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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

“C
OME
CLOSER
, H
ENRY
,
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.