Unclaimed (Turner, #2)

“Maybe this is true,” Mark said quietly, “but I’m guessing it was my father who sacked you. The scales are balanced between us.” His mother would have agreed. She’d been mad, but there had been a frightening lucidity to everything she had done. She’d sold everything the family owned and had given it all to the poor. But she’d never seen it as charity. She’d always imagined she was giving it back.

Mr. Taunton looked up at him. “I’ll beg your pardon, sir, but I don’t feel so balanced. I am very much in your family’s debt.” He rubbed his head. “Didn’t come here to argue with you, in any event. You see, I have this dog. A bitch—the finest sheep dog in all of Somerset, she is. She’s a breed from Scotland.” The man’s eyes shone with a sudden light. “She came into heat a few months back. All the men hereabouts are mad for a chance at one of Daisy’s pups. There’s five of them, seven weeks old now. Four are spoken for. I’ve held the last one back, because…” The man spread his blunt fingers. The fingernails were lined by dark grease. “Sir Mark, are you by any chance in want of a pup? I’d be honored to know that Daisy’s whelp went to one of Elizabeth Turner’s sons.”

Mark swallowed a lump in his throat. The wealthier members of the community—the mill owners, the landowners—had offered him a few scant meals around their table. Even that hospitality had not been freely given. They’d wanted to trade gossip and to boast that they’d had him as a guest.

But Mark knew what a good sheepdog meant to these men. Not just income, but companionship, friendship, the difference between a hardscrabble life and comfort. It was as if the man had offered him his firstborn child.

“Mr. Taunton, I came to Shepton Mallet to think…to think on an opportunity that presented itself to me. You see, I’ve been asked to join the Commission on the Poor Laws.”

Taunton, for all the dirt he carried, nodded sagely. “That’s…an honor,” he said, his mouth twitching.

Mark rubbed his forehead. “You mean it’s a nuisance. I’m not a proponent of the Poor Laws, and the Commission has bungled the administration worse than Parliament. I’ve no wish to spend my time attending to details like the allotment of gruel at workhouses around the country.”

Taunton drummed his fingers against his knee. “If it’s a mess, mayhap you could clean it up. Happen they could use a good man.”

“I know. It’s the only reason I haven’t turned the offer down flat.”

And people—important people—would listen to him if he said the system was falling to pieces. He could make a difference. He’d been granted a measure of popularity by fate; he had an obligation to use it to do good. He just wished it didn’t sound like such an ever-loving chore.

“But, you see, if I accept the position, I’ll be traveling constantly. I’d have nowhere to keep a dog. Surely, Daisy’s pup deserves better.”

Mark looked across into a face that was slowly shuttering.

“Of course,” Taunton muttered. “You’ll be going into the finest drawing rooms. No room there for a filthy mutt.” His shoulders squared. “Well, perhaps I might be of service some other way.” He looked around the room.

Maybe Mark didn’t think of his mother’s actions as pure charity. But this man—this proud man—undoubtedly did. Mark could as soon have cut the man’s hand off as refuse the offer.

“But my brother,” he heard himself saying. “My elder brother—he’d not lock the animal up in a tiny London parlor. And I know he’d enjoy having an animal around. I was thinking just the other day that I ought to get him one.”

The man looked up, the light returning to his eyes.

“In fact,” Mark promised, “I’m sure he’d want it. And the dog would be happier with him.”

Taunton broke into a broad grin. “It needs a few days yet with its dam. But you’re right. I suppose there’d be more room to romp at Parford Manor.”

“Actually,” Mark started to say, and then realized that he didn’t need to clarify which brother he’d intended the gift for. “Actually, I won’t be visiting him immediately in any event, so a delay is just as well. Thank you. You’ve no idea what this will mean to my brother.”

Taunton gave him a jerk of a nod. “Truthfully, Sir Mark—this scarcely means anything. All these years, I’ve carried the shame of knowing I should have done more. About…about your sister. And you and your brothers. I saw what was happening, when I first came back, but didn’t dare to speak up.”

Mark sat still, not wanting to move. Not wanting to acknowledge by so much as a breath that those words reached any part of him.

Taunton continued, “Only one person in all of Shepton Mallet would have stopped that kind of wrong when it happened. And she was Elizabeth Turner.”

One nod, that was all Mark could manage.

“I always thought that what happened to you and your brothers after she passed on—that was her way of looking out for you, once she found her way round to herself again.”