Forbidden. Nicola Cornick

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

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