Unveiled

“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?”