Forbidden Page 14

  “You need to slow down as you take the turn in the stair,” he said. “Otherwise you have too much velocity.”

  “Velocity?” Margery said faintly.

  “Too much speed,” Henry said. “You go too quickly and do not have enough time to prepare to land. I know from painful experience. I broke my arm falling from the stair when I was nine years old.”

  Now he had surprised her. Margery had never envisaged that the solemn boy he must have been would ever have slid down the banisters.

  “Did we know each other as children?” she asked abruptly. It had not occurred to her that they might, before now. The idea disturbed her because she could remember nothing of her early childhood at Templemore.

  Henry nodded. “We met a few times.”

  “What was I like?” Margery asked on impulse.

  “You were a baby,” Henry said. “You had no personality at that stage.”

  “Even babies have personalities,” Margery argued. “It is simply that you were not interested in me.”

  “I was a ten-year-old boy,” Henry said dryly. “What do you expect?”

  “Do you remember my mother?” Margery asked. “What was she like?”

  She felt Henry stiffen beside her. It was only for a second, the very slightest of hesitations, and she felt it rather than saw it because, as always, his expression was quite impassive.

  “Lady Rose was very beautiful,” he said.

  As an answer it was unsatisfactory, telling Margery only what she had already seen in the portraits and nothing of the woman she wanted to know. Something in Henry’s face forbade her to question further, though, and she had the strangest feeling that he had held something back, not to hurt her but quite the reverse. She was already starting to suspect that she knew what it was. Her mother, she was certain, had not been a very nice person. She had been haughty and proud and spoiled. And no one wanted to tell her because they did not want to upset her.

  Henry sketched a bow to her and set off up the staircase and Margery turned back toward Lord Templemore’s private parlor. As she reached the door, she stopped and looked around. Henry was standing on the first landing, his hand resting on the banister and for one mad moment Margery thought he was going to emulate her and slide down to the bottom.

  But that would be ridiculous. Henry had too much self-control, too much containment, ever to do so inappropriate a thing. Nevertheless she waited, almost holding her breath. She saw him shake his head slightly, and then he turned and disappeared from her view.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Devil: Lust

  “HOW DELIGHTFUL THAT YOU are able to spare me the time to meet for tea, Marguerite,” Lady Emily said, with her vague, sweet smile, beckoning Margery into her private sitting room and gesturing her to take the seat nearest the fire. The room was blisteringly hot. Sunlight falling through the mullioned panes fought with the heat from the grate. Margery could already feel the uncomfortable prickle of sweat on her forehead and she surreptitiously tried to push the old velvet wing chair a foot away from the fire. It refused to move.

  Lady Emily seemed oblivious to the stuffy, airless atmosphere of the room. She wafted across to the little side table and poured tea into tiny china cups. A scent of jasmine arose. Lady Emily’s bracelets clinked against the china and rattled against each other as she handed the cup to Margery.

  “It’s a pleasure to have some time with you, Aunt Emily,” Margery said. She knew she sounded stiff and formal. There was something about Lady Emily that discomfited her and she could not explain why. She also felt guilty. It was all too easy to ignore Lady Emily, who fluttered around ineffectually in Lady Wardeaux’s shadow, as insubstantial as her floating draperies. Margery had been at Templemore a week now and knew her aunt as little as when she had arrived.

  “This is a charming room,” Margery said, clutching desperately for a topic of conversation as Lady Emily settled opposite her and smiled benignly across the rim of her teacup. “You have a lovely view across the deer park.”

  “Oh, I am very lucky,” Lady Emily said lightly. “Very, very lucky. I have lived at Templemore all my life, you know.” She offered Margery a plate of little ginger biscuits. “Yes, indeed.” Her eyes, gray as Lord Templemore’s and Margery’s own, were pale and inward-looking. “My mama came here as the housekeeper. Your great-grandfather took her as his mistress while his wife was still alive. He was in his seventies then, and my mama no more than five-and-twenty. It was quite a scandal!”

