future and the fortunes of the characters in Forbidden. The Tarot has been used for hundreds of years to predict the future.




Forbidden

Nicola Cornick















www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)


Don’t miss the rest of theScandalous Women of the Tonseries, available now!

WHISPER OF SCANDAL

ONE WICKED SIN

MISTRESS BY MIDNIGHT

NOTORIOUS

DESIRED

Also available fromNicola Cornick

DECEIVED

LORD OF SCANDAL

UNMASKED

THE CONFESSIONS OF A DUCHESS

THE SCANDALS OF AN INNOCENT

THE UNDOING OF A LADY

DAUNTSEY PARK: THE LAST RAKE IN LONDON

Browse www.mirabooks.co.uk or www.nicolacornick.co.uk forNicola’s full backlist


To Bellbridge Montagu, Monty, the most loyal animal companion and best friend a writer could have, with love and happy memories




PROLOGUE


The Wheel of Fortune: Fate turns its wheel London, April 1817

THE MAN SITTING BEFORE HIM had a certain reputation.

Ruthless. Intelligent. Controlled. Dangerous.

Mr. Churchward knew a little of his history. Baron Henry Wardeaux had been a soldier. The way he spoke still bore the trace of command, clipped and direct. He had fought with Wellesley in the Peninsular War where he had been known as The Engineer for his skill in military fortifications. He had done other work, too, spoken of in whispers, secret work behind enemy lines. Mr. Churchward was a lawyer, a man given to dealing in facts and figures, but he believed the stories told of Henry Wardeaux.

“So, Mr. Churchward,” Wardeaux said, sitting back in the high-backed armchair and crossing one elegantly booted leg over the other. “Have you discovered proof that Miss Mallon is Lord Templemore’s granddaughter?”

No pleasantries about the weather, which had been mild and wet of late. No enquiries into Mr. Churchward’s health, which was good but for a few twinges of gout. Lord Wardeaux never wasted words.

Mr. Churchward shuffled his papers a little nervously. He cleared his throat. “We have found no definite proof, as yet, my lord,” he admitted. “It has only been two days,” he said, trying not to sound defensive.

Two days since a man had come to Mr. Churchward with information that the Earl of Templemore’s granddaughter, who had been missing for twenty years, was alive and well, and working as a lady’s maid in London. Two days of frantic activity to try to discover if the information could possibly be correct.

It had been astonishing news, news that had revived the health and hopes of the old earl. He had sent his godson and heir, Henry Wardeaux, to London immediately. If the report was true, Henry Wardeaux would no longer be the heir. Templemore was one of only a handful of titles in the country that could descend through the female line.

Churchward wondered how Lord Wardeaux would feel about losing the huge Templemore inheritance. He would never know. Henry Wardeaux would never reveal his emotions on that or any other subject.

“If you have not yet found proof, what have you found?” Wardeaux asked.

Mr. Churchward gave a sharp sigh. “We have discovered a great deal about Miss Mallon’s adoptive family, my lord. None of it is good.”

Wardeaux’s firm lips almost twitched into a smile. “Indeed?”

“Her elder brother owns a business buying and selling secondhand items. It is a cover for the sale of stolen goods,” Churchward said. “Her middle brother works in a tavern and her youngest brother…” The lawyer shook his head sadly. “There is no criminal activity he has not dabbled in. Highway robbery, fraud, larceny…”

“Why is he not locked up?”

“Because he is good at getting away with it,” Mr. Churchward said.

This time, Henry Wardeaux did laugh. “And from this den of thieves comes Lord Templemore’s granddaughter and heiress,” he said.

“Perhaps,” Mr. Churchward admitted. The circumstantial evidence that Margery Mallon was really Lady Marguerite Saint-Pierre was very strong, but he disliked circumstantial evidence. It was irregular, lacking firm verification. He wanted facts, witnesses, written testimony, not the faded miniature portrait and the garnet brooch that his informant had provided.

He fidgeted with the quill pen that lay on his desk. Never, in his long and distinguished career serving the nobility, had he been involved in such a case as this. When the earl’s daughter had been murdered twenty years before and her four-year-old child stolen, no one had ever expected to see little Marguerite again. No one, neither Bow Street nor the private investigators the earl had hired, had been able to trace her. The earl had mourned for years.

Wardeaux shifted slightly in his chair. “If you cannot prove one way or the other whether Miss Mallon is Lord Templemore’s granddaughter, Mr. Churchward, I shall have to do so myself.”

“If you gave me more time, my lord—” Churchward began, but Wardeaux lifted one hand in so authoritative a gesture that he fell silent.

“We don’t have time,” Wardeaux said. There was an edge of steel beneath the quiet words. “The earl is anxious to be reunited with his granddaughter.”

Mr. Churchward understood the urgency. The earl was dying. Even so, he hesitated. He knew Margery Mallon, and in turning over the case to Henry Wardeaux he felt as though he was throwing her to the wolves.

“My lord…” he said.

Wardeaux waited. Churchward sensed his impatience. He was a hard man, a cold man whose life had driven all gentleness out of him.

“The girl has no notion of her parentage,” he warned. “According to my enquiries she is quite…” He groped to find the appropriate word. “Innocent.”

Wardeaux looked at him. Mr. Churchward found it disconcerting. The darkness in his eyes suggested he had long ago forgotten what true innocence was.

“I see,” Wardeaux said slowly. He stood up. “Where do I find her?”




CHAPTER ONE


The Moon: Take care, for all is not as it seems

THE CLOCK ON ST. PAUL’S CHURCH was chiming the hour of ten as Margery went down the servants’ steps into the basement of Mrs. Tong’s brothel. She had not intended to arrive so late. Normally, she called at the Temple of Venus during the day when there were no customers and the courtesans were resting in their rooms in anticipation of a busy night ahead. Mrs. Tong’s girls were generous, which was more than could be said for Mrs. Tong herself. They let Margery into their rooms and let her take away their discarded gowns, hats, gloves, anything they had finished with, in return for the fresh pastries and sweetmeats that Margery made herself.

Tonight Margery had brought candied pineapple and marzipan treats, sugar cakes and tiny Naples biscuits made of sponge and jam.

She made her way up the back stairs to the boudoir on the first floor. The room was a riot of color, silk cushions in purple and gold, red velvet curtains drawn against the night. The air was thick with chatter and the scent of perfume and candle wax. The girls were ready for their night’s work but they almost swooned with greed and delight when they saw Margery with her marketing basket. They ran to fetch scarves and gloves to trade for the cakes.

“Girls, girls!” Mrs. Tong bustled in with the air of a circus trainer rounding up her performing animals. “The gentlemen are arriving!” The madam clapped her hands sharply. “Miss Kitty, Lord Carver is asking for you. Miss Martha, try to charm Lord Wilton this time. Miss Harriet—” she permitted a small, chilly smile to touch her lips “—the Duke of Tyne is very pleased with you.”

Mrs. Tong tweaked a neckline lower here and a hemline upward there, then sent her girls down to the salon. They left in a chatter of conversation and a cloud of perfume, waving farewell to Margery, licking the sugar from their fingers. Margery watched them flutter down the main staircase like a flock of brightly colored birds of paradise. Accustomed to coming and going via the servants’ passage, she had only once glimpsed the brothel’s reception rooms; they had seemed lush and mysterious, a dangerous and different world, draped with bright silks and rich velvets, adorned with the prettiest and most skillful courtesans in London.

The room emptied, the chatter died away. Mrs. Tong’s dark, beady gaze passed over Margery dismissively, as if she was a trader who knew the price of everything and could see nothing worth her time. Margery knew what Mrs. Tong was thinking. She had seen that thought reflected in people’s eyes for years. She was small and plain, a mouse of a creature, all shades of brown. No one ever wasted a second look on her. She was used to it and she did not care. Good looks, Margery had often observed in her career in service, so often led to trouble.

“You’d best be on your way.” Mrs. Tong popped one of Margery’s marzipan treats into her mouth and blinked in ecstasy as the sugar melted on her tongue. “Make sure you take the back stairs,” she added, sharply. The sugar had not sweetened her mood. “I don’t want any of the customers thinking you work for me.” She caught the corner of a golden gown that was trailing from Margery’s basket. “Is that wasteful strumpet Kitty throwing this away? There’s plenty more wear in it.” She tugged and the gown fell to the floor in a waterfall of silk and lace. “Go on, be off with you. And leave those pineapple candies.”

“No gown, no pineapple,” Margery said firmly.

Mrs. Tong rolled her eyes. She bundled the gown up and threw it at Margery, who caught it neatly. Mrs. Tong pounced on the packet of candies.

“I’ll take the marzipan, as well,” she said, snatching it from the basket.

Margery’s last glimpse of Mrs. Tong, as she closed the door and slipped out onto the landing, was of the bawd slumped in a wing chair, wig askew, legs akimbo, stuffing sweetmeats into her painted face as though she were a starving woman.

The landing was quiet and shadowed. The girls were downstairs now, plying their customers with wine and flirtatious conversation. No doubt Mrs. Tong would be joining them as soon as she had recovered from her excesses. Margery could hear snatches of music and laughter from the open doors of the salon. She trod softly toward the servants’ stair, her steps muffled by the thick carpet. Even had she lost the golden gown through Mrs. Tong’s miserliness, she would still have had a good haul tonight. There were three pairs of gloves, two hats—one of which was squashed flat, rolled upon in an amorous encounter, perhaps—two more gowns, one ominously ripped, a beautiful silk scarf that was a little stained with wine, and an assortment of undergarments. These had surprised Margery; the girls had told her they wore none.

Billy would be pleased with her. There was a great deal of material that could be reused and clothing that could be resold. Margery’s brother and his wife ran a shop in Giltspur Street that traded in secondhand clothes and various other things. Margery never enquired too closely into the nature of Billy’s business interests—she suspected he was a fence for stolen goods—but he was fair to her and gave her a cut of the profits on the materials she brought in.

Tomorrow, on her day off, she would deliver the clothes and join Billy, Alison and their brood of infants for tea. Tonight, though, she had to get back to Bedford Square. Lady Grant was the kindest of employers but even she might be taken aback to learn that her lady’s maid visited the London brothels on a regular basis.

Margery was halfway along the landing when her foot caught in the Turkey carpet and she stumbled. The basket lurched from her hand. The golden gown, which she had quickly stuffed on top, unrolled like a balloon canopy, tumbled through the gaps in the wrought-iron banister and floated slowly and elegantly down to land in a heap on the marble floor of the hall below.

Margery stood transfixed. She did not want to lose the expensive silk gown, and she had traded three packets of sweetmeats for it.

On the other hand, she did not want to get caught venturing into those parts of the brothel that were forbidden to her. Mrs. Tong was quite capable of refusing her entry ever again if she broke the rules, and then a very lucrative source of income would be lost to her.

Very slowly, very carefully, Margery started to tiptoe down the broad main stair, all senses alert to discovery. She was halfway down the steps when there was a sound from above and she froze, pressing back into a shadowy alcove among erotic statues of naked frolicking nymphs and shepherds. Something long and hard prodded her in the ribs—a phallus belonging to a marble satyr with a particularly dreamy expression on his face. There was no wonder he looked so happy. Margery looked critically at his physique. She had no firsthand knowledge of such matters but common sense told her that it simply could not be life-size. Perhaps all Mrs. Tong’s statues were overendowed. Margery hoped they did not make the customers feel too inadequate.

Margery took another cautious step down, then another. Only three more to go and then she would be standing on the black-and-white-checkered floor of the brothel’s hall and the beautiful golden gown would be within her grasp. She would grab it, stuff it back in the basket and scoot through the green baize door that led to the servants’ quarters below stairs.

It was a simple plan and it almost worked.

She’d almost reached the entrance to the servants’ quarters when she saw that someone was blocking her way. It was not Mrs. Tong, full of righteous indignation, but a man, lounging in the shadows. He did not move. Nor did he speak.

The candlelight skipped across his face, emphasizing some features, concealing others. Margery could see that he had black hair but not the precise shade. It needed a cut. His face was thin and brown with high cheekbones that reminded her of the carved stone statues she had seen in churches. He had a groove down each cheek where he smiled and a groove in his chin, as well. An odd shiver rippled through her, for this was a man with a saint’s face but with sinner’s eyes, dark, wicked eyes, hiding secrets. His brows were strong and dark, too, and his mouth neither too thin nor too wide. When he smiled, Margery realized that she was staring at him, staring in fact at his mouth, which looked tantalizingly firm.

