Forbidden

by Nicola Cornick

  Henry had released her reluctantly. His cheek pressed to hers, his mouth against her hair, he had asked her if she had changed her mind. He had not said that he loved her. Margery, her heart breaking, had said that she had not. She would not marry him.

  Chessie had given Henry one very hard stare and whisked her away from prying eyes. Some story had been put about that Margery had suffered a tear in her gown. Chessie had helped her tidy herself; she had retied her ribbons and smoothed her skirts, had looked her over and had expressed very dry approval for Henry’s ability to make love to a woman without creasing her gown or disarranging her hair. Margery had blushed to her toes.

  Margery looked herself over in the mirror. She doubted she would ever be able to look in a mirror again without seeing Henry making love to her, his hands dark against the paleness of her skin, his body sliding into hers. She felt hot and light-headed again, sated with physical pleasure, wanting nothing more than to sleep. At least she looked respectable again now, even if she felt anything but.

  “I heard Henry ask you if you had changed your mind,” Chessie said. She had been busy tidying up various pots and brushes on the dressing table that did not really need tidying, as though she needed the occupation. Her hands paused. Her blue eyes held a troubled expression. “Tell me to mind my own business if you wish. I am only anxious that you do not get yourself into a deal of trouble.”

  “He proposed to me,” Margery said. “Again,” she added scrupulously. “Several times.”

  “And what did you say?” Chessie asked.

  “I told him I would not marry without love,” Margery said.

  “Oh, Margery,” Chessie said. Margery was shocked to see that her blue eyes were full of tears. “I hope,” Chessie said, “I truly hope that this has a happy ending for you but I fear it will not. Henry—” She hesitated, then sat down abruptly on the edge of the bed. “Henry was in love with someone when he was young,” she said, her words tumbling out in a rush. “Her name was Isobel. I did not want to tell you because it was not my business and I hoped he would tell you himself, but…” She looked up and met Margery’s eyes. “Henry was married at only nineteen. He was very much in love with his wife.”

  Margery felt an odd rushing sensation in her ears.

  Henry had been in love? Henry had been married?

  She grabbed at the upright post of the bed to steady herself. “What happened? Did she die?”

  “Eventually,” Chessie said dryly. “She had affaires all over Town. She shamed Henry by sleeping with his own father. In the end, Lord Templemore paid her to go away and she went abroad. She died a few years later, but only after she had dragged Henry’s name and his honor through the gutter.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  “I wanted to but I thought it was Henry’s place to tell you himself. I’m sorry.”

  Margery’s legs felt so shaky that she sat down next to Chessie on the fat purple coverlet. Henry had been in love. The words repeated over and over in her head. He had been married and he had never told her. No one had mentioned it to her. She thought about the coldness that had come into Henry’s eyes when she had spoken of love, of the remoteness she had felt in him. Now she understood. Henry had cut himself off completely. He had not want to feel again.

  “I wish he had told me,” she said. “I wish he had explained.” She was so candid herself that keeping such an enormous secret felt impossible and wrong. Yet, at the same time, she could blame Henry for nothing. His wife had taken all the love he had offered, and twisted and despoiled it beyond recognition.

  Margery swallowed hard. She remembered wondering how Henry had felt as a small, solemn child in the huge edifice of Templemore. No siblings to show him love or bear him company in the way that she had had Jem and Jed and Billy. Nothing but a cold, distant mother and an absent, libertine father.

  She had misunderstood, she realized now. She had thought that Henry had never learned to love. She had accused him of being a stranger to love. But what had happened to him had been worse. Despite, or perhaps because of the example of his parents’ marriage, despite the licentious ways of his father and his godfather, he had, with faith and courage, offered his love and his honor to this woman, Isobel. And she had destroyed them.

  A small, hard knot tightened in Margery’s throat. She felt so angry with the unknown woman who had shattered Henry’s faith that she wanted to kill her, though she was prepared to admit that that might have been partly jealousy, as well. Or possibly a very great deal of jealousy.

