“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.
I
T 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.