  She laughed merrily, as though the sexual exploits of her parents were greatly entertaining. “Old Lady Templemore had been refusing papa her bed for years. She was very devout and would not sleep with him on saint’s days, and of course every day of the year is dedicated to one saint or another.”

  “I see,” Margery said, feeling vaguely uncomfortable at this insight into the intimate life of her ancestors.

  “Oh, the Templemore men!” Lady Emily smiled indulgently. “Such rakes. Deplorable. Papa practically had a harem of mistresses. They called the women his game parlor. Casper, my brother, was the same. He married late and then he was unfaithful to your dear grandmama before the ink was dry on the wedding lines. Of course, he only married her for her money. Why do you think he never speaks of her?”

  “Guilt, I imagine,” Margery said dryly. She loved her grandfather but as she learned more about him she could not ignore his faults. She wondered how much the influence of a libidinous father had set him on the same track.

  “Casper has always been a most generous brother to me,” Lady Emily continued. “So much older, of course. Thirty years! I’ve always been the indulged little sister.”

  She started idly turning over the pile of tarot cards at her elbow. Margery’s eyes were drawn to the vivid pictures and garish colors, the Hanged Man, smiling as he was strung upside down from a scaffold. The Devil horned and chained. Death the skeleton, riding a black horse, carrying his bloodred scythe…. Margery shuddered at the images of suppressed violence.

  Lady Emily smiled. “Drink your tea, my dear,” she said.

  The tea tasted vile. Margery took one sip then quickly tipped the rest into a potted plant when Lady Emily was not looking.

  “You must have been quite young when my mother was born, Aunt Emily,” she said. “Were you not closer to her in age than you were to grandpapa?”

  She saw Lady Emily’s fingers check as she shuffled the pack of cards.

  “I was twenty-three when dearest Rose was born,” Lady Emily said after a moment. She smiled, wide and vague. “Such a beautiful child! She was almost like a sister to me. More tea, Marguerite?”

  “Oh, no, thank you,” Margery said hurriedly.

  Lady Emily poured herself another cup. “Of course, dear Rose…” She paused and shook her head, while Margery wondered what on earth she was about to say. “Such a tragedy,” Lady Emily murmured. “So sad. First marrying that dreadful man and then…” She shuddered.

  “You knew my father, then,” Margery said. She thought she should probably leave well enough alone, since she had not met a single person with a good word to say about Comte Antoine de Saint-Pierre, but she could not help herself. The man was an enigma to her. She knew nothing of her father and it felt strange and lonely.

  Lady Emily did not answer at once. She blinked, raising her hand to rub her eyes. One of the tarot cards fluttered down onto the rug.

  “The sun,” Lady Emily said vaguely. “It is very bright today.” She looked up at Margery. “Your father? He was very handsome, my love. Poor dear Rose was so taken in by him. She was not the only one.”

  Margery remembered Henry referring to her father’s roistering about Town, his drinking, his mistresses, his gambling. It was extremely lowering to think that she was descended from a haughty society beauty and a rakish spy. Between them, they appeared to have had few good qualities to endow her with.

  “I don’t suppose he was a very nice person,” she said, a little wistfully.

  “
No,” Lady Emily agreed with surprising firmness. “He was not. Vain, I fear. He and Rose were always competing for the mirror. And really quite cruel…” She was turning one of the tarot cards over and over between her fingers. “Best not to ask, my love,” she said. Suddenly her eyes were very bright. “Best to let the past lie.”

  “I don’t really remember it anyway,” Margery said. “I think I was too young.”

  “Good,” Lady Emily said, smiling. “That’s very good.” She frowned. “Are you happy at Templemore, Marguerite? I fear there are shades here, the ghosts of the past. They walk. It is not a happy house.”

  “It is certainly dark and gloomy,” Margery agreed. “But I have not experienced any ghosts. I have no sensibility. No ghost would appear to me. I am far too practical.” Suddenly she was desperate to be away from Lady Emily and her ceaseless turning of the tarot cards. The heat in the room was getting unbearable. Margery stood up and her head swam.

  “Excuse me, Aunt Emily,” she said. “I need some fresh air.”

