Forbidden Page 16

  “I am not sure what you expect me to do,” Henry said, “other than carry Lady Marguerite off.”

  “Would you?” his mother asked hopefully.

  The idea held a certain degree of appeal, Henry thought. But he could not act on it. Marriage to Margery, aside from branding him the biggest fortune hunter in the ton, would be a helter-skelter mix of lust and argument until the lust died and the argument turned rancid. He shuddered at the thought of all that chaos.

  He realized that Margery was looking at him. This was in itself unusual, since she had made a point of keeping out of his way ever since his return. Now, though, there was quite definitely a plea in the silver depths of her eyes. Henry found it oddly difficult to resist that appeal. He strode languidly over to her sofa, edged Lord Fane out of the way and rested his hands on the back directly behind her. If his fellow peers chose to interpret that as a sign that he exercised a prior claim, he was not averse to that in order to chase them away.

  “Gentlemen,” he said. “Pleasant as it has been to see you all, I fear that Lady Marguerite is about to expire beneath the weight of your attentions. So if you would not mind…”

  “Thank you,” Margery whispered to him and when she smiled Henry felt a ridiculous pleasure.

  His words created a certain amount of resentment. “So, Wardeaux thinks to steal a march,” he heard Fane say to Bryson as Barnard ushered the overzealous suitors from the room. “Good luck to him—I suppose she is quite a fetching little piece if one can ignore the smell of the servants’ hall, but she is not good enough for me.”

  Henry found himself possessed of such a white-hot fury that his hands itched to take Fane by the cravat and strangle the life out of him. He balled his fists at his sides, and instead derived a certain pleasure from sticking his foot out as Fane passed him, sending the peer sprawling in the entrance hall in front of everyone.

  “In your proper place, Fane,” Henry said pleasantly. “Beneath Lady Marguerite’s feet.” He strolled back into the saloon feeling absurdly pleased with himself.

  “The local gentry are small fry,” Lady Wardeaux was saying to Margery, “but one must keep in with them. As for the others—” Her face creased with displeasure. “It is most unfortunate that they did not see fit to wait until you went to London, Marguerite.”

  “The local innkeepers must be delighted,” Henry said. It would be like this from here on in, he thought. There would be an endless troop of hopeful peers through the house until Margery made her choice. He wondered if she realized just how besieged she would be. Drawing a deep breath, he tried to drive out all the inappropriately possessive feelings the thought engendered.

  Margery had started to collect the plates and teacups, stacking them neatly on the table.

  “Marguerite, my dear—” An expression of abject horror crossed Lady Wardeaux’s features. “Pray do not remove the cups. That is the footman’s task.”

  She went out to chivvy the servants and Margery sat back with a sigh, picking up a copy of La Belle Assemblée and flicking through it. A silence descended on the drawing room but it was a silence sharp with awareness. Margery broke it after a moment.

  “I quite had it in mind to wed Sir Reggie,” she said lightly, “until the Marquis of Bryson arrived.” Her silver-gray gaze was guileless. “He is extremely handsome.”

  Henry looked at her. It was impossible to tell whether she was sincere or not. He supposed that two weeks might completely change her beliefs about marriage, but it would be surprising, since one of Margery’s abiding characteristics was stubbornness. On the other hand, this elegant creature before him, so fresh and pretty in her bright yellow muslin, had a certain brittle air of sophistication about her that the Margery Mallon he had known a month before had definitely lacked.

  The bright candor that had so warmed him had vanished. Henry felt a lurch in his stomach to think that a mere four weeks might have changed Margery so fundamentally. Yet it was not impossible. She was the richest heiress in the ton now, and might have developed attitudes to match. Not every young woman coming into such an inheritance would remain unspoiled.

  “Bryson keeps a stable of mistresses the way that most men keep a stable of horses,” he said.

