Читать книгу Forbidden - Nicola Cornick, Nicola Cornick - Страница 11

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.”

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.

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.