Forbidden

She saw him smile. “It takes more than one kiss to change that, sweetheart.”

There was a long, long moment in which Margery could feel the warmth of his body and hear the thunder of her pulse in her ears. She did want to kiss him. Her stomach dropped with shock as she realized it. Fierce curiosity licked through her, laced with wickedness. She could barely believe how she was feeling. Things like this did not happen to her; she was far too sensible to want to kiss strange gentlemen in brothels. Or so she had thought. Yet something of the sumptuous, bawdy atmosphere seemed to have infected her like too much wine in the blood, and here she was with this man who was temptation personified….

His lips brushed hers, so light a touch she thought she had imagined it. He captured her gasp of shock in another kiss, hot and sweet, that took her completely by surprise. It was her first kiss. Occasionally, she had wondered what it might feel like and now, all of a sudden, she knew. It felt as though there were too many sensations for her to grasp. She was aware only of the strength of his arms about her and the touch of his mouth on hers. It was all sparks and flame, fiery desire and the ache of wanting. It was enough to set her trembling in a way she had never felt before.

His lips very gently nudged hers apart, his tongue touched hers and everything became dizzying and molten and shocking in a perfectly delicious way. Now she knew why people liked kissing so much. She never wanted to stop. Her body felt soft and yielding against the strength and hardness of his. The pit of her stomach felt hollow with a peculiar longing. She was lost in a dangerous new world and did not want to be found.

A door shut sharply, away to their right, and Margery jumped and awoke, stepping back out of the circle of his arms. The sweetness fled and she felt cold and shocked. She was no Cinderella. Nor was she the heroine of one of the Gothic romances she read in secret. She was a servant girl and he was a gentleman. She wondered what on earth she had been thinking. No, she knew what she had been thinking. She had been thinking that kissing was the most delightful occupation she had yet discovered. More accurately she had been thinking that kissing this particular man was the most delicious thing imaginable. But that did not make it the right thing to do.

“No.” She pressed her fingers to her lips in a brief, betraying gesture and saw his gaze follow the movement and his eyes darken.

“No,” she said again. “This is quite wrong.”

“You!” Mrs. Tong was swooping toward Margery like a vengeful harpy, scarves flying, bangles clashing. “I told you—” She broke off as the man moved protectively close to Margery’s side. A smile of ludicrous brightness transformed her sharp features. “I beg your pardon, sir,” she said. “I did not see you there. Was this girl importuning you? She does not work here.” Mrs. Tong shot Margery another vicious vengeful look. “My girls are a great deal more professional—”

“I don’t doubt it, ma’am.” The gentleman cut in, so smoothly it did not sound like an interruption. “But you have the matter quite mistaken. I was lost—” a hint of amusement in his tone “—and Miss Mallon was doing no more than giving me directions, for which I am most grateful.”

“Since she is in the wrong place herself,” Mrs. Tong said sharply, “it amazes me that she could direct anybody.” She softened her tone and placed a hand on the man’s arm. “If you would care to come with me, sir, I can help you with whatever you require. You.” She jerked her head at Margery. “Out.”

“Goodnight, ma’am.” Margery did not spare Mrs. Tong more than a brief nod of the head. She could feel the madam’s eyes boring into her. She knew that Mrs. Tong suspected her of trying to tout for business. This would be the last time she was permitted in the Temple of Venus.

“Sir…” She dropped the gentleman a curtsy. “I hope you find your way.”

That provocative smile lit his eyes again and made her shiver. “You sound like a Methodist preacher, Miss Mallon.”

Margery turned away. She did not want to see him accompany Mrs. Tong into the brothel’s salon to be pounced upon by all those twittering courtesans. The thought set up an odd sort of ache in her heart. It was foolish to care, when all he had done was flirt with her. He will have forgotten her in less than a day, or very likely in less than an hour. The door of the salon opened, and light and music spilled out across the tiled floor of the hall. The real business of the evening was about to start. Margery tucked the basket beneath her arm and hurried through the door to the servants’ quarters, past the kitchens where the steam was rising and the cooks were sweating to prepare delicacies for Mrs. Tong’s guests. No one looked at her as she passed. Once again she had become invisible.