  “Of course, Marguerite, my love,” Lady Emily said vaguely. She waved a hand. Her bracelets clashed. “It was so charming of you to join me for tea.” She raised her gaze to Margery’s face. “I do hope that I have been able to tell you something of your parents.”

  “Yes, thank you,” Margery said. Her hand slipped on the doorknob. Her palm was damp. She looked at Lady Emily sitting in a shaft of bright sunlight that pitilessly illuminated the faded gray of her hair and the tiredness of her face, and wondered why she was thanking her aunt for making her feel more miserable and lonely than she had been before.

  * * *

  “I HAVE BEEN GIVING some thought to the Templemore jewels,” the earl announced at dinner that night. They were eating informally by Templemore standards, en famille, as Lady Wardeaux put it, which meant that the extra leaves on the long mahogany dinner table were not being used and they sat only four feet apart from one another, rather than six. It made conversation slightly easier, although a chilly silence was apparently the normal environment around the Templemore dinner table.

  Margery, who had been trying to disguise her disgust with the turtle soup—there was no way that it could surreptitiously be fed to the dogs—saw everyone fall silent. Lady Emily’s pale gray eyes opened wide and her soupspoon was suspended on its way to her mouth. A quick frown touched Lady Wardeaux’s brow. Mr. Churchward broke off in the middle of whatever he had been saying to Chessie. Only Henry seemed unperturbed.

  “Margery shall try them on after dinner,” the earl said. “Fine jewels are better admired by candlelight.” He smiled at Margery. “They glow.”

  “I doubt the Templemore jewels will glow in any light,” Henry said. “They have been in the vaults so long they will surely need cleaning.”

  “Churchward may take them back to London with him,” Lord Templemore said, with a dismissive wave of the hand. “Then they may be cleaned for Margery’s come-out and the Templemore diamonds reset.”

  “Come-out?” Margery said faintly. It had not once occurred to her that she might have to return to London and have one of those grand and thoroughly intimidating balls that were the fate of every young lady in society. She had thought that a local assembly would be the extent of her social ordeal. “Surely I am too old,” she said. “I have already been out, to all intents and purposes, for twelve years.”

  She saw Henry smile. “Not as Lady Marguerite Saint-Pierre,” he said. “You must be introduced formally to ton society.”

  Margery’s stomach lurched at the thought of being the center of attention at a ton ball. There would be nowhere to hide and so many people watching her and talking about her. Henry’s dark gaze was resting on her thoughtfully, and she was almost certain that he was remembering those foolish thoughts she had confided to him in London about how she preferred for no one to notice her.

  Well, there was no chance of that in future. She might as well wear a large placard with her name on it. Suddenly sick with nerves she pushed away her soup plate and a footman swooped down to tidy it away.

  “We will travel up in a month or so,” the earl said, “before the end of the Season.”

  “I am so very glad that you feel well enough to make the trip to Town, Casper,” Lady Emily trilled. “The cards told me we should be making a journey. I drew the Chariot in my reading today.”

  Silence fell again, since no one seemed able to find an adequate response to this. The plates were cleared and the roast beef served. Lord Templemore instructed his butler, Barnard, to fetch the jewels from the strong room and lay them out in the Red Saloon.

  “The Templemore jewels are exquisite,” Lady Wardeaux said to Margery. “You are most fortunate.” Her tone implied that Margery scarcely deserved such good luck. “Of course, your grandfather is quite right to have the diamonds reset. You are far too small to carry them off.”

  “I am grateful,” Margery said. “I am sure the mere weight of them would have squashed me flat.”

  “One requires stature to wear the Templemore diamonds,” Lady Wardeaux said. “One needs Town bronze. They would have suited a beauty like Lady Antonia Gristwood perfectly. Such a pity she will never wear them—”

  “Mama!” Henry’s voice cut like a whip and Lady Wardeaux fell silent.

  Margery looked up.

  “Who is Lady Antonia Gristwood?” she asked.

  There was an odd silence around the table.

  “Lady Antonia is the daughter of the Duke of Carlisle,” Lady Emily said brightly. “She was going to marry Henry before she jilted him because he lost Templemore.”