  “I hate her,” she said viciously. “It is fortunate she is dead.” She checked the clock and grabbed her little cream satin reticule. “We must go back to the ball. I know we must. I have been absent far too long. But Chessie—” She pressed her friend’s hand. “Thank you for telling me.”

  Henry had gone when they reached the ballroom. Margery was relieved; it would have been impossible to dance with him again or make inconsequential chat in front of a crowd.

  Chessie’s revelation had shaken her badly. She was not naive enough to imagine she might teach Henry to love again. That was the sort of blind hope destined to end in tears. That was the sort of misery that had lain in store for her mother. What she had to decide now was whether Henry’s offer of a marriage, based on mutual need and mutual desire, was sufficient when her stubborn heart argued for more.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The Ten of Swords: Ruin

  “YOU LOOK BLUE-DEVILED.”

  Henry jumped as his cousin Garrick spoke in his ear. He had been watching Margery—it was becoming something of a dangerous habit—as she threaded her way through the guests at Lady Fowler’s rout. It was another hot London night and another ton ballroom. As ever, Margery sparkled, a tiny, bright figure looking completely at ease in her new setting. As ever, she was under siege; a positive battalion of suitors pursued her around the room and he had to stand there and watch like a chaperon on a rout chair. Of course he felt blue-deviled.

  “You’ve quarreled with the divine Lady Marguerite,” Garrick said, guessing the cause of Henry’s bad temper with disturbing accuracy.

  “She asked me about Isobel,” Henry admitted. “She wanted to know why I hadn’t told her I had been married before.”

  “And you told her that it was because it was not important,” Garrick hazarded.

  Henry shrugged. “It isn’t.”

  “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,” Garrick said. “You understand nothing about women, Henry.”

  “Evidently not,” Henry agreed.

  Bafflingly, Margery had rejected all his subsequent invitations. She had refused to drive with him again, she had turned down his offer to escort her to any number of concerts and exhibitions, and she had even declined his invitations to dance, brandishing an undeniably full card at him when he had challenged her. He had been reduced to standing on the sidelines and it was not a position he was accustomed to occupying.

  He had been obliged to admit that his plan to seduce Margery into agreeing to be his wife had been badly flawed in any case. Instead of entrapping her, he had been the one who had been captured, dazed and disturbed by the fierceness of his response to her. The longer she thwarted him, the more acute became his need for her. But it was not a need that could be satisfied simply by taking her to his bed. He wanted more than that. Only marriage would suffice, and while Margery refused him he was obliged to watch other men court her, thwarted by a slip of a girl whose strength of will was as powerful as his own.

  He leaned his shoulders back against the pillar and watched Margery as she danced a mazurka with Lord Donnington. Tall and clumsy as a young giraffe, the young peer was not the most elegant dancer. He had just stepped on Margery’s hem, but she was smiling at him anyway.

  There was warmth in her eyes and an irresistible lift to her lips and the candlelight burnished her hair to a glorious spun bronze and shadowed the vulnerable curve of the nape of her neck. She looked beautiful. Henry felt tha
t beauty like a punch in the gut.

  “I suppose you have heard that Lady Marguerite has had twenty offers of marriage?” Garrick said slyly.

  “Make that twenty-one,” Henry said, straightening up. “Or twenty-two, since she has turned me down twice.”

  Garrick grimaced. “Do you want to drown your sorrows?”

  “Not particularly,” Henry said, but he followed his cousin into the refreshment room. Garrick took two glasses of champagne from a passing footman and gestured Henry over to some quiet seats.

  “If you want my advice—” Garrick began.

  “I don’t.”

  “She doesn’t trust you,” Garrick said, ignoring him. “Look at what happened to her mother.”

  Henry shook his head. “You’ve lost me.”

  “Try not to be so obtuse,” Garrick begged. “Lady Rose fell in love and eloped with a downright scoundrel.”