A bolt of heat streaked through her, fierce and unfamiliar, like the burn of spirits. It made her tingle and set her head spinning. She took a step back, trying to steady herself. It was very hot in the brothel. Perhaps that was why she felt so faint all of a sudden, or perhaps she was sickening for something, as her grandmother would have said.

Still the gentleman did not move. He looked at Margery. She looked back at him. He was a gentleman; there was no doubt about that. He was beautifully dressed, something Margery, with her eye for style and color, was quick to appreciate. His cravat was tied in a complicated arrangement she did not even recognize, and held by a diamond pin. A jacket of elegant proportions fit his shoulders without a wrinkle, in much the same way that his tight buckskins clung to his thighs. A dandy, Margery thought. She had a servant’s finely honed instinct for recognizing various qualities in men and women. This was a man of fashion, but she sensed that there was more to him than that, something dark, deep, dangerous perhaps, in a way she could not begin to understand. She shivered.

He was blocking her escape.

“May I help you, sir?” she asked, wanting to bite back the words as soon as they were spoken, for she realized that they were perhaps not the most felicitous choice in a brothel.

Something flared in his eyes like the shimmer of heat from the candles. He straightened and took a step closer to her. Margery involuntarily tightened her grip on the handle of her basket. The wooden struts creaked.

“I am sure that you can.” His voice was very mellow. He sounded amused. His mouth had curled into another slow smile. It crept into those dark eyes and lit them with warmth that made Margery’s face burn. The strange awareness drummed more persistently in her blood.

This is a rake. Take care….

“I don’t work here,” she said quickly.

He paused. His gaze slid over her in a slow, thorough appraisal. Oh, yes, this was a rake. He knew how to look at a woman. There was an expression in his eyes that Margery had seen before. She had seen it in the eyes of many men looking upon the beautiful scandalous ladies for whom she had worked. She had also seen it in the gaze of people looking at her homemade sweetmeats. It was a mixture of greed and speculation and desire.

No one had ever looked at her in that way. No one had looked at her as though they wanted to eat her up, sample her, taste her and savor that pleasure. Such an idea was absurd, impossible.

Except that it was not, for this man was looking at her with acute interest and—she gulped, her throat suddenly dry—definite desire.

There had to be some mistake. He was confusing her with someone else.

“You don’t work here,” he repeated softly. He took a step closer to her, put out a hand and touched her cheek lightly with the back of his fingers. He wore no gloves and his hand was warm. Margery’s skin felt even hotter now.

“I’m only visiting,” she said in a rush.

His eyes widened. That smile, like sunshine on water, deepened. “There’s nothing wrong in that,” he said.

“No! I mean—” Margery floundered. “I’m not here to—” She stopped, wondering how on earth to describe the many and varied sexual practices that Mrs. Tong’s customers indulged in and she did not.

“I’m a lady’s maid,” she blurted out.

“Of course, you wish to be incognito.” The stranger shrugged. “Don’t worry. Mrs. Tong caters to all tastes. Many ladies enjoy dressing up as maids. Marie Antoinette, for example.” He smiled. “The marketing basket is a nice touch.”

“I’m not dressing up,” Margery said. She whispered it because he was now so close that she seemed to have lost the power of speech. “I really am a lady’s maid.”

The stranger laughed. “Then it is enterprising of you to supplement your income like this.”

Oh, lord. Now he thought she worked part-time as a lightskirt. It was not unheard of. Margery knew plenty of maidservants who sold their favors. It was more lucrative than scrubbing floors. It was whispered about Town that Lord Osborne had once visited his favorite brothel only to be confronted with his housemaid, who was working as a courtesan on the side. Margery had never considered supplementing her income that way. When she had left Berkshire for London it had been with her grandmother’s warnings ringing in her ears.

“London is a cesspool of vice,” Granny Mallon had said. “You take my word for it—I’ve been there once. Keep yourself nice for your husband, my girl.”

Margery had not cared much about finding a husband but she did care about keeping herself nice. It was important to her.

Besides, no one had asked her to give up her virtue anyway. Lady Grant’s twin footmen were too pretty and too much in love with themselves to notice anyone else, and the rest of the male staff were too young, or too old or too unattractive. And they were her friends. Margery had not felt a single amorous flutter toward any of them.

She did have a servant follower, Humphrey, who was the second gardener at the house next door. He brought her flowers and moped about the kitchen inarticulately, staring at her and reddening if she spoke to him. Humphrey reminded Margery of a stray animal. She felt pity for him and a kind of impatient affection. He did not make her tremble, or cause her knees to weaken, as they were weakening now. He did not make the breath catch in her throat or her heart beat like a drum, as it was beating now.

But Margery had also been warned about handsome gentlemen, men who preyed on naive country girls. Granny Mallon had not been wrong. London was indeed a home to every vice beneath the sun, and Margery was fairly certain that this man was intimately acquainted with quite a number of them. There was something downright wicked about him.

“We are at cross-purposes,” she said. She had to force the words out and her voice sounded husky and high-pitched at the same time. “I am not a lightskirt, nor am I here to sample any of the pleasures of the brothel—”

“Are you sure?”

Had he heard the note of wistfulness in her voice? Margery gulped.

“Not even—” his mouth was dangerously close to hers “—one kiss?”

“I’m a virgin!” Margery squeaked.

She saw him smile. “It takes more than one kiss to change that, sweetheart.”

There was a long, long moment in which Margery could feel the warmth of his body and hear the thunder of her pulse in her ears. She did want to kiss him. Her stomach dropped with shock as she realized it. Fierce curiosity licked through her, laced with wickedness. She could barely believe how she was feeling. Things like this did not happen to her; she was far too sensible to want to kiss strange gentlemen in brothels. Or so she had thought. Yet something of the sumptuous, bawdy atmosphere seemed to have infected her like too much wine in the blood, and here she was with this man who was temptation personified….

His lips brushed hers, so light a touch she thought she had imagined it. He captured her gasp of shock in another kiss, hot and sweet, that took her completely by surprise. It was her first kiss. Occasionally, she had wondered what it might feel like and now, all of a sudden, she knew. It felt as though there were too many sensations for her to grasp. She was aware only of the strength of his arms about her and the touch of his mouth on hers. It was all sparks and flame, fiery desire and the ache of wanting. It was enough to set her trembling in a way she had never felt before.

His lips very gently nudged hers apart, his tongue touched hers and everything became dizzying and molten and shocking in a perfectly delicious way. Now she knew why people liked kissing so much. She never wanted to stop. Her body felt soft and yielding against the strength and hardness of his. The pit of her stomach felt hollow with a peculiar longing. She was lost in a dangerous new world and did not want to be found.

A door shut sharply, away to their right, and Margery jumped and awoke, stepping back out of the circle of his arms. The sweetness fled and she felt cold and shocked. She was no Cinderella. Nor was she the heroine of one of the Gothic romances she read in secret. She was a servant girl and he was a gentleman. She wondered what on earth she had been thinking. No, she knew what she had been thinking. She had been thinking that kissing was the most delightful occupation she had yet discovered. More accurately she had been thinking that kissing this particular man was the most delicious thing imaginable. But that did not make it the right thing to do.

“No.” She pressed her fingers to her lips in a brief, betraying gesture and saw his gaze follow the movement and his eyes darken.

“No,” she said again. “This is quite wrong.”

“You!” Mrs. Tong was swooping toward Margery like a vengeful harpy, scarves flying, bangles clashing. “I told you—” She broke off as the man moved protectively close to Margery’s side. A smile of ludicrous brightness transformed her sharp features. “I beg your pardon, sir,” she said. “I did not see you there. Was this girl importuning you? She does not work here.” Mrs. Tong shot Margery another vicious vengeful look. “My girls are a great deal more professional—”

“I don’t doubt it, ma’am.” The gentleman cut in, so smoothly it did not sound like an interruption. “But you have the matter quite mistaken. I was lost—” a hint of amusement in his tone “—and Miss Mallon was doing no more than giving me directions, for which I am most grateful.”

“Since she is in the wrong place herself,” Mrs. Tong said sharply, “it amazes me that she could direct anybody.” She softened her tone and placed a hand on the man’s arm. “If you would care to come with me, sir, I can help you with whatever you require. You.” She jerked her head at Margery. “Out.”

“Goodnight, ma’am.” Margery did not spare Mrs. Tong more than a brief nod of the head. She could feel the madam’s eyes boring into her. She knew that Mrs. Tong suspected her of trying to tout for business. This would be the last time she was permitted in the Temple of Venus.

“Sir…” She dropped the gentleman a curtsy. “I hope you find your way.”

That provocative smile lit his eyes again and made her shiver. “You sound like a Methodist preacher, Miss Mallon.”

Margery turned away. She did not want to see him accompany Mrs. Tong into the brothel’s salon to be pounced upon by all those twittering courtesans. The thought set up an odd sort of ache in her heart. It was foolish to care, when all he had done was flirt with her. He will have forgotten her in less than a day, or very likely in less than an hour. The door of the salon opened, and light and music spilled out across the tiled floor of the hall. The real business of the evening was about to start. Margery tucked the basket beneath her arm and hurried through the door to the servants’ quarters, past the kitchens where the steam was rising and the cooks were sweating to prepare delicacies for Mrs. Tong’s guests. No one looked at her as she passed. Once again she had become invisible.

Out in the street the evening was bright and starlit but Margery’s feet suddenly felt like lead. It was no more than tiredness, she told herself. It had nothing to do with the gentleman she had met in the brothel and the contrary disappointment she felt because the encounter was over. She was tired because she had risen early to launder Lady Grant’s silk underclothes, for they were of such exquisite quality that they could not be trusted to anyone else. She had worked a whole day and here she was working a long evening as well, and once she was back in Bedford Street she would need to stay up into the early hours to await Lady Grant’s return from the theater. Those people who thought that lady’s maids had an easy life had absolutely no notion.

“Moll!”

Margery jumped and spun around. Her brother Jem was the only one who called her Moll. She waited as his tall figure detached itself from the shadows of the street corner and strolled forward.

“Thought it was you,” he said, as he caught up with her. He grinned. “What the devil were you doing in a bawdy house, Moll?”

“Minding my own business,” Margery said sharply.

Jem lifted the cover on the basket and took out the last of the honey cakes. Margery slapped his hand but he ate them anyway.

“They’ll spoil if they don’t get eaten,” Jem said. “They taste good,” he added with his mouth full, scattering crumbs on the cobbles. “You should have been a cook rather than a maid.”

“I don’t want to be a cook,” Margery said. “I only want to make sweets and pastries.” Her ideal was to be a confectioner and sell her beautiful cakes and sweetmeats for a living, but to set up in a shop was too expensive, so in the meantime she earned use of the oven at Bedford Street by helping Lady Grant’s cook with the more complicated French desserts and pastries.

“When I make a fortune,” Jem said, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth, “I’ll set you up in your own shop. I promise.”

Margery laughed. “I’ll die waiting for that day,” she said without rancor. She knew Jem spent every penny of his rather dubious earnings on gambling, drinking and women.

Although she would never admit it, Jem was her favorite brother. He had always been there for her, even though he was ten years her senior. She knew she should not favor him over the others because Billy worked hard to support his wife and growing family, and Jed, back in Berkshire, was a pot man in a respectable hotel. Jem was a scamp who never seemed to do an honest day’s work. But Jem was merry where Billy was serious. There was something about him that made it impossible to be angry with him even when he was helping himself to the rest of her stock. It was charm, Margery thought, as she fastened the cloth down firmly over the remaining cakes. Jem could charm the birds from the trees.

“I’ll walk you back,” Jem said.

“You’ll get no more cakes for your trouble,” Margery warned him.

Jem laughed. “You’re a hard woman, Moll.”

“And if you weren’t my brother,” Margery said, “I wouldn’t give you the time of day.”

Covent Garden piazza was full of evening crowds. An elegant lady, passing on the arm of a very smug-looking elderly gentleman, turned her head to stare at them. Margery sighed. It was always the same; ladies seemed quite unable to resist Jem. His golden hair and blue eyes, his smile and air of raffish charm worked on them like magic. They shed their clothes, their inhibitions and their husbands to fill his bed.

Jem sketched the lady an exaggerated bow and grinned with unabashed arrogance.

“For pity’s sake,” Margery said, pulling on her brother’s arm to draw him away. “Why don’t you just charge by the hour?”