Out in the street the evening was bright and starlit but Margery’s feet suddenly felt like lead. It was no more than tiredness, she told herself. It had nothing to do with the gentleman she had met in the brothel and the contrary disappointment she felt because the encounter was over. She was tired because she had risen early to launder Lady Grant’s silk underclothes, for they were of such exquisite quality that they could not be trusted to anyone else. She had worked a whole day and here she was working a long evening as well, and once she was back in Bedford Street she would need to stay up into the early hours to await Lady Grant’s return from the theater. Those people who thought that lady’s maids had an easy life had absolutely no notion.

“Moll!”

Margery jumped and spun around. Her brother Jem was the only one who called her Moll. She waited as his tall figure detached itself from the shadows of the street corner and strolled forward.

“Thought it was you,” he said, as he caught up with her. He grinned. “What the devil were you doing in a bawdy house, Moll?”

“Minding my own business,” Margery said sharply.

Jem lifted the cover on the basket and took out the last of the honey cakes. Margery slapped his hand but he ate them anyway.

“They’ll spoil if they don’t get eaten,” Jem said. “They taste good,” he added with his mouth full, scattering crumbs on the cobbles. “You should have been a cook rather than a maid.”

“I don’t want to be a cook,” Margery said. “I only want to make sweets and pastries.” Her ideal was to be a confectioner and sell her beautiful cakes and sweetmeats for a living, but to set up in a shop was too expensive, so in the meantime she earned use of the oven at Bedford Street by helping Lady Grant’s cook with the more complicated French desserts and pastries.

“When I make a fortune,” Jem said, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth, “I’ll set you up in your own shop. I promise.”

Margery laughed. “I’ll die waiting for that day,” she said without rancor. She knew Jem spent every penny of his rather dubious earnings on gambling, drinking and women.

Although she would never admit it, Jem was her favorite brother. He had always been there for her, even though he was ten years her senior. She knew she should not favor him over the others because Billy worked hard to support his wife and growing family, and Jed, back in Berkshire, was a pot man in a respectable hotel. Jem was a scamp who never seemed to do an honest day’s work. But Jem was merry where Billy was serious. There was something about him that made it impossible to be angry with him even when he was helping himself to the rest of her stock. It was charm, Margery thought, as she fastened the cloth down firmly over the remaining cakes. Jem could charm the birds from the trees.

“I’ll walk you back,” Jem said.

“You’ll get no more cakes for your trouble,” Margery warned him.

Jem laughed. “You’re a hard woman, Moll.”

“And if you weren’t my brother,” Margery said, “I wouldn’t give you the time of day.”

Covent Garden piazza was full of evening crowds. An elegant lady, passing on the arm of a very smug-looking elderly gentleman, turned her head to stare at them. Margery sighed. It was always the same; ladies seemed quite unable to resist Jem. His golden hair and blue eyes, his smile and air of raffish charm worked on them like magic. They shed their clothes, their inhibitions and their husbands to fill his bed.

Jem sketched the lady an exaggerated bow and grinned with unabashed arrogance.

“For pity’s sake,” Margery said, pulling on her brother’s arm to draw him away. “Why don’t you just charge by the hour?”

Jem laughed again. “Now there’s a thought.”

“I’m sure Mrs. Tong would give you a job,” Margery said. “She likes pretty boys.”

“She’s not the only one,” Jem said complacently. He patted her hand. “Come along then, Miss Mallon. You had better lend me some of your respectability.”

Margery stopped dead again on the pavement, causing another couple to cannon off them in a volley of exclamations and apologies.

“What the devil?” Jem enquired mildly.

Margery did not hear him. She was clutching the handle of the basket a little more tightly as a frisson of disquiet rippled through her. She was back again in the hallway of the brothel, feeling the stranger’s hands on her, tasting his kiss and hearing his voice, smooth, mellow, charming the bawd out of her anger.