  “I hope you are not implying there is any similarity between Antoine de Saint-Pierre and myself,” Henry said, scowling. If Margery thought that he was like her ne’er-do-well father then she really did have a poor opinion of him. He hoped it was not so. Cursing, he ran a hand through his hair.

  “Of course you’re not like Saint-Pierre,” Garrick said. “But there is a similarity between Lady Marguerite and her mother. Marguerite is in love with you, just as her mother was with Saint-Pierre. Saint-Pierre ruined her mother’s life. So Lady Marguerite will never put herself in the position her mother was in and marry a man she cannot trust, a man who does not love her.”

  Knowing Margery’s family history, Henry found it puzzling that she was so set on marrying for love. He imagined it would be the last emotion Margery would trust, but then he realized that with her generosity of character it was not in her nature to withhold love. She gave it openly and unconditionally. And she would want the same in return, only trusting a man with her heart as well as her body if she believed he would love her, and only her, forever.

  “How lovely Lady Marguerite looks tonight,” Garrick said. “Donnington will be just the latest to fall. It’s because she has—”

  “Warmth,” Henry said. His soul felt cold now that Margery had withdrawn her love from him. The sweetness and generosity in her had been the flame that had drawn him back to her, time and again. He had needed to capture and hold that warmth, and yet somehow it had slipped through his fingers, as elusive as water.

  Through the open door of the refreshment room he could see Margery twirling her way through the waltz in the arms of Lord Plumley. The Templemore diamonds glittered at her throat. She looked beautiful and elegant and as though she had been born to grace every ballroom in the land. Henry shifted in his seat. He was not likely to forget just how beautiful Margery had looked stretched in half-naked abandon over the glass case of the China Room, those diamonds her only adornment. He loosened his neck cloth, which, like his trousers, felt intolerably tight. If he were never allowed to touch Margery again he would be fit for bedlam.

  “She is beautiful and accomplished and courageous,” Garrick continued. “I imagine you must feel very proud of her.”

  “I do, curse you,” Henry ground out.

  Garrick grinned. “Then you should ask yourself,” he said gently, “just what is the difference between what you feel for Lady Marguerite—and love.” He got to his feet and clapped Henry on the shoulder. “Good luck, old fellow. You were always so good at solving mathematical problems. A pity if the one calculation that really matters should evade you.”

  * * *

  MARGERY SLEPT LATE the morning after Lady Fowler’s rout and came downstairs to breakfast as the clock struck eleven. The morning newspapers were on the rosewood table in the hall waiting for Barnard to take them up to Lord Templemore. Her grandfather liked to take all the papers into the library after breakfast and read them at his leisure, everything from The Times to the Gentleman’s Athenian Mercury, which he said gave a balanced impression of the news since they expressed such opposing views. Today it was the Mercury on the top of the pile on the silver tray. Margery squinted sideways at it in passing, her eye catching the gossip column of a person who rejoiced in the title of Lady Loveworn.

  “Disappointing news for the many suitors of Lady M S-P,” the piece began. “It seemed that nothing could topple the famous heiress from her place at the pinnacle of the ton, but now it appears that Lady M is not the innocent she seems. Hopeful swains should note that at least one lover has been before them in the lady’s affections. Whether the determined hordes of bachelors can overlook this lapse in the interest of two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand pounds remains to be seen. We are sure there is some hardy soul out there who will regard a little shop soil as worth the price of a fortune.”

  The shock and understanding hit Margery with a force that stole her breath. She sat down heavily on the second step of the stairs and tried to think, but all she could see was the print of the paper swimming before her eyes, the horrible innuendo that hid the terrifying truth.

  Someone knew what had happened at Templemore. One of the servants must have seen her leaving Henry’s chamber and now they had gone to the press with the story. Or perhaps someone knew that she and Henry had slipped away from the ball the previous week. Suddenly her chest felt tight with panic. She could not breathe. What had been secret and special to her alone was now exposed to the world. It had become squalid, picked over by the gossipmongers, discussed in the clubs, sordid and scandalous.