Jem laughed again. “Now there’s a thought.”

“I’m sure Mrs. Tong would give you a job,” Margery said. “She likes pretty boys.”

“She’s not the only one,” Jem said complacently. He patted her hand. “Come along then, Miss Mallon. You had better lend me some of your respectability.”

Margery stopped dead again on the pavement, causing another couple to cannon off them in a volley of exclamations and apologies.

“What the devil?” Jem enquired mildly.

Margery did not hear him. She was clutching the handle of the basket a little more tightly as a frisson of disquiet rippled through her. She was back again in the hallway of the brothel, feeling the stranger’s hands on her, tasting his kiss and hearing his voice, smooth, mellow, charming the bawd out of her anger.

Miss Mallon was doing no more than giving me directions….

For the first time, Margery realized that he had known her name.




CHAPTER TWO


The Magician Reversed: Trickery and deception

MARGERY WAS SITTING on the top step of the sweeping staircase in Lady Grant’s house in Bedford Street. Next to her sat Betty, the second housemaid. They were hidden by the curve of the stair and the soaring marble pillar at the top. None of the guests thronging the hall below could see them, but they had the most marvelous view. Tonight, Lord and Lady Grant were hosting a dinner and a ball—one of the first major events of the new London Season—and word was that the ton were begging, buying and bartering for tickets. Lady Grant’s events were always frightfully fashionable. To fail to secure an invitation was social death.

“Oh, Miss Mallon,” Betty said, her big brown eyes as huge as dinner plates as she stared down on the scene below. “Look at the clothes! Look at the jewels!” She dug Margery slyly in the ribs with her elbow. “Look at the gentlemen! They are so handsome!”

“I’m studying the gowns, Betty, not the gentlemen,” Margery reproved, “and so should you if you wish one day to be a lady’s maid.”

She made a quick pencil sketch of one of the gowns in her notebook. Lady Grant was modish to a fault, a leader of fashion, and as her personal maid it was Margery’s responsibility to keep her at the forefront of style. She watched the ladies as they strolled out of the dining room, making notes of the dresses and the jewels, the combination of colors, materials and styles. She could spot the work of individual modistes and guess to within a guinea or two the price of each gown. She was good at her job and on evenings like this, she enjoyed it.

Margery paused in her sketches, chewing the end of her pencil. Betty was correct. There were some very handsome men present tonight. She could hardly pretend otherwise. For a moment she saw another face, a man with a wicked smile and laughing dark eyes, and she remembered a kiss that was hot and tender and promised so much. She felt a tingling warmth sweep through her, as though her entire body was slowly catching alight.

Margery had thought about the gentleman from the brothel in the week since they had met, and it was starting to annoy her that she could not banish him from her mind. She had thought about his voice, smooth but with that note of command, she had remembered the tilt of his head, the light in his eyes, his smile. Oh, yes, she had remembered his smile. She had seen nothing else when she went about her work, whether she was dressing Lady Grant for a drive in the park, or re-dressing her for an evening at the theater or undressing her afterward. She had been so distracted that she had over-starched the lace, mended Lady Grant’s hem with a most uneven stitch and added the wrong color of feather to her French bonnet. She had mislaid Lady Grant’s jewel box and had folded her favorite pelisse away in the wrong clothes press.

Then there was the kiss. It had haunted her dreams as well as her waking moments. She had lain in her narrow bed under the eaves and dreamed of kissing him, and she had woken flushed and confused, her heart racing, her body quivering with a delicious foretaste of passion. She was not quite sure what it was she wanted, only that her body ached and trembled for him, and that the more she tried to ignore it the more those illicit, demanding sensations rose up in her to beg for fulfillment. She felt on edge and inflamed, angry with herself that she could not conquer it. She was not a girl normally given to fantasies and it was odd and disquieting to be dreaming of a man, especially one she had met only once.

“How red your face is, Miss Mallon.” Betty was looking at her curiously.

“It’s very hot in here,” Margery said. She pushed the memory of the kiss from her mind and concentrated sharply on the crowd of guests now thronging the hall. Lady Rothbury, Lady Grant’s sister, was looking particularly stunning in a gown of eau de nil that shimmered with gold thread. Her gaze moved on, over the welter of colors and styles, the flash of diamonds and the flutter of fans. The air was scented now with a mixture of hothouse flowers and perfume. The chatter of the guests rang in her ears. Margery craned forward for a closer look at a tall, thin woman in a striped gown that shrieked Parisian design. The movement caught the eye of the gentleman by her side. He looked up and their eyes met.

All the air left Margery’s body in a rush. The candles spun in the chandeliers like a wheel of light.

It was the gentleman from the brothel.

For one very long moment they stared at each other while the sound beat in Margery’s ears, and the light dazzled her eyes and she could neither move nor breathe. Then the gentleman inclined his head in the slightest of bows, and a mocking smile curled his mouth, and Margery knew he had recognized her. Movement returned to her body, and with it an intensification of the hot blush that spread through her so fast she felt as though she were burning up. The pencil slid from her fingers. The book tumbled off her lap as she jumped to her feet, smoothing her skirts with clumsy hands. She drew back behind the shelter of the pillar. Her heart was hammering underneath her bodice and her palms felt damp.

Who was he? What was he doing here? Would he give her away?

If he should mention to Lady Grant that one of her maids had been in Mrs. Tong’s brothel, that would be the end of her. She would be thrown out in the street without a reference and with no prospect of another respectable job. Her heated body turned cold. She would be forced to beg her brother Billy for work. She could not be a tavern wench or even a courtesan because she was not pretty enough, and anyway, that was no way to think….

“Miss Mallon!”

Margery’s frightened thoughts were scuttling around and it was a moment before she realized that she was being addressed. Mrs. Biddle, the housekeeper, was standing a foot away, glaring at them. Betty gave a little gasp and leapt up, pressing her hands to her reddening cheeks, horror in her eyes at being caught. Margery retrieved her pencil and notebook, trying to regain a little composure.

“Run along, Betty,” Mrs. Biddle said sharply. “You have work to do.”

Betty scrambled a curtsy and scurried away.

“I’m sorry,” Margery said. “It was my fault. Betty would like to be lady’s maid one day and I was teaching her a little about the job.”

“Lady Grant is asking for her silver gauze scarf,” Mrs. Biddle said, her tone softening. She was always respectful of Margery’s position as a senior servant. In other ways, she mothered her. “If you could take it down to the parlor, Miss Mallon, Mr. Soames will deliver it to the ballroom for her ladyship.”

“Of course, Mrs. Biddle,” Margery said. It would be unheard-of for her to take the scarf to Lady Grant herself. No one but the butler and the footmen could be seen at an evening function. The rest of the servants had to be invisible.

She hurried to Lady Grant’s bedchamber and found the silver gauze scarf that perfectly complemented Lady Grant’s evening gown. It was impossibly sheer and silky, embroidered with tiny silver stars and crescent moons. For a moment Margery raised it to her cheek, enjoying the soft caress of the material against her skin. She had never owned so luxurious an item in her entire life.

With an envious little sigh, she tucked the scarf under her arm and went out along the corridor and down the servants’ stair. She hesitated before pushing open the green baize door that separated the servants’ quarters from the hall. She was not quite sure why. Her mysterious gentlemen, whoever he was, would be in the ballroom by now with the skinny woman in the elegant gown. There was no chance of meeting him.

Sure enough the hall was empty. She felt a slight pang of regret.

Mr. Soames was waiting for her in the parlor. She handed over the shawl and he took it as reverently as though it were a holy relic. Margery tried not to laugh. Mr. Soames was always so serious about everything, but then a butler’s job was a serious business, the very pinnacle of a male servant’s ambition. He had told her that, if she was lucky and worked hard, she might reach the top of her profession, too, and become a housekeeper one day.

Mr. Soames went out carrying his precious burden, closing the door softly behind him. Margery waited for a moment in the warm, silent confines of the parlor.

Margery had a hundred and one tasks waiting for her. Lady Grant’s dressing room needed to be tidied. Her nightclothes needed to be laid out for the moment, several hours ahead, when she finally retired from the ball. In the meantime, there was a pile of mending to be done, invisible work that required Margery’s keen eyes and nimble fingers. Her head ached to think of peering over tiny stitches in the pale candlelight.

On impulse she released the catch on the parlor door instead and stepped out onto the terrace. The mending could wait for a few more minutes.

It was cool outside, so early in the year. The air was fresh, the sky blurred with mist and scented with the smoke of all London’s chimneys. Beneath that was the sweeter smell of flowers mingled with perfume and candle wax. Margery drew in a deep breath. She could hear the music from the ballroom. The orchestra was playing the opening bars of a country-dance. She could picture the scene, the candlelight, the jewels, the vivid rainbow colors of the gowns. It was a world so close and yet so far out of reach.

The music called to something long lost inside her. In her memory, she could hear an orchestra playing and see an enormous ballroom stretching as far as the eye could see. Light sparkled from huge mirrors. The swish of silken gowns was all around her.

Her feet started to move to the music. She had not danced in years. She usually sat out the servants’ balls that employers insisted on holding each Christmas. She had no desire for her feet to be crushed by a clumsy coachman who fancied himself a dancer.

She twirled along the terrace, feeling lighter than air. It was ridiculous; she smiled to herself as she imagined quite how ridiculous she must look. It was also the sort of thing she never did. She was too serious, too sensible, to indulge in such a frivolous activity as dancing alone on a misty moonlit terrace.

The music changed, slid into a waltz, and Margery spun up against a very hard, masculine chest. Arms closed about her, steadying her. Her palms flattened against the smooth material of a particularly expensive and well-made evening jacket. Her legs pressed against a pair of very hard, masculine thighs encased in particularly well-made and expensive trousers. Margery noticed these things and told herself it was because she was a lady’s maid and trained to assess fashion, male or female, at a glance and a touch.

“Dance with me,” her dark gentleman said. He was smiling at her in exactly the way he had smiled in the hall of the brothel before he kissed her, that wicked, provocative smile. “You were meant to dance with me.”

Margery faltered. He was holding her in the way a man held his partner in the waltz, but suddenly she wanted to twist out of his grip and run away. She felt breathless and trapped and excited all at once.

“I cannot waltz,” she protested. It was a modern dance, new and more than a little scandalous. At least, it was the way that he was holding her. She could feel the heat of his body and smell his lime cologne. It made her head spin, which was a curious sensation.

Once she had drunk too much ale at the fair. This was similar, but a great deal more pleasant and a great deal more stimulating. The brush of his thigh against hers made her skin tingle, even through the ugly black wool of her gown. Oddly, it also made her feel very aware of the latent power in him, a strength and masculinity kept banked down under absolute control.

“You waltz beautifully,” he said. They were already moving, catching the beat of the music. “Where did you learn to dance like this?” His breath feathered across Margery’s cheek, raising delicious shivers deep within her.

“I learned to dance as a child,” Margery said. She frowned, reaching for the memories. It seemed ridiculous to think that in the rough-and-tumble of the Mallon household she had learned something as refined as dancing. She could not place the memory precisely. Yet she knew it had happened. Dancing was instinctive to her.

“This is very improper,” she said uncertainly.

“And completely delightful,” he said.

“You should be in the ballroom.”

“I prefer to be here with you.”

It was, indeed, delightful. Margery was forced to agree. His body was pressed against hers at breast, hip and thigh. His hand rested low in the small of her back in a gesture that felt astonishingly intimate. Heat flared through her, the sort of heat one simply should not be feeling on a cool April evening.

“Good gracious,” she said involuntarily. “Is this not illegal in public?”

She saw amusement glint in his eyes. “On the contrary,” he said. “It is positively encouraged.”

He drew her closer. His cheek grazed hers. His scent filled her senses. The warmth of his hand seared her back through the woolen gown and the cotton chemise beneath. Another shiver chased over her skin at the thought of his hands on her. She felt feverish, aware of every little sensation that racked her body. She felt as voluptuous as the nudes she had seen in the paintings in great houses, languid and heavy with wanting, her body as open and ripe as a fruit begging to be plucked and devoured.

It was shocking, it was delicious and it was wanton. She was tumbling down a helter-skelter of forbidden pleasure.

“You make me want to be—” She just managed to stop herself before the scandalous words came tumbling out.

You make me want to be very, very wicked….

