Unclaimed (Turner, #2)

“There is no such thing as a fallen woman—you just need to look for the man who pushed her.” He shouldn’t say that, not here. So many people might recognize its source. But no one cringed from his mother’s aphorism. Instead, the rector’s wife gave a thoughtful shake of her head, looking back to Mrs. Farleigh.

“Tolliver,” Mark said, “I adhere to the law of chastity because I don’t believe in pushing women. That’s what it means to be a man. I don’t hurt others simply to make myself feel superior. Gossip can ruin a woman as surely as unchaste behavior. True men don’t indulge in either. We don’t need to.”

Tolliver raised stricken eyes to Mark. “I—I didn’t think of that.”

Most people didn’t.

Mrs. Farleigh had donned his coat. Even that unrelieved, ill-fitting navy could not dim her beauty.

“When someone falls,” Mark said, “you don’t throw her back down in the dirt. You offer her a hand up. It’s the Christian thing to do.” But the thought of taking her hand didn’t make him feel Christian at all. His mind kept slipping back to that evening. Not to her form, dripping wet, but to the wild light that had come into her eyes the moment when she’d told him she hated him. The memory still sent a queer little thrill through him. He didn’t understand it at all.

To his credit, Tolliver didn’t flinch. “What…what do I do?” he asked.

Miss Lewis stood and said, “We go and escort her over here.” She cast her mother a defiant glance. Mark held his breath as the two started across the field. But nobody stopped them.

JESSICA WASN’T SURE what Sir Mark intended when he came up to her an hour later. The picnic was breaking up. Blankets were being folded, and the remains of the repast tucked away for future consumption.

He’d not talked to her in all that intervening time, but she was sure he’d said something about her. The rector’s daughter had come up to her and had admired her gown and hair. The girl had even walked with her, introducing her to women who’d not so much as turned in her direction a week ago at service. She’d promenaded beside Miss Lewis in a growing muddle of confusion, and the passage of time had only served to strengthen it.

Sir Mark stood before her now, and she wasn’t sure if she should be grateful to him. She had been practically an outcast before this afternoon. He’d diverted the flow of gossip, as if he were Hercules and shifting a river on its course was no hardship.

It wasn’t merely that the people had heeded his sterling reputation. Another man might have been diffident and uncomfortable, standing before everyone in his shirtsleeves. Sir Mark, though, acted as if his dishabille were normal. He managed to look fully attired—so much so that she would have felt awkward and ungainly had she pointed out that he lacked a coat.

He didn’t say anything. He simply watched her from a few feet distant. She snapped the blanket she had brought in the air. He snagged one corner as it floated past him and helped her fold it once, then twice, before he passed his gathered ends to her.

He did it so carefully that their hands did not touch. Still he didn’t speak.

Jessica broke the silence. “Thank you for your assistance. You must be…here for your garment.”

One of her hands had already gone to the cuff when he shook his head.

“You’re wrong about that. I’m here to walk you home,” Sir Mark said. “You live up the road beyond the old sawmill, do you not?”

Jessica placed the blanket in her basket. “What do you mean, walk me home?”

“Walk.” He held up two fingers and mimed. “Most people learn how to do it at a young age. I’ve observed that you’re reasonably proficient in the activity.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Jessica sputtered.

“Then perhaps you are unsure as to the meaning of the word home? Although—fair warning—I do mean to take you a roundabout way, if you can bear my company for a full half-hour. I thought we’d go along the Doulting Water, and then up the hedgerow.”

“But—”

“Ah, it’s the middle word you’re objecting to, then.”

“Middle word?”

His eyes met hers, intensely blue. She swallowed hard, her stomach clenching. “You.” He said the word as if no other person existed, as if the dissipating crowd stood at a distance of many miles.

She couldn’t say anything. She carefully set her basket on her arm and looked away. She glanced about helplessly, but for once, nobody was hurrying over to separate them, to save Sir Mark from conversing with a woman like her. What had he said to them? And why was he doing this to her?

She straightened, not wanting him to see her confusion. “Surely you plan on defining that term as well?”

“Even if I had the temerity to explain you to yourself, I lack the ability. I don’t know you well enough. That is, after all, the purpose of the endeavor in the first place.” He held out his arm for her. As if she could take it. As if they were just two friends walking together.

Sir Mark did not make any sense at all.