Nicola Cornick - Forbidden

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.

Which was why he had to find out the truth about Margery’s identity as swiftly as possible.

Henry forced himself to relax. “Very well, my lord,” he said easily. “It will be as you wish.” He checked the gilt clock on the mantel. He could be back in London before nightfall if he rode hard.

He would seek out Margery Mallon, but not to bring her directly to Templemore. He would learn as much as he could about her in this one night and then he would decide if she was truly Lady Marguerite de Saint-Pierre, heiress to the Templemore title and a huge fortune. He felt a pang of guilt at his deception but quashed it as quickly as he had dismissed the flare of lust. He could not afford either emotion. The future of Templemore was too important.

The earl sat back against the embroidered cushions, closing his eyes, suddenly exhausted. His skin was stretched thin across his high cheekbones. He groped for the wine and drank a greedy mouthful, sitting back with a sigh.

Henry stood abruptly, leaving his glass of wine untouched.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said. “I will go and fulfill your commission at once.”

“You’re a good boy, Henry.” The earl had opened his eyes again. They were weary, shadowed by all the unhappiness he had experienced. “I will see that you do not lose out when my granddaughter inherits.”

Henry felt a violent wave of antipathy. “I want nothing from you, sir. I have my own estate and my engineering projects—”

The earl dismissed them with a lordly wave. “Such matters are not work for a gentleman.”

“They are work for a penniless gentleman,” Henry corrected.

The earl laughed, that dry rattle again. “Marry an heiress and all your difficulties will be solved. Lady Antonia Gristwood—”

“Will not wish to throw herself away on me, my lord,” Henry said matter-of-factly.

“Perhaps a cit’s daughter would not be so choosy. You still have the title.”

How flattering . But it did rather sum up Henry’s prospects now. “I’ve no desire to wed, sir,” Henry said. The heiresses would melt away swiftly enough when they heard of his reversal of fortune. In their own way they were as fickle as his mistress.

The earl seemed not to have heard. His chin had sunk to his chest and he looked as though he was lost in thought. Henry wondered whether his godfather was still lost in the past. The earl, Henry thought, had a remarkable talent for alienating members of his family: first his wife, whom he had married for her money and betrayed before the ink was dry on the marriage lines, then his daughter, then his godson. He hoped to high heaven that if Margery Mallon was indeed the earl’s granddaughter he would not devastate her life, as well.

He swallowed the bitter taste in his mouth, bowed stiffly to the earl and went out. The hall was empty although the air trembled and the door of the Red Saloon was still swinging closed, a sure sign that Lady Wardeaux had indeed been eavesdropping. Henry did not want to have to confront his mother and her ruined hopes yet again.

Nor did he wish to see Lord Templemore’s younger sister, Lady Emily, endlessly reading the tarot cards and reassuring him that his fortunes would turn again.

They would turn because Henry would make them turn.

He had grown up at Templemore. He had been told from childhood that he would inherit the title and land and that he had to learn to be a good master. He had done more than that. He had taken the estate to his heart and he loved every last brick and blade of grass there. It would hurt to give them up, but he had suffered reversals in his life before. He had overcome them all.

The tap of his boots echoed on the black marble floor of the hall. He paused by the door of the library to study the John Hoppner portrait of four-year-old Marguerite Catherine Rose Saint-Pierre, painted just before she had vanished from her grandfather’s life.

The window in the dome far above his head scattered light like jewels on the tiles of the floor and illuminated the painting with a soft glow. Marguerite had been a pretty child, small, delicate, with golden-brown hair. She gazed solemnly out at him from her gilt frame, watching him with Margery Mallon’s clear gray eyes.

The earl had summoned him with such haste that he had not had time to change out of his riding clothes. He strode out to the stable, calling for a fresh horse to take him back to London.

The Knight of Swords: A tall dark-haired man with a great deal of charm and wit

IT WAS SEVEN O’CLOCK on a beautiful spring evening. Warmth still shimmered in the air, and the sky over London was turning a deep indigo-blue. The sun was dipping behind the elegant facades of the houses in Bedford Street and the shadows lengthened among the trees in the square.