Miss Mallon was doing no more than giving me directions….

For the first time, Margery realized that he had known her name.

CHAPTER TWO

The Magician Reversed: Trickery and deception

MARGERY WAS SITTING on the top step of the sweeping staircase in Lady Grant’s house in Bedford Street. Next to her sat Betty, the second housemaid. They were hidden by the curve of the stair and the soaring marble pillar at the top. None of the guests thronging the hall below could see them, but they had the most marvelous view. Tonight, Lord and Lady Grant were hosting a dinner and a ball—one of the first major events of the new London Season—and word was that the ton were begging, buying and bartering for tickets. Lady Grant’s events were always frightfully fashionable. To fail to secure an invitation was social death.

“Oh, Miss Mallon,” Betty said, her big brown eyes as huge as dinner plates as she stared down on the scene below. “Look at the clothes! Look at the jewels!” She dug Margery slyly in the ribs with her elbow. “Look at the gentlemen! They are so handsome!”

“I’m studying the gowns, Betty, not the gentlemen,” Margery reproved, “and so should you if you wish one day to be a lady’s maid.”

She made a quick pencil sketch of one of the gowns in her notebook. Lady Grant was modish to a fault, a leader of fashion, and as her personal maid it was Margery’s responsibility to keep her at the forefront of style. She watched the ladies as they strolled out of the dining room, making notes of the dresses and the jewels, the combination of colors, materials and styles. She could spot the work of individual modistes and guess to within a guinea or two the price of each gown. She was good at her job and on evenings like this, she enjoyed it.

Margery paused in her sketches, chewing the end of her pencil. Betty was correct. There were some very handsome men present tonight. She could hardly pretend otherwise. For a moment she saw another face, a man with a wicked smile and laughing dark eyes, and she remembered a kiss that was hot and tender and promised so much. She felt a tingling warmth sweep through her, as though her entire body was slowly catching alight.

Margery had thought about the gentleman from the brothel in the week since they had met, and it was starting to annoy her that she could not banish him from her mind. She had thought about his voice, smooth but with that note of command, she had remembered the tilt of his head, the light in his eyes, his smile. Oh, yes, she had remembered his smile. She had seen nothing else when she went about her work, whether she was dressing Lady Grant for a drive in the park, or re-dressing her for an evening at the theater or undressing her afterward. She had been so distracted that she had over-starched the lace, mended Lady Grant’s hem with a most uneven stitch and added the wrong color of feather to her French bonnet. She had mislaid Lady Grant’s jewel box and had folded her favorite pelisse away in the wrong clothes press.

Then there was the kiss. It had haunted her dreams as well as her waking moments. She had lain in her narrow bed under the eaves and dreamed of kissing him, and she had woken flushed and confused, her heart racing, her body quivering with a delicious foretaste of passion. She was not quite sure what it was she wanted, only that her body ached and trembled for him, and that the more she tried to ignore it the more those illicit, demanding sensations rose up in her to beg for fulfillment. She felt on edge and inflamed, angry with herself that she could not conquer it. She was not a girl normally given to fantasies and it was odd and disquieting to be dreaming of a man, especially one she had met only once.

“How red your face is, Miss Mallon.” Betty was looking at her curiously.

“It’s very hot in here,” Margery said. She pushed the memory of the kiss from her mind and concentrated sharply on the crowd of guests now thronging the hall. Lady Rothbury, Lady Grant’s sister, was looking particularly stunning in a gown of eau de nil that shimmered with gold thread. Her gaze moved on, over the welter of colors and styles, the flash of diamonds and the flutter of fans. The air was scented now with a mixture of hothouse flowers and perfume. The chatter of the guests rang in her ears. Margery craned forward for a closer look at a tall, thin woman in a striped gown that shrieked Parisian design. The movement caught the eye of the gentleman by her side. He looked up and their eyes met.

