Praise for USA TODAY bestselling author
Courtney Milan

Trial by Desire

“An exquisitely sensual and unforgettable romance by one of the genre’s incandescent new stars.”

—Booklist (starred review)

“Milan’s strength of writing draws the reader into her deeply emotional love stories, which are romantic yet brimming over with sexual tension and marvelous characters…filled with enough wit and wisdom to make it a ‘keeper.’”

—RT Book Reviews (Top Pick)

Proof by Seduction

“Historical romance fans will celebrate Milan’s powerhouse debut, which comes with a full complement of humor, characterization, plot and sheer gutsiness.”

—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“One of the finest historical romances I’ve read in years.”

—New York Times bestselling author Julia Quinn

“A brilliant debut…deeply romantic, sexy and smart.”

—New York Times bestselling author Eloisa James

“With a tender, passionate romance, a touch of sly humor, and a gruff and incredibly sexy hero, Courtney Milan’s Proof by Seduction is a delicious read from the first page all the way to the very satisfying ending.”

—New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Hoyt

“Sexy, hilarious, and deeply, deeply touching. Courtney Milan writes with the keenest understanding of the heart. It is a cliché to say so, but I laughed and I cried. And I cannot wait to read her next book.”

—Sherry Thomas, author of Private Arrangements

COURTNEY MILAN
Unveiled

MILLS & BOON

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

Dear Reader,

One of my first memories is waking up very early in the morning to play with my sister. Anyone who has brothers, sisters or children can guess what my second memory is: getting into a massive screaming fight with that same sister. (She won. She always won.)

There’s nobody I love quite like my family. They know all of my embarrassing secrets. They can make me laugh with a few short words that make no sense to anyone else. But anyone who knows me that well inevitably knows how to get my goat—all of my goats.

When I started to write about Ash Turner, I knew he was going to be the kind of man who could accomplish anything—whether that was making a fortune for himself, seducing a reluctant woman or simply solving a problem on a tenant farm. With a hero that capable, I knew that Ash needed a challenge—something so impossible that even he could not overcome it.

So I gave Ash brothers. His brothers can see past all that strength and still laugh at him. Deep down, when Ash thinks of his brothers, he knows he’ll never be good enough for them. Family is Ash’s greatest strength and his biggest weakness. He’ll do anything for his brothers…and, as Margaret Dalrymple soon discovers, he’s ruthless enough to do it, even if it causes other people problems.

I’m really excited for you to meet the Turners, and I hope you enjoy reading about them as much as I loved writing them.

Courtney

Acknowledgments

I had a lot of help writing this book.

The discussion about marriage I had with Tessa gave rise to the central premise of this book; Tessa, Amy and Leigh talked me through the basics one cold morning in Vail, and the Northwest Pixies brainstormed titles on a Friday night (Darcy Burke gets the credit). I couldn’t do anything without Kristin Nelson, my wonderful agent, as well as the remainder of the agency staff: Sara, Anita and Lindsay. My editor, Margo Lipschultz, pushed me to make this the best book I could, and the team at Harlequin Books once again did a phenomenal job with the amazing cover and the work in producing this book.

The Vanettes, the Pixies, Destination Debut and the Loop that Must Not Be Named—without any of you, I would have gone insane.

The lovely staff at Montacute House answered numerous strange and silly questions. Darren did his best to correct my execrable Latin. Franzeca Drouin, as always, went above and beyond the call of duty. Elyssa Papa is still my favorite beta reader ever, and I rely on Kim Castillo for pretty much everything else.

Finally, I need to thank my husband for listening to me read parts aloud and not wincing, and my dog, for curling up patiently at my feet when I was too busy writing to take him to the dog park.

The cat gets no thanks. I still have scars.

Unveiled

For Mom, who always believed I could do anything despite copious evidence to the contrary.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

Somerset, August 1837

SO THIS WAS HOW IT felt to be a conquering hero.

Ash Turner—once plain Mr. Turner; now, so long as fate stayed Parliament’s hand, the future Duke of Parford—sat back on his horse as he reached the crest of the hill.

The estate he would inherit was laid out in the valley before him. Stone walls and green hedges hugged the curves of the limestone hill where his horse stood, breaking the brilliant apple-green growth of high summer into gentle, rolling squares of patchwork. A small cottage stood to the side of the road. He could hear the hushed whispers of the farm children, who had crept out to gawk at him as he passed.

Over the past few months, he’d become accustomed to being gawked at.

Behind him, his younger brother’s steed stamped and came to a halt. From this high vantage point, they could see Parford Manor—an impressive four-story, five-winged affair, its brilliant windows glittering in the sunlight. Undoubtedly, someone had set a servant to watch for his arrival. In a few moments, the staff would spill out onto the front steps, arranging themselves in careful lines, ready to greet the man who would be their master.

The man who’d stolen a dukedom.

A smile played over Ash’s face. Once he inherited, nobody would gainsay him.

“You don’t have to do this.” The words came from behind him.

Nobody, that was, except his little brother.

Ash turned in the saddle. Mark was facing forwards, looking at the manor below with an abstracted expression. That detached focus made him look simultaneously old, as if he deserved an elder’s beard to go with that inexplicable wisdom, and yet still unaccountably boyish.

“It’s not right.” Mark’s voice was barely audible above the wind that whipped at Ash’s collar.

Mark was seven years younger than Ash, which made him by most estimations firmly an adult. But despite all that Mark had experienced, he had somehow managed to retain an aura of almost painful purity. He was the opposite of Ash—blond, where Ash’s hair was dark; slim, where Ash’s shoulders had broadened with years of labor. But most of all, Mark seemed profoundly, sacredly innocent, where Ash felt tired and profane. Perhaps that was why the last thing Ash wanted to do in his moment of victory was to hash through the ethics.

Ash shook his head. “You asked me to find you a quiet country home for these last weeks of summer, so you might work in peace.” He spread his arms, palms up. “Well. Here you are.”

Down in the valley, the first ranks of servants had begun to gather, jockeying for position on the wide steps leading up to the massive front doors.

Mark shrugged, as if this evidence of prosperity meant nothing to him. “A house back in Shepton Mallet would have done.”

A tight knot formed in Ash’s stomach. “You’re not going back to Shepton Mallet. You’re never going back there. Do you suppose I would simply kick you from a carriage at Market Cross and let you disappear for the summer?”

Mark finally broke his gaze from the tableau in front of them and met Ash’s eyes. “Even by your extravagant standards, Ash, you must admit this is a bit much.”

“You don’t think I would make a good duke? Or you don’t approve of the method I used to inveigle a summer’s invitation to the ducal manor?”

Mark simply shook his head. “I don’t need this. We don’t need this.”

And therein lay Ash’s problem. He wanted to make up for every last bit of his brothers’ childhood deprivation. He wanted to repay every skipped meal with twelve-course dinners, gift a thousand pairs of gloves in exchange for every shoeless winter. He’d risked his life building a fortune to ensure their happiness. Yet both his brothers declared themselves satisfied with a few prosaic simplicities.

Simplicities wouldn’t make up for Ash’s failure. So maybe he had overindulged when Mark finally asked him for a favor.

“Shepton Mallet would have been quiet,” Mark said, almost wistfully.

“Shepton Mallet is halfway to dead.” Ash clucked to his horse. As he did so, the wind stopped. What he’d intended as a faint sound of encouragement sounded overloud. The horse started down the road towards the manor.

Mark kicked his mare into a trot and followed.

“You’ve never thought it through,” Ash tossed over his shoulder. “With Richard and Edmund Dalrymple no longer able to inherit, you’re fourth in line for the dukedom. There are a great many advantages to that. Opportunities will arise.”

“Is that how you’re describing your actions, this past year? ‘No longer able to inherit?’”

Ash ignored this sally. “You’re young. You’re handsome. I’m sure there are some lovely milkmaids in Somerset who would be delighted to make the acquaintance of a man who stands an arm’s length from a dukedom.”

Mark stopped his horse a few yards before the gate to the grounds. Ash felt a fillip of annoyance at the delay, but he halted, too.

“Say it,” Mark said. “Say what you did to the Dalrymples. You’ve spouted one euphemism after another ever since this started. If you can’t even bring yourself to speak the words, you should never have done it.”

“Christ. You’re acting as if I killed them.”

But Mark was looking at him, his blue eyes intense. In this mood, with the sun glancing off all that blond hair, Ash wouldn’t have been surprised if his brother had pulled a flaming sword from his saddlebag and proclaimed him barred from Eden forever. “Say it,” Mark repeated.

And besides, his little brother so rarely asked anything of him. Ash would have given Mark whatever he wanted, so long as he just…well, wanted.

“Very well.” He met his brother’s eyes. “I brought the evidence of the Duke of Parford’s first marriage before the ecclesiastical courts, and thus had his second marriage declared void for bigamy. The children resulting from that union were declared illegitimate and unable to inherit. Which left the duke’s long-hated fifth cousin, twice removed, as the presumptive heir. That would be me.” Ash started his horse again. “I didn’t do anything to the Dalrymples. I just told the truth of what their own father had done all those years ago.”

And he wasn’t about to apologize for it, either.

Mark snorted and started his horse again. “And you didn’t have to do that.”

But he had. Ash didn’t believe in foretellings or spiritual claptrap, but from time to time, he had…premonitions, perhaps, although that word smacked of the occult. A better phrase might have been that he possessed a sheer animal instinct. As if the reactive beast buried deep inside him could recognize truths that human intelligence, dulled by years of education, could not.

When he’d found out about Parford, he’d known with a blazing certainty: If I become Parford, I can finally break my brothers free of the prison they’ve built for themselves.

With that burden weighing down one side of the scale, no moral considerations could balance the other to equipoise. The disinherited Dalrymples meant nothing. Besides, after what Richard and Edmund had done to his brothers? Really. He shed no tears for their loss.

The servants had finished gathering, and as Ash trotted up the drive, they held themselves at stiff attention. They were too well trained to gawk, too polite to let more than a little rigidity infect their manner. Likely, they were too accustomed to their wages to do more than grouse about the upstart heir the courts had forced upon them.

They’d like him soon enough. Everyone always did.

“Who knows?” he said quietly. “Maybe one of these serving girls will catch your eye. You can have any one you’d like.”

Mark favored him with an amused look. “Satan,” he said, shaking his head, “get thee behind me.”

Ash’s steed came to a stop and he dismounted slowly. The manor looked smaller than Ash remembered, the stone of its facade honey-gold, not bleak and imposing. It had shrunk from the unassailable fortress that had loomed in Ash’s head all these years. Now it was just a house. A big house, yes, but not the dark, menacing edifice he’d brooded over in his memory.

The servants stood in painful, ordered rows. Ash glanced over them.

There were probably more than a hundred retainers arrayed before him, all dressed in gray. He felt as sober as they appeared. Had there been the slightest danger of Mark accepting his cavalier offer, Ash would never have made it. These people were his dependents now—or they would be, once the current duke passed on. His duty. Their prosperity would hang on his whim, as his had once hung on Parford’s. It was a weighty responsibility.

I’m going to do better than that old bastard.

A vow, that, and one he meant every bit as much as the last promise he’d sworn, looking up at this building.

He turned to greet the majordomo, who stepped forwards. As he did so, he saw her. She stood on the last row of steps, a few inches apart from the rest of the servants. She held her head high. The wind started up again, as if the entire universe had been holding its breath up until this moment. She was looking directly at him, and Ash felt a cavernous hollow open deep in his chest.

He’d never seen the woman before in his life. He couldn’t have; he would have remembered the feel of her, the sheer rightness of it. She was pretty, even with that dark hair pulled into a severe knot and pinioned beneath a white lace cap. But it wasn’t her looks that caught his attention. Ash had seen enough beautiful women in his time. Maybe it was her eyes, narrowed and steely, fixed on him as if he were the source of all that was wrong in the world. Maybe it was the set of her chin, so unyielding, so fiercely determined, when every face around hers mirrored uncertainty. Whatever it was, something about her resonated deep within him.