He laughed, as though he knew exactly what she had been going to say and exactly how wicked she wanted to be. His lips touched the hollow at the base of her throat and she felt her pulse jump. Then they dipped into the tender skin beneath her ear, and this time her entire body twitched and shivered. She could not prevent it. She was helpless beneath the sure touch of his lips and his hands.

His shoulder brushed a spray of cherry blossom and the petals fell, the scent enveloping them. Somewhere deep in the gardens a nightingale sang.

A stray beam of candlelight from the parlor fell across them and in its light Margery saw that he was studying her face intently, almost as though he was committing it to memory. She felt disturbed. The mood was broken. She slipped from his arms and felt cold and a little bereft to have lost his touch. The music continued but he stood still now, his face in shadow.

“I should go,” she said, but she did not move. Suddenly she was scared; she wanted to beg him not to tell Lady Grant what had happened at the brothel but she was too proud to beg for anything. She always had been. Her brothers often said that pride and stubbornness were her besetting sins.

“Wait,” he said. “I wanted to ask you—” He broke off. It was too late. Some of Lady Grant’s guests spilled out onto the terrace, chattering and laughing. Margery knew that in a moment they would see her; see her with a gentleman, a maidservant caught in a guilty tryst.

“I must go,” she whispered.

He caught her hand. His was warm. He pressed a kiss to her palm, a feather-light caress. It made her tremble. The light in his eyes made her stomach swoop down to her toes in a giddy glide.

“Thank you,” he said, “for the dance.”

She had been seen. She heard the voices and spun around, pulling her hand from his. Her fingers closed over her palm as though to trap the kiss and hold it there.

“Who is that?” A woman in a filmy flame-red gown was peering at Margery through the darkness. Margery shrank back into the shadows as a couple of ladies giggled and pointed.

“It’s no one. A maidservant.”

Someone tittered. “How encroaching of her to be out here spying on her betters in the ballroom!”

Margery’s cheeks burned. At least they had not seen her dancing. And the terrace was empty. Her mysterious gentleman had gone.

Something glittered at her feet. She bent to pick it up. It was a cravat pin, slender, with a diamond head and a couple of initials entwined around the gold stick. She turned it over between her fingers and watched the diamond catch the light.

For a moment temptation caught her in its spell. The pin was valuable. If she gave it to Jem, he would give her money for it with no questions asked. There had been times in the past when he had asked her if Lady Grant had any jewelry or clothing or other possessions that she might not miss. Margery had given him a fine telling off and he had not mentioned it again, but now, staring at the glittering diamond, she thought longingly of the money she could put toward a little confectionery shop.

She gave herself a shake. No and no and no. Thieves and criminals had surrounded her since childhood. Billy was bad enough, a chancer and a con man, and Jem was worse. There was something very dangerous about Jem. Growing up among thieves was no good reason to become one. She would hand over the cravat pin to Lady Grant and tell her that she had found it. She would imply that one of the guests had dropped it and she had come across it by chance. She slipped it into the pocket of her gown.

“You, there! The little maidservant.” One of the women on the terrace was calling to Margery. “Fetch me a glass of champagne.” Her voice was haughty. The light from the colored lanterns skipped over a gown of striped silk. Margery recognized the thin, disdainful woman she had seen in the hall.

“I’ll ask one of the footmen to serve you, ma’am,” she said politely.

“Fetch it yourself,” the woman said. “I don’t want to wait.”

Someone else laughed. They were all looking at Margery, sharp and predatory as the bullies she remembered from the streets of her childhood. Jem had fought those children for her. Now she was on her own.

“I’ll ask the footman, ma’am,” she repeated, and saw the woman’s eyes narrow with dislike.

“What a singularly unhelpful creature you are,” she said contemptuously. “I will be sure to mention your insolence to Lady Grant.”

“Ma’am.” Margery dropped the slightest curtsy, enough to fulfill convention, but so slight as to be almost an insult.

She walked slowly, head held high, to the terrace doors. Once inside the parlor she shut the doors against the laughter and chatter on the terrace, then locked them for good measure and drew the curtains closed. Her hands were trembling and she felt tears pricking her eyes. She knew that it was foolish. Spiteful comments from people like the lady on the terrace were common in a servant’s life. She tried to disregard them. Most of the time the aristocracy ignored those who waited on them. Margery was accustomed to being considered a part of the furniture but it did not make cruelty or rudeness any more tolerable.

She slid a hand into her pocket and felt the prick of the cravat pin against her fingers. Already the waltz on the terrace felt like a dream. She had stepped out of time, forgotten her place as lady’s maid, forgotten her black woolen gown and practical boots, and had stolen a moment of pleasure in the arms of the most handsome man at the ball.

She took the cravat pin from her pocket and ran her fingertips over the entwined initials, H and W. She wondered who he was.

She knew she would not see him again.




CHAPTER THREE


The Hanged Man: Reversal and sacrifice

“COME CLOSER, HENRY, so that I can see you.” The voice was dry as tinder but the tone was still commanding, bearing overtones of the man the Earl of Templemore had been before illness ravaged his body. He sat in a chair before the fire, a fire that roared despite the high sun of an April day. The bright morning light made the red-flocked wallpaper look faded and dull, and struck blindingly across the rococo mirrors, reflecting back endless images of the earl hunched in his chair, a blanket shrouding his knees.

Henry Wardeaux came forward and formally shook the old man’s hand, just as he had greeted him for the past twenty-nine years. They had never been on more intimate terms, even though the earl was also Henry’s godfather. Lord Templemore was not a man given to displays of affection.

“How are you, sir?” Henry asked. It was a courtesy question only. He knew that the earl was dying; the earl also knew that he was dying and never pretended otherwise.

A dry rattle of laughter was his reply.

“I survive.” One white-knuckled hand grasped an ivory-headed cane as the earl sat forward in his chair. “If you have good news for me I might yet feel quite well. Did you meet my granddaughter?”

For a man who showed little emotion there was a wealth of longing in his voice. Henry felt a simultaneous jolt of pity and exasperation, pity that the old man was so desperate to find his daughter’s lost child that he would grasp after every straw, and exasperation that this very desperation made a shrewd man weak.

Mr. Churchward was still working to establish whether Margery Mallon was definitely the earl’s grandchild. Churchward was not the sort of man who liked to make mistakes, particularly not over something as important as the lost heir to one of the most ancient and prestigious earldoms in the country. Lord Templemore, however, had been certain of it from the start because he had wanted it to be true.

Henry took the seat that the earl indicated. “I have met Miss Mallon twice in the past ten days,” he said, taking care not to commit himself over whether the girl was the earl’s granddaughter or not. “In point of fact, I first met her in a brothel.”

The earl’s gaze came up sharply. Gray eyes, so bright, so cool, a mirror image of Margery Mallon’s clear gray gaze, pinned Henry to the seat.

“Did you?” The earl said expressionlessly. “Mr. Churchward indicated that Miss Mallon was a lady’s maid, not a courtesan.”

Henry wondered if it would have made any difference to the earl if Margery Mallon had been the most notorious whore in all of London. He thought it would probably not. The earl had waited twenty years to find his heir and he was not going to be dissuaded from his quest now.

“That is correct, sir,” Henry said. A smile twitched his lips as he remembered the small, bustling but efficient figure that was Margery Mallon. There was a no-nonsense practicality about her that was strangely seductive. “Miss Mallon does indeed work as a lady’s maid for Lady Grant in Bedford Street,” he said. “But she also makes sweetmeats and sells them to the whores in the bawdy houses of Covent Garden.”

The earl’s brows shot up. “How enterprising,” he said. “I assume Mr. Churchward warned you not to disclose that piece of information to me?”

“He counseled against it, sir.” Henry’s smile grew. “He thought that the shock of learning that your granddaughter frequented such a place might kill you.”

“And you said?”

“That you had frequented many such places yourself in the past, sir,” Henry said politely, “and that you would consider it far preferable that your granddaughter sold sweetmeats to whores rather than selling herself.”

The earl gave a bark of laughter. “How well you know me, Henry.”

Henry inclined his head. “Sir.”

The earl glanced at the array of family portraits that marched across the drawing room walls. “Perhaps Miss Mallon is the first Templemore in two hundred years to possess some of the mercantile spirit of our Tudor forebears.”

Henry followed the earl’s gaze to the portrait of Sir Thomas Templemore, founder of the dynasty, pompous in cloth of gold, the chain of office around his neck commemorating the peak of his success as Lord Mayor of London. Sir Thomas had been a self-made man who had risen to enormous wealth and power in the cloth trade, and greater riches still lending money to the feckless courtiers of Queen Elizabeth I. He had been the first and last of the Templemores to demonstrate any business acumen.

Henry’s mouth turned down at the corners. More recent generations of the family had maintained their wealth through spectacularly rich marriages. Templemore was costly to run and each earl had possessed a range of expensive vices from gambling on fast horses to the keeping of fast women. The present earl’s late wife had been the daughter of a nabob and he had married her solely for her fortune.

“I am prepared for Miss Mallon to have had a… checkered past.” The earl’s words drew Henry’s attention back. His gaze was shrewd, searching Henry’s face. “In some ways it would be surprising if she had not, given her upbringing. You may tell me the truth, Henry. It will not kill me.”

Henry sat back. He examined the high polish on his boots. His mother, whom he suspected was currently standing with her ear pressed to the other side of the drawing room door, would be silently urging him to take this God-given opportunity. She would be willing him to blacken Margery Mallon’s name in the hope that the earl might forget these notions of reclaiming his granddaughter and return to the accepted order, the one in which Henry inherited everything, estate, title and fortune.

But there could be no going back. And Henry was, if nothing else, a gentleman, and he was not going to lie.

“As far as I could ascertain,” Henry said, “Miss Mallon is a woman of unimpeachable virtue.”

The earl raised a brow. He had read into Henry’s words everything that Henry had not said. “Did you test that virtue?” He was blunt.

“I tried.” Henry was equally blunt. “We were, after all, in a brothel.”

Seducing Margery Mallon had been very far from his original intention. His purpose was to get to know Margery a little and see if he could determine whether she was the earl’s heir or not. Yet, when he had come face-to-face with her in the hall at the Temple of Venus, he had been presented with an opportunity he could not resist.

Or, more truthfully, an opportunity he had not wanted to resist. There had been something about Margery’s combination of innocence and steely practicality that had intrigued him. He had wanted to kiss her in order to put that innocence to the test, because the cynic in him told him that such virtue could only be pretense. Surely no woman of her age and station in life could be as inexperienced as she had claimed to be.

He had wanted to kiss her from sheer self-indulgence, too. She had smelled of marzipan and sugar cakes, and he had wanted to find out if she tasted as sweet as honey. He had been fascinated by her pale, fine-boned delicacy, by the vulnerable line of her cheek and jaw. Her mouth in particular had transfixed him; it was full, willful and sensual, a complete contradiction to the neat respectability of her appearance and enough to make a man dream of kissing her until she begged for more. The fact that she seemed to have no idea of the effect she had on him had only sharpened his hunger for her.

He had kissed her and discovered that she did indeed taste of honey, so he had kissed her some more and been floored by the desire that had roared through him. It had prompted him to carry her into the nearest room and strip off her disfiguring servant’s clothes and make love to her. If Mrs. Tong had not come upon them he was not sure how far his wayward impulses would have led him.

It had been as bad—worse—when he had seen Margery at the ball. He had forgotten all the questions he had prepared to ask and had lost himself in the pleasure of holding her in his arms. There had been an element of need in his fierce attraction to her. She was all sweetness and innocence and she washed the world clean of the violence and darkness he had seen in it. He wanted that sweetness in his life. He wanted to lose himself in her.

Arousal stirred in him again. Henry dismissed it ruthlessly. It was no more than an aberration. It had to be. He had never been attracted to ingenues and even if he had been, he had no business finding Margery Mallon sensually appealing. If Churchward discovered that she was not the Earl of Templemore’s granddaughter, she would continue her life as a lady’s maid none the wiser. If she was the lost heiress, then she would one day become Countess of Templemore. Either way, she was utterly forbidden to him, and the only thing that surprised him was that he had considered seducing her at all.

He had a beautiful opera singer in keeping who was sophisticated and experienced and everything that Margery was not. He thought of Celia, silken, skillful, obliging, and felt nothing more than vague boredom. He was jaded. No matter. He had long-ago stopped expecting to feel otherwise. Besides, Celia would leave him now that he was no longer heir to Templemore and could not afford her. He thought about it and found he did not greatly care. Mistresses came and mistresses went.

