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
