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“A gently bred young woman,” Henry said, an edge to his voice
now, “does not give herself to a man as you did with me last night and then
refuse to marry him, unless she has very good reason. So I ask again—” His tone
hardened further still. “Why are you refusing me?”

Margery clutched at the straw offered. “I am not a gently bred
woman,” she said quickly. “I do not behave as a lady would. I do not see
marriage as a necessity.”

This was getting more and more difficult. She could see that he
did not believe her and he had every reason not to do so. In London she had told
him point blank that she was a virgin and would never accept
carte blanche.
He
knew she was not wanton; she had had every opportunity to make a different life
for herself through selling her body and had never chosen to do so.

His eyes searched her face and it felt like a physical
touch.

“That’s nonsense and you know it,” Henry said. “You are in
every way a lady. Don’t demean yourself so.”

Tears prickled Margery’s eyes. He sounded so angry, as though
he would confront anyone who dared to suggest she was anything less than a
gentlewoman.

He was waiting for her to say something else, to explain. She
could feel his frustration and his bafflement. She could not bear it. She turned
away, and to her inexpressible relief Henry moved away, too, but only as far as
the rug before the hearth where he paced as though he would wear a path in
it.

“You have thought of the scandal, I assume,” he said, after a
moment. “It is inevitable that someone would have seen you leave my rooms last
night. Your reputation is ruined.”

Margery felt a flicker of fear deep down. She had thought of
that in the long hours of the night. Templemore’s endless dark corridors could
contain any number of gossiping servants. She knew exactly what it was like to
live and work in a house like this. There were no secrets.

“That’s impossible,” she said, denying facts she knew to be
true since she would rather not accept them. “There was no one about. No one saw
me.”

Henry shook his head, a faint smile on his lips. “You, of all
people, should know that servants see everything. Someone will know. The scandal
of it would kill your grandfather for sure.”

“That’s blackmail!” Margery said.

Henry shrugged. “Call it what you will. It is fact.”

Margery stared at him. “I won’t do it,” she said stubbornly. “I
will not marry you.” She could see his reasoning all too plainly and it lit her
with despair. He saw their situation—he saw
her
—as
his responsibility. He had to protect her, do his duty, because he had made such
a profound mistake in taking her virginity. He was a man of honor and that very
fact made her heart turn over with misery because she admired him for his
principles. They made her regret all the more fiercely that he could not love
her, because to have the love of a man like that would be wonderful.

Henry came back to her side in one swift stride. He pulled her
around to look at him. She sensed the puzzlement in him and the frustration.

“I do not understand why you are refusing me.”

The pain twisted in Margery. She was refusing him because she
loved him and because without his love the match was so unequal that she could
not bear it. She remembered Chessie saying once that she had tried to change
Fitz after marriage and tried to make him love her, to no avail. She remembered
her mother, another Templemore woman, who had loved unwisely and lost
everything. Her stomach dropped with desolation.

“Last night,” Henry said. “You wanted me then. You responded to
me then.” His lips brushed her cheek, touched the corner of her mouth. It was
instantly disarming. She could feel her body weakening and melting into warmth.
She felt a fierce longing for his touch, his kiss, and jerked herself away. She
could not bear for Henry to seduce her into agreement. She was all too likely to
surrender, and embarrassingly quickly.

“Lust,” she said. She forced the word out between dry lips.
“You said it yourself before, my lord. We have a certain attraction to one
another. Last night—” She swallowed hard. “It was most enjoyable, but scarcely
sufficient to base a life upon. So…” She forced another shrug, making certain
that she was sounding as hard and uncaring as she could. “It is best not to
compound our mistake with the greater one of marriage.”

She withdrew her hands from his and turned away from him. The
distance yawned between then and with every word she pushed him farther
away.

“I understand that you have business at Wardeaux,” she said.
“We have kept you from it for far too long. And as my grandfather plans our
return to London in a few days, I think we shall not see much of each
other.”