“And after you tried to seduce Miss Mallon,” the earl said, recalling him abruptly to the room and the business in hand. “What happened then?”

“Miss Mallon refused me,” Henry said. “She has no time for rakes.”

The earl’s smile was bitter. “A pity her mama did not display the same good sense.” He shifted in his chair as though his bones hurt him. “I’d scarcely call you a rake, though, Henry. You have far too much self-control to indulge in any excess. You do not have the temperament for it, unlike your papa.”

Unlike you, Henry thought. He studied the earl’s face, the tightly drawn lines about his mouth and chin that indicated both pain and grief. Guilt and remorse were his godfather’s constant companions these days. The Earl of Templemore would never admit to anything as weak as regret and yet Henry knew he must feel it; regret for the quarrel that had driven his daughter from the house twenty years before and led to her murder and the disappearance of her child, regret for the years of unbridled dissolution when he had tried to drown his loss in worldly pleasures, regret even for the difficult relationship that he had endured with his godson because Henry was not the heir that the earl had wanted and he had never been able to forgive him that fact.

Enough. If the earl had regrets about the past, that was his concern. Henry had no intention of emulating him.

“I have been remiss.” The earl’s dry voice cut into his preoccupation. “Will you join me in a glass of port wine, Henry?”

Henry did not trouble to ring the bell. He was perfectly capable of pouring two glasses of port. Besides, he would have to become accustomed to managing without servants if Margery Mallon inherited the Templemore title. His own estate was poor; everything that was unentailed had been sold off to pay for his father’s profligacy. He had been building it back up for years but the estate was small and would never be wealthy.

He could deal with hardship and struggle. He had seen plenty of it, in the Peninsular Wars. His mother, on the other hand, was too sheltered a flower to relish so drastic a change in circumstances. She had been living on the expectation of his future for years and had been in an intolerably bad mood ever since she had heard the news of Margery Mallon’s existence.

“Thank you.” The earl took the glass from his hand and took an appreciative sip. The cellar at Templemore was as fine as the late-seventeenth-century house itself. The collection of wines alone was worth thousands of pounds. Henry wondered if Margery Mallon had the palate to appreciate it.

“I want you to bring her to me.” The earl placed his delicate crystal glass on the Pembroke table and sat forward again, urgency in every line of his body. “I want to meet her, Henry.”

Henry stifled another burst of impatience. “My lord,” he said. “It is too soon. There may be some mistake. Churchward has not yet finished his enquiries and I have not been able to prove Miss Mallon’s identity beyond doubt.”

The earl cut him short with an imperious wave. “There is no mistake,” he said fiercely. “I want to see my granddaughter.”

Henry bit back the response that sprang to his lips. The earl’s face was ashen, his hand shaking on the head of the cane. Henry felt his unspoken words: if we delay I may not live to see her….

“Take Churchward,” the earl said, his gaze pinning Henry with all the fierce power his body lacked. “Go directly to Bedford Street to acquaint Miss Mallon with the details of her parentage and her inheritance. Then bring her here to me.”

It was an order, a series of orders. The earl never asked, Henry thought wryly. He was steeped in autocracy. There could be no argument.

Henry thought about Margery Mallon’s brothers. Unlike Margery, who had promptly returned the diamond pin he had deliberately let fall on the terrace, the Mallon men were dishonest through and through. He and Churchward had been at great pains to protect the earl from their exploitation. For all his fierceness, Lord Templemore was a sick and vulnerable old man whose life had been devastated by tragedy once before. Henry would not permit Margery’s adoptive siblings to manipulate the situation to their advantage.

There was also the danger to Margery herself. Twenty years before, someone had killed the earl’s daughter. The only witness to that murder had been her four-year-old child. If the murderer or murderers were still alive, the news that the earl’s granddaughter had been found could put her in the gravest peril. Henry had to protect Margery from that danger.

Which was why he had to find out the truth about Margery’s identity as swiftly as possible.

Henry forced himself to relax. “Very well, my lord,” he said easily. “It will be as you wish.” He checked the gilt clock on the mantel. He could be back in London before nightfall if he rode hard.

He would seek out Margery Mallon, but not to bring her directly to Templemore. He would learn as much as he could about her in this one night and then he would decide if she was truly Lady Marguerite de Saint-Pierre, heiress to the Templemore title and a huge fortune. He felt a pang of guilt at his deception but quashed it as quickly as he had dismissed the flare of lust. He could not afford either emotion. The future of Templemore was too important.

The earl sat back against the embroidered cushions, closing his eyes, suddenly exhausted. His skin was stretched thin across his high cheekbones. He groped for the wine and drank a greedy mouthful, sitting back with a sigh.

Henry stood abruptly, leaving his glass of wine untouched.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said. “I will go and fulfill your commission at once.”

“You’re a good boy, Henry.” The earl had opened his eyes again. They were weary, shadowed by all the unhappiness he had experienced. “I will see that you do not lose out when my granddaughter inherits.”

Henry felt a violent wave of antipathy. “I want nothing from you, sir. I have my own estate and my engineering projects—”

The earl dismissed them with a lordly wave. “Such matters are not work for a gentleman.”

“They are work for a penniless gentleman,” Henry corrected.

The earl laughed, that dry rattle again. “Marry an heiress and all your difficulties will be solved. Lady Antonia Gristwood—”

“Will not wish to throw herself away on me, my lord,” Henry said matter-of-factly.

“Perhaps a cit’s daughter would not be so choosy. You still have the title.”

How flattering. But it did rather sum up Henry’s prospects now. “I’ve no desire to wed, sir,” Henry said. The heiresses would melt away swiftly enough when they heard of his reversal of fortune. In their own way they were as fickle as his mistress.

The earl seemed not to have heard. His chin had sunk to his chest and he looked as though he was lost in thought. Henry wondered whether his godfather was still lost in the past. The earl, Henry thought, had a remarkable talent for alienating members of his family: first his wife, whom he had married for her money and betrayed before the ink was dry on the marriage lines, then his daughter, then his godson. He hoped to high heaven that if Margery Mallon was indeed the earl’s granddaughter he would not devastate her life, as well.

He swallowed the bitter taste in his mouth, bowed stiffly to the earl and went out. The hall was empty although the air trembled and the door of the Red Saloon was still swinging closed, a sure sign that Lady Wardeaux had indeed been eavesdropping. Henry did not want to have to confront his mother and her ruined hopes yet again.

Nor did he wish to see Lord Templemore’s younger sister, Lady Emily, endlessly reading the tarot cards and reassuring him that his fortunes would turn again.

They would turn because Henry would make them turn.

He had grown up at Templemore. He had been told from childhood that he would inherit the title and land and that he had to learn to be a good master. He had done more than that. He had taken the estate to his heart and he loved every last brick and blade of grass there. It would hurt to give them up, but he had suffered reversals in his life before. He had overcome them all.

The tap of his boots echoed on the black marble floor of the hall. He paused by the door of the library to study the John Hoppner portrait of four-year-old Marguerite Catherine Rose Saint-Pierre, painted just before she had vanished from her grandfather’s life.

The window in the dome far above his head scattered light like jewels on the tiles of the floor and illuminated the painting with a soft glow. Marguerite had been a pretty child, small, delicate, with golden-brown hair. She gazed solemnly out at him from her gilt frame, watching him with Margery Mallon’s clear gray eyes.

The earl had summoned him with such haste that he had not had time to change out of his riding clothes. He strode out to the stable, calling for a fresh horse to take him back to London.




CHAPTER FOUR


The Knight of Swords: A tall dark-haired man with a great deal of charm and wit

IT WAS SEVEN O’CLOCK on a beautiful spring evening. Warmth still shimmered in the air, and the sky over London was turning a deep indigo-blue. The sun was dipping behind the elegant facades of the houses in Bedford Street and the shadows lengthened among the trees in the square.

It was Margery’s evening off. She came up the area steps, tying her bonnet beneath her chin as she walked. She stopped dead when she found the gentleman she had danced with at the ball the previous night loitering at the top. He gave every appearance of waiting for her.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, her tone deliberately sharp. She had come down to earth since her encounter with him and had been berating herself for being a silly little fool whose head was stuffed with romantic nonsense. She was a lady’s maid, not Cinderella.

Even so, her heart tripped a beat, because his smile—the wicked smile that curled his firm mouth and slipped into his dark eyes—was so much more potent in real life than it had been in her dreams and memories.

“Good evening to you, too,” he said. “Are you pleased to see me?”

“Of course not,” Margery said. She put as much disdain into her tone as she could muster, knowing even as she did so that she was betrayed by the shaking of her fingers on the ribbons of her bonnet and the hot color that burned in her cheeks.

Damnation. Surely she had learned enough over the years to know how to deal with a rake. She had acted as maid to any number of scandalous women who had perfected the art of flirtation. She should meet this insolent gentleman’s arrogance with a pert confidence of her own. Yet she could not. She was tongue-tied.

She started to walk. “Why would I be pleased to see you?” she asked over her shoulder. “I barely know you.”

“Henry Ward, at your service.” He sketched a bow. It had an edge of mockery. “Now you know me.”

“I know your name,” Margery corrected. “I have no ambition to learn more.”

He laughed. It was a laugh that said he knew she was lying. He was right, of course, though she was damned if she was going to admit it. She quickened her pace. He matched it with minimum effort.

“Wait,” he said. “I’d like to speak with you.” He hesitated. “Please.”

It was the please that stopped her. She was not accustomed to courtesy from the aristocracy but by the time she had realized her mistake she was standing still and he was holding her hand. She had no idea how either of these things had occurred, only that his charm was clearly very dangerous to her.

“Miss Mallon—”

Margery snatched her hand back. “That reminds me. When we met in the brothel you addressed me as Miss Mallon. How did you know my name?”

She saw a flash of expression in his eyes that she could not read. Then it was gone; he shrugged lightly.

“I forget,” he said. “Perhaps Mrs. Tong mentioned your name.”

Margery shook her head. She knew that was not true. “No,” she said, refusing to be deflected. “She did not.”

Henry looked at her. His gaze was clear and open, yet she sensed something hidden. Instinct warned her that there was something he was not telling her.

“Then I do not know,” he said. “Someone must have told me your name. The brothel servants, perhaps, or one of the girls…”

Margery turned a shoulder and started walking again. A sharp pain had lodged itself in her chest, like a combination of indigestion and disappointment. She did not want to think about Henry spending time with Mrs. Tong’s girls, taking his pleasure with them, lying with one of them or perhaps more than one.

The images jostled in her head, bright, vivid, intolerably lustful and licentious. Jealousy, sudden and vicious, scored her with deep claws. It disturbed her because she had no right to feel it. She did not want to feel it. She had no claim on him. She might as well be jealous of the horribly disdainful lady in the striped gown, the one who had been clinging to Henry’s arm at the ball.

She paused. Now she thought about it, she was jealous of the snobbish aristocrat in the striped gown.

“I didn’t stay at the brothel.” He put one hand on her sleeve. She stopped again. “There is no need to be jealous,” he said softly.

Margery shook him off. “Why would I be jealous?” She did not want him reading her mind. It was too disconcerting.

“You are jealous because you like me.” He smiled at her. It was arrogant. It was irresistible. Something heated and unfurled within her like a flower opening in the sun.

“I like you, too,” he said gently. “I like you very much.”

He touched her cheek and Margery could not help herself; she felt her whole body sweeten and sing at his words. It was impossible for her to withstand his charm. Her defenses felt like straw in the wind.

“Why did you come to find me?” She could hear that her tone had lost its sharpness.

“I wanted to thank you for returning the cravat pin,” Henry said. “I hope it did not cause any difficulties for you with Lady Grant. I would not have wanted you to get into trouble.”

Margery smiled. His concern for her made her feel warm and cherished. It was a new sensation. Jem was a protective brother but he did not make her feel as special as she did now.

“Thank you,” she said. “That is kind of you.” She smiled. “There was no difficulty. Lady Grant was only grateful that your lost property had been found. She is the best of employers. All the ladies I have worked for have been so kind—”

She stopped, aware of the smile in Henry’s eyes, wondering why she was telling him so much. She was not usually so open. Disquiet stirred in her as she realized the extent of her danger. Henry was too charming and too easy to talk to, and she was too inexperienced to deal with him. She should run now, while she still had the chance.

“Thank you for your thoughtfulness,” she said quickly, “and for not giving me away to Lady Grant.”

Henry shook his head. “I’d never do that.” There was warmth and sincerity in his tone. Margery’s pulse fluttered.

