Unveiled (8 page)

His eyes widened as they came to rest on her. He looked into her face for one long second before his eyes dropped down—down her dust-covered shift, the robe cinched simply at her waist. She felt naked before him.

His gaze felt as unwelcome as an invading army.

“Miss Lowell. What in God's name are you doing?”

He spoke as if it were
his
home, as if
she
were the interloper here. Of course he thought it true, under the circumstances. Still, bile gathered in her belly, and the tight knot in her chest squeezed even tighter. Who was he to question her? Who was he to interrupt her? He'd already taken her mother from her once. How dare he do it again? Her hands clutched around the heavy clods of dirt.

And then he took a step towards her.

It happened so fast that Margaret wasn't even sure where the impulse came from. But before the thought had a chance to form in her head, she acted. “Go away,” she hissed fiercely. “Get out. Get out
now.
” As she spoke, she pulled her hand back, swiftly, and hurled one of the clods of dirt she was holding directly at him. It flew through the air—suddenly everything seemed so slow—she wished she could grab back that violent, raging impulse, but it was already too late.

The clod smacked into his chest with a sick sound, like an axe splitting a pumpkin. In the light of the moon spilling through the glass, she could see clumps of dirt clinging to the luminous white of his shirt. His mouth opened slightly, in shocked betrayal. She felt just as stunned as he looked.

Oh, no. She hadn't really thrown it. She couldn't have done.

But she had. Ever so slowly, he raised one hand to brush particles from his eyes.

She was panting, her fist clenched around the other clod of dirt. The rage had slipped from her grasp, leaving her with only the cold certainty of what she had just done.

It wasn't his fault that her father had been a bigamist. It wasn't his fault her mother had been ill. It wasn't even his fault, really, that she was a bastard and her mother—her kind, gentle, graceful mother—had been made an adulteress. It wasn't his fault that she was so dreadfully alone, that her future seemed so dreary. It wasn't his fault.

It just
felt
as if it was.

He stood stock-still, as if she had turned him to stone when she struck him with that bit of soil.

What had she come to? How must this appear to him? She was wandering about the house—at night—in her shift and stockings, wielding a trowel and trying to find, hidden in this pot of dirt, a woman who had been buried in the churchyard months ago. He must suppose she teetered on the very brink of madness.

Not so far off, that. Deep inside her, for the first time in months, a knot dissolved and a well of emotion breached her rigid walls. It hit her with all the force of floodwaters, and it was only her determination not to
cry in front of this man that kept her from being submerged by the power of the riptide. With that undercurrent of hot anger gone from her, she could understand what the feeling was that pressed against her chest.

It was grief, almost crushing. She wanted her mother back. Instead, she'd gotten…him.

He still hadn't said a word to her. He didn't criticize; he didn't bellow in protest. She couldn't make out his eyes, but she could imagine him watching her in the dark. Those eyes would be cold and calculating.

Perhaps he was trying to figure out how to best use this moment to his advantage. He'd shown her respect before. No doubt in the morning, that would disappear. She had no idea what would take its place.

Finally, he raised one finger to tap his forehead, as if miming a gentlemanly tip of the hat. And he turned and left her alone, just as he'd done on that dusty road more than a week before.

The gesture had to have been meant sarcastically.

If she knew anything about men, she knew she would eventually pay the price for her foolish, unthinking reaction. A man as ruthless as he was would find a way to use her lapse to his advantage, to turn that single instance of violence into a repeated threat which he might hold over her head. Margaret's hands were shaking in the dirt. She felt on the verge of a fever. Still, she raised her chin and went back to her work—filling the pot with soil, patting it around the cutting, carefully continuing the work she had started.

Tonight, she had a new rose to plant. Payment could wait.

 

P
AYMENT WAITED A SCANT
fifteen minutes.

Margaret finished filling the pot with dirt and
reached for the cutting. A thorn pricked her thumb as she pulled the slender branch from the water, but she had traveled beyond pain and into numbness now. She patted it into place and gently arranged the soil around the stem.

The door opened again. Soft footfalls again—his, no doubt. A little shiver went down her spine, but she straightened her back. So he wasn't going to wait for morning to show her the ruthless side of his personality. No more benevolent, tolerant employer; no more sweet words whispered about her strength, her magnificence.