For a moment she thought Henry was going to refuse to accept
his dismissal. Her body was clenched tight with the tension as she waited. The
ticking of the ugly clock on the mantel filled her ears as she waited for him to
go, waited for him to leave her.

He paused with his hand on the doorknob. Margery held her
breath. She wanted to hear him to say that he loved her but she knew he would
not. He would not say it because it was not true.

“Send for me if you need me,” Henry said. “I will always come
to you.” And although they had not been the words Margery had wanted to hear,
she felt the tears close her throat. The door shut behind him. He had gone. She
did not know why she wanted to cry. She had done the right thing. She knew it.
But it did not seem to help.

* * *

H
ENRY
RODE
SO
HARD
it took only a couple of hours
to reach Wardeaux. His luggage, his valet, everything else he had left in the
dust to follow when they could. He wanted to be alone. He would have been filthy
company anyway. He was angry and frustrated. It had never once occurred to him
that Margery would refuse his suit and he was not prepared to accept her
decision.

By now, the sun was up and the air was warm. The old
Elizabethan manor of Wardeaux Court looked timeless and peaceful and very much
like home, nestled in the curve of the river, its mullioned windows reflecting
the light. Henry left Diabolo in his stall with a bag of oats and a trough of
water, and walked down to the river where it ran narrow and deep through the
water meadows, and all the time he was thinking of Margery.

He remembered the time they had spent together in London—which
seemed as though it had happened years before, rather than months—and the
bright, honest, fearless qualities he had seen in Margery then. It had been her
warmth and generosity of spirit that had drawn him to her in the first place,
helpless to resist the need he had for her, wanting her sweetness to illuminate
his own life.

Becoming Lady Marguerite had changed her, not merely
superficially with the clothes, the jewels, the dancing and the patina of polite
conversation. She had become more wary of people, more guarded. Henry felt a
pang of shame that he had played his part in that, in trying to make Margery
into someone different. The truth was that she had always been more than good
enough for any role, be it lady’s maid or countess. Her grandfather had been
wise enough to recognize that. He had not.

Yet beneath the silks and laces, Margery was still the same
person. Last night he had tasted again that warmth and generosity in her. She
had given herself to him wholly and without reservation. She had reached out to
him. She had held nothing back and he had taken because he had such a hunger for
her.

He knew, although she had not said so, that she must love him.
Despite her claim that she had been motivated by no more than lust, he knew
differently. She argued that she was no lady and so was not governed by the
moral precepts of society, but Henry knew in his heart that Margery would never
give herself to a man she did not love. It was not in her nature. She was too
generous to hold anything back, so when she had given her body she had also
given him her love.

She loved him but she would not marry him.

He rested a hand on the top bar of the fence and looked out
across the river. The sunlight on the water dazzled him. The house slumbered in
its hollow. Wardeaux was beautiful. He did not need Templemore.

But he did need Margery. There was a longing in him that only
she could satisfy. It was not love, that brittle, foolish emotion that he had
felt for Isobel so long ago, and he was grateful for that. Love was not
something he recognized or wanted in his life. He had surrendered everything
when he had been young and in love, he had lost his good sense and his
self-respect, his name and his honor. Isobel had taken them all and tarnished
them beyond recognition, and he would never allow anyone to do that again.

His feelings for Margery were different. They were not
something he had ever felt before. They were compounded of a raging desire that
could not be sated and a need to protect and care for her, to claim her and hold
her safe. He did not like the way it made him feel. It made him vulnerable and
he detested that but he had to accept it. He needed Margery by his side.

Margery wanted love. It was the one thing that he could not
give her. He paused for a moment, wondering if it was selfish in him to insist
on marrying her when there might be another man prepared to give her his love.
He decided that it was selfish. And that it made no difference.

He had to persuade Margery to change her mind about marriage.
The action he had been too scrupulous to take that morning had become a
necessity. He would have to seduce her into accepting him.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The High Priestess: A secret is revealed

L
ONDON
FELT
DIFFERENT
.