  “I thought that was de rigueur in the ton,” Margery said, her eyes mocking him over the top of the magazine. “I understand that you had an opera singer in keeping. Just the one, so I believe. Perhaps you do not have Lord Bryson’s stamina?”

  Minx. Henry, who had resolved not to be drawn into a dispute with Margery any more than he was going to make love to her, was tempted to break his vow on the spot.

  “I thought you believed that love was a prerequisite for marriage,” he said. “Did you then fall in love with Lord Bryson at first sight?”

  Margery raised a shoulder in a dismissive shrug. “Perhaps I was a little naive about that. I do not believe that love matches sit well with the ton. If I am to make a marriage of convenience, then is not any man as good as another?”

  She sounded sincere. She looked sincere. Henry felt anger and disillusion stir in him that she had so easily, so carelessly, dismissed the principles that had been important to her and was now as vapid and shallow as any spoiled debutante. He took the magazine from her hand and tossed it down onto the sofa. Margery’s eyes widened with surprise and annoyance.

  “If you are to make a marriage of convenience,” Henry said, “it would be better to settle for Lord Blunt. At least he might die soon.”

  “I do not see that it matters much,” Margery said dismissively. “Whoever I choose will have no real respect for me. He will deplore my upbringing while spending my money. You heard Lord Fane’s comment.”

  “All the more reason to find a worthy man.” Henry felt that ungovernable fury again for Fane’s boorishness, and with it a fierce protectiveness for her. He wanted to defend her against the slights and the snobbery of the ton. At the same time, he wanted to shake her for even considering abandoning her principles and selling herself into an advantageous marriage.

  “That is unexpected advice coming from you,” Margery said. She had sprung to her feet and was confronting him. “You intend to make a passionless match with some equally cold-blooded aristocrat. Why criticize me for doing the best I can?”

  “That was different,” Henry said, keeping a tight hold on his temper and his self-control. “That was what I wanted. I do not want to marry for love, but you are denying what you want.”

  Margery’s slender shoulders lifted in another shrug. “A love match was what I used to want before I understood how the world worked. The best thing I can do now is to marry a man whose estate and title match my own. In that way, we will both understand the bargain we have made.” She smiled. “Perhaps I could even catch myself a duke.”

  “Perhaps you could,” Henry said, through his teeth. She looked so fresh and pretty in her springlike dress, and she sounded so spoiled, corrupted by all she had gained. He felt a violent wave of anger.

  “Since you outrank me, and I am not suitable to put myself forward as a husband, pray remember to call on me as your lover when you have produced the heir and the spare,” he said. “No doubt you are aware that that is the way fashionable society operates. If you are to adopt some of its customs, why not all of them?”

  He found he had already taken a step toward her. He took another. She did not retreat because it was not in her nature. She stood her ground and looked at him, looked down her nose at him, in fact, with all the disdain of the Templemores. Henry had never found disdain arousing before; in Margery he found it provocative in the extreme. He wanted to toss her onto the sofa so recently occupied by his mother and the Dowager Lady Radnor and make wild love to her.

  “How odious you can be,” Margery said. “I wish you had not come back.”

  “I doubt you would think me odious if you were in my bed,” Henry said. “You may be above me, but you might find it stimulating to have me under you.”

  Margery’s mouth rounde
d into a small outraged O. “If I wished to take a lover,” she said, rallying, “I am sure I could do a great deal better than you.”

  That was fighting talk, and Henry could see that Margery knew full well it was dangerous. There was trepidation as well as defiance in her eyes now.

  That was the trouble with the Templemores; they had always been reckless in the extreme. He had simply not expected to see that recklessness in Margery. Nor had he expected to find it so stimulating. Not that his behavior was any better. He was already halfway down the road to ruin—Margery’s ruin—and riding hell for leather. He knew it. He could feel his self-control slipping. There was a devil in him, the same one that had possessed his father, the one he had fought so hard for so long to deny with his devotion to duty and his rejection of all that was rakish and unprincipled.