It reminded him of the cacophony of an orchestra as it tuned its instruments: dissonance, suddenly resolving into harmony. It was the rumble, not of thunder, but its low, rolling precursor, trembling on the horizon. It was all of that. It was none of that. It was sheer animal instinct, and it reached up and grabbed him by the throat. Her. Her.

Ash had never ignored his instincts before—not once. He swallowed hard as the majordomo approached.

“One thing,” he whispered to his brother. “The woman in the last row—on the far right? She’s mine.”

Before his brother could do more than frown at him, before Ash himself could swallow the lingering feeling of sparks coursing through his veins, the majordomo was upon them, bowing and introducing himself. Ash took a deep breath and focused on the man.

“Mr.— I mean, my—” The man paused, uncertain how to address Ash. With the duke still alive, Ash, a mere distant cousin, held no title. And yet he had come here as heir to the dukedom, on the strictest orders from Chancery. Ash could guess at the careful calculation in the majordomo’s eyes: should he risk offending the man who might well be his next master? Or ought he adhere to the strict formalities required by etiquette?

Ash tossed his reins to the groom who crept forwards. “Plain Mr. Turner will do. There’s no need to worry about how you address me. I scarcely know what to call myself.”

The man nodded and the taut muscles in his face relaxed. “Mr. Turner, shall I arrange a tour, or would you and your brother care to take some refreshment first?”

Ash’s eyes wandered to the woman in the back row. She met his gaze, her expression implacable, and a queer shiver ran down his spine. It was not lust itself he felt, but the premonition of desire, as if the wind that whipped around his cravat were whispering in his ears. Her. Choose her.

“Good luck,” Mark muttered. “I don’t believe she likes you all that much.”

That much Ash had gleaned from the set of her jaw.

“No refreshment,” Ash said aloud. “No rest. I want to know everything, and the sooner, the better. I’ll need to speak with Parford, as well. I’d best start as I mean to go on.” He glanced at the woman one last time, and then met his brother’s eyes. “After all, I do enjoy a challenge.”

FROM HER HIGH PERCH on the cold stone steps, Anna Margaret Dalrymple could make out little in the features of the two gentlemen who approached on horseback. But what she could see did not bode well for her future.

Ash Turner was both taller and younger than she had expected. Margaret had imagined him arriving in a jewel-encrusted carriage, pulled by a team of eight horses—something both ridiculously feminine and outrageously ostentatious, to match his reputation as a wealthy nabob. The man who had taken everything from her should have been some hunched creature, prematurely bald, capable of no expression except an insolent sneer.

But this man sat his horse with all the ease and grace of an accomplished rider, and she could not make out a single massive, unsightly gem anywhere on his person.

Drat.

As Mr. Turner cantered up, the servants—it was difficult to think of them as fellow servants, when she was used to thinking of them as hers—tensed, breath held. And no wonder. This man had supplanted her brother, the rightful heir, through ruthless legal machinations. If Richard failed in his bid to have the Duke of Parford’s children legitimized by act of Parliament, Mr. Turner would be the new master. And when her father died, Margaret would find herself a homeless bastard.

He dismounted from his steed with ease and tossed the reins to the stable boy who dashed out to greet him. While he exchanged a few words with the majordomo, she could sense the unease about her, multiplying itself through the shuffling of feet and the uncertain rubbing of hands against sides. What sort of a man was he?

His gaze swept over them, harsh and severe. For one brief second, his eyes came to rest on Margaret. It was an illusion, of course—a wealthy merchant, come to investigate his patrimony, would care nothing for a servant clad in a shapeless gray frock, her hair secured under a severe mobcap. But it seemed as if he were looking directly inside her, as if he could see every day of these past painful months. It was as if he could see the empty echo of the lady she had been. Her heart thumped once, heavily.

She’d counted on being invisible to him in this guise.

Then, as if she’d been but a brief snag in the fluid silk of his life, he looked away, finishing his survey of the massed knot of servants. Beside her, the upstairs maids held their breath. Margaret wished he would just get it over with and say something dastardly, so they could all hate him.

But he smiled. It was an easy, casual expression, and it radiated a good cheer that left Margaret feeling perversely annoyed. He took off his black leather riding gloves and turned to address them.

“This place,” he said in a voice that was quiet yet carrying, “looks marvelous. I can tell that Parford Manor is in the hands of one of the finest staffs in all of England.”

Margaret could see the effect of those words travel like a wave through the servants. Backs straightened, subtly; eyes that had been narrowed relaxed. Hands unclenched. They all leaned towards him, just the barest inch, as if the sun had peeked out from behind disapproving clouds.

Just like that, he was stealing from her again. This time, he robbed her of the trust and support of her family retainers.

Mr. Turner, however, didn’t seem to realize his cruelty.

He removed his riding coat, revealing broad, straight shoulders—shoulders that ought to have bowed under the sheer villainous weight of what he’d done. He turned back to the majordomo. He acted as if he were not stealing onto Parford lands, as if he hadn’t won the grudging right to come here in Chancery a bare few weeks ago to investigate what he had called economic waste.

Smith, the traitor, was already beginning to relax in response.

Margaret had assumed that the servants were hers. After all those years running the house alongside her mother, she’d believed their loyalties could not be suborned.

But Mr. Smith nodded at something Mr. Turner said. Slowly, her servant—her old, faithful servant, whose family had served hers for six generations—turned and looked in Margaret’s direction. He held out his hand, and Mr. Turner looked up at her. This time, his gaze fixed on her and stayed. The wind blew, whipping her skirts about her ankles, as if he’d called up a gale with the intensity of his stare.

She couldn’t hear Smith’s commentary, but she could imagine his words delivered in his matter-of-fact tenor. “That’s Anna Margaret Dalrymple there, His Grace’s daughter. She’s stayed behind on Parford lands to report your comings and goings to her brothers. Oh, and she’s pretending to be the old duke’s nurse, because they’re afraid you’ll kill the man to influence the succession.”

Mr. Turner put his head to the side and blinked at her, as if not believing his eyes. He knew who she was; he had to know, or he’d not be looking at her like that. He wouldn’t be stalking towards her, his footfalls sure as a tiger’s. Now, she could see the windswept tousle of his hair, the strong line of his jaw. As he came closer, she could even make out the little creases around his mouth, where his smile had left lines.

It seemed entirely wrong that someone so awful could be so handsome.

Mr. Turner came to stand in front of her. Margaret tilted her chin up, so that she could look him in the eyes, and wished she were just a little taller.

He was studying her with something like bemusement. “Miss?” he finally asked.

Smith came up beside Margaret. “Ah, yes. Mr. Turner, this is Miss…” He paused and glanced at her, and in that instant, the growing bubble of betrayal was pricked, and she realized he had not given her secrets away. Ash Turner didn’t know who she was.

“Miss Lowell.” She remembered to curtsy, too, ducking her head as a servant would. “Miss Margaret Lowell.”

“You’re Parford’s nurse?”

Nurse; daughter. With his illness, it came to the same thing. She was the only protection her father had against this man, with her brothers scattered across England to fight for their inheritance in Parliament. She met Mr. Turner’s gaze steadily. “I am.”

“I should like to speak with him. Smith tells me you’re very strict about his schedule. When would it least inconvenience you?”

He gave her a great big dazzling smile that felt as if he’d just opened the firebox on a kitchen range. As bitterly as she disliked him, she still felt its effect. This was how this man, barely older than her, had managed to make a fortune so quickly. Even she wanted to jump to attention, to scurry just a little faster, just so he would favor her with that smile again.

Instead, she met his eyes implacably. “I’m not strict.” She drew herself up a little taller. “Strict implies unnecessary, but I assure you the care I take is very necessary indeed. His Grace is old. He is ill. He is weak, and I won’t brook any nonsense. I won’t have him disturbed just because some fool of a gentleman bids me do so.”

Mr. Turner’s smile grew as she spoke. “Precisely so,” he said. “Tell me, Miss…” he paused there and lowered one eyelid at her in a shiver of a languid wink. “Miss Margaret Lowell, do you always speak to your new employers in this manner, or is this an exception carved out for me in particular?”

“While Parford lives, you are not my employer. And when he has—” Her throat caught at the words; her lungs burned at the memory of the last grave she’d stood beside.

Hold yourself together, Margaret chided herself, or he’ll know who you are before the day’s over.

She cleared her throat and enunciated with particular care. “And once he’s passed on, you’ll hardly have need of my services. Not unless you’re planning on becoming bedridden yourself. Is there any chance of that?”

“Fierce and intelligent, too.” He let out a little sigh. “When I’m in bed, I don’t suppose I’ll want your services. Leastwise, not as a nurse. So yes, you are quite correct.”

His eyelashes were unconscionably thick. They shielded eyes so dark she could not distinguish pupil from cornea. It took her a moment to realize that what he’d said went well beyond idle flirtation. Smith coughed uneasily. He’d overheard the whole thing, from that unfortunate compliment to the improper innuendo. How horrifying. How lowering.

Still, the image came to mind unbidden—Mr. Turner, stripped of those layers of dark blue wool and pristine linen, his skin shining gold against white sheets, turned over on his side, that smile glinting just for her.

How enticing.

Margaret pressed her lips together and imagined herself emptying the chamber pot over his naked form. Now there was a thought that would bring her some satisfaction.

He leaned in. “Tell me, Miss Lowell. Is Parford well enough for a little conversation? You can accompany me to the room and make sure I don’t overstep myself or overexcite him.”

“He was alert earlier.” And, in point of fact, her father had insisted that when that devil Turner arrived, he wanted to see him straight away. “I’ll see if he’s still awake and willing to speak with you.”

She turned away, but he caught her wrist. She turned reluctantly back towards him. His naked hand was warm against her skin. She wished he hadn’t removed his gloves. His grip was not tight, but it was strong.

“One last question.” His eyes found hers. “Why did the majordomo hesitate before pronouncing your name?”

So he’d noticed that, too. In circumstances such as this, only the truth would do.

“Because,” she said with a sigh, “I’m a bastard. It’s not precisely clear what name I should be given.”

“What? No family? No one to stand for you and protect your good name? No brothers to beat off unwanted suitors?” His fingers tightened on her wrist a fraction; his gaze dipped downwards, briefly, to her bosom, before returning to her face. “Well. That’s a shame.” He smiled at her again, as if to say that there was no shame at all—at least not for him.

And that smile, that dratted smile. After all that he’d done to her, he thought he could waltz into her family home and take her to bed?

But he gave a sigh and let go of her hand. “It’s a terrible shame. I make it a point of honor not to impose upon defenseless women.”

He shook his head, almost sadly, and turned to gesture behind him. The young man who had accompanied him when he’d arrived loped up the steps in response.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “Miss Lowell, let me present to you my younger brother, Mr. Mark Turner. He’s come into the country with me this fine summer so he can have some quiet time to finish the philosophical tract he is writing.”

“It’s not precisely a philosophical tract.”

Mr. Mark Turner, unlike his brother, was slight—not skinny, but wiry, his muscles ropy. He was a few inches shorter than his elder brother, and in sharp contrast with his brother’s tanned complexion and dark hair, he was pale and blond.

“Mark, this is Miss Lowell, Parford’s nurse. Undoubtedly, she needs all her patience for that old misanthrope, so treat her kindly.” Mr. Turner grinned, as if he’d said something very droll.

Mr. Mark Turner did not appear to think it odd that his brother had introduced him to a servant—worse, that he had introduced a servant to him. He just looked at his brother and very slowly shook his head, as if to reprove him. “Ash” was all he said.