Margaret had few illusions about what would happen next. A man could put on any airs he wished when he had the desire to please. But strike a man in the middle of the chest after midnight, and all his cruelest impulses would come out. All she knew was that she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of weeping.

Now she would discover what sort of man Mr. Ash Turner really was. She could not bring herself to look up and meet his eyes. He crossed the room until he stood over her. In the night, he cast no shadows, but she could feel the darkness of him anyway, looming over her. She could feel the heat of his presence, as if he were a piece of solid iron recently removed from a blacksmith's fire. She concentrated on the dirt in the pot, patting it unnecessarily into place. Her skin prickled under his gaze; the hint of some sweet thing tickled her nose.

The gentle clop of clay set upon wood sounded. She blinked and looked up—not to his face, but to the surface of the table. He'd placed a cup on the bench before her. She stared at it, at his fingers on the handle. Fine hairs sprouted from the back of his wrist. His fingers
seemed strong and capable. Fragrant steam rose from the vessel.

Of all the ways she had imagined him taking revenge, this had not appeared on any of her lists.

Her gaze traveled up his waist, his chest. He'd changed his shirt, thank God; she wouldn't have to stare at a splotch of dirt marring his linen. Finally she met his eyes. “What is that?”

He pushed the mug towards her. “A toddy of steamed milk, honey and nutmeg. A jigger of rum, for good measure.”

“You woke the cook for this?”

“Mrs. Lorens? God, no. I can warm a little milk on the range myself.”

His arm returned to his side. Those hands could have been overpowering. Almost frightening in their strength, as ruthless as he was. She'd never thought before how gently he used them.

She swallowed.

“It's a remedy for sleeplessness,” he continued. “I used to make it for my brothers when I found them up and about at night.”

He spoke casually, as if the nocturnal lobbing of soil was a regular occurrence in the Turner household, one usually met with hot drinks and a comfortable discussion. She could almost see him, puttering by the cast-iron heating plates.

“And did you often find your brothers wandering about at night?”

His eyes glinted at her. “In the first few months when I was back from India? I found them living on the streets, you know. They'd almost forgotten how to sleep.”

“On the
streets?
A duke's cousins? That can't be correct.”

“Sixth cousins, twice removed. And while I am
correct,
it certainly was not right. Parford didn't care.” He spat those words out.

It took her a moment to realize that he wasn't angry at her. This wasn't some form of complicated revenge. She couldn't yet think what to say.

He shook his head. “Speaking of whom, I'll have someone look in on the duke in the early morning. Sleep late. You'll need it.”

She looked up at him, but he was already turning away, as if dukes' heirs had nothing better to do than to deliver hot drinks to their dependents and tell them to sleep past the morning bells.

“Mr. Turner. You do realize I'm a servant, don't you?”

He cast a tolerant glance over his shoulder. “I was one, too. Before I made my fortune. If I lost it all, I'd be one again. This notion of class that we English hold to—it's an interesting delusion. You don't
have
to be a servant, Miss Lowell, just because you were born as one.”

She shook her head blankly.

“I crossed three oceans in a cramped hammock hung in the bilge, utterly besieged by rats. And yet here I am now. What does that tell you?”

“That you were quite, quite lucky?”

He smiled again, this time with a little shake of his head that indicated he knew what she'd not said. She couldn't have missed that aura of confidence he radiated. The air around him was simply more invigorating. Mr. Turner wasn't
lucky.
He was strong—so strong that he had no need to be jealous of power in others.

“When I looked at myself, I never saw a servant. What do you suppose I see when I look at you?”

For months, everyone who had looked at her had seen a bastard.

What did he see? She couldn't answer. She didn't
know.
She wasn't even sure what she believed of herself, when she passed by a looking glass. These days, she tried not to look. Under his perusal, she had no response.

What he dismissed with that lazy shrug of his shoulders was more than a delusion. It had been the guiding light of her life, the true constant of the North Star. Her belief that she'd been better than others because of her birth had seemed an unshakeable foundation. But that light had snuffed out and north had disappeared in a dizzying whirl. She'd been left fumbling in the dark for some hint of direction.

She hadn't spoken yet, and he just smiled at her one last time and walked away.

Margaret had always thought a man seduced a woman by making her aware of his charms: his body, his wealth, his kisses. How naive she had been.