“You could have sent a note,” she said. “There was no need—” She stopped abruptly as Henry took her hand again. Her breath caught in her throat. Her heart seemed to skip a beat.

“No need to see you again?” His thumb brushed her gloved palm and she shivered. She felt hot and melting, trembling on the edge of something sweet and dangerous. “But perhaps,” he said, “I am here by choice. Perhaps I am here because I wanted to see you.”

Margery closed her eyes against the seduction of his words. She wondered if she had run mad. Maybe there would be a full moon tonight to account for her foolishness. For she knew she was being very, very foolish. There was nothing more imprudent than a maidservant who succumbed to wicked temptation and a rake’s charm.

Her sensible soul told her to dismiss him and go straight home again.

Her wicked side, the part of her she had not even known existed until Henry had kissed her, told her that this was just a small adventure and it could do no harm.

She took the arm that he offered and they started to walk again, more slowly this time, her hand tucked confidingly into the crook of his elbow. She had thought it would feel like walking with Jem or another of her brothers. She could not have been more wrong. Even through the barrier of her glove, she could feel the hardness of muscle beneath his sleeve. The sensation distracted her; she realized that Henry had asked her a question and she had failed to answer.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I asked where we were going.” Henry sounded amused, as though he had guessed the cause of her disturbance. She blushed to imagine that he knew the effect he had on her.

“I am going for a walk,” Margery said. “I like to get some fresh air and see the people passing by.” She hesitated and cast a shy glance at him from beneath her lashes. “I suppose you may accompany me if you wish.”

Henry slanted a smile down at her and her wayward heart did another little skip. “That,” he said, “would be entirely delightful. Do you go walking often?”

“As often as I have an evening free and good weather,” Margery said.

“Alone?”

“Of course I go alone,” Margery said. “I am not going to sit inside on a beautiful evening because I lack a suitable escort.”

His lips twitched. “How very practical of you,” he murmured. “I hope that you are not troubled by importunate men when you are out alone.”

Margery looked at him. “Only tonight,” she said dryly.

His smile was rueful. “Touché.”

“It is not a problem because I do nothing to draw attention to myself,” Margery said. “A maidservant is nothing more than a fool if she does. Besides—” She stopped on the edge of further confession. It seemed fatally easy to confide in Mr. Henry Ward.

Henry looked down at her. “What is it?”

Margery blushed. “Oh, it is nothing.”

“You were going to say that no one notices you,” Henry said. “But I do. I see you.”

They had stopped walking. “How did you know?” she demanded. “How did you know I was going to say that?”

Henry smiled. He put his fingers beneath her chin and tilted her face up to his. Margery met his eyes and felt fear as well as excitement shimmer down her spine. There was something in his expression that was bright and hot and searing; it matched the expression he had worn that night in the brothel. She shivered.

“You are always trying to hide,” Henry said quietly, “but you cannot hide from me. I noticed you from the very first.”

Margery tried, she really tried this time, not to let his words go to her head. But it was hopeless. She was already half seduced. She felt her lips form a tiny “oh” sound that was a mixture of disbelief and pure longing. She felt her stomach clench with the echo of that desire. She saw Henry’s gaze slide along the curve of her cheek to her mouth. He brushed his thumb over the line of her jaw and her heart jumped almost out of her chest as she heard herself give a little gasp.

Are you mad, my girl? The man is a rake. You will be in his bed before you can saystrumpet.

Once more, Granny Mallon’s acerbic words slid into Margery’s mind, wrenching her back to reality. It was impossible to lose her head over a handsome gentleman with Granny Mallon metaphorically sitting on her shoulder all the time, the voice of her virtue.

“I was not fishing for compliments,” she said. “And I am not looking for carte blanche, Mr. Ward.”

He stepped back, his hand falling slowly to his side. There was rueful amusement in his eyes. “I beg your pardon. I never imagined that you were, Miss Mallon, and I am sorry if I offended you.” He smiled at her and Margery felt her tension ease. Soon, she knew, they would have to turn back to Bedford Street. Darkness was falling and it would be beyond foolish for her to stay out with him at night. Her small adventure would end very soon.

Henry offered her his arm again and after a moment they resumed their walk, silently now as the sun sank behind the roofs of the town houses and the sunset turned red and gold.

There was a flower seller on the street corner with a cart that was empty but for a few bunches of delicate pink rosebuds. Margery looked at them and her heart ached. She loved flowers, from the huge hothouse arrangements that overflowed in Lady Grant’s ballroom to the tiny wild harebells that grew in profusion on the chalk lands where she had grown up.

Perhaps her longing was in her eyes, because Henry had turned to the flower girl. “I’d like to buy the rest of your stock, please,” he said, and the girl’s tired face lifted as she handed him the bouquets and took his coins. He presented them to Margery who buried her nose in the sweet-scented sprays.

“How lovely,” she said. She was trying to guard her heart against him but it was no good. She was so touched and happy. “No one has ever bought me flowers before.”

Henry smiled at her. “It is my pleasure.”

“My mother said I was named after two flowers,” Margery said. She was inhaling the scent of the roses with her eyes closed. When she opened them she saw that Henry was watching her.

“Marguerite and Rose,” she said. “Those are my names.”

She saw some expression cloud Henry’s eyes. Doubt clutched at her. Something was wrong but she had no idea what it was.

“It’s quite a mouthful, isn’t it,” she said uncertainly.

“Is that why you changed it to Margery?” Henry said.

“It seemed more practical,” Margery said. “For a lady’s maid.”

Henry nodded and smiled at her. “I would like to take you for supper,” he said. He took her hand. “Please. Allow me.”

Margery hesitated, hanging back, wary of him again. A walk in the evening was one thing, supper with its suggestion of intimacy and seduction, quite another.

“Why would you do that?” she asked cautiously.

“Because you look as though you are hungry,” Henry said.

Margery could not help her peal of laughter. “That was not what I meant.”

“I know,” Henry said. He was laughing, too. “But you do.”

“I had no dinner today.” Margery was surprised to realize it. “Lady Grant is attending a ball tonight so I dressed her and then came straight out.”

“Then you need to eat,” Henry said. He gave her hand a little tug. Still, she hesitated.

It can do no harm….

Not Granny Mallon’s voice this time, but the voice of her own desires, dangerously persuasive.

She felt her heart sing with pleasure and anticipation that the evening was not to end yet and that she would always have something sweet to remember in the future.

“Thank you,” she said. “I should like that very much.”

From the broad, elegant spaces of Bedford Square, they turned southward toward the higgledy-piggledy jumble of cobbled streets that crowded near the Thames. The evening was cool and bright, the roads busy and noisy, but Margery did not notice the crowds. Her entire attention was wrapped up in Henry, in the brush of his body against hers as they walked, in his smile and in his touch. She wanted no more than this. She held the pink rosebuds carefully and breathed in their heady scent. She was very happy.

LADY EMILY TEMPLEMORE sat at the cherrywood table in the Red Saloon at Templemore House, her tarot cards spread out in a horseshoe shape before her. She had been in her teens when she first started to use the ancient wisdom of the tarot to foretell the future and to guide her. People had laughed at her for her credulity and her interest in the occult. She had been labeled an eccentric and a bluestocking but there had been a hint of fear in those who mocked her. She did not really care. No one understood her; they never had and they never would.

Tonight she had asked the cards a direct question and, as always, they had answered her. She had asked if Margery Mallon was the lost grandchild of her half brother the earl, and if so, what she should do. That was two questions, really, but the one went with the other. If the child had been found, then Lady Emily knew she could not keep quiet and wait for fate to catch up with her. She would need to take action.

Card one in the spread represented the past. It was Temperance, but it was reversed, speaking of quarrels and strife. A shiver shook Lady Emily’s narrow frame as the cruelty and guilt of the past reached out to touch her again. There certainly had been quarrels aplenty at Templemore.

Card two, representing the present, was the Eight of Swords. The card summed up her current emotions very accurately. She felt trapped and powerless and very afraid. She reached for her glass of ratafia and swallowed three quarters of the sweet liqueur in one gulp. A flush lit her sallow cheeks. She felt a little warmer. The neck of the bottle rattled against the glass as she topped it up. The fire hissed as a log settled deeper in the grate.

Card three was very important, because it gave an insight into the hidden influences at work. It was the Knight of Swords. She thought this was probably Henry. Henry was ruthless and determined and driven by duty. He would do his utmost to bring Lady Marguerite home, even though he would be the one who would lose the most by it. Lady Emily shrugged her thin shoulders. She knew Henry was dangerous, her most dangerous enemy.

Matters did not improve with the fourth card, which represented the obstacles in her path. It was the Seven of Cups. The card spoke of important choices to be made. The problem was that there were so many different options that she felt quite overwhelmed. The card held a warning, as well: take care in your decision, for all is not as it seems.

Frowning, Lady Emily turned her attention to the final three cards. Card five showed the attitudes of other people. There was help here, though not in very reliable form. The Page of Pentacles was a wastrel, dissolute and impatient. He was not a good ally, but at the moment he was all she had. Lady Emily’s gaze strayed toward the writing desk. Later she would write, secretly and swiftly, to put him on his guard and to ask for his aid.

There were two cards remaining. They told her what she should do and the final outcome. The first was Strength, but it was reversed. She had to overcome her fears. If she did so then the final card promised her reward. It was the Six of Wands. Victory. Already she felt flushed with success and achievement. If she was patient, if she was brave, she would triumph.

In the depths of the house a clock struck eight. It was the only sound. Templemore House felt as though it was waiting, waiting to awaken, waiting for the lost heir to return. Lady Emily’s gaze went to the portrait over the fireplace. Her father. It was a great pity that, having lost his first wife in childbirth when his heir was born, he had failed to marry his mistress, Emily’s mother, until after her birth. For the first two years of her life Emily had been illegitimate. She glared at the fierce-looking man in his Georgian finery. He had been no more than a smug, licentious, arrogant scoundrel. How she hated him for the sexual excesses that had led to her being branded a bastard. Legitimizing her through eventual marriage to her mother had been too little, too late. It had barred her from the succession and turned her into an oddity, scorned by society as the daughter of a whore, laughed at behind her back.

The old fury rose in her. Her silver bracelets clashed as she sent the tarot pack tumbling with one flick of her wrist. The card showing the Fool fluttered into the fire, its edges curling in the flame. Damn her father and damn her half brother and damn his spoiled daughter who had deserved to die. Emily stood up. Lady Rose had been destroyed but now her daughter was coming home. The Wheel of Fortune was turning once again.




CHAPTER FIVE


The Seven of Swords: Do not give your trust too easily

MARGERY HAD SUGGESTED taking Henry to the Hoop and Grapes Inn for dinner. It was, as Henry pointed out, the haunt of footpads, highwaymen and any number of criminals. Margery had chosen it for the good food and because they knew her there.

“You do not strike me as the sort of female to frequent a place like this, Miss Mallon,” Henry said as they stopped in front of an ancient black-beamed and white-plastered building that boasted a battered wooden signboard above the door. “You seem far too respectable for such a flash house.”

“I’m far too respectable to frequent a bawdy house,” Margery said, “but you found me in one.”

“So I did,” Henry said. Amusement glinted in his eyes. “What an unusual woman you are, Miss Mallon.”

He opened the door to usher her inside. The air was so thick with the smell of pipe smoke it almost made Margery choke. Her eyes watered, and the smell of strong ale and warm bodies caught in her throat.

The taproom was packed with men and a few women. Total silence fell as they walked in. Margery saw the amusement deepen in Henry’s eyes. His lips twitched into a smile. “I’ve had warmer welcomes behind the French lines,” he murmured.

“They think you might be from Bow Street,” Margery said.

Henry looked offended. “They think I’m a Runner when I dress as well as this?”

Margery giggled. She took his hand and led him through to an inner parlor flickering with golden candlelight. There was a rickety wooden table in the corner by the fire. Henry held a chair for her before taking the one opposite.

“So you were a soldier,” Margery said, resting her elbows on the table and studying him thoughtfully. He looked entirely relaxed as though the unfriendly atmosphere of the Grapes had completely failed to intimidate him. “No wonder you’re not afraid,” she said slowly.

Henry raised a dark brow. “Were you trying to scare me by bringing me here?”

“Not scare you, precisely,” Margery said. She dropped her gaze and traced a circle on the top of the table with her fingertip. She had to admit that she had been testing him. She was curious; he gave away so little of himself. There was something watchful and closed about him, as though he held himself under the tightest control. A little shiver edged down her spine.

