Forbidden by Nicola Cornick Page A

turned
to the flower girl. “I’d like to buy the rest of your stock, please,” he said,
and the girl’s tired face lifted as she handed him the bouquets and took his
coins. He presented them to Margery who buried her nose in the sweet-scented
sprays.
    “How lovely,” she said. She was trying to guard her heart
against him but it was no good. She was so touched and happy. “No one has ever
bought me flowers before.”
    Henry smiled at her. “It is my pleasure.”
    “My mother said I was named after two flowers,” Margery said.
She was inhaling the scent of the roses with her eyes closed. When she opened
them she saw that Henry was watching her.
    “Marguerite and Rose,” she said. “Those are my names.”
    She saw some expression cloud Henry’s eyes. Doubt clutched at
her. Something was wrong but she had no idea what it was.
    “It’s quite a mouthful, isn’t it,” she said uncertainly.
    “Is that why you changed it to Margery?” Henry said.
    “It seemed more practical,” Margery said. “For a lady’s
maid.”
    Henry nodded and smiled at her. “I would like to take you for
supper,” he said. He took her hand. “Please. Allow me.”
    Margery hesitated, hanging back, wary of him again. A walk in
the evening was one thing, supper with its suggestion of intimacy and seduction,
quite another.
    “Why would you do that?” she asked cautiously.
    “Because you look as though you are hungry,” Henry said.
    Margery could not help her peal of laughter. “That was not what
I meant.”
    “I know,” Henry said. He was laughing, too. “But you do.”
    “I had no dinner today.” Margery was surprised to realize it.
“Lady Grant is attending a ball tonight so I dressed her and then came straight
out.”
    “Then you need to eat,” Henry said. He gave her hand a little
tug. Still, she hesitated.
    It can do no harm ....
    Not Granny Mallon’s voice this time, but the voice of her own
desires, dangerously persuasive.
    She felt her heart sing with pleasure and anticipation that the
evening was not to end yet and that she would always have something sweet to
remember in the future.
    “Thank you,” she said. “I should like that very much.”
    From the broad, elegant spaces of Bedford Square, they turned
southward toward the higgledy-piggledy jumble of cobbled streets that crowded
near the Thames. The evening was cool and bright, the roads busy and noisy, but
Margery did not notice the crowds. Her entire attention was wrapped up in Henry,
in the brush of his body against hers as they walked, in his smile and in his
touch. She wanted no more than this. She held the pink rosebuds carefully and
breathed in their heady scent. She was very happy.
    * * *
    L ADY E MILY T EMPLEMORE sat at the
cherrywood table in the Red Saloon at Templemore House, her tarot cards spread
out in a horseshoe shape before her. She had been in her teens when she first
started to use the ancient wisdom of the tarot to foretell the future and to
guide her. People had laughed at her for her credulity and her interest in the
occult. She had been labeled an eccentric and a bluestocking but there had been
a hint of fear in those who mocked her. She did not really care. No one
understood her; they never had and they never would.
    Tonight she had asked the cards a direct question and, as
always, they had answered her. She had asked if Margery Mallon was the lost
grandchild of her half brother the earl, and if so, what she should do. That was
two questions, really, but the one went with the other. If the child had been
found, then Lady Emily knew she could not keep quiet and wait for fate to catch
up with her. She would need to take action.
    Card one in the spread represented the past. It was Temperance,
but it was reversed, speaking of quarrels and strife. A shiver shook Lady
Emily’s narrow frame as the cruelty and guilt of the past reached out to touch
her again. There certainly had been quarrels aplenty at Templemore.
    Card two, representing