Ash Turner seduced her with the promise of her own self. She longed to believe him, longed to believe that the nightmare of the past month was nothing more than a delusion, that if she simply screwed her eyes tightly shut, she would be important again. And that desire was more alluring than any promise of wealth, more irresistible than any number of heated kisses pressed against her lips.

In her life, she'd met indulgent men, autocratic men, absent-minded men who forgot her existence when she was not around. But a man like him… He stood so far outside her experience that she'd not been able
to recognize him. But there it was, the conclusion inescapable. He thought she was magnificent. And he meant it—
really
meant it—beyond all possibility of fabrication.

Of all the recent disasters to befall her, this one—that this man, of all men, admired her—seemed the most devastating. Could he not have been someone—
anyone
—else? For a long while, Margaret stared at the cup in front of her, the steam curling upwards and away.

She mattered. She was important. She clutched those thoughts to her heart, and they made her grief bearable. Slowly, she reached out and pulled the mug forwards.

The contents were every bit as sweet as she'd imagined.

A
SH HAD INSTRUCTED
Miss Lowell to sleep late, but he'd been up at first light himself. Work wouldn't wait. And indeed, it did not. His morning messenger arrived just after the clock struck half-ten in the morning.

The fellow was one of the new men Ash had hired just a few months before—what was his name again?— Isaac Strong; yes, that was it. The man walked stiffly, his legs no doubt learning to move properly once again after being cramped in a carriage all the long voyage from London. The whites of his eyes were shot through with red, and as he was conducted into the front sitting room of the suite Ash had taken, he rubbed the black skullcap on his head wearily. He didn't see Ash sitting on a sofa near the window. He looked as tired as Ash felt.

“Mr. Strong. It's your first visit out, yes?”

As he addressed Strong, the man jerked to attention, all signs of his weariness evaporating in a flurry of consternation.

Operating at a few days' remove from London had numerous disadvantages. Most of them, Ash had been able to alleviate by dint of having well-trained, competent men in London. A smaller number of them were needed here, though, and so his men took turns traveling out to speak with him.

Not so efficient as some of the alternatives. But then,
the alternatives were rendered problematic by other considerations.

“It is Strong, isn't it?”

Strong nodded, puffing his chest out. “Sir,” he said tightly, as if he were some newly commissioned subaltern. And then, like that selfsame hapless officer, he fumbled with the brass buckles on the satchel slung about his shoulder. Before Ash had a chance to ask him whether he needed to rest or refresh himself, he pulled out a fat sheaf of papers and held it out, as if an entire war depended on whatever was in those pages.

“Sir,” Strong barked out, “your report, sir.”

“My report?” Ash felt a prickle of consternation along the skin of his thumbs. “That's my report?”

The words must have come out harsher than he'd intended, because Strong ducked his head farther. “The report you requested on the current inclinations of the members of the House of Lords regarding the proposed act. I—” he looked up into Ash's face and must have read the distaste Ash felt curling his lips, because he swallowed, his throat bobbing “—I h-have a detailed listing, and that, along with the alphabetical appendix, should suffice to—”

“Ah,” said Ash, enlightenment dawning suddenly. “You made an alphabetical appendix, did you?”

That explained the ink-stained forefinger, the thick sheaf of papers. It certainly explained the rumpled wild-eyed look that Mr. Strong was giving him. Ash suppressed a grin. “Did you include the Latin translation in triplicate?”

“The
Latin translation?
” Strong's eyes widened in abject fear. “Jeffreys made no mention of—oh.” Strong snapped his mouth shut, almost viciously.

Ash had never hired fools. Gullible geniuses, now…

Strong swallowed. “Please tell me you wanted a list of every invitation the Dalrymple brothers have accepted over the past two months, complete with an inventory of the nearest coaching-houses, and a calculation of the shortest distance from London by stagecoach.”

“That,” Ash said, “was an exceptionally creative addition. I'll have to talk to Jeffreys. He's not usually quite so…so aggressive with the new men. Come. Let's talk in my study.” He jerked his head towards the room to the right—a former parlor that he'd converted for his use.

As Ash pushed himself to his feet, Strong let out a sigh. “Sir, how much were they having me on about, then?”

“The whole report.”

If silence could blaspheme… Paper crinkled as Strong's knuckles clenched about his alphabetical appendix.