  The devil won. He put out a negligent hand and caught Margery’s elbow, drawing her toward him. The sleeve of her gown felt smooth beneath his fingers and her arm was warm, soft and rounded beneath the light muslin. He heard her intake of breath, a tiny catch in the throat. Her eyes were still wide and defiant but beneath the surface lurked all manner of fascinating emotions. She knew she was pushing the edge of his control but that in itself was enough to excite her. He could see it in the smoky silver of her eyes, and that knowledge brought him back to the edge of arousal, tempting him almost beyond endurance.

  “You think that you could find a better lover than me,” he said very softly. “And you are basing that assumption on…what, precisely? Given that you were a virgin a month ago, I imagine your means of comparison would be decidedly limited.”

  Margery gasped. “A gentleman would not mention such a thing.”

  “I beg your pardon,” Henry said. “I was simply stating a fact. If you have managed to extend your amorous education in the past few weeks, as well as becoming heiress to the richest earldom in the country, then do enlighten me. After all, I have not been here to follow your progress.”

  “What I have been doing in the past few weeks is not your business,” Margery said. She looked at him with cold, hard dislike. “I wish you had not come back,” she repeated.

  She tweaked her sleeve from his grip and whisked past him and out of the room. The door closed softly behind her.

  Henry swore under his breath. He walked slowly across to the window. The last of the visitors were departing, the carriage wheels spattering the gravel. Bryson handled his team well. He was a very accomplished whip. And he would make Margery very unhappy as a husband.

  Henry swore again. Margery was right; it was none of his business. The fact that he wanted her future to be his business meant that he was deep in trouble, deeper than when he had gone away two weeks before. He had come back fully intending to speak with Lord Templemore and be gone. He had not planned to be drawn into Margery’s life at all.

  That was the trouble with good intentions, Henry thought. The road to hell was paved with them.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Ace of Cups: The start of love

  THAT AFTERNOON MARGERY was sitting by the fountain watching the goldfish flirting their lazy fins beneath the lily leaves. She had brought a book with her, a Gothic romance by Clara Reeve called The Old English Baron. She had found it in her grandfather’s extensive library, a room that had overawed her when she had first seen it, with its floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and well-thumbed collection.

  Lord Templemore had been delighted to find her browsing. Her mother, he said, had read nothing other than the fashionable magazines. Margery hardly felt qualified to call herself bookish but she did enjoy having the leisure to read. As a maid, she had only been able to snatch moments between her duties and so often fell asleep at night over her books.

  One of the peacocks strutted up to her across the gravel. It gave a loud cry and spread its tail feathers in shimmering display, turning back and forth so that she might admire it. Margery smiled. She was starting to get quite fond of the bad-tempered birds. Perhaps the poor thing wanted to mate and felt frustrated. She sympathized.

  She wished Henry had not come back. Except that she had missed him quite desperately every single day of his absence. She had felt bereft and lonely, angry with herself for the weakness but powerless to prevent it.

  She had been so pleased to see him and so angry to see him. Her heart had felt as though it might burst and she had been quite breathless. She did not quite understand her own emotions but she understood all too well why she had tried to provoke him this morning in an attempt to appear as though she did not care. It had been a spectacularly bad idea that had left her feeling more miserable than ever.

  Lust and passion. That was all Henry could offer her. She wanted it, but she could not have it with honor and never with love.

  She sighed. Being Lady Marguerite Saint-Pierre was decidedly more a bed of thorns than roses at the moment. On the outside, the expensive gowns made her a lady, but she was still grappling with her new role. She was learning about the estate and the way that Templemore was run. She was also learning the social graces. It felt as though she had spent an inordinate amount of time with Lady Wardeaux and Lady Emily learning how to arrange flowers and how to supervise dinner menus.