  Not the innocent she seems… A little shop soil…

  Margery realized that she was shaking and cold. Her whole body trembled. No one had seen her yet because she was hidden by the curve of the stair. Through the delicate wrought iron she could see the servants ferrying food into the dining room. There were voices within; evidently Chessie and Jem and perhaps even Lady Wardeaux and Lady Emily were already up and partaking of breakfast. Everything was running a little later today because they had all been out at the ball the previous night.

  Margery tried to concentrate, but her thoughts were scattered and broken and she did not know what to do. It had never occurred to her that anyone would go to the papers with what they knew about her, but of course she was famous now, rich, eligible. Gossip about her would be in high demand. It had been so naive of her to imagine no one would know, and that if they did know, they would not speak.

  She was ruined.

  She grabbed the other papers from the pile. The Times did not deal in scandal, of course, but plenty of other papers did. The same story, implying that she had taken at least one lover, was in more than half of the other papers. There was even a suggestion that she had spread her favors and much else besides in Mrs. Tong’s bawdy house before her elevation to the peerage. Each story was more distasteful than the last, as though the papers were trying to outdo each other. By the time she had scanned them all she felt sick.

  Fear clawed at her stomach. Her grandfather. He could not see this, not after the tragedy of her mother. Such a heinous scandal might indeed kill Lord Templemore, and she had brought it on them all.

  Bile rose in her throat. She felt so shamed. The malicious words cheapened what had happened with Henry. She could not bear it. Her love for him was exposed to everyone as no more than a lustful indulgence, a piece of gossip to be picked over and judged, as she would be, too. And tomorrow, no doubt, there would be more of the same and she was powerless to prevent it.

  Her mind scrambled around like a mouse in a trap. By the time the story had run its course she would be branded a licentious whore and she would have ruined her grandfather’s life as thoroughly as her mother had done.

  A maid passed with a tray of food. The rich smell of kidneys and bacon made Margery’s stomach heave and she pressed a hand to her mouth to hold back the nausea. She reached for the silver tray, scrabbling in sudden panic to steal the papers from the table before Barnard appeared to take them to her grandfather. It could only be a temporary delay. She knew that. Lord Templemore would hear the gossip soon enoug
h, as would the rest of the world. But she did not want him to read it. The news had to come from her.

  Her shaking fingers caught the edge of the tray and sent it tumbling onto the floor with a resounding crash. Barnard appeared from the breakfast room and behind him, Chessie and Jem. Margery saw with inexpressible relief that Lady Wardeaux was not present.

  “Margery!” Chessie had run forward to catch her arm. “Whatever is the matter? You look dreadful—” Her voice faded away as Jem made a sudden movement. Looking at him Margery saw he had picked up the Mercury from the floor. All the color had drained from his face. He looked as bad as Margery felt.

  “Moll?” he said incredulously. “Surely this is a pack of lies?” His voice was hoarse.

  Chessie grabbed the paper out of his hands. Her horrified gaze came up to Margery’s face and in their silence lay Jem’s answer.

  “The story is everywhere,” Margery said. She scarcely recognized her own voice, it was so rough with anxiety. “Grandfather cannot see—”

  “Wardeaux,” Jem said viciously, crumpling the paper in his fists. “I’ll kill him. God help me I will.”

  Margery drew a breath but Chessie, with the greatest presence of mind, grabbed Jem’s arm and did not let go. “Please do not,” she said calmly. “Margery would not like it.”

  Jem swung around on her. “Moll?” he said again.

  “I love him,” Margery said. She fought the tears that filled her eyes. “It’s not Henry’s fault,” she said. “He asked me to marry him and I refused.”

  Jem swore. “Why the hell—”

  “Not now,” Chessie interposed with the same steely calm and Jem stalked off, swearing under his breath.