Unveiled

“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.”