It was not simply that it was June now, and all the trees bore
fresh green leaves and some were ridiculously pretty in their pink and white
blossoms. Margery was accustomed to seeing London in all seasons, wreathed in
the fog of winter or when the dusty heat of August had taken the shine off
summer.

It was not even that she was now one of the richest heiresses
in the ton, and so of course everything looked different, from the pile of
invitation cards that threatened the mantelpiece with collapse to the displays
of flowers that the cart delivered fresh each morning, from the smart open
phaeton in which she went driving in the park to the rainbow array of gowns
folded in her wardrobe.

No, the difference, of course, was Henry. He was gone from her
life and it seemed bleak and lacking color without him.

Margery tried to pretend. She went to dress fittings in Bond
Street where the modistes tried to give her clothes rather than sell them to her
because she was the sensation of the Season. She wore the Templemore diamonds in
their new setting, and all the other jewels that had graced the necks of her
mother and her grandmother before her.

She had the best box at the opera and the theater and anywhere
else she chose to go. She rode on Rotten Row with Chessie and Jem and she drove
with her grandfather to the exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art and to
lectures and concerts.

The Prince Regent entertained her at Carlton House and declared
her to be utterly charming. People begged for invitations to the balls she
attended and crowds thronged the streets to catch a glimpse of her, and all of
it was worth less than nothing because Henry was not there.

She had met a number of people who had known her mother and
some who even remembered her as a child. It was odd and disconcerting to hear
them speak of her, because she still had recovered no more memories of her
childhood and wondered if she ever would. There had been no more strange
accidents since she had come to London. She had told Jem about the fire and the
shooting in the woods and he had said that, from what he had heard, Lord
Templemore had probably sired a host of bastards who were jealous of her because
they were not inheriting the family estate, and that she should not regard it
because he was sticking close enough to protect her from anyone. He was indeed
attentive to her, and he was also relishing the influence his position gave him
in the ton. The ladies swooned over him.

Margery’s come-out ball had been arranged to take place at the
end of June, a fortnight after her arrival in Town. It would be one of the last
balls, the culmination of a glittering round of social events and activities.
The cream of the ton had been invited and there were reports that those who had
not received one of the gold-embossed cards had wept tears of rage and
frustration. Some had begged, stolen or bought tickets. It promised to be the
crush of the Season.

“You look lovely,” Chessie whispered to Margery as they paused
at the top of Templemore House’s grand stair. She tweaked a wayward curl back
into Margery’s diamond tiara and beamed at her. “Truly, Margery, you are the
most beautiful debutante.”

“And the oldest one London has ever seen,” Margery said wryly.
She looked at her reflection in the long pier glass and a stranger stared back
at her. The girl in the mirror was tiny but elegant, a perfect miniature, as her
grandfather had once said.

She was wearing a gown of cream silk with silver gauze
embroidered with tiny diamond stars. They caught the light and shone like
glittering raindrops. There were diamonds in her tiara and around her neck. Her
feet were clad in cream evening slippers with diamond heels. Her hair was a fine
golden-brown and shone like a swatch of rich silk. Her gray eyes were sparkling,
her complexion was pink and cream as a china doll’s. She looked happy. She
looked
rich
. Even Lady Wardeaux was smiling with
approval.

Margery almost stretched out her hand to touch the mirror, to
check that she really was the girl standing there under the gleaming candlelight
of a hundred chandeliers. It seemed impossible, but it was true.

In a change from normal etiquette, her grandfather had decreed
that the guests should arrive first and then he would escort Margery down the
stairs and present her to them. It seemed like the most pretentious nonsense to
Margery and as she listened to the roar of the crowd in the huge hall and
reception rooms below she almost turned tail and ran.

Suddenly she longed for Henry with a sharpness that caught her
breath and left a hollow beneath her heart. She wanted to lean on his strength
and feel safe and protected. She wanted him by her side. The force of the
impulse shocked her. She missed him dreadfully.