All the air left Margery’s body in a rush. The candles spun in the chandeliers like a wheel of light.

It was the gentleman from the brothel.

For one very long moment they stared at each other while the sound beat in Margery’s ears, and the light dazzled her eyes and she could neither move nor breathe. Then the gentleman inclined his head in the slightest of bows, and a mocking smile curled his mouth, and Margery knew he had recognized her. Movement returned to her body, and with it an intensification of the hot blush that spread through her so fast she felt as though she were burning up. The pencil slid from her fingers. The book tumbled off her lap as she jumped to her feet, smoothing her skirts with clumsy hands. She drew back behind the shelter of the pillar. Her heart was hammering underneath her bodice and her palms felt damp.

Who was he? What was he doing here? Would he give her away?

If he should mention to Lady Grant that one of her maids had been in Mrs. Tong’s brothel, that would be the end of her. She would be thrown out in the street without a reference and with no prospect of another respectable job. Her heated body turned cold. She would be forced to beg her brother Billy for work. She could not be a tavern wench or even a courtesan because she was not pretty enough, and anyway, that was no way to think….

“Miss Mallon!”

Margery’s frightened thoughts were scuttling around and it was a moment before she realized that she was being addressed. Mrs. Biddle, the housekeeper, was standing a foot away, glaring at them. Betty gave a little gasp and leapt up, pressing her hands to her reddening cheeks, horror in her eyes at being caught. Margery retrieved her pencil and notebook, trying to regain a little composure.

“Run along, Betty,” Mrs. Biddle said sharply. “You have work to do.”

Betty scrambled a curtsy and scurried away.

“I’m sorry,” Margery said. “It was my fault. Betty would like to be lady’s maid one day and I was teaching her a little about the job.”

“Lady Grant is asking for her silver gauze scarf,” Mrs. Biddle said, her tone softening. She was always respectful of Margery’s position as a senior servant. In other ways, she mothered her. “If you could take it down to the parlor, Miss Mallon, Mr. Soames will deliver it to the ballroom for her ladyship.”

“Of course, Mrs. Biddle,” Margery said. It would be unheard-of for her to take the scarf to Lady Grant herself. No one but the butler and the footmen could be seen at an evening function. The rest of the servants had to be invisible.

She hurried to Lady Grant’s bedchamber and found the silver gauze scarf that perfectly complemented Lady Grant’s evening gown. It was impossibly sheer and silky, embroidered with tiny silver stars and crescent moons. For a moment Margery raised it to her cheek, enjoying the soft caress of the material against her skin. She had never owned so luxurious an item in her entire life.

With an envious little sigh, she tucked the scarf under her arm and went out along the corridor and down the servants’ stair. She hesitated before pushing open the green baize door that separated the servants’ quarters from the hall. She was not quite sure why. Her mysterious gentlemen, whoever he was, would be in the ballroom by now with the skinny woman in the elegant gown. There was no chance of meeting him.

Sure enough the hall was empty. She felt a slight pang of regret.

Mr. Soames was waiting for her in the parlor. She handed over the shawl and he took it as reverently as though it were a holy relic. Margery tried not to laugh. Mr. Soames was always so serious about everything, but then a butler’s job was a serious business, the very pinnacle of a male servant’s ambition. He had told her that, if she was lucky and worked hard, she might reach the top of her profession, too, and become a housekeeper one day.

Mr. Soames went out carrying his precious burden, closing the door softly behind him. Margery waited for a moment in the warm, silent confines of the parlor.

Margery had a hundred and one tasks waiting for her. Lady Grant’s dressing room needed to be tidied. Her nightclothes needed to be laid out for the moment, several hours ahead, when she finally retired from the ball. In the meantime, there was a pile of mending to be done, invisible work that required Margery’s keen eyes and nimble fingers. Her head ached to think of peering over tiny stitches in the pale candlelight.

On impulse she released the catch on the parlor door instead and stepped out onto the terrace. The mending could wait for a few more minutes.