Ash shrugged. “I abhor lists. I despise reports, written on paper. If I wanted a useless stack of pages, I would just have you all send couriers out to deliver them, and never mind the expense of carting my men about England. But I don't. The last thing I want to do, ever, is to sit down and read through a tangle of letters, just so that I can get to the point. I want all my reports delivered orally—that way, I can ask you questions as I wish, and I don't have to trudge through extraneous material that will be of no use to any of us.”

“Did they…” Strong rubbed his skullcap again, a grimace on his face. “That is, is this because…”

“You mean, were they trying to get you sacked?”
Ash shook his head. “Jeffreys was having me on as much as you. He knows how I feel about paper.” Mostly. Even his right-hand man didn't understand the true extent of it.

“Well. That rather explains the first message I am supposed to deliver to you. Mr. Jeffreys has sent up a handful of agricultural texts for you, in answer to your last query, which he said betrayed a great deal of ignorance which could not be answered by a mere sentence or three. He told me to tell you to…to…” Strong paused and looked away.

“Out with it.” Ash paused at the library door. “I know they aren't your words.”

“To be a man and just read through them. Apparently, he, uh,
appreciates
your views on reports.”

Ash smiled bitterly, feeling the exact opposite of appreciation. “Well, your first order of business when you get back to London is to tell him to go to hell. No—write that down. I don't want you to forget. Here, I have paper—”

He stopped, looking at the makeshift desk he'd made in the parlor. He'd left it clear last night, all the spare scraps of paper bundled away to whence they'd belonged—not that he had much use for paper as it was.

But set atop the oak surface of his desk was a solitary sheet, folded in two. It was weighted down by a clay mug. A
familiar
clay mug, he realized as he picked it up. It smelled faintly of honey and nutmeg. In that instant, his remaining fatigue dissolved in a cloud of anticipation.

“Wait a minute,” Ash said softly. He felt a prickle of excitement in his fingertips—an echo of the surprise he'd experienced on finding Margaret last night
in nothing but a linen shift and a thin wrapper. Her hair had been down. Unbound, it had curled, and he'd longed to sink his hands in the silk of it. She'd looked like an apparition from one of his more sensual dreams. Even now, a part of him longed to go back to the conservatory, to start that conversation over again, and this time, to give in to his lust-filled imaginings. He was getting aroused, just remembering the pattern the moonlight had made on her skin.

But he'd found something better than mere animal satisfaction last night. Just as the natural curves of her body had been revealed by the night, so, too, she had slipped beyond the starchy disdain she'd directed at him these past days. There had been something raw and honest about that late-night conversation—something that had transcended the formal boundaries she'd insisted must stand between them. With those walls destroyed, anything could happen.
Everything
could happen. Ash felt as if he stood on the precipice of some tall cliff, readying himself to jump. In a few moments, he would know if the rush of wind he felt about him meant he was flying or falling.

He picked the paper up. And here he'd already refused one report. But then, this wasn't a dry, business communication. He could hardly ask Strong to read
this
aloud.

He could imagine her slipping in here, just before dawn. She would have leaned against his desk, here, bending over the inkwell. A welcome image, that, if entirely distracting—the smooth fabric of her gown falling over the sweet swell of her buttocks, framing curves that were made to be cupped in the palm of his hand. And how had she got into this locked room? Ah, yes. The master key. With that, she might have stolen
into his bedchamber. She might have come to him on silent feet, to press those beguiling curves against his chest, his groin… Hell. If he'd contemplated
that
possibility last night, he truly wouldn't have slept. Not one wink.

But now was not the time to indulge in fantasy—not with Strong looking on, not when he held a more tangible—if less physically gratifying—reality in his hands. He unfolded her note gingerly. Only two short words on that paper, and a signature. Ash took a deep breath—it would have been idiotic to be nervous, and he tried to avoid idiocy—and read.

Two short little words. He read them, one by one.
I'm. Sorry.
He read it again to be sure, and the second time it said the same thing:
I'm sorry,
plainly spelled out for anyone to see. The apology was followed by an
M
and a wavering squiggle of ink.