Her grandfather came to join her, handsome in a claret-colored
velvet evening jacket that was, so Lady Wardeaux muttered, at least fifty years
out of date. They started to descend the broad and sweeping stair together with
Lady Wardeaux, Chessie and Lady Emily following them down. A sea of faces swam
before Margery’s eyes. Everyone was gazing upward, staring at her. Over the past
fortnight she had attended balls every night of the week, and met everyone from
royal dukes to politicians to poets to men who had made their fortunes in trade.
This was her greatest ordeal, for they were all waiting for her now, all
watching her. There was a tight band about her chest. The tiara pinched her
temples. The candlelight swam before her eyes. She was terrified.

A wave of applause started to ripple through the assembled
guests, swelling and rolling toward Margery like the tide. Her grandfather was
smiling; he looked so proud. And suddenly Margery did not care if it was all
pretense, if people were only smiling and clapping because she was rich and
eligible and her grandfather was one of the most influential peers in England.
He was happy and that was all that mattered to her now.

She stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek and the applause doubled
as the guests roared their approval. They reached the bottom of the stairs and
were immediately engulfed. The press of people was overwhelming, all wanting to
congratulate her and to shake her grandfather’s hand. Margery smiled until her
face ached, smiled and chatted and felt an increasing sense of unreality. The
noise was deafening. There were so many faces.

Gradually she came to realize that while everyone smiled and
complimented her, many of those smiles did not reach the eyes. People watched
her for the slightest slip that might betray her upbringing. She knew that
behind her back they laughed at her. She had seen some of the caricatures of
herself in the papers, dressed as a maidservant cleaning the Templemore diamonds
with a feather duster.

There had been other cartoons making fun of her childhood and
her career in service. Her grandfather had told her not to regard them, to treat
them with aristocratic disdain, but that did not come easily to Margery.

It was with some relief that she saw the Duke and Duchess of
Farne, Lord and Lady Rothbury and Lord and Lady Grant approaching her.

“Thank goodness!” she said, as Joanna Grant came over and gave
her a hug, followed by her sisters, all chattering and smiling, glorious in
their cascade of silks and jewels.

“This is all so splendid, Margery, my love,” Joanna said,
grabbing Margery’s hands and spinning her around. “You are the success of the
Season!”

“I feel such a fraud,” Margery confessed. “These grand
occasions terrify me.”

“Well, you carry it off perfectly,” Tess Rothbury said, eyeing
the silver-and-cream gown with the greatest approval. “And you look simply
stunning. There isn’t a bachelor in the room who doesn’t want to elope with you
on the spot.”

“I think they would rather bundle my money into the carriage to
Gretna than me,” Margery said, laughing.

“The word is that you are very choosy,” Joanna said. “Can it be
true that you have had nineteen proposals of marriage?”

“Twenty,” Margery said, shame-faced. “Viscount Port proposed
this morning.”

“They say you will marry either Plumley or Cumnor,” Tess said.
“They are taking bets on it at Whites. Of course, Lord Plumley is rich as
Croesus, but they say that he snores fit to wake the dead. Happily I would not
know, but the neighbors do complain.”

“The Duke of Cumnor is the most eligible peer in Town,” Joanna
put in. “But he is still tied to his mama’s apron strings.” She gave a little
shrug. “Not a promising sign.”

“It is a sad fact that almost no gentleman meets my sisters’
stringent criteria,” Merryn Farne murmured. “Apart from their own husbands, of
course. It seems that between us we have already snapped up all the most
desirable gentlemen in the ton.”

“There is Lord Stephen Kestrel,” Joanna said. “But I do believe
he has a
tendre
for Chessie Alton.”

“I hope so,” Margery said. “Chessie deserves to be very
happy.”

“Well,” Tess said, “then it seems you are destined to remain a
spinster, Margery. Oh, but wait!” Her eyes lit up. “We forgot the most eligible
choice. Lord Wardeaux, of course. By door of the refreshment room, talking to
Garrick.”