The elder Turner reached out and ruffled his younger brother’s hair. Mr. Mark Turner did not glower under that touch like a youth pretending to be an adult; neither did he preen like a child being recognized by his elder. He could not have been more than four-and-twenty, the same age as Margaret’s second-eldest brother. Yet he stood and regarded his brother, unflinching under his touch, his eyes steady and ageless.

It was as if they’d exchanged an entire conversation with those gestures. And Margaret despised Mr. Turner all the more for that obvious affection between him and his younger brother. He wasn’t supposed to be handsome. He wasn’t supposed to be human. He wasn’t supposed to have any good qualities at all.

One thing was for certain: Ash Turner was going to be a damned nuisance.

CHAPTER TWO

MR. TURNER CONTINUED to be a nuisance as Margaret led him up the wide stairway towards her father’s sickroom. At first, he said nothing. Instead, he gawked about him with a sense of casual proprietorship, taking in the stone of the stairways, and then, as they entered the upper gallery, the portraits on the wall. It wasn’t greed she saw in his gaze; that she could have forgiven. But he was an interloper at Parford Manor, and he looked about him with the jaded eye of a purchaser—searching out the flaws, as if he didn’t want to say too much by way of compliment, lest he raise the price too high in subsequent rounds of bargaining.

He glanced out the leaded windows. “Pleasantly situated,” he remarked.

Pleasantly situated. Parford Manor was the center of a massive estate—fifty acres of parkland on the most beautiful rolling hills in all of England, surrounded by tenant farms. The gardens were the labor of her mother’s life, a living, breathing monument to a woman who was even now fading from common memory. And he thought it was merely pleasantly situated?

He was a boor.

“Beautifully maintained,” he said as they passed a tapestry in the stone stairs.

She rolled her eyes, which thankfully, as she walked ahead of him, he could not see.

“The manor needs a bit of updating, though.”

Margaret stopped dead, afraid to even look in his direction. He came abreast of her and turned to look at her.

“You don’t agree? All that dark wainscoting downstairs. Tear it down—get some bright papers on the wall.” He gestured above to the gallery’s ceiling. “New chandeliers—Lord, it must be dark in here, of a winter evening. Don’t you think?”

He was absolutely intolerable. “The gallery was last renovated by the duchess herself, a decade prior. I shouldn’t like to set my tastes against a sensibility as refined as hers.”

His brow furrowed. “Surely you have an opinion of your own.”

“I do. I believe I just expressed it.”

There was a bit too much asperity in her tone, and he looked at her in surprise. Of course; a nurse wouldn’t have been quite so bold in her speech. Not to a duke’s heir. Not even to a wealthy tradesman who held the power of her employment in his too-large hands.

But what he said was “So. I’m a lout to think of altering her choices. I suppose I am fouling up a great lot of tradition. But only to improve, Miss Lowell. Only to improve.”

Margaret’s life had hardly been improved when he’d made her a bastard. That, however, she couldn’t say. Instead, she sighed. “Are you always this chatty with servants?”

“Only the pretty ones.” He cast her another sidelong glance, and a grin. “The pretty, intelligent ones.”

A beat fluttered in her stomach and Margaret started walking again. Down the gallery, into the hall beyond. She stopped before a wide wood door. “We’re about to enter a sickroom, so consider restraining your flirtations. His Grace is not well.”

Mr. Turner shook his head, solemn again. “A shame. I’d prefer him in his study, hale and hearty. There’s little honor in vanquishing an invalid.”

Margaret gripped the brass handle of her father’s door. She couldn’t look back at him, for fear he’d read the truth in the rigidity of her features. Her mother’s locket hung heavy on its chain, a great weight around her neck. “Is that why you did this, then? Is that why you had the duke and the duchess’s marriage of thirty years voided for bigamy, their innocent children declared bastards and disinherited entirely?” Her voice was shaking. “You claim to have too much honor to importune a woman without family, but let a man have a dukedom, and you feel free to…to vanquish him?”

There was a long pause behind her. “Are you always this chatty with your employers? I should imagine the Dalrymples—and no, Miss Lowell, I would not describe your employer’s poisonous offspring as either ‘children’ or ‘innocent’—would have stamped that trait right out of you.”

Margaret closed her eyes. Poisonous, was she? She wondered what she had done to deserve that particular epithet from a man she had met only this day. “I served the duchess when she was ill.” True; she’d spent her waking hours in her mother’s sickroom. “She was never well, these last years, but when you announced to the world that her husband was a bigamist—that she herself had been nothing more than an adulteress for the last thirty years, you destroyed her. She simply lost her will to continue. She was dead a few months later. To hear you talk about the circumstances that led to her death in so easy a fashion is utterly repellant.”

He didn’t answer her, and she turned to look at him. He was watching her seriously, his lips pressed together. He looked as if he were actually listening to her, as if she had something important to say. Maybe that was why she continued.

“You weren’t the one who had to urge her to eat. You didn’t watch the light in her eyes wink out and die. You men never see the consequences of what you do. All you care about is that in the end, you collect the title and the estates. That’s not honorable.”

Another longer pause. “You’re perfectly right,” he finally said. “It wasn’t honorable. It was revenge. I doubt you understand the complexity of the family relationship. But, at least, I didn’t intend to cause the duchess’s death. Parford, on the other hand…” His fingers clenched at his side. “I doubt Parford could say the same of my sister, were you to query him on the matter. As for the worthless boys he called sons? Quite frankly, after what they did to my brothers at Eton, I’d have wished far worse upon him.”

“Richard and his friends must have been quite the terror, to justify having his title stripped.”

“Richard? You’re calling the former Marquess of Winchester Richard?”

Rather than answer that, Margaret swung the door open and pushed it inward. “His Grace is waiting.”

Mr. Turner gave her one last long, searching look. Her heart thumped as he perused her face. Surely he would know what her little slip of the tongue had meant. But he just shook his head and entered the room. She followed behind.

Over the past few months, Margaret had learned to hide how completely aghast the sight of her father left her. She knew, rationally, that he was ill. But between her visits—even if no more than an hour elapsed—this image of him, thin as a fence rail and swathed in bedclothes, never managed to lodge in her memory. She remembered him healthy and robust, larger and more incomprehensible than the sky itself. That memory had riveted itself in her imagination, unable to be dislodged by something so trivial as the passage of time. In her heart, he couldn’t change. Her father was bigger than her, stronger than her, more frightening than her.

Reality had been cruel. He’d shrunk into a glazed shell of a man, holding on to life with the same tenacity that held him upright in this perfect seated posture. He ought to have been lying down.

“Parford,” Mr. Turner said. He put his hands in his pockets and stood there, glowering, all his chatty conversation evaporated. He was as still as a tombstone, looking forwards. That rigid stance seemed entirely at odds with his easy manner to a servant.

Her father rolled his head lazily to regard him. “Turner.”

Mr. Turner stared at him for one long instant before swiveling away. He turned to a basin on a nearby table, and when that could not hold his interest any longer, his gaze moved to a jumble of medicines in brown apothecary’s bottles.

He picked up one and turned it over. “Well. My finely honed speech, saved all these years, seems too big for this room after all.”

“Oh, pull up your trousers and be a man. What in God’s wide world are you waiting for?” That whiplash crack of authority in her father’s voice set Margaret’s teeth on edge. “Just get it over with, Turner. Say your piece, and then let me sleep.”

“It seems unsporting to crow about my triumph to a linen-clad scarecrow.” Mr. Turner set down the laudanum and looked over. “But I suppose you wouldn’t have it any other way, would you?”

Her father let out another exasperated sigh. “Get on with it, Turner. I’m dying. I have no wish to spend my last days enduring your endless hand-wringing and shilly-shallying. We both know how this is supposed to go—eyes for eyes, and all that. Am I supposed to beg you, as you once begged me?”

Margaret had no idea what her father was speaking about.

But Turner must have, because he scowled. “You’re making a mockery of this.”

“That’s not your line,” Parford snapped. “You’re supposed to throw my own words back at me. What did I say to that smelly, bedraggled child who visited me? Oh, yes: ‘We have as much blood in common as the queen has with a pig farmer.’ I did say pig farmer, didn’t I?”

“Coal miner, actually. And at the time, George was king.”

“Damn. My memory is full of holes. Still, you’ve deviated from the script. Here you are, heir to the Duchy of Parford, despite everything I did. Aren’t you going to grind my nose in it? Will that satisfy your vengeance? Or would you prefer to drive a dagger through my chest and drink my blood?”

Mr. Turner set his jaw and reached sharply for a small sack at his waist. At that sudden movement, Margaret felt a small shock of fear go through her, and she darted forwards, her hand reaching out to stop him—

“Relax, girl,” her father grumbled. “What do you suppose he’s secreted in that tiny little pouch? The world’s smallest rapier?”

Mr. Turner merely glanced at her and pulled something from the pouch and threw it forwards. “Here. This is yours.”

It landed on the Duke of Parford’s lap, and for once, that harsh stream of words dried up. He stared at it and then closed his hand about it. “A sixpence? Oh, no! I’m feeling revenged upon.”

The entire conversation was opaque to Margaret. “The sixpence,” Mr. Turner said grimly. “When I came to you and begged for your intercession, you threw it in my face and told me the only thing you wanted me to get was a bath. My sister died, my brothers—” He shook his head. “I told you I would make you sorry. And now here I am.”

“Yes. Congratulations. You’ve stolen a dukedom. Am I supposed to care?”

“You stole it yourself. I didn’t make your children bastards. I didn’t steal their inheritance. It was you who did it, so certain your first wife would never come to light. And now you’re reaping your own punishment.”

Her father leaned back against the cushions. “Me? Punished? Hardly. I’m the duke—and I will be until I die, which hopefully will be soon.” He yawned widely. “Once I have passed on to the next world, I can hardly care what becomes of my pitiful bastard offspring in this one.” He leaned back.

Margaret’s spine felt tight with tension. Her hands flattened against the plasterwork behind her. Her father had never been demonstrative or affectionate. Still, she’d always believed that he cared for her, even if only in his high-handed fashion. At his words, she wanted to melt into the wall and simply disappear. The hair on her head, scraped into that awful bun, pulled against her scalp.

But her father didn’t glance her way. “You seem to be under the impression that I give a damn about those whelps I sired on that whey-faced chit I was forced to pretend was my bride. You’re wrong.”

That “whey-faced chit” was Margaret’s mother—sweet and soft-spoken, warm and gentle and loving. She was barely six months in the grave. Margaret stared straight ahead, her hands clenching.

“Now, if you’ve finished berating me, go away. I’m bored.” Her father leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes.

Mr. Turner stared at him for a few moments, his jaw working. Finally, with one last look at Margaret, he left. Margaret closed the door behind him and turned to her father. He lay on the bed, his eyes shut as if he were sleeping. She doubted he was. She watched the ragged rise and fall of his chest, unsure what to think.

What on earth had Mr. Turner been alluding to? This was clearly not the first time her father had spoken with him. There was more to Mr. Turner than just a voided marriage and a grab for a dukedom, but if so, this was the first Margaret had heard of it. More important, had her father’s unkind words been an act, put on to convince Mr. Turner her father didn’t care about his children, and to thus shield them from revenge? Or had he spoken the simple truth?

As if sensing her questions, he opened his eyes. He must have seen the hurt on her face, because he expelled his breath in disgust. “Oh, Christ, Anna. You’re already a girl and a bastard. Don’t make yourself triply useless by crying.”

Margaret was beyond tears. She’d shed them all months ago, for all the good they’d done. But shame settled against her skin like a fine burning net. Over the past months, she’d had everything stripped from her: her name, when it was discovered that Lady Anna Margaret Dalrymple was a bastard. Her dowry, when Chancery decided that as illegitimate offspring, she wasn’t entitled to the funds settled upon her mother.