“My brothers drink here,” Margery said.

“Ah. You wish to introduce me to your family.” Henry sat back in his chair, stretching out his long legs. “Our acquaintance proceeds quickly, Miss Mallon.”

Margery laughed. “No, indeed. You need have no fear of that. I am simply being careful.”

“Very wise,” Henry said. “In case I fail to act as a gentleman should.” He was smiling but there was something challenging in his eyes that made Margery’s stomach curl and the heat rise through her blood. She tore her gaze away from his. At this rate she would not be able to eat a mouthful.

“I am relying on you to behave properly,” she said.

Henry gave her an ironic bow. “Not a cast-iron way of ensuring success,” he drawled.

“Do your best,” Margery said tartly and saw him grin.

“So, your brothers are criminals.” He slid his hand over hers where it rested on the table. His touch was warm and sent quivers of awareness trembling through her. “How stimulating.”

“Are you sure you are not a Runner?” Margery asked sweetly. She drew her hand gently from under his, not because she wanted to but because she knew she had to, if she was going to stick to the straight and narrow.

“Of course they are not criminals,” she said. Then honesty prompted her to qualify the statement. “That is, Jed is certainly not a criminal. He is a pot man at the Bear Hotel in Wantage. Billy runs his own business buying and selling cloth.” She ignored the other, less respectable things she knew Billy bought and sold. “And Jem…” She paused. “Well, I have to admit that Jem does sail a little close to the wind.”

Henry was laughing at her but she did not mind. There was warmth and admiration in his eyes that made her feel very happy inside.

“I like that you defend them,” he murmured. “You see the best in everyone.”

The Grapes’s three maidservants now converged upon them, squabbling for the privilege of serving them. Margery knew exactly why the girls were competing for Henry’s attention. It seemed that he rated even more highly than Jem, for he was not only good-looking but he looked rich, as well. All three girls were eyeing him with fascinated speculation and more than a little anticipation. Margery felt jealousy stir in her, the same jealousy that had beset her earlier.

“What would you like to eat and drink?” Henry asked her, while the tavern wench who had won the tussle for their order eyed Margery with ill-concealed dislike.

“I will take the mutton pie and a glass of ale, if you please,” Margery said.

The girl turned her attention back to Henry. “My lord?” she asked.

“I will have the same, please,” Henry said. He passed over a guinea and the maidservant pocketed it faster than a rat moved up a drainpipe. She dropped him a curtsy. “That would buy you plenty more than food and drink, my lord,” she said, opening her eyes very wide to make her meaning explicitly clear.

Henry raised his brows and smiled at her with such charm that even Margery blinked. “Thank you,” he murmured. “If I require more I will be sure to let you know.” He turned to Margery as the girl strolled away with a suggestive swing of the hips.

“She thinks me a nobleman and you are not even sure that you rate me a gentleman,” he said.

“She thinks you ripe for fleecing,” Margery said crushingly. “She is judging the guinea, not you.” She put up a hand and untied the ribbons on her bonnet, laying it aside. Looking up, she saw that Henry’s gaze was on her hair. Her first thought was that it must have got squashed beneath the hat, but when his eyes met hers she saw a spark of something hot that made her heart jerk. Her hair was a golden-brown, fine and entirely without curl, completely ordinary, yet Henry looked as though he wanted to reach out and touch it. She saw him swallow hard. It was extraordinary. She felt hot and bewildered, but excitement tingled in the pit of her stomach as she thought of his fingers slipping through the strands.

She was glad when the ale came. It broke the rather odd silence between them. Henry poured for them both from the pitcher. Margery took a mouthful, looked up and saw Henry’s eyes on her, a gleam of humor in them.

“It tastes rougher than a badger’s pelt,” he murmured.

“I prefer it to wine,” Margery said. She could feel the ale loosening her tongue already. It was indeed rough, with a kick like a mule. “Mrs. Biddle tells me I should cultivate a taste for sherry if I am to be a housekeeper in my turn,” she said, “but I find it too genteel a drink.”

“Do you want to be a housekeeper?” Henry enquired. “Is that not the pinnacle of achievement for an upper servant?” He topped up her glass.

“Mrs. Biddle says that I could do it if I wished, for I am already the youngest lady’s maid she has ever known.” She sighed. “Truth is, I do not want to be a servant.”

Henry’s lips twitched into that irresistible smile that always led her into indiscretion. “What do you want to be, Miss Mallon?”

“I want to be a confectioner,” Margery said in a rush. “I want to have a shop and make comfits and marzipan cakes and sweetmeats. I want to own my own business and sell my cakes to all the lords and ladies of the ton.”

Once again Henry’s eyes gleamed with that secret amusement. “It is good to have ambition,” he murmured.

“But I need money to set myself up in business.” Margery drooped. “I save all that I can from my wages—and the money that Billy pays me for collecting old clothes for him—but it will never be enough to buy a shop.”

Henry’s eyes met hers over the rim of his glass. “You had not thought to… ah… raise funds another way?”

The spark in his eyes captured and held her. She saw speculation there and desire that burned her and set her heart racing. She also saw exactly, explicitly, what he was suggesting.

She took another gulp of the ale. “Certainly not. I told you I was not a lightskirt! Besides—” even in her indignation she could not quite escape the force of logic “—I am not certain that I would be in any way successful enough to make the necessary capital.”

A corner of Henry’s mouth twitched upward into that dangerous smile. “I am sure you could learn.”

Their gazes tangled, his dark, direct with an undercurrent that made Margery’s toes curl. Then his smile broadened.

“Actually,” he said lightly, “I only wondered whether there was someone who might give you a loan.”

Margery almost choked on her ale. “You were teasing me,” she accused.

“Yes. Although…” Henry paused. “If the other idea appeals to you—”

“It does not. I told you I was not looking for carte blanche!”

She had spoken too quickly, intent only on denying the quiver of desire in the pit of her stomach. It was illuminating to discover that her morals were nowhere near as stalwart as she had believed them to be. She thought of Henry’s hands on her body, his lips against her skin, and she felt the tide of warmth rush into her face. Oh, how she wanted him. How seductive it was and how much trouble she could get herself into with the slightest of missteps. She was completely out of her depth.

Henry was watching her. He knew.

Margery sought to hide her mortification in her glass of ale and took several long swallows, which only served to make her head spin all the more.

The pies arrived, fragrant with mutton and dark gravy. Henry refilled her glass. They talked as they ate, which Margery knew was not refined, but suddenly there seemed so much to say. Henry asked her about her childhood in Wantage, and her work there and her family. She told him about Granny Mallon and her dire warnings about London gentlemen and Henry laughed and told her that her grandmother had been in the right of it.

Margery laughed, too, and drank until her head was fuzzy and the candlelight blurred to a golden haze and her elbow slid off the table, which made Henry laugh some more. A fiddler struck up in the other room, and the scrape of tables being pushed back was followed by a wild jig, the notes rising to the rafters.

But in their corner of the parlor, it was warm and intimate and felt as though it was theirs alone.

“Tell me,” Henry said, leaning forward, the candlelight reflected in his dark eyes. “What is the earliest thing that you remember?”

Margery wrinkled up her nose. It seemed an odd, fanciful question, but then she supposed they had been discussing their childhoods. Or rather they had been discussing her childhood. She could not recall a single thing that Henry had told her in answer to her questions. She knew she was a little cast away, so perhaps she was not remembering. Henry was drinking brandy now and she had a glass of cherry brandy, sweet and strong.

“I recollect a huge room,” she said slowly, “with a checkered floor of black and white and a dome high above my head that scattered colored light all around me.” She looked up to meet an odd expression in Henry’s eyes. It was gone before she could place it.

“I have no idea where it was. I have been in many great houses since, but have never seen anything like it. Perhaps I imagined it.”

There had been other memories, too; people whose faces she could see only in shadow, scents, voices. She thought she remembered a carriage, a flight through the night, raised voices, cold and tears, but the memories were overlaid with others of her childhood in the tenement house in Wantage and the rough-and-tumble of life with her brothers.

Henry was watching her and the expression in his eyes was intent and secret.

“Sometimes,” she said slowly, knowing that the drink was prompting her to be indiscreet, “I do think my imagination plays tricks on me. It disturbs me because I remember things that seem quite fanciful—silks and perfumes and such soft beds, yet I am not a fanciful person.”

“And yet you do have a romantic streak, do you not, Miss Mallon?” Henry said. “I know, for example, that you read Gothic romances.”

Margery jumped. “How could you possibly know that?” It was unnerving the way in which he appeared to know so much about her. No one, not even those people who had known her for twenty years or more, realized that she loved those stories of beautiful heroines and handsome heroes and haunted castles.

Henry raised his brows. “I saw that you had a copy of Mrs. Radcliffe’s book The Romance of the Forest in your reticule. I assumed that it was yours, unless you are taking it home for the admirable Mrs. Biddle.”

Margery was betrayed into a giggle. “Mrs. Biddle reads nothing other than books on household management,” she said. “She thinks fiction is frivolous.”

“We won’t tell her your secret, then,” Henry said with his slow smile. “For fear of damaging your future prospects.”

The music was becoming wilder still, the customers more raucous and amorous. One of the tavern wenches was enthusiastically kissing a tall fair man who had her pressed up against the plaster wall and looked as though he was about to ravish her there and then, in full view of the customers.

“He’s a scamp,” Margery said. “A highwayman. Jem says he works the Great West Road.”

Two men at the next table were coming to blows over a game of shove ha’penny. One planted a punch on the other; the table rocked and overturned and then they were locked in grunting combat. A knife flashed.

“Time to go, I think,” Henry said. He stood up, drawing Margery to her feet, one arm about her waist as she stumbled a little. “You may have a taste for dangerous company,” he said, “but I have more care for self-preservation.”

“I’ll protect you,” Margery said, smiling up into his eyes. She felt happy and a little dizzy and more than a little drunk. Fortunately, Henry’s arm felt exceedingly strong and reliable about her. It felt perilously right, as though she belonged in his arms, a foolish, whimsical notion that nevertheless she could not dislodge.

She turned toward the door—and found herself face-to-face with her brother Jem.

“Moll!” Jem’s voice snapped like a whip and the sweet, heady atmosphere that had held Margery in its spell died like a flame doused with water.

“Hello, Jem,” she said, disentangling herself from Henry, who seemed inordinately and provocatively slow to release her.

“Who’s the swell?” Jem said, cocking his head at Henry. There was an edge to his voice and an ugly look in his eyes.

“Henry Ward,” Henry said, stepping between them. He offered his hand. Jem studiously ignored it. Henry looked amused.

“Jem,” Margery said reproachfully.

Her brother flicked her look. “You should be careful, Moll,” he said. His gaze returned to Henry. “You can pick up all sorts of riffraff in here.”

“And you should mind your own business,” Margery said, furious now. She felt Henry shift beside her. She could sense the sudden tension in him, an antagonism that matched Jem’s except that Henry was watchful and controlled, appraising her brother with coolly assessing eyes. She remembered that Henry had been in the war and felt a shiver of alarm. Jem was hotheaded, a street fighter, but he was no match for a trained soldier.

The atmosphere was as thick as smoke now. The music had died away; everyone was watching, apart from the highwayman who was fumbling with the barmaid’s bodice, his face buried in her cleavage. Even the men from the next table had abandoned their fight in anticipation of one that promised to be more deadly.

Jem put his hand on Margery’s arm. “I’ll take you home,” he said. “Come on.” He nodded toward the door. “I’ll not have my sister treated like a fancy piece.”

“No,” Margery said stubbornly. “I’m not going with you.” She shook him off. She felt humiliated and upset; she wanted to cry because Jem had taken all the fun and excitement from her evening and torn it to shreds. Everything looked tawdry now and Jem was making her feel like naive fool and worse, like a whore whose favors were up for sale for the price of a mutton pie.

“Don’t confuse me with the sort of women you consort with, Jem Mallon,” she said sharply. “I’m no lightskirt.” She bit her lip against the sting of tears. “You’ve spoiled my evening,” she said. “I was having such a nice time.” She felt forlorn, like the little girl she had once been, stamping her foot with anger and hurt when Jem or Jed or Billy had broken one of her precious toys.

“For God’s sake, Moll,” Jem said contemptuously. “Can’t you see all he wants is a quick fumble down a dark alley and he’s just loosening you up for it?”