Lord Wardeaux.

Margery turned hot. Then she turned icy cold. She looked up.
Tess had not been mistaken. Henry was leaning against a pillar, looking
breathtakingly splendid in his black-and-white evening dress. He was indeed
talking to the Duke of Farne but he was looking directly across the room at her
and his gaze never wavered from her face.

Margery was not at all sure how a mere look could make her feel
so dizzy, as though she had forgotten to breathe. But it did. And as Henry
started to cross the floor toward her she felt even dizzier and more breathless
still.

She heard Tess give a little sigh. “Is he not
sinfully
handsome? So dark and intense!”

“He must be,” Joanna said dryly. “Normally you never notice any
man apart from your husband.”

“I had quite a
tendre
for Lord
Wardeaux myself when I was younger,” Merryn admitted. “Naturally it was his
engineering projects that I admired the most.”

“Of course you did,” Tess said. “His engineering projects were
frightfully attractive.”

Henry was bowing to them.

“How are you, Henry?” Merryn said, reaching up to kiss his
cheek. She caught Tess’s eye. “What?” she protested. “He is Garrick’s cousin. It
is perfectly acceptable for me to kiss him!”

Henry was still looking directly at Margery. He took her hand
and pressed his lips to the back of it. Margery worked extremely hard to repress
the quiver of sensation that flickered along her nerve endings. One touch was
all it had taken to reawaken her longing for him.

“Madam,” Henry said. She suspected he could read all too well
the effect he had on her. There was a glint of wicked amusement in his dark
eyes.

“Ladies, we are
de trop,
” Joanna
Grant said, smiling mischievously as she shepherded her sisters away.

“Dance with me,” Henry said to Margery. He was already guiding
her toward the floor.

“I am to open the dancing with the Duke of Cley,” Margery said,
looking around. The Duke was nowhere to be seen and Henry seemed disinclined to
accept a refusal anyway.

“Cley should have been more attentive,” Henry said, “if he did
not wish to lose his chance.” Other couples were following them onto the floor,
taking their place in the set.

“I like your gown,” Henry said. His fingers touched her sleeve
lightly and brushed her bare arm below the band of embroidered satin. “Cream
rather than white.” His eyes met hers. “Almost virginal, but not quite.”

Margery blushed hotly. She glared at him. “You have been here
two minutes and already you are behaving very badly, my lord.”

Henry’s fingers, warm and strong, interlocked with hers. His
hand was sure on her waist as he spun her down the set of the first
country-dance. Margery repressed a little shiver of longing. This was the Henry
Wardeaux she remembered from their first meeting, the charming rake who could
have taken anything from her, her heart, her soul, her love. One touch of his
hand, one look, was all it had taken to undo all her efforts to forget him. She
did not want to feel so vulnerable. It hurt too much.

“I do not recall inviting you tonight,” she said, reaching for
hauteur to defend herself against the emotional onslaught.

“You did not,” Henry said. “Your grandfather did. He still
outranks you, I think.”

“I do not know why he would do such a thing,” Margery said.

“He thought you were missing me,” Henry said. He raised his
brows. “Were you?”

The music separated them for a moment.

“Well?” Henry said, as they came back together again. “You did
not answer me.”

“No,” Margery said. “I did not. I did not miss you at all.”

Henry laughed. His fingers tightened on hers. She almost lost
the beat of the music because she was assailed by so sharp a longing that it
felt like pain.

“You always did lie badly,” he said softly.

Margery did not answer. She could not. She was aware only of
the touch of his hand in hers and the way in which her willful heart sang to be
near him again, ready to betray her in an instant.

“When did you return to London?” She was aware that the other
dancers in the set were watching them and that polite conversation, as Lady
Wardeaux had been at pains to teach her, was a requirement of any couple in the
dance.

“I have been here almost a fortnight,” Henry said.

Margery almost missed her step. Her heart was sore to realize
that Henry had been in London almost as long as she had.