It was cool outside, so early in the year. The air was fresh, the sky blurred with mist and scented with the smoke of all London’s chimneys. Beneath that was the sweeter smell of flowers mingled with perfume and candle wax. Margery drew in a deep breath. She could hear the music from the ballroom. The orchestra was playing the opening bars of a country-dance. She could picture the scene, the candlelight, the jewels, the vivid rainbow colors of the gowns. It was a world so close and yet so far out of reach.

The music called to something long lost inside her. In her memory, she could hear an orchestra playing and see an enormous ballroom stretching as far as the eye could see. Light sparkled from huge mirrors. The swish of silken gowns was all around her.

Her feet started to move to the music. She had not danced in years. She usually sat out the servants’ balls that employers insisted on holding each Christmas. She had no desire for her feet to be crushed by a clumsy coachman who fancied himself a dancer.

She twirled along the terrace, feeling lighter than air. It was ridiculous; she smiled to herself as she imagined quite how ridiculous she must look. It was also the sort of thing she never did. She was too serious, too sensible, to indulge in such a frivolous activity as dancing alone on a misty moonlit terrace.

The music changed, slid into a waltz, and Margery spun up against a very hard, masculine chest. Arms closed about her, steadying her. Her palms flattened against the smooth material of a particularly expensive and well-made evening jacket. Her legs pressed against a pair of very hard, masculine thighs encased in particularly well-made and expensive trousers. Margery noticed these things and told herself it was because she was a lady’s maid and trained to assess fashion, male or female, at a glance and a touch.

“Dance with me,” her dark gentleman said. He was smiling at her in exactly the way he had smiled in the hall of the brothel before he kissed her, that wicked, provocative smile. “You were meant to dance with me.”

Margery faltered. He was holding her in the way a man held his partner in the waltz, but suddenly she wanted to twist out of his grip and run away. She felt breathless and trapped and excited all at once.

“I cannot waltz,” she protested. It was a modern dance, new and more than a little scandalous. At least, it was the way that he was holding her. She could feel the heat of his body and smell his lime cologne. It made her head spin, which was a curious sensation.

Once she had drunk too much ale at the fair. This was similar, but a great deal more pleasant and a great deal more stimulating. The brush of his thigh against hers made her skin tingle, even through the ugly black wool of her gown. Oddly, it also made her feel very aware of the latent power in him, a strength and masculinity kept banked down under absolute control.

“You waltz beautifully,” he said. They were already moving, catching the beat of the music. “Where did you learn to dance like this?” His breath feathered across Margery’s cheek, raising delicious shivers deep within her.

“I learned to dance as a child,” Margery said. She frowned, reaching for the memories. It seemed ridiculous to think that in the rough-and-tumble of the Mallon household she had learned something as refined as dancing. She could not place the memory precisely. Yet she knew it had happened. Dancing was instinctive to her.

“This is very improper,” she said uncertainly.

“And completely delightful,” he said.

“You should be in the ballroom.”

“I prefer to be here with you.”

It was, indeed, delightful. Margery was forced to agree. His body was pressed against hers at breast, hip and thigh. His hand rested low in the small of her back in a gesture that felt astonishingly intimate. Heat flared through her, the sort of heat one simply should not be feeling on a cool April evening.

“Good gracious,” she said involuntarily. “Is this not illegal in public?”

She saw amusement glint in his eyes. “On the contrary,” he said. “It is positively encouraged.”

He drew her closer. His cheek grazed hers. His scent filled her senses. The warmth of his hand seared her back through the woolen gown and the cotton chemise beneath. Another shiver chased over her skin at the thought of his hands on her. She felt feverish, aware of every little sensation that racked her body. She felt as voluptuous as the nudes she had seen in the paintings in great houses, languid and heavy with wanting, her body as open and ripe as a fruit begging to be plucked and devoured.

It was shocking, it was delicious and it was wanton. She was tumbling down a helter-skelter of forbidden pleasure.

“You make me want to be—” She just managed to stop herself before the scandalous words came tumbling out.

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.