Margaret took a deep breath. She had been scoured clean of everything except the hard truth of herself. It coiled, deep inside her, like a spiked little ball.

“Would you like a glass of barley water?” she asked calmly.

Perhaps her father took that smooth inquiry as meekness, because his lip curled. He didn’t understand. It took every ounce of strength she had not to simply turn on her heel and walk out of the room. Because Mr. Turner had been right about one thing. It had been selfishness on her father’s part—pure, utter selfishness—to lie to her mother, to pretend to marry her, to beget offspring he’d known were legally unable to inherit.

“None of that tepid stuff, now,” he warned her.

The water was room temperature against her wrist, but she had no desire to send down to the icehouse. In fact, in her current guise as lowly nurse, she might have to go herself. She poured the liquid as it was, a tiny act of defiance, proof that inside she was still Lady Anna Margaret. She wasn’t some nameless bastard servant in a great house, to be ordered about at whim.

She leaned over the Duke of Parford and held the glass to his lips.

“Pfaw,” he protested, and water dribbled down his chin.

But he drank, and she raised a handkerchief to his face and dabbed away the excess moisture.

If some unknowing artist had glanced at this tableau, he might have titled it Father and Daughter. He might have captured the fine weave of the linen she used to dab excess moisture away, the comforting touch of her hand on his shoulder. Every perfunctory detail he might see, and render on his emotional palette as a gesture of love.

It wasn’t, not anymore. Margaret had loved her father once. Perhaps she still did. But at the moment, she could not find any trace of that emotion. What was left?

Duty. Honor. Obligation. Maybe just a perverse desire to demonstrate to her father: See? This is how you go about not betraying your family. She would show him. She didn’t need to be received as nobility to be noble.

If everything else had been stolen away, that much of her, at least, remained.

ASH EXITED PARFORD’S SICKROOM only to discover a procession lying in wait for him. The housekeeper, a Mrs. Benedict, introduced herself. She was accompanied by Smith, the majordomo, and a Mr. Dunridge, who was apparently the land steward. In the finest of old traditions, he was going to be Shown About and made to appreciate what he stood to inherit.

It wasn’t hard to show suitable enthusiasm. Parford Manor was a beautifully maintained house. It seemed lived in without being ragged. Even the parquet floors had an understated beauty, the sort of luminous glow that came from years of beeswax and care.

The manor was even older than that long-ago split between the Turners and the Dalrymples, he mused as he was led outside into the formal gardens. The grass was green and springy beneath his feet. No lawn a mere decade old could ever achieve that complacent health. It seemed not just a bit of turf, but an entire organism, spread before him.

His many times great-grandfather had once been lord here. The man had perhaps once walked upon this very path. He might have turned this selfsame corner, around the long, low holly, and seen the slow roll of the river beyond.

A bit daunting, that history. When he was a boy, his father had taught him about his noble relations, as if that ancient history somehow made him special, more interesting than other mill owners’ children. But that happy accident, that divergence from nobility all those great-grandfathers ago, hadn’t done any of the Turners much good. It hadn’t fed them or clothed them. Fortunes had come, and fortunes had been given away in mindless acts of insane charity.

Now, Ash stood on the cusp of the dukedom. He’d vowed he would care for his dependents—every one of them, from Mrs. Benedict, who continually stopped to reaffix her cap with pins that kept sliding from her gray hair, down to the last maid toiling over a copper kettle in the scullery.

Parford had, of course, got the matter completely backwards.

Yes, he’d thought of revenge. But thoughts of cold vengeance had given way to stark reality. There was no use trading eyes for eyes, when he’d been able to provide for his brothers by trading rubies instead.

Ancient history, indeed. The families had split, probably around the same time that the solid row of elms had been planted along the western drive. Ash’s fore-bearer, a younger son, had married a manufacturer’s daughter for wealth. He’d taken the name of Turner in exchange for a fortune—much to the fury of the rest of the Dalrymple family, who’d viewed the act as a mercenary betrayal. Time had passed. The elms reached halfway to the heavens now. The old Turner money had dwindled and disappeared before Ash had resurrected it. And yet the remnants of that bitter dispute still festered.

No; Ash didn’t just want revenge. He also wanted to take care of his own. Until this morning, however, he’d thought only of his brothers and his business. He hadn’t comprehended precisely how many responsibilities he was inheriting.

His responsibilities were not all unpleasant, though. There was, after all, Miss Lowell.

Miss Lowell was a surprising, delectable contradiction of a woman. She was intelligent, fierce and loyal. She looked soft in all the right places, but when it came to the ones she cared for, she was hard as flint. She seemed formidable, and Ash appreciated formidable women.

She was a mystery, and Ash was going to enjoy unraveling every delicious clue, until he’d stripped every last inch of her naked. In every sense of the word.

Their group made its way back to the manor by way of a path that hugged the river. When they reached the house once more, the steward and the majordomo took their leave. Mrs. Benedict opened the outside door to the glassed-in conservatory. It was littered with buckets of rose cuttings and potted plants, awaiting permanent placement. From there, she led him down a hall and into another parlor. Windows looked out over the gray river in the distance.

“There’s one last thing,” Mrs. Benedict said, coming to a halt. “I have standards for the conditions under which my girls must work.”

“In my London townhouse, I grant my servants a half day every week and a pair of full days each month.”

She let out a puff of air. “That’s not what I meant.” She squared her shoulders fiercely and then looked up. “I insist on this, Mr. Turner, as a condition of my employment. You and your brother are young, healthy males. I’ll not have you imposing on my girls. They’re from decent families. It’s not right to put them in a position where they can’t truly say no.”

Ah. Those sorts of working conditions. Ash had a feeling he was going to like Mrs. Benedict.

“You won’t have to worry about my brother,” Ash said. Unfortunately. “As for myself, I didn’t get where I was by indulging my wants indiscriminately. Besides, I had a sister, too. I couldn’t use any woman so cavalierly without her memory intruding.”

What he had planned for Miss Lowell could hardly be considered cavalier. He considered it more along the lines of a regular campaign.

But Mrs. Benedict must not have heard that unspoken caveat. She gave him a sharp nod. “You’re not what I expected, sir.”

“I’m not what I expected, either.”

She let loose a sharp chortle and reached into the pocket of her apron. With a metallic clink, she withdrew a chatelaine, heavy with keys, and unfastened the clasp of the ring. “I believe you.” She fished around and removed one. “Here.”

He held out his hand.

“It’s the master key.” She placed it into his waiting palm. “If you misuse it, I’ll have your ears, duke’s heir or no.”

The key she put into his hand was heavy iron, the bow fashioned into wrought curlicues. Interwoven amongst those was the stylized sword that was so prominent on the Parford coat of arms. Ash stared at it in bemusement before shoving it into a pocket. Mrs. Benedict, however, was already opening the door onto a long hallway, her interview of him concluded. She marched away as if she were the commanding general. Ash shrugged and followed after.

“Now,” she said as he came abreast of her once more, “tell me of your dining arrangements. Shall I manage the menus, or do you need to be consulted?”

“I trust you. But speaking of dining, it occurs to me that my brother and I make dreadfully uneven numbers. Once the rest of my men arrive from London, there will be no remedying that, not with any influx of women. But for this evening…” He trailed off invitingly.

Mrs. Benedict frowned as she walked. “Well, there’s the Misses Duprey, Amelia and Catherine, over north of Yeovil. They’d be delighted with an invitation. Further afield, we might think of Lady Harcourt’s daughters—a bit on the young side, fourteen and sixteen. Though Lady Harcourt wouldn’t mind in the least—she’s eager to marry them off.”

Ash choked. God. A fourteen-year-old child. He wouldn’t know what to say to such a creature.

“No,” he choked out. “Not Lady Harcourt. Definitely not her daughters.” Whoever they were. When he became the duke, he would have to know who these people were. He’d have to figure out the best way to accomplish that—after all, it wasn’t as if he would actually read a copy of Debrett’s. “Nor the Misses Duprey, whoever they might be. The lack of feminine conversation, you see, will be felt in a few hours’ time—and I doubt Lady Harcourt would forgive me if I sprung an invitation on her with no notice at all. No, Mrs. Benedict. I was thinking more along the lines of…you.”

This last line was delivered as they stepped from the hallway into the grand entryway.

“Me!” The housekeeper’s mouth dropped open. She stopped walking—right in the midst of the grand tiled hall—and clutched her skirts. She turned to him and peered into his face. Perhaps she was looking for telltale signs of madness. Finding neither rolling eyes nor froth at his lips, she shook her head.

“Me?” She managed to turn the syllable into a question. “I’m no lady to be taking my meals with the master. I’m a servant, sir, and a good one. I wouldn’t know—that is, I couldn’t carry on a conversation with a duke’s heir.”

“Nonsense,” Ash said. “You’ve done precisely that, this past half hour. You’ve watched the Dalrymples, haven’t you?”

At her faint nod, he smiled. She was already disposed to like him, however tentative that feeling was on her part. Now it was time to foster that delicate inclination.

He heard a noise from upstairs, as of a door closing. After a few moments, the quiet echo of footsteps in the upper gallery followed. The hairs on the back of his neck tingled.

“Can I tell you a secret? You must know the family history—that there was bad blood between the Turners and the Dalrymples, that my brothers and I grew up in near poverty.”

She sniffed and looked away. “This isn’t a household prone to gossip about its masters. I see to that. In fact, if you do hear any such talk, don’t you listen to it. Come to me, straight away, and I’ll set the culprit straight.”

“Oh, no. I’m not accusing you of gossip. But perhaps you might, from time to time, have heard about the masters’ less fortunate relations?” He gave her his most cajoling smile, and she softened.

“Perhaps,” she allowed.

“The truth is, I feel more comfortable conversing with servants than I sometimes do with my peers. This transition has been most sudden for me. A person like you could do a lot of good for someone like me. The way I see it, you’re barely a servant. You’re essentially the mistress of this house.”

“Well.” Mrs. Benedict preened just a bit under this praise. Ash gave her another smile, and she glanced back, faintly encouraged.

“Your manners are lovely, your speech precise. You’re not so different from a lady yourself—managing the household, seeing to it that everything is just right for the master’s convenience. The only difference between you and a lady is that you’re given a salary.” She looked at him with wide eyes and a half smile. He could almost feel her will bowing before his—and a housekeeper in a manor this large, with this many servants, had considerable strength of character.

It had always surprised him when he heard other merchants talk about the difficulties of keeping household servants in line, or the frustration of attempting to hire diligent accounting clerks. Ash had never had any problem getting people to do as he wished.

If you gave people compliments, they tended to like you. If you confided in them, they were likely to trust you. And if you then asked for their help, they were yours forever. Of course, it helped that Ash genuinely liked almost everyone. People could sense that; it was as good as a master key on a housekeeper’s ring, opening up the affections of even the most recalcitrant of individuals.

“A lady? Me?” She caught a stray curl of gray hair and twisted it around her finger. “Go on with you.” Her words said, stop this nonsense, but she was smiling. She didn’t really mean it.

The footsteps he’d heard traversing the gallery earlier began to descend the stairs. He felt her arrival, a prickle of awareness settling against his skin. He wouldn’t turn. He wouldn’t look at her.

“So,” Ash continued, looking straight at Mrs. Benedict, “it would help me and my brother immensely if you would sit at the dinner table and eat with us. You’ll rescue us from countless male arguments. By your simple presence, you’ll help teach me what I need to know in order to uphold my dignity as Duke of Parford.”

While he had no doubt that Mrs. Benedict would be a fine addition to the table, the woman he’d been waiting for was descending the stairs right now.

An appeal to Mrs. Benedict’s pride, her sensibilities and her service to the title. Was anything left to offer? Ah, yes. One last thing.

