Nicola Cornick - Forbidden

“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.

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.”