Unveiled (5 page)

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.

 

A
SH 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.
”

T
HE 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.