“And I can already tell that you know this neighborhood intimately. You know its people. You know who they are and what they need. If I’m to be duke—and I intend to be a good one—I need to know what you know. Please say you’ll do me the very great honor of dining with me.”

She stared up at him, her cap sliding askew once more, as if she were trying to decide what to think. “For a man who claims to need someone to teach him finesse,” she said dryly, “you are far too agreeable. Are you this talkative with all the servants?”

Miss Lowell came to stand behind them with that last word. He could feel the draft of air that presaged her arrival, could smell that faint, sweet scent that clung to her. He imagined her placing her hands on her hips in disapproval. He stifled a grin and pitched his voice to carry.

“No, Mrs. Benedict,” Ash said. “Only the pretty ones.”

“Go on with you!” Mrs. Benedict wagged her finger at him, as if he were a wayward child. “I’m fifty-five, if I’m a day, and I’ve watched every last hair on my head turn to gray.”

Ash frowned at her and peered at the unruly curls peeking out from under her cap. “Silver,” he said. “Like moonlight, I think.”

She burst into laughter then, and Ash knew he’d won. It wasn’t flirtation—no sense of awareness had passed between him and the housekeeper. It was something sweeter and friendlier. He’d seen her as a person, rather than as a servant, and she knew it.

“There,” Ash said. “It’s settled. You’ll dine with me.”

Mrs. Benedict acquiesced to Ash’s upsetting of a social order older than William the Conqueror with a nod.

Ash turned casually. As he did, he saw Miss Lowell. He started and consciously widened his eyes, pretending he’d been unaware of her standing two feet off. Her head was turned to regard him, her eyebrows drawn down, as if she were uncertain what he and Mrs. Benedict might have to laugh about. She didn’t know he’d already identified her by the faint hint of roses that trailed around her, filling the entryway with her subtle perfume. That, and he’d known no other house servant would have dared to come down the main staircase with the housekeeper watching.

“Ah,” Ash said, “and this solves the other half of our dilemma, Mrs. Benedict. Our numbers are still uneven. My brother and I couldn’t possibly sit down to table with just you. We’d overwhelm you with our idiotic masculinity.”

“Oh?”

“Oh,” Ash said, with great finality. And then he let out a great sigh. “There’s only one possible solution. I suppose Miss Lowell will have to join us, as well.”

CHAPTER THREE

MR. TURNER’S ILL-FATED supper invitation actually went a long way towards easing Margaret’s fears. He had seemed so persuasive, so glib, that she had begun to worry he would soon lead all the servants astray. But he could, after all, make mistakes. This one would prove enlightening.

There was a reason servants did not sit with their masters at table, and it had nothing to do with pride or condescension. Margaret folded her hands primly in her lap, as the footmen served the soup course. She was in for what promised to be an evening of very awkward conversation.

What was Mr. Turner to do, after all? He couldn’t very well ask Mrs. Benedict about the course of her day. What could the woman possibly say in answer? “Well, I pressed your laundry, polished your silver and then oversaw the preparation of your meals.” No doubt Mr. Turner thought this meal would be a perfect opportunity to impose upon Margaret. She suppressed a grim smile.

The classes didn’t mix.

At one time, she might have thought that with haughty self-assurance, content in her own superiority. Now, she understood it as a bleak truth. Every lady of her acquaintance had stopped answering her letters—even Elaine who had once clung shyly to her side.

The walls of the dining hall were decorated with the portraits of dukes from ages past. Even her own ancestors would look down their noses at her, if they could see her through their painted eyes.

But she hardly fit with the servants. She was both mistress and supplicant, nurse and daughter of the house. She was isolated from everyone. It might have been petty of her, but she was glad that Mr. Turner was about to taste some of that same bitter solitude.

There was not the slightest indication on Mr. Turner’s face that he knew the tangle that awaited him. His valet had arrived in the servants’ coach and had turned him out splendidly. Those broad shoulders were only emphasized by his navy blue coat. His dark hair was rumpled almost perfectly, and the crisp lines of his cravat formed the perfect contrast with his easy manner. He was far too handsome for his own good.

Handsome or not, he’d soon discover that the boundaries of rank and privilege could not be superseded by decree, no matter how warm the accompanying smile. It didn’t matter where anyone ate. Servants were still servants. Bastards were still bastards.

But nobody had informed Mr. Turner of this incontrovertible fact. As the footmen placed wide bowls of celery soup before them, he turned towards Mrs. Benedict. The housekeeper was seated at his honored right. When Margaret had dined with her family, they’d used the entire expanse of their long dining room table. Mr. Turner, apparently, had asked for other arrangements. This table had been procured, and it felt small and close and uncomfortable, as if they were attending a crowded dinner party. Without the party.

“Mrs. Benedict,” Mr. Turner said as the footmen whisked the covers off the green soup, “I was thinking of investing in cotton, and I wished to ask you a few things.”

“Oh.” Mrs. Benedict’s face turned red. “Mr. Turner, I know how to dose a goose with castor oil, and I have a secret formula to get the shine back into silver. Investment—” she pronounced the word gingerly, as if holding up a dirty handkerchief “—that’s not for the likes of me.”

Inwardly, Margaret nodded.

“You want to talk to one of your peers, or a solicitor. I’m just a simple housekeeper.”

Mr. Turner picked up a spoon. “Nonsense. It is precisely your opinion I want. Men of my station would simply sniff and tell me nobody of good breeding wears cotton, and not to bother with it. But there’s money to be made if I ignore the gentry’s prejudice. I could sell five hundred times the amount to people like you. You are important.”

As Mr. Turner spoke, Margaret could see a change pass over Mrs. Benedict. She unfolded her arms. Her eyes widened. By the time Mr. Turner favored her with his final, brilliant smile, the woman had a soft, foolish grin in place.

“Well.” She fiddled with the cutlery and looked up. “There’s rags to start. Cotton—it absorbs water, and so I’ve used it for dishcloths.”

Mr. Turner nodded. “Go on.” He tasted his soup and looked back at Mrs. Benedict, focusing on her as if she were the only person in the universe. She continued, tentatively at first, and then with greater confidence. As she spoke, Mr. Turner leaned towards the housekeeper, his gaze riveted on her. Every aspect of his face said the same thing: You matter. You are important. Your observations are valuable.

It stung. Not just that Mr. Turner ignored Margaret; her pride had been beaten down enough over the past few months that such a slight would hardly even tickle. No. It stung that she was wrong. It stung that he could transition from a man who could court votes in Parliament, to someone who could sit down and talk to a servant and find his welcome. That he should belong everywhere with everyone, while she had no place with anyone.

Mr. Benedict and Mrs. Turner progressed from the topic of cotton to the mill in the village, and from there to tenant farmers. Margaret was so used to her father’s style of autocratic demand. Every word he voiced was a command. It came out a shout, as if he had to rail to be heard above the cacophony of a wide and clamorous world. Mr. Turner spoke quietly, but everyone strained forwards to hear his words.

Even Margaret.

He was good at winning others over, she realized. It did not augur well for her future. What would happen when he brought this smiling bonhomie to bear on the members of the House of Lords who would decide the question of legitimacy? Richard might scream and protest and threaten, but it was not often the lords got to choose their own members. Had she no personal stake in the matter, she would have chosen Mr. Turner, too.

She stared grimly ahead of her. Her soup was replaced with creamed peas; peas were followed by fresh-caught fish, and fish by roast beef. She watched the plates stream by, unable to do more than take a few forkfuls of food. If her brother was not legitimized, the vast bulk of the family’s entailed inheritance would fall to Mr. Turner. She had no illusions about her relative importance. Her two brothers would lay claim to whatever scraps remained.

She could feel all her hopes for the future dissolving in the wake of his damnable likeableness.

Mrs. Benedict spread her hands, continuing a conversation Margaret had ceased to follow. “There’s always been land disputes, sir.”

“I’ll talk to them, then.” Mr. Turner spoke as if any problems would simply be concluded with a bit of plain speaking. Likely, Margaret thought bitterly, with him, they would be. Life seemed to rain gifts on this man. Wealth. Station. Legitimacy.

Margaret didn’t think she would have dared to dislike him, had he not taken so much from her. She looked away, feeling petty.

“Miss Lowell. You have my apologies. We’re boring you.”

Her eyes cut back to him. “No. Of course not.”

“Yes, we are. It’s either that or we’re upsetting you. I won’t stand for either. Come now. What is it?”

“It’s just…” She searched for an answer that would satisfy him. But as she looked into his face, all thoughts of lies disappeared. “You are the most cheerfully ruthless individual I have ever met.”

A big grin spread over his face, and he gave a guffaw. “Cheerfully ruthless! I like that. Should I adopt it as my motto? Would it look well on my coat of arms? Mark, how do you say ‘cheerfully ruthless’ in Latin?”

“Nequam quidem sumus,” his brother intoned. It was the first he’d spoken all evening, and he said the words dreamily. Up until that point, she’d thought he was the fine young scholar that he appeared—a little distracted, and wiry-thin. But Margaret had spent time around her brothers when they came home from Eton—enough to recognize a few words of impolite Latin. She choked.

Mark looked across the table at her, all blond good looks, and dropped her a wink. Margaret revised her estimate of him from “painfully serious scholar” to “mischievous schoolboy.”

“Alas,” the elder Mr. Turner said, “that lacks a certain panache.”

“Don’t you know Latin?” Margaret asked in surprise.

“Never went to school.” He leaned back in his chair. “Never had the time for it. I went to India with a hundred and fifty pounds in my pocket, determined at fourteen to make my fortune. But Mark’s the scholar now.” He turned to his brother, and it was obvious from every line on his face, from the fierce smile that overtook him, that this was no idle boast. No matter what his brother might have said in Latin. “Did you know that he’s writing a book?”

“Ash,” Mark said, with all the unease of a younger brother being praised.

“His essays have been published in the Quarterly Review; did you know that? Three of them, now.”

“Ash.”

“The queen herself quoted from one not two months prior. I had that from a friend.”

“Ash.” The younger Mr. Turner ducked his head and put his hand in front of his face. “Don’t listen to him. It was frippery. Pretty language, but nothing original. Nothing to be really pleased about. Besides, she didn’t even remember my name.”

“She will.” There was a glow in Mr. Turner’s eyes. “When you’re the brother of a duke? She’ll know your name, your birth date and the number of teeth you had pulled at eleven years of age.”

Mr. Turner leaned forwards, as if speaking a vow.

And, she realized, he was.

Margaret felt the bottom fall out of her stomach. This was what he wanted—not her father’s estate, nor his title, nor even the revenge he’d spoken about. This was where all that ruthless intensity concentrated: on his brother.

And Mark, for all his teasing, accepted this as his due. He simply took, as a matter of course, that his brother loved him, that he might tease him in Latin and receive this…this powerful endorsement. Mr. Turner would never call his brother useless. Of all the things that the Turners had and Margaret lacked, this camaraderie seemed the most unfair.

“Yes,” he said, catching her look. “More of my cheerful ruthlessness, I’m afraid. And now you know my greatest weakness: my brothers. I want to give them everything. I want everyone in the world to realize how perfect they are. They are smarter than me, better than me. And I’ll do anything—cross anyone, steal anything, destroy whatever I must—to give them what they deserve.”

Margaret dropped her eyes from that fervor. She felt strangely small and intensely jealous.

She had never felt that sort of ardor about anything—or anyone—in her life. The table seemed even tinier in that large room, a tiny craft adrift on a wide sea of parquet. Behind her, the stares of her painted ancestors bored into her back.

She drew in a deep breath and turned to his younger brother. He looked a little embarrassed at that out-burst—but not surprised or uncomfortable. Just as if his brother had ruffled his hair.

“So, Mr. Mark Turner. What is this book you’re writing?”

He leaned back in his chair. “Just Mark will do. It’ll be confusing enough if you have to call us both Turner.”