  Lady Wardeaux had also tutored her in the superficial discourse required on social occasions. She could chat comfortably to the neighbors about the weather or the state of the roads. She could offer the vicar tea and discuss feminine accomplishments with his wife. She could even, at a pinch, act as hostess for her grandfather if he chose to hold a formal dinner.

  In other ways, however, she was sadly lacking. She possessed few feminine accomplishments such as painting watercolors or playing the piano. She could sew, of course, since it had been one of the skills she needed as a lady’s maid, but she had had only the most basic of educations and knew no languages and precious little about history or geography. Lady Wardeaux, in a rare moment of encouragement, had pointed out to her that no one liked a bluestocking, but Margery still felt inadequate.

  She was not sure what she was supposed to do all day either. According to Lady Wardeaux she was already doing it, but being Lady Marguerite was not really a job. It did not require her to get up at five in the morning to clean grates or to carry hot water.

  She had hoped that her brothers might come to visit her so that she could recapture something of her old self and her old life, but Jed had not replied to her letter. Billy had congratulated her on her good fortune and asked for a loan, but had made no mention of visiting her. That only left Jem, who was apparently out of London on some typically vague business that was bound to be illegal, immoral or both. Margery felt a little hurt to be so abandoned. She had thought she was close to her brothers and she needed them.

  This morning she had stood before the enormous portrait of her mother in the Blue Saloon and tried to draw something, anything, from the pretty painted face that looked down at her with such unconscious arrogance. Lady Rose, Margery now realized, had been the sort of spoiled little rich girl whom she had deplored when she was a maidservant, the type of woman who had taken her material comforts for granted and who had ignored those she thought of as beneath her. As for Margery’s father, there were no pictures of him in the house, not even a miniature, because he had been a thoroughly bad lot and an utter cad. No one mentioned his name. He had even been crossed out of the family bible where the names of the Templemores were recorded back through several centuries.

  “Excuse me, milady.” William, one of Templemore’s many footmen, was approaching her over the gravel. The peacocks scattered, squawking and shedding their tail feathers. William bowed to her. “Lord Templemore requests that you join him in his study, ma’am.”

  “Thank you.” Margery got to her feet and dusted down her skirts. “How is your mama, William?” she asked as the footman followed her deferentially indoors. “I heard that she has not been well.”

  “She is much recovered now, thank you, ma’am,” William said, holding the garden door op
en for her. “She asked me to thank you for the fruit you sent.”

  Margery nodded. “It was a pleasure. The hothouses produce far more than we can use here, so it is nice to share.”

  “Lady Templemore used to do the same,” William said. “His lordship’s late wife. You are the spitting image of her, ma’am.” He blushed as though he had spoken out of turn. “Begging your pardon, ma’am, but she was a lovely lady, your grandmama, so I heard.”

  No one ever said that about her mother, Margery thought.

  She blinked as she went into the darkness of the West Passage with its stone-flagged hall and hideous gold furniture. Chessie had told her that, like the ugly gilt clock in the Red Saloon, the tables and spindly chairs were from the palace of King Louis XIV of France and were worth a fortune. Personally she considered them a crime against good taste and impractical into the bargain. No one could sit on a chair like that. It would collapse.

  She knocked on the door of her grandfather’s parlor. He bade her enter.

  Henry was with him. There was a pile of drawings and diagrams on the big cherrywood table in the center of the room, but these had been temporarily abandoned and the two men were playing chess at the smaller table in the window. Margery stopped abruptly just inside the door. She had not imagined that Henry’s relationship with his godfather would involve something so frivolous as a game. They had always seemed so formal with each other. Now the earl was smiling as he put Henry’s queen in check and Margery felt a pang of something close to jealousy. Then she felt ashamed. Lord Templemore was her grandfather and he loved her. She should not grudge Henry a relationship with him, too.

  The sunlight played over Henry’s glossy black hair, and when he looked up Margery was conscious of a strange tumbling feeling in her stomach.

  “Checkmate,” Lord Templemore said with considerable satisfaction.