Forbidden by Nicola Cornick Page A

the matter?”
She took in, for the first time, the pinched expression on Jessie’s face and the
fear in her eyes.
    “Lady Grant is asking for you.” Jessie sat down heavily on
Margery’s little narrow bed, which sagged in glum protest. “There’s trouble. I
don’t know what, but it’s bad. Something terrible has happened.”
    Trouble.
    Margery felt a clutch of fear. Lady Grant seldom rose before
ten and only then in the direst emergency. Surely—her stomach did a dizzy swoop
and she felt sick—surely Lady Grant could not know what had happened last night,
could not know that her maid had behaved like a wanton, drinking ale in an inn
of ill repute, dining with a gentleman and then kissing him to within an inch of
her life. More than mere kissing, if she were truthful....
    Her body heated to a burning blush as she remembered all the
liberties she had allowed Henry to take and the way in which she had responded
to him. For a second when she had awoken she had hoped that it was all a dream.
It was not.
    But perhaps Lady Grant did know.
Perhaps someone had seen her with Henry in Bedford Square Gardens and reported
her for lewd behavior. Her mind spun and the ache in her head stabbed at her
viciously. She could imagine the outcry. She could even see in her mind’s eye
the constable coming to take her away. They would put her in the stocks and
brand her a whore. She grabbed the wooden rail at the end of the bed to steady
herself.
    “Are you quite well, Miss Mallon?” Jessie was looking at her
with sharp curiosity. Margery knew that some of the housemaids resented the fact
that she had achieved the rank of lady’s maid so young. Some of them would not
be sorry to see her fall from grace.
    “I am very well, thank you,” she said briskly. “Pray tell Lady
Grant that I shall be down directly.”
    It took her only a few minutes to slip on her gown—thank
goodness she had one freshly pressed—and to braid her hair into a neat plait.
Those few minutes also enabled her to persuade herself that Lady Grant’s early
rising and the trouble that Jessie had referred to were in no way connected to
her. Of course they were not. It was both fanciful and presumptuous of her to
imagine it.
    As she hurried down the stairs to Lady Grant’s bedchamber she
was aware of a strange atmosphere in the house. It was silent and yet it felt
tense, waiting. Margery shivered. Her hand shook a little as she knocked on the
oaken panels of Lady Grant’s door and turned the handle.
    Lady Grant was in her nightgown in the dressing room, rummaging
through her chest of drawers, leaving all of Margery’s carefully arranged piles
of clothing in complete disarray. Her rich red-gold hair tumbled in artistic
profusion over her bare shoulders above the lace embroidery of her neckline. She
looked at once harassed and fragile, and when Margery came in she swooped on her
with a cry of gladness.
    “Margery! Oh, thank goodness! You have no idea.... Mr.
Churchward is here—the lawyer—at seven-thirty in the morning! I sent Alex to
deal with him but he insists that I join them and I have no notion what to wear.
I simply cannot be expected to decide such matters
before I have had my morning chocolate....”
    The door opened and Lord Grant strode in. “Joanna,” he said. “I
left you twenty minutes ago and you are no further forward now than you were
then.”
    “Ten more minutes, my lord,” Margery said, pushing Lady Grant
gently but firmly away from the chest and selecting a range of undergarments at
the same time. “I promise.”
    Lord Grant’s incisive gaze swept Margery from head to foot.
“Miss…Mallon, is it not? I think that you had better attend the drawing room
with my wife when she is ready.” He nodded to her, smiled at Lady Grant and went
out closing the door with a decisive click.
    Margery’s heart gave a great, sickening lurch. Lady Grant was
staring at her as though she had suddenly grown a second head. “Well! What can
that be