Both the Turners were rather too casual. But as a servant, Margaret could hardly object. She inclined her head in acknowledgment.

“I’m writing about chastity.”

She waited for him to guffaw. Or even to give her that mischievous grin again, signaling this was another of his schoolboy pranks.

He didn’t.

“Chastity?” she repeated weakly.

“Chastity.”

He hadn’t said it as one would expect to hear the word—with serious overtones, in a humble, reverent voice. He said it with a sparkle in his eye and a lift to his mouth, as if chastity were the best thing in the world. Margaret had met a great many of her brother’s friends. This was not an attitude that was common among young gentlemen. Quite the opposite.

“You see,” he continued, “the focus in all the works on chastity to date has often been so philosophical that it fails to engage the general populace on a moral level. My goal is to start with a practical approach, and…” He trailed off, with the air of someone realizing that his enthusiasm for a subject was not matched by those around him. “It’s enormously exciting.”

“I can see that.”

Mr. Mark Turner was the same age as Edmund, a few years younger than Richard. She couldn’t imagine her brothers—or any of their friends—writing a philosophical defense of chastity. They likely couldn’t even speak the word without laughing.

Her lip curled in memory.

“Chastity,” said the elder Mr. Turner in a dry voice, “is not one of the things I’d planned for my younger brother to embrace.”

An uncomfortable silence settled over the table. The two men exchanged level glances. What was encoded in those looks, Margaret could not say.

“This isn’t a conversation for mixed company,” Mrs. Benedict put in.

Mark shook himself and looked away. “Too true. Alas, my work is by necessity aimed at men. If I were to write about chastity for women, it would no doubt slant towards a different sort of practicality.”

“Oh?” Margaret asked.

“Don’t encourage him,” Mr. Turner warned. “When he has that gleam in his eye, no good can come of it.”

Margaret turned to Mark. “Consider yourself encouraged.”

Beside her, Mr. Turner made a noise of exasperation.

“I was thinking more of a compendium. ‘Places to strike a man so as to best preserve one’s virtue.’”

“What?” said Mr. Turner. “There’s more than the one?”

“Gentlemen,” pleaded Mrs. Benedict, but to no avail.

“What do you say, Miss Lowell? Would ladies have any interest in such a guide?” Mark smiled at her. “Ash tells me you’ve no family to speak of. Does that mean no brother has ever taught you to defend yourself?”

Edmund had taken her aside when she turned fourteen and advised her that if she kept her legs and her mouth clamped shut, she might land a marquess. That had been the end of his helpful advice. She shook her head.

The lines about Mark’s eyes softened. “Well, then I’ll have to show you.” He shot a glance at his brother across the table and smiled again—this time, more impishly. “After all, I have no problem if my brother is forced to embrace chastity.” He picked up his fork, applying himself to the meat in front of him as if no further conversation were necessary.

Perhaps he’d not fully realized what he’d implied with those careless words.

By the dour look in Mr. Turner’s eyes, and the slow shake of his head, his brother was not amused.

Margaret heard both the words and the meaning behind them. So much for Mr. Turner’s vaunted honor, his claim that he wouldn’t prey upon a woman alone. The realization turned the bite of turnip in her mouth to charcoal. They’d talked about her already, as brothers were wont to do. In the space of one day, Mr. Turner had already made plans to seduce her—plans so firm, he’d shared them with his younger brother. She’d heard Edmund speaking with his friends often enough, discussing this widow or that willing wife, when they didn’t know she could hear their conversation.

No doubt Mr. Turner thought she would fall into his bed. Women probably did, for him. That relentless pull tugged her now, even when she wasn’t looking at him. Women laid their hearts at the feet of men like him—a man so ruthlessly intense as to take one’s breath away, and cheerful enough to make one laugh while he did it.

But then, for all his cheerful intensity, he’d aimed that ruthlessness at her before.

A year ago, she’d been the belle of the ball, the toast of the town, a diamond of the first water, engaged to a peer of the realm. She’d been the closest thing to a princess that there was.

Then Ash Turner had intruded in her life. She had been nothing but an afterthought to him, if that. Still, the toast had been charred by the fire; the diamond had turned out to be carved ice, destined to melt in the first heat of gossip.

He’d robbed her of her name, her dowry, her everything. If after all of that, Mr. Turner thought he would get one scrap of affection from her, he was badly mistaken.

ASH NEEDED TO HAVE a conversation with his brother about discretion.

After that first frozen stare, half horror, half betrayal, Miss Lowell had simply stopped looking at him. And that, Ash decided, was a very, very bad thing. The pudding came—a mercy to kill the conversation—and she sat in place at table, moving the mixed fruit and cream about with her spoon. Her lips pinched together and her complexion went from pale pink and animated to gray and closed.

There was a gold chain around her neck. The necklace disappeared into the high neck of her gown, weighted into a narrow V, as if there were some heavy locket suspended on it. He felt a hint of jealousy, wondering who had given it to her, and what she might hold inside it.

No doubt she was wondering how to fight him off. That made him feel like some sordid roué, thinking of nothing but his own pleasure. But as little as he’d been in polite company, even Ash knew better than to issue a clarification. “No, Miss Lowell,” Ash could imagine himself saying, “I would never force myself on you. I mean to seduce you into willingness. That’s all.” That would get him a fork stabbed through his hand, by the black look she gave her pudding.

Thank God the knives had been removed along with the beef.

She finished moving the fruit around her plate. Supper was breaking apart—Mark made the customary excuses on behalf of the gentlemen—and still she’d not met his eyes. This was wrong. He couldn’t let it continue.

When she left, he followed her. They had barely reached the landing of the stairs before she turned on him. There was a ferocious light in her eyes, and he held up his hands to show he intended her no harm.

“Miss Lowell. I’m afraid my brother has given you the wrong impression.”

She let out a puff of air. “I know how gentlemen talk when they are amongst themselves,” she said dismissively. “Don’t imagine you can hide it.”

By “gentlemen,” she likely meant men like Richard and Edmund Dalrymple. Ash could just imagine what those worthless parasites would have said about a too-pretty nurse, with her too-kissable lips and that alabaster skin. No doubt there’d been other indignities visited upon her when they’d been in residence. That was likely the reason Mrs. Benedict had thought it necessary to establish rules of conduct from the beginning. Neither of those worthless boys had ever understood concepts like honor or consent. Ash felt a current of anger go through him, just imagining the importunities that might have been visited upon her. He wasn’t like them.

“No,” he said curtly. “I don’t think you know what I’m like.”

“You want to take a kiss. You want to take me to your bed. And you’ve boasted to your brother that you’ll do it. Don’t prevaricate, Mr. Turner. You want what every so-called gentleman wants.”

“You don’t know what I want.” His voice sounded hoarse and he found himself looking at her. She was just the right height for him—tall enough that he might simply tip her head back and take that kiss, without even asking.

“Oh?” Her voice echoed with scorn.

He stepped towards her. For all her brave words, her eyes widened. But she didn’t move when he reached out to her. She stood her ground, her expression stoic, as if his touch were just one more burden to be endured.

What had happened to her, that she didn’t even flinch when he touched her shoulders? He ran his finger lightly along the line of her gold chain, tracing it back along her collarbone to the nape of her neck.

“If this is your idea of a prelude to seduction,” she said haughtily, “all you’ve managed to do is make my skin crawl.”

Ash doubted that was true, by the slow change in her breathing. He undid the hook his fingers found in the necklace and slid the chain from her neck. It was heavy; the expected locket came from between her breasts as he pulled the chain. It was a surprisingly well-made piece, ornate and with a hint of aged tarnish that suggested it was an heirloom.

She snatched for it, but he turned swiftly, holding it away from her.

He wondered whose face he might see if he were to undo the catch of the locket. He didn’t want to know. If it were Richard, or worse, Edmund…

“Give it back.” She grabbed again.

He fished in his waistcoat pocket with his free hand until he found the bounty he’d received earlier that day.

“This,” he said holding up the prize, “is the master key to the manor. I received it from Mrs. Benedict just this afternoon. It unlocks every door here. Including, presumably, yours.”

He held it up by its iron shank and slid the gold chain of her locket through the bow made by the sword. When he let go, the key slid down the necklace and clanged against her locket. She jumped. He reached for her hand and piled the whole thing in her palm—chain, locket and key.

“I don’t want to take a kiss,” he said. “I don’t want to take you to bed.” He closed her hand about the locket, pressing her fingers into it. “I don’t want to take anything from you. Do you understand?”

She swallowed and shook her head.

“I want you to give me a kiss. I want you to forget the idiot man who gave you this and then walked away, leaving you alone.” He squeezed the hand that held her locket. “I want you to know that if you don’t wish to kiss me, you can rid yourself of me with this simple expedient. Look me in the eyes and say, ‘Ash, I have no desire to be your sordid love slave.’ And I will simply walk away. Go ahead. Try it.”

She met his gaze. “Mr. Turner—”

He brought his hand to her lips, not touching her, but close enough that her breath warmed his fingers. “No good. You at least have to call me Ash.”

She pulled away from him, playing with a strand of hair that had escaped the knot atop her head. Even bound together, that mass of dark hair made an impressive coil. If she brushed it loose, it might reach her waist.

“Come now,” he said. “Such a little thing I’m asking for.”

“What kind of a Christian name is Ash?” She shook her head. “What is wrong with Luke or John or Adam?”

This was not something he wanted to talk about. “It’s not my Christian name. It’s a…a use name. Of a sort.” His mother had given all her children full Bible verses for names. Telling her the mouthful of a name he’d been born with would simply take too long. “I don’t have a Christian name. I have…” Ash paused, frowning. “I have a label, recorded in a parish register. And it’s of no moment. Everyone who knows me calls me Ash. If you are going to refuse to be my love slave, you should at least do me the honor of not Mr. Turnering me.”

She looked up at him from behind wisps of hair that had fallen from her knot. For the first time that evening, he caught a glimpse of one hint of a dimple, an unwilling smile that quirked her lips. That amusement was a fragile, delicate thing, as insubstantial as moonlight on water. He held his breath, waiting. But she dispelled it with a shake of her head.

“It’s too familiar. People will say—” She stopped, and ran one hand down the serviceable fabric of her dress. “They’ll say I’m reaching above my station.”

He shrugged to hide his appalled reaction. Miss Lowell had fire. She had intelligence. She had an almost haunting beauty. And yet she wouldn’t reach above what she saw as her station? What a monstrous waste.

Whoever was in that locket had a lot to answer for.

“I am going to guess,” he said quietly, “that you’ve heard about your station all your life. That you’ve been told, over and over, what you can and cannot do because of some foolish accident of your birth.”

Her nostrils flared, and her fingers clenched around the key he’d given her.

Ash continued. “What do they know? Do they hear the secret dreams you whisper in the dark of the night? Don’t let your station in life strangle you.”

Her bosom held motionless, as if she didn’t dare exhale.

“If I never so much as breathe against the skin of your wrist, I want you to forget what you’ve been told.”

Her hand had gone to her wrist as he spoke, as if she felt the heat of his breath there.

“So call me Ash,” he said with a smile. “Call me Ash, not for me, but as a small defiance. Call me Ash because you deserve it. Because your station is just so many words in a parish register, not a sentence of death.”

She swallowed and swayed towards him—not even an inch, but still, she moved. Ash stood very still, willing her closer. She opened her lips a fraction and wet them. His blood stirred at the sight of the pink of her tongue.

“Ash.” She breathed the word as if it were the last name on earth. He stood there, almost tipsy at the sound of it on her lips. Yes. Yes.

“Yes?” His own voice was hoarse.

She looked him in the eyes. And he saw there every last scrap of strength, every inch of backbone that he desired. She drew herself up straight. He could almost taste her on his tongue.