  “The woman in the stripy gown,” Margery murmured, remembering Joanna Grant’s ball and the supercilious beauty who had so arrogantly demanded to be waited upon. The woman had been proud to a fault.

  “Emily!” Now it was Lady Wardeaux’s turn to snap a rebuke, but Margery could see a furtive spark of triumph in her eyes. She knew Lady Wardeaux had wanted her to hear about Lady Antonia, who would have carried off the Templemore diamonds with so much more style than she could ever hope to achieve. She felt upset, which was no doubt precisely what Lady Wardeaux had wanted. More disturbingly, she felt jealous of the woman Henry had apparently been going to marry. It had never occurred to her that he might have been betrothed. Nor that he might have lost his fiancée when he had lost his inheritance.

  She looked at Henry. He was staring at his mother and he looked angry.

  “I am very sorry,” she said, addressing him directly. “Sorry that Lady Antonia jilted you, I mean.”

  Now everyone was looking at her as though she had committed some unspeakable act at the dining table. She knew she was supposed to have ignored Lady Emily’s comment and soldiered on chewing the tough roast beef, because that was what a lady would do. A lady would pretend to be selectively deaf.

  Henry shrugged. “It was bound to happen,” he said. “Carlisle would not have let his daughter throw herself away on a mere baron.”

  There was absolutely no emotion in his voice. Margery stared, wondering if he could truly be so unmoved.

  “But did you love her?” she asked.

  This time there was a distinct gasp of shock around the table, as though she had taken off her gown and danced naked amid the crockery. Lady Wardeaux had her eyes closed in horror. Lady Emily’s mouth hung open. Even the footmen’s wooden impassivity was threatened. The earl was smiling slightly as he fed some beef to one of the spaniels.

  Henry’s eyebrows shot up. “My dear Lady Marguerite,” he drawled. “Marriage has nothing to do with love. It is a business agreement based on mutual benefit.” His tone made Margery feel as naive as the little maidservant she had once been, reading penny romances in the attic. “I assure you my heart is not broken and neither is Lady Antonia’s, assuming she has a heart, which I beg leave to doubt.”

  “Well, then,” Margery said, “it is a great pity the wedding did not come off because it sounds as though you would have been ideally suited.”

&nbs
p; She sawed furiously at her beef. Of all the cold, indifferent, stiff-necked, stuffed-shirted pomposity. She would never understand the aristocracy and she did not want to be one of them.

  The beef was removed and pudding served. Gradually the room resumed what passed for a normal air. The ladies withdrew for tea; the gentlemen were left to their port. Lady Wardeaux delicately ignored Margery’s social gaffe and chatted about the warm springlike weather until Barnard came to tell them that the jewels had been laid out for them to try on in the Red Saloon.

  “I know I did a bad thing,” Margery whispered to Chessie, catching her arm as they made their way past the library. “But I cannot quite work out whether it was worse to mention love, or to do so in front of the servants.”

  Chessie gave a snort of laughter. “It is Lady Wardeaux who showed bad manners,” she whispered back.

  “I bumped into Lady Antonia at Lady Grant’s most recent ball,” Margery said. “She was vile.”

  Chessie pulled an expressive face. “She has vileness perfected to an art form,” she agreed. “Not even Henry deserved that.”

  The Red Saloon glittered, the light from the chandeliers throwing back the sparkle and gleam of a dozen different items of jewelry Barnard had laid out in their velvet cases. Edith, Margery’s maid, had set out a table with a mirror and a stand of candles.

  Lady Wardeaux fell on the jewels rather like a magpie, picking them up, holding them to the light, exclaiming over them. Margery, catching Chessie’s eye, tried not to laugh, but there was no denying that they were a stunning collection. She simply could not accept that one day they would all be hers, especially not the earl’s coronet with its ermine trim and eight silver balls.

  “Am I going to have to wear that barbaric thing?” she whispered to Chessie in abject horror.

  “Only for state occasions such as the coronation of monarchs,” Chessie said comfortingly and Margery almost fainted at the thought of it.