Henry stepped between them then with so much intent that Margery grabbed his sleeve in urgent fingers. The atmosphere had changed now. It was deadly.

“No,” Margery said. “Please.”

Her eyes met Henry’s. There was such protective fury in his that she was awed to see it. Something sweet and warm settled inside her. Here was a man who cared about her good name and would do all he could to defend it and her against the world. She had never felt so cherished before.

“Your sister does not want me to hit you,” Henry said, his voice lethally soft. “Out of respect for her, I will not. Don’t insult her again.”

There was an ugly look on Jem’s face. He would not back down. “I don’t trust you,” he said. “If you touch her I will kill you.” He turned on his heel and stalked out of the inn, sending a glass tankard spinning to smash on the floor and pushing a drunk out of his way.

There was a long, heavy pause and then the music struck up again, raucous as before. The sound of voices rose above the din, and everyone moved, resumed whatever they had been doing and pretended that they had not been watching and hoping for a mill.

“I’m sorry,” Margery said. She was shaking. She felt Henry take her hands in his. His touch was very comforting.

“He only wanted to protect you,” Henry said. “I would have done the same.”

Margery gave a little hiccup halfway between a sob and a laugh. “I doubt you would have threatened to kill anyone,” she said.

“I might have expressed myself slightly differently, but the sentiment would have been the same.” His lips grazed her cheek in the lightest and most fleeting caress. “I’ll take you back,” he said. “Completely untouched, so that your brother does not come looking for me to slide a knife between my ribs.”

He took her bonnet and tied the ribbons beneath her chin with quick efficiency. His fingers brushed her throat. Margery repressed a shiver. She felt shaken and upset but beneath that was a deeper emotion, something so precious and tender she trembled to feel it.

The street was silent and dark, the leaning houses pressing together, their windows blind, their shutters closed. High above the sloping roofs, Margery could see a sky spangled with stars. She felt tired all of a sudden, as though the pleasure she had taken in the evening and in Henry’s company had drained away, leaving her empty. She sighed. “I did not want the evening to end like this.”

Henry stopped walking and turned to her. “How did you want it to end?”

The quiet words made her heart skip a beat. She glanced up at him but in the dark his expression was unreadable.

“I wanted to go to Bedford Square Gardens,” Margery said, in a rush. “I wanted to look at the stars and feel the breeze on my face and hear the sounds of the city at night….”

“We can still do that,” Henry said. “Since that is what you would like to do.”

Margery paused. They were alone and the night pressed in about them, silent and secret. Somewhere, streets away, a clock chimed the quarter hour. She could hear Henry’s quiet breathing and feel the heat of his body where it brushed against hers. He said nothing more. He was waiting for her to decide what she wanted.

A strange feeling swept through Margery, part excited, part fearful. Jem had been right; she had taken a risk tonight, but she trusted Henry. She knew that in all the drab repetition of her daily life this one evening would always sparkle as bright and exciting as a jewel. She did not expect it to happen again, but she wanted it to end well, not on the sourness of Jem’s intervention, spoiling the magic.

“Yes,” she said. Her voice was husky. “Yes, please.”

Henry smiled but said nothing and took her hand in his. They walked back through the quiet streets, the brim of her bonnet brushing his shoulder. Neither of them spoke. It did not feel necessary. When they reached the gate at the corner of the gardens, Margery opened her reticule. Her fingers shook a little as she took out the key and turned it in the lock. The gate swung open on well-oiled hinges and they stepped inside.

“Lady Grant gave me a key when she realized that I like to take the air here of an evening,” Margery said. “The gardens are private to the residents.”

On this evening it was like a secret garden, belonging to them alone. The gravel of the paths crunched softly under their feet as they made their way beneath the spreading boughs of poplar and oak. Margery ran down the path to the place where a pool was sheltered by the overhanging branches of a willow. She trailed her fingers in the cool water and watched the ripples shatter the reflection of the stars. Somewhere, distantly, in one of the grand town houses that bordered the square, an orchestra was playing a slow, dreamy waltz. It reminded Margery of the previous night, when she had danced with Henry on the terrace.

With a sigh, she straightened and turned back to look for Henry. He was standing still and straight in the shadows of a plane tree. His silhouette was dark, his shoulders broad and strong. The moonlight glinted on his glossy black hair. Margery went up to him and put her hands against his chest.

“Thank you,” she said simply.

He smiled. “My pleasure, Miss Mallon.”

Spontaneously, Margery stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek, as she would have kissed one of her brothers if they had given her a present. Henry’s cheek was smooth beneath her lips—evidently he had shaved before coming to meet her—and warm. Margery was suddenly vividly aware of the scent of his cologne mingled with the smell of crisp linen and sweet scented grass. The combination went straight to her head and she felt a soaring dizziness that was far more dangerous than the light-headedness induced by the ale.

She drew back, made clumsy by shock and awareness, and in the same moment Henry turned his head and her lips brushed the corner of his mouth. Margery felt him go very still. The moment turned from something sweet to something profoundly awkward. Heat suffused her. She felt inept and mortified. She was ready to curl up with embarrassment.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean… It was a mistake—”

“Does this feel like a mistake?” Henry said. His arms went around her, pulling her against him, and then he was kissing her properly. Margery’s head spun, and the ground shifted beneath her sensible half boots and she realized that the kiss in the brothel had been nothing at all compared to this.

Henry’s lips moved over hers, his tongue touching hers, tasting her, searching, exploring. It was astonishing. It was bewitching. Little ripples of pleasure shimmered through her, down to her toes. She was shocked and intrigued all at once. It lit her blood with fire, making her shiver with heat and cold simultaneously as though she suffered a fever.

She had wanted this. She realized now how very much she had wanted Henry to kiss her. She had wanted it all evening and now it was happening. Her whole body tingled with surprised delight and a sudden fierce triumph.

With one hand Henry pulled the ribbons on her bonnet and cast it aside on the grass, and then his arm was across her back and his fingers were tangled in her hair, sending the neat pins flying, tilting her face up so that he could kiss her more deeply and more urgently still. Margery felt sweet lassitude seep through her body, weakening her knees, filling her with the most agreeable sensation of pleasure that she had ever known. She wanted more of it; suddenly she felt starved and greedy for it, her senses waking into life.

She drew closer to Henry, sliding her arms about his neck and opening her lips beneath his, kissing him back. He tasted of brandy and fresh air and something she had never known before, something that was elemental and special only to him. Her breasts were pressed against his chest as he held her close. There was a lovely, painful ache in the pit of her stomach. She had never known anything to compare with this combination of driving need and wanton weakness.

Henry’s mouth left hers, but only to press kisses against the tender line of her neck and to linger in the hollow at the base of her throat. She trembled now, alive to his touch, as he slid the striped spencer from her shoulders and dropped it to join the discarded bonnet on the grass. His hand cupped the curve of her breast through her gown, his thumb insistent as it rubbed over her nipple. The friction of rough cotton against her skin was exquisite and Margery stopped thinking abruptly, her mind swamped instead by pure, hot desire. She gave a keening little cry and Henry’s lips returned to hers in a ruthless kiss that swallowed her cry and drew her tighter still into a spiral of need.

If she had thought his touch through the material of her gown incendiary, it was nothing to the experience when he slid his hand inside her bodice and she felt his palm, warm and firm, against the side of her breast. The heat and the longing exploded inside her.

It felt as though the very stars were spinning in their courses. She had long ago forgotten to think. She was consumed by sensation only, her whole body clenched in such desperate wanting that she thought she would scream with it.

Her back was against one of the trees now. She could feel the bark snagging against the thin cotton of her gown. She tilted her head back to allow Henry greater access to the bare skin of her throat and shoulders, delighting in the nip of his teeth and the caress of his tongue. There was no shame or hesitation in her. This was a part of her nature that she had not suspected for a moment, but now it drove her.

When Henry tugged down the neck of her gown and she felt his mouth at her breast, she was shot through with such intense pleasure that she would have crumpled to the ground had he not held her pinned against the tree.

A moment later she realized that he was lifting her. The bark scored her bare back but the roughness of it was no more than additional and delightful stimulation against her nakedness. His hands were beneath her thighs, somehow her legs were wrapped about his waist, and her palms were flat against the solid hardness of the tree trunk. She could feel the kiss of the night air against her breasts.

She was filled with a ravenous greed to take Henry completely. She did not want to give herself to him. That felt too passive for the need within her, which was hungry and concentrated. She wanted to take. She was learning so much about herself and so fast. Her mind could not grapple with it, but her body knew what it wanted. It knew it with a knowledge that was deep and primitive. Henry’s mouth was at her breast again, his tongue licked, his teeth tugged on her nipple and she arched back against the hard trunk of the tree, bending like a strung bow.

“Henry, please.” Her words came out a whisper.

Taken by such pleasure she had meant to urge him on to more, but her words had the opposite effect.

She felt the loss of his touch first as he let her slide gently to the ground. She stumbled, disoriented and confused, and he steadied her. She could see his face in the moonlight now, see the vivid shock in it before a frightening blankness replaced it.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He was breathing hard and his tone was rough. There was a note of furious anger in it but Margery instinctively knew it was at himself, not her. “I’m very sorry. That should never have happened.”

The pleasure vanished. Margery felt cold all of a sudden, shivering in the summer breeze, shamefully exposed in the silver moonlight. She pulled up her bodice, tidying it with fingers that shook.

It felt as though her mind was trembling, too, at the enormity of what she had almost done. The thoughts, the images rushed in on her; she could see herself abandoned to all modesty and sense, pinioned against the broad oak, half-naked in Henry’s arms, begging him to ravish her.

Icy shame seeped through her, yet at the same time the blazing demand of her body could not be denied. It felt as though she were split in half, part shamed, part wanting. She could neither make sense of it nor put back those sensations that had almost devoured her. She could not go back to the way she had been before.

She reached for her spencer, struggling to slip it on, making a small noise of distress as it slid from her grasp. Henry helped to arrange it about her shoulders and she felt profoundly grateful for the scant cover it gave her. His hands lingered against her bare skin for one long, aching moment and she shook. Even now, full of shock and mortification, she could feel the flutter of desire echo through her body. She did not know how she could have behaved so badly. It seemed impossible. And yet her body was awakened now and it possessed a dark and disturbing set of desires that were quite beyond the control of reason.

She wanted to run but Henry was too quick for her and caught her arm.

“I’ll take you back.” His voice was his own now, cool again, distant, while she still felt lost and utterly adrift.

“No.” She could not bear to be with him another moment. She was so embarrassed she thought that she would melt with it. Those wicked, delicious sensations of his mouth tugging at her breast… the mere memory of it turned her hot. She did not know how she could have permitted it but she wanted to permit it all over again. She was a wanton and worse still, she actually wanted to be wanton. She was bad through and through. And how lovely that felt. No wonder the church deplored such licentiousness. No wonder everyone warned about the dangers of lust.

“I’m not leaving you here.” Henry’s tone brooked no argument. He walked beside her to the gate and waited patiently as she tried to turn the key in the lock. She was all fingers and thumbs. Eventually he sighed, took the key from her and locked the gate behind them, quickly and efficiently.

They walked back to Bedford Street an impeccably respectable two feet apart. They did not speak. The five minutes it took felt like an hour, but at least it gave the heat in Margery’s blood time to cool. She could see what had happened now and mostly it made her feel like a fool. She had met a handsome gentleman and she had liked him rather too much for her own good. She had been in some danger of tumbling foolishly into love with a man she did not really know. As if that were not bad enough, she had discovered that far from being indifferent to carnal pleasures, she rather liked them. In fact she liked them a lot. And between liking and loving she had almost been undone.

“Goodnight, Mr. Ward.” Once she was within sight of the area steps Margery was itching to be gone. She knew she would not see Henry again. Her silly Cinderella dream was over and she had almost been fatally burned by it. There was a reason why maidservants were warned to steer clear of handsome gentlemen. It was all too easy to tumble from virtue. She knew that now.

Henry put out a hand and touched her wrist, a light touch that seemed to sear like a flame. “Margery,” he said. “There is something you should know.”

He’s married, Margery thought. She felt another thud of disappointment and grief. Of course he was. Well, she had learned her lesson good and proper tonight.

“Best not,” she said. She pressed her fingers to his lips to silence him and smiled even though there was a prickle of tears in her throat. Better to pretend that she had not been hurt. She did not want him knowing that, as well.





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