“Ash,” she repeated more firmly. “I have no desire to be your sordid love slave. Now leave me alone.”

CHAPTER FOUR

THE SUN WAS SO HOT at noon the next day that waves rose from the track in front of her, blurring the small town two miles distant into indistinct smudges of brown. Margaret’s hairpins bit into her scalp like aggressive little insects.

She’d composed a letter to her brother last night. When they’d first come up with this plan, they’d imagined that Margaret would see Mr. Turner only in passing and would have just the servants’ gossip to send on. But she’d filled pages with her account of that first evening. After she’d penned a factual account of the day, she’d added the following:

None of this captures the essence of the man. For all his mercenary tradesmanlike mannerisms, Ash Turner is far more dangerous than we believed, for a reason that will not sound sinister when I write it: he makes people like him. Think on what that will mean when he addresses the Members of Parliament who will vote on the question.

This letter to her brother was now tucked into the inner pocket of her mantle, the hard corners of the paper poking her ribs in tangible reminder. She had stayed behind because her family needed her. Because when Parliament resumed in mid-November, it would debate whether to pass a bill granting her family the extraordinary remedy of legitimacy.

Her role here had been simple when they’d conceived it: she was to document Mr. Turner’s every failing. She would transcribe letters, dictated by her father, adding her own observations. These observations would demonstrate that Mr. Turner was unfit to manage the estate. The evidence would be collected, collated and sent to the lords in the autumn, when her brothers presented their petition.

Margaret had thought sending a letter would be as simple as asking her father to frank it and leaving it on the front table with the remainder of the post. She hadn’t truly thought through her deception. Had Mr. Turner been bent on sport or drink as her brothers were, simplicity would have sufficed. But what seemed like half his office had arrived this morning—a regular cadre of sober businessmen who had taken over one of the gatehouses. They were all dedicated to serving Mr. Turner, and they were constantly coming and going. Any one of those men might see her leaving the letter in the hall. They would wonder why a simple nurse was writing to the Dalrymple brothers. She’d had little choice but to carry the letter into town, where the vicar’s wife would assist her.

The walk had already proved hot and uncomfortable.

But halfway to the village, the sullen summer silence was marred by hoofbeats. Hoofbeats were not a good sign. Margaret pulled her bonnet ribbons about her chin. With her brothers gone, only the Turners would be about on horseback, riding on Parford land. And somehow, she didn’t imagine that Mr. Mark Turner—gentle, sweet Mark who wrote about chastity—had sought her out. That would have been too easy.

The horse cantered into view, coming around a bend in the hedge.

Of course it had to be the elder of the two brothers. The taller one. The larger one. The dangerous one. Of course she had to be set upon by the man who’d destroyed her life. And of course it happened at the precise moment when the last of the starch deserted the collar of her gown. Mr. Turner looked as if he’d no notion that the sun shone overhead. No sweat beaded on his forehead; no flush of heat colored his cheeks as he rode up beside her and slowed his horse to a walk. He manufactured no polite excuse for his presence. Instead, he looked her up and down, from her dusty half-boots to the drooping bonnet on her head. And then he smiled.

“Am I intruding?” he asked.

“You’re always intruding.” Simple truth.

“Ah.” He spoke with a faintly puzzled air, as if nothing could have left him more confused than a woman who didn’t know she was supposed to kneel down and kiss his feet at the first sign of his interest. No doubt he was befuddled for good reason. Had she truly been the woman she appeared—an illegitimate servant—she would no doubt have found him very nice indeed. A lowborn nurse would not have cared that his money had been made in trade, that the title he stood to inherit had been won through legal machinations.

And, Margaret had to add, in truth he didn’t strike her as the typically gauche nabob, flush with sudden wealth. He carried his wealth so confidently one almost didn’t notice it was new. Margaret adjusted her bonnet again. But as she pulled it up an inch, her hairpins poked her neck once more.

“You do realize,” he said, “you are allowed to speak to me.”

“I can’t possibly. You’re kicking up dust. I can scarcely breathe, let alone carry on a conversation.”

It wasn’t true. There’d been a fine rain last night, which had left the ground moist and springy—not so wet as to be muddy, but not so dry as to toss up clouds of dirt.

He didn’t contradict her obvious lie, however. Instead, his smile broadened. “If I take you up on my horse, no doubt you’ll breathe more freely.”

Just the thought of being lifted onto that beast made her lungs tighten. He would set her before him. She would feel his thighs pressing into her, his hands straying against her body… No. She’d never been one for foot kissing. She wasn’t about to start now.

“Why do you persist in saying these things?” she asked. “I have been perfectly clear on the matter. A true gentleman wouldn’t wait for a second dismissal.”

“No.” His voice filled with a dark humor. “A gentleman would have just taken you to bed to begin with, without bothering to ask for permission. Luckily for you, I was too busy making my own way in the world to learn to be a gentleman.” He tossed his head back. “If you want to know why I keep pestering you, it’s because you remind me of Laurette.”

“Laurette?” Margaret repeated the name with distaste. It sounded tawdry, the sort of half-Frenchified affectation a mistress would adopt. “I doubt it can be quite proper for you to speak of her.”

“I met her in India.” His eyes sparked at her in amusement, as if he knew precisely how discomfited she was. “I kept her for a little more than a year, before I realized she needed more than I was able to give.”

“Mr. Turner.” She could imagine Laurette now—a beautiful Indian woman, her skin dark, her limbs entangled with his. And why, oh, why did that image fill her with heat instead of disgust? Another yank of her bonnet strings, but this adjustment served only to drive the pins harder into her scalp.

He grinned at her discomfort. “It’s Ash, if you recall, not Mr. Turner. As for Laurette, at first she was wary, but as time went on, she came to sleep with me at nights.”

“Mr. Turner! I won’t listen to this.” She put her hands over her ears, but she could not keep out the sound of his voice.

“When she was young, I had to cut her meat into very small cubes. Even then, though, her teeth were needle-sharp. My hands were perpetually in bandages.”

Margaret stopped dead in the path. Her hands fell to her side. The sensual image that had persisted in her head disappeared in a swirl of impossibility, just as Laurette grew tiny fangs. An unpredictable bubble of laughter almost escaped her, before she managed to convert it into a mere disbelieving puff of air. “Mr. Turner,” she said, investing his name with all the starchy scorn she could muster. Under the circumstances, it wasn’t much.

Mr. Turner drew up his horse a few paces ahead. He wheeled to face her, his eyes bright. “Yes. That was very bad of me. Laurette was a tiger. I was…accompanying a man who shot her mother for sport. He took the pelt and left the cub barely able to feed herself. It took me hours of searching before I finally found her hiding in the underbrush. She was the tiniest thing—barely the size of a ship’s cat. And she looked into my eyes from the bramble with the most baleful glare. What I thought was if I could win this magnificent creature’s regard, it would truly mean something.”

On those last words, he looked into Margaret’s eyes. For just one second, Margaret wished she were the sort to tumble into love over a pair of handsome brown eyes and a lovely set of shoulders. That she could ignore who she was—who he was—and what he’d done. But she couldn’t.

Maybe he could manufacture the ring of sincerity in his voice, could manipulate the warm directness of his gaze. But it didn’t matter even if he meant what he said.

He might make her forget the itch of her hairpins. But when he left, they would still be there, piercing her scalp. He couldn’t change reality, and she wouldn’t forget.

She glanced up at him reluctantly. “What happened after you found the cub, then?”

“I reached for her. She bit me.” He smiled, looking off into the distance. “It was worth it.”

She had to look away, as well. More dangerous, even, than those piercing brown eyes was that implied compliment. He’d just told her that she was worth it—she and all her prickles.

And he hadn’t said it because he wanted sixty thousand pounds in the five-percents. Nor because she was the key to forging an alliance with an old, noble family. No; he could have any of the other women who no doubt had signaled their willingness to kiss his feet. Instead, he’d chosen to pursue her. And no matter how impure his motives, she felt all the force of that compliment. Not going to her head, like bubbles of champagne, but sinking deep into her skin.

She tugged on her bonnet strings again. “Is that how you see me? Wild? Savage?”

“Fierce. Protective. Implacable when angered, but I believe your affection can be earned. And you’ve been hiding in a veritable thicket of rules made for you by society. You’re cribbed about by the requirements of gentility, when genteel society has never done you any favors. Why do you even wear a bonnet, when you hate it so?”

Margaret sniffed, her hair pins itching once more. “I don’t know what you could mean,” she said untruthfully. How had he known?

“You’ve tugged on your bonnet strings five times in this conversation already. Why wear one, if it’s so uncomfortable? Have you any reason for it, other than that it is what everyone else does?”

“I brown terribly in the sunlight. I’ll develop freckles.”

“Oh, no. That sounds awful.” He spoke with exaggerated solicitude, but he leaned down from his horse until his nose was a bare foot from hers. “Freckles. And what do those dastardly spots portend? Are freckled people thrown in prison? Pilloried? Covered in tar and sprinkled with tiny little down feathers?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

He moved his hand in a lazy circle, ending with it stretched towards her, palm out. As if to say, explain why.

“Pale skin—a white complexion—is superior,” Margaret said. “I don’t know why I am defending a proposition everyone knows to be true.”

“Because I don’t know it.” Mr. Turner slid his finger under her chin. “Yet another reason why I am glad I am not a gentleman. Do you know why my peers want their brides to have pale skin?”

She was all too aware of the golden glow of vitality emanating from him. She could feel the warmth in his finger. She shouldn’t encourage him. Still, the word slipped out. “Why?”

“They want a woman who is a canvas, white and empty. Standing still, existing for no other purpose than to serve as a mute object onto which they can paint their own hopes and desires. They want their brides veiled. They want a demure, blank space they can fill with whatever they desire.”

He tipped her chin up, and the afternoon sunlight spilled over the rim of her bonnet, touching her face with warmth.

“No.” Margaret wished she could snatch that wavering syllable back. But what he said was too true to be borne, and nobody knew it better than she. Her own wants and desires had been insignificant. She’d been engaged to her brother’s friend before her second season had been halfway over. She’d been a pale, insipid nothing, a collection of rites of etiquette and rules of precedent squashed into womanly form and given a dowry.

His voice was low. “Damn their bonnets. Damn their rules.”

“What do you want?” Her hands were shaking. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“Miss Lowell, you magnificent creature, I want you to paint your own canvas. I want you to unveil yourself.” He raised his hand to her cheek and traced the line of warm sunshine down her jaw. That faint caress was hotter and more dizzying than the relentless sun overhead. She stood straight, not letting herself respond, hoping that her cheeks wouldn’t flush.

You matter. You are important. He was doing it again, but this time, he was doing it to her. He was subverting some deep part of her as easily as he’d won over Mrs. Benedict. What he’d whispered seemed more intimate than the touch of his glove against her cheek. It wasn’t fair that this man, this one man who had utterly destroyed her, would be the one to pick her deepest desire out of the maelstrom of her wants.

“Am I asking so much, then? I only want you to think of yourself.”

“That’s sophistry. You know you have your sights set on a great deal more.”

He smiled in wry acquiescence. “For now, Miss Lowell, I’d be happy with nothing more from you than a little defiance.”

She looked up into his dark eyes. A little defiance, he called it. Just a little defiance, to believe that she mattered.

But she needed more than a little defiance to call upon now. She couldn’t let this continue. A few more days of this, and he might begin to convince her of his sincerity. When he looked at her with that fierce light in his eyes, she could almost feel the world bending about him. She could feel herself drifting to land at his feet, ready to do his bidding. If he continued to pay her those extravagant compliments, she might actually start to believe him.

She took his hand where it touched her cheek and moved it firmly to rest against the buff fabric of his breeches.

“Mr. Turner, you fail to understand.”