Margaret?
Or
Miss Lowell?
He couldn't tell, and for a moment he almost considered asking Strong for his interpretation. But it didn't matter what she'd called herself. That moment when she'd lobbed that bit of dirt at him—well, he'd wanted to see her in the throes of passion. Now he had. Not the passion he'd hoped for, true, but still it had been a candid, unstudied response. There would be more of those. Many, many more. Next time she looked at him with that much emotion shimmering in her eyes, he'd have better comfort to offer than a mug of warm milk.

When he looked up at Strong, Ash felt a tight little smile on his face. Those two words had warmed him more than the thought of her bending over his desk, her skirts touching the wood paneling. Her feet had been on the floor where he now stood. She had tiptoed into
his suite, in the dark of night, while he lay sleeping a scant handful of yards away.

For the past week he'd been mired in place, making no progress with his brothers, the upcoming debate in Parliament, or her.

But he felt it now, a certainty burning deep inside him. It was all going to come right, and she was the key.

“Good news, sir?”

Ash folded her note in quarters. “The best, Mr. Strong. The absolute best.”

 

“M
ISS
L
OWELL.
H
AVE YOU
the time for another lesson?”

Margaret stopped in the hall. She'd not been sure how to face Mr. Ash Turner again after last night—after her outburst and his too-kind response. But his younger brother posed no such difficulties. Still, she remembered her brother's letter.

He's a dangerous beast.
She turned to him.

“Mr. Turner—”

“Mark.” He looked as innocent and unassuming as always, and dressed in white and silver, he seemed to glow with positive innocence in the sunlight.

“Mark,” she acquiesced. “I've been wondering. You aren't exactly teaching me to fight by gentleman's rules, are you?”

He shrugged. “What use would that be? You'll never need to use what I'm teaching you against a gentleman who follows the rules.”

“I'm merely wondering how you learned to fight this way.”

He looked at her. “My brother—my other brother, the one you've not yet met—and I spent a bit of time
on the streets of Bristol. You learn a great deal when survival is foisted upon you. Served me a few good turns when I was at Eton.”

Mr. Turner had made the same claim, that Mark had spent time on the streets. Perhaps that was why Richard had called him dangerous. This was yet another confirmation of the unsettling disclosure Ash had made last night.

But looking into Mark's face, she saw nothing of the street waif in him. She didn't know what to think. “From the streets of Bristol to Eton. That must have been…different.”

“Not so much. I made an excellent target those first few months at school. All the bullies looked to prove themselves.” His smile widened, ever so slightly. “If you have to fight off five boys at once, you can't fight fairly.”

A small knot coalesced in Margaret's stomach. “By chance, did you ever have to fight off Richard Dalrymple?”

“Him? Oh, no.” He smiled at her.

She took a breath in relief. Somehow, if he'd struck her brother, it would make her tentative friendship with him seem all the more disingenuous.

“Just Edmund.”

Her hopes fell again. “And did you fight him fairly?”

“No.” His expression shuttered. “I fought him once, and that sufficed for both of us. After that, the Dalrymples bedeviled my brother and me in other ways.”

He looked so innocent—his hair so blond, his eyes so blue. He was like an archangel.

Did archangels advise women on the most ef
ficacious way to pop a man's arm from his socket? Generally, Margaret supposed, they didn't.

“You're perturbed by that, aren't you?”

“The Dalrymples are my employers. It would be odd if I felt no loyalty to them.”

He cocked his head and looked at her, his eyes narrowing. “If it makes you feel better, I haven't struck a Dalrymple in the better part of a decade. Surely, after what my brother has done to them, a little physical harm hardly signifies.”

Her brother had told her to beware this man. And yet… Her brother was not always right. Richard wouldn't have understood last night either—why a clod of dirt and a hot drink had brought Margaret around to an understanding that even now, she was afraid to probe.

And then, it
was
her birthday, and Richard hadn't even remembered. She deserved defiance—a little defiance.

And so she smiled back at Mark. “You're quite right,” she finally said. “It shouldn't bother me at all.”

 

S
OME HOURS AFTER
S
TRONG
had given his reports—orally—and been sent to rest, Ash heard his brother and Margaret talking. Her laughter floated down the hall, twining with Mark's tenor chuckle.

His thoughts of jealousy had leached from him overnight. All things considered, he didn't disapprove of his brother making friends with her. It was just as well, and he knew Mark would pursue nothing more than friendship.