He lifted one eyebrow, and Margaret stood up straight and glared at him. “I’m not a cat. I’m not a canvas. And I’m certainly not about to become an enterprise for you to cosset and charm into docility. You want a little defiance?”

His head cocked at an angle, as if he couldn’t believe the words she was saying.

“Good,” she said. “Then you may try this: leave me alone. For good. Don’t talk to me. Don’t browbeat me. And for God’s sake, don’t try to seduce me.”

He looked at her quizzically. For a second, she thought she’d pushed him too far. She was sure that his pleasant manner would evaporate into scorn. That he would force that kiss on her, no matter what he’d said before.

Instead, he sat back on his horse, touched his hat and disappeared down the track.

IT HAD BEEN MORE than a week since Ash had been sent on his way, but Miss Lowell was never far from his thoughts—or indeed, from his person. Right now, in fact, she was a mere two rooms away. He could sense her presence, tantalizingly close.

“No. Keep your elbow tucked close to your side.” His brother’s instruction wafted down from the hall, both enticing and damnably irritating.

Ash stared at the pages in front of him, more determined than ever to concentrate on the letters before him and to block out the vision that came to mind with those words. He couldn’t see Mark, but his voice carried. Ash could just imagine what was happening at that moment.

“Like this?” Miss Lowell’s response.

“Yes, better. Now bring it up. Quickly, now.”

Ash envisioned his brother standing in the parlor. He could stand behind Miss Lowell, his fingers wrapping about her hand. Sometimes, he thought that Miss Lowell had accepted Mark’s offer to teach her to defend against a man just to drive Ash mad. He was certain Mark had offered with that exact end in mind.

Brothers. Ash shook his head.

Ash wished he’d had the bright idea to teach Miss Lowell how to hit a man. There were so many opportunities for touching. But then, that was why she would never have accepted. Not from him. Not yet, at least. Everything worth having, he reminded himself, was worth waiting for. Every day that passed in which he did not importune her worked in his favor. She would learn that he could be trusted, that he wasn’t going to harm her. That wariness would eventually leave her eyes. Patience won all battles, revealed all secrets. If he could figure out how to reach her once…

Instead, Mark was the one reaching her. Or, rather, being Mark—he was not reaching her at all.

Because Mark wouldn’t take advantage of any of those delightful opportunities to fold his hands around hers. Ash had purposefully walked by the parlor during Mark’s lessons several times this past week. He’d walked as if he hadn’t cared one whit about what his brother was doing with Miss Lowell. Still, he’d managed to ascertain a great deal from the corner of his eye.

They’d thrown open the broad double doors, for propriety’s sake. So far as Ash could tell, Mark had never laid so much as a fingernail on Miss Lowell. Instead, he stood a proper three yards distant. Two of the upstairs maids had joined them—at first, to serve as reluctant chaperones. But as the days had passed, they’d joined in earnest as giggling participants. If Ash judged the matter right, the maids were giggling, willing participants, who wished Mark would do more than instruct.

It was just like Mark, to be surrounded by women, and yet to take no advantage.

Ash wasn’t sure if he was more annoyed at Mark, for stealing time with the woman who had riveted his attention, or jealous of Miss Lowell herself. After all, he’d planned these weeks as a way to spend time with his younger brother. A way to build common experience, to finally forge a connection that would bridge the many differences between them. But when Mark wasn’t teaching Miss Lowell effective ways to bring a man down, he buried himself to his neck in books. The summer contained no horseback ambles across wide fields, no lazy trips to the river armed with fish hooks and bait. There were no evenings spent drinking port and discussing politics.

No; the only place Ash ever met his brother was here in the library. And to put it mildly, libraries had never been Ash’s specialty. In point of fact, he would rather dig a well for Parford Manor using a spoon made of cheese than read about—he turned the volume over in his hands—Practical Agriculture. Looking at the table of contents alone made him feel exhausted. An incipient headache formed at his temples. But he stayed here with the damned book, because when Mark was finished with Miss Lowell, he would come into the library. And before his brother threw himself headlong into his work, Ash would have a narrow opportunity to speak with him.

So he sat here, pretending to make sense of subtitles on soil.

It was another fifteen minutes before he heard Mark bidding Miss Lowell farewell. She left first, walking past. She didn’t even glance into the library as she went by. It had been like that for nine days, now. Ever since he’d talked to her on the path, she had flatly ignored him. For nine days, he’d been forced to listen to the two most interesting people on the estate make friends with each other. Ash let out a small growl of frustration.

At that moment, Mark sauntered into the room. He took one look at Ash and shook his head.

“Don’t be ridiculous, older brother.” His voice was annoyingly cheerful. Ash was convinced he put on that bright expression on purpose, just to annoy him. He became even more sure when Mark leaned over the arm of his chair and favored him with a brilliant smile. “I’ve never even touched her, you know.”

“It hardly matters. Neither have I.”

“That was rather the point.” Mark pushed away from Ash’s seat and turned around. “Come now. Chastity builds character.”

Ash held back a rude noise. He’d wanted to spend time with his brother, not antagonize him further.

“If you must know,” Mark continued, “she reminds me of Hope.”

A brief band of pain constricted about Ash’s chest. “She’s nothing like Hope.” But his brother’s words brought to mind a picture of their sister, her hair long and dark, her smile fragile. It was an image he couldn’t forget, even had he wanted to. She should have been a grown woman now. She would have been, if Parford had acted when Ash begged him to do so.

“What do you remember of her, anyway?”

“Not enough. Her hands. Her laugh. I remember that after she died, everything seemed to change so quickly. It was as if she had been the gatekeeper to all that was good in the world, and with her gone…” Mark shrugged again. “But all that’s over. Still, I remember enough of the nightmare that followed to know that it’s a hellish thing to be alone in the world, unprotected.”

“Miss Lowell doesn’t need protection from me.”

“She’s employed by the Dalrymples, Ash. What do you suppose will happen to her when we leave and Richard and Edmund return? Do you fancy leaving her to their tender mercies, then?”

He hadn’t fancied leaving her behind at all. But if he said that, Mark would tease him all the more. “I hadn’t thought what would happen when we left,” Ash said stiffly.

“No. You wouldn’t.” Mark spoke this piece of brazen treachery with an utterly matter-of-fact manner.

Ash flinched. He could not make himself look away from his brother’s gaze. He spent half the days wishing Mark would talk to him. It was in moments like this that he wished to take it all back. He wished he could push his brother away. That he could forget what he had done to his brothers—or rather, what he hadn’t.

“Christ, Mark.”

“You don’t always think about others the way you should,” Mark said simply.

That criticism cut more deeply than the reference to Hope. Mark stated it so mildly, making the wound sting all the more. Mark’s gaze was as piercing as only someone who had survived the precise contours of one’s faults could be.

“I think about others every damned second of the day. It’s because of you that I’m here, after all, because of what I wanted to give you—”

“And still you stomp about, leaving little eddies of destruction in your wake.”

Hell. Guilt was bad enough, without having his brother point out his every flaw. Ash had been the one to solemnly swear that he would protect and defend the younger children. He had been the one who had nodded as his father told him that their mother was given to excess. He’d solemnly promised to temper her zeal.

He’d failed. A few years later, despite his best efforts, his sister had died. A few months after that, Ash had left for India, determined to make his fortune and thus undo everything their mother had done.

But he’d left his brothers behind. He would never be able to forget the sick sensation he’d felt when he found Mark and Smite on his return, pale and thin, alone on the streets of Bristol. It had made so much sense to leave them. But nothing he did could repair what had happened to them in his absence. They wouldn’t even talk of those years, not to him.

And that hadn’t been the only time he’d abandoned Mark. Just the first.

“Very well,” he said stiffly. “You are quite in the right. I should never have left. I failed Hope. I failed you.”

A puzzled look flitted across Mark’s face. “How is it that we are talking about me, then?”

“Every time I look at you, I recall how I’ve failed you. There. I’ve admitted it. Are you happy now?”

“Happy that you look at me and see failure?” Mark’s voice was tending towards scorn now, and his lip curled. “Hardly.”

Christ. He was cocking it up again. “I know you’re not a failure. You took a first at Oxford.”

“In case you hadn’t noticed,” Mark said hotly, “I’m a good deal more than that. Granville himself said I was the brightest student he’d seen in the thirty-five years he’d been in philosophy. And this—” Mark gestured at the pages that lay on the table in front of him “—this will show everyone what I can do. Even you, Ash. Even you. So don’t look at me and see failure. I haven’t failed anything.”

This had all gone horribly wrong. “Don’t get so upset, Mark. I’m not questioning your intelligence. Or your capabilities.”

“What are you questioning, then? It can’t be my principles, seeing as how you have none of your own to speak of.”

“Oh, it’s my principles you object to, then?” Ash felt the whole bitter weight of his responsibilities shift restlessly. He’d done everything for his brothers—everything. Mark was his principle. And if Ash’s hands were a little dirty, it was because he’d wanted to keep his brothers’ clean. “They’re a hell of a lot more honest than your own,” he snapped.

He wished he could take the words back as soon as he’d said them, because Mark actually gasped in surprise.

“What do you mean by that?”

Ash didn’t want to answer. He didn’t want to let Mark know that there was yet another barrier between them, another one of Ash’s many failures. But Mark gestured, and the words tripped out anyway.

“Maybe you’re too young to remember what it was like before father died, or what happened in those years afterwards. You might not remember the day Mother decided to take to heart the Biblical command that one should sell everything one had and give it all to the poor. Nice, in principle; in practice, it leaves your own children starving, housed in rat-infested penury. We lost everything we should have had—modest comfort, education. She traded a secure competence for some stupid words she didn’t even understand.”

“You’re the one who never understood Mother,” Mark said.

“As if I could. She was mad, Mark. Plain and simple.”

Mark’s lip curled. “There was nothing plain or simple about her insanity.”

“Maybe it doesn’t seem that way to you. But I was supposed to protect you—all of you. Her principles killed Hope. They almost killed you and Smite. And throughout it all, Mother clung to dead words in a dead book, paying no attention to the living around her. Maybe you can understand why I mislike the notion of my youngest brother clinging to more dead words. Maybe you can understand why I wince, knowing that my little brother, who spent his childhood with a woman who quite literally went mad with her principles, is spending the summers of his youth practicing the same sort of abstemious insanity that he grew up with. Do you want to know why I’ve failed you? Because I haven’t been able to save you from a woman who has been dead these past ten years. I haven’t saved you from anything.”

Mark stared at him, his hands curled into fists. “You don’t know anything,” he spat. “Not about me. Not about Mother. You can be such a great oaf sometimes.”

“Oaf? Is that the best insult the brightest student in thirty-five years of philosophy can muster? Call me a damned bastard. Curse me. Consider a little blasphemy, Mark. It would make me feel a great deal better, knowing you were capable of even a little sin.”

“Far be it from me to leave you unsatisfied. Ash, you can go to bloody hell. It is the height of hypocrisy for you to criticize what I choose to do with my time, when I know for a fact that you haven’t even bothered to read my work. Not one word.”

Despite the finality ringing in his voice, he looked at Ash with an expectant hope in his eyes. And Ash knew what his brother wanted. He wanted to be contradicted. Wanted Ash to spit out that he’d read the carefully bound essays his brother had so proudly sent to him over the years.

But Ash’s best effort—“I stumbled through the introductory paragraph, before I threw up my hands in despair”—would hardly mollify his brother. The truth choked him, and if it were to come out, it would destroy Ash’s last chance of forging any sort of connection with Mark.

When he remained silent, Mark shook his head. “I don’t know why I bother. Some days, I think Smite has the right of it.”

The final sally, and Ash had nothing to say in response. Mark swept his gaze around the room at his books, stacked in neat arrays along the table near the window. Finally, he picked the top two from the pile and walked out.

He didn’t even stamp his feet as he left.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.