Unveiled (Turner, #1)

MARGARET ENTERED THE Rutledges’ town house filled with dread. She’d had days to consider what she needed to do. She just didn’t want to do it.

She could feel all of society’s eyes on her, could feel the lascivious interest that rose around them. She was swept away by a flood of colored evening gowns and dark suits. All she had to do was turn away from Ash when she saw him and pointedly show her lack of interest.

So simple—and yet so impossible.

She hadn’t realized quite how impossible it was until she finally saw him in the crowd. He caught sight of her. And all of her worst fears came true as he looked up at her and gently, oh, so gently, smiled. He smiled when he saw her. That should not have felt like such a death knell. But it made what she had to do so much more of a betrayal—a betrayal of not just her own desires, not merely his inclinations, but of something precious between them.

She didn’t smile back. She looked away. Those two things sent a rush of murmurs through the watching crowd—as if she had just been merely impolite, instead of utterly false. But not looking at Ash was as impossible as not inhaling. No matter how hard she tried to hold back her next breath, the best she could hope was to delay it for a while. All the while, her lungs burned. She ached all over. And Ash…

Oh, Ash. Through the corner of her eye, she could see him advancing on her.

Of course. Her brothers’ plan was sheer idiocy, and she should have known it. Strict rules of propriety governed the interactions between men and women. There were books devoted to the art of turning away men one didn’t wish to address. A complicated dance that everyone adhered to. But Ash had never read those books.

Trying not to love him was improbable. Keeping him from loving her? Now that was downright impossible. Why, oh, why, of all the men in the world, did Ash have to be this one? He was trying to destroy her brothers. He’d broken her heart twice over and had mended it again, better than new.

He was only a few yards away from her now. “Lady Margaret?” There was a calm, cool confidence in his voice. He knew she would turn. He knew she would look at him. He had no doubts. He never did.

And he would never stop trying, just because she looked in another direction.

There was only one way Margaret could respond. She turned and ran.

A crescendo of babble rose about her in full-voiced speculation as she darted through the crowd. She ducked through a side door, almost invisible in the ornate carving of the ballroom. She found herself in the servants’ quarters. As soon as she went through the door, she knew it wasn’t enough. He would follow her. He would find her here. She couldn’t face him, couldn’t talk to him.

She grabbed a nearby door handle and wrenched it open. A tiny storeroom stood behind the door, little more than a closet where the household kept decorations and table linens. She stepped inside and pulled the door shut behind her.

Darkness enveloped her. Darkness and blessed silence.

Only then did she put her head in her hands. Rubbing her eyes did nothing to obliterate his image in her mind. She could still feel his smile against her skin, as if it were a tangible thing. That wicked, horrible, inescapable smile. Oh, who was she fooling? That lovely, insane, undeniably attractive smile. Pulling her arms about herself could not erase the feel of his hands, big and strong, on her shoulders.

She felt both utterly humiliated and sick at what she had done to him.

How long was she going to have to stay in this darkened storeroom? Long enough for the gossip to die down. Minutes, certainly. Hours, perhaps. She rubbed her temples. She should have just jumped in a fountain and had done with it.

Half an hour later, the humiliation hadn’t subsided. Instead, her legs were cramped; there was not even enough room to sit, not with all her skirts. She had just about convinced herself she could safely show her face, when a polite knock sounded on the door. It was so ridiculously incongruous—that knock, on a storeroom. It could be only one person.

She shut her eyes and waited, but of course Ash didn’t go away. Instead, he knocked again.

“Margaret,” he said gently. And then, even more quietly: “Please. I know you’d like me to keep my distance—but I don’t believe it’s possible.”

She opened the door. He slouched against the doorjamb. His cravat was crooked. She wanted to bury her head against his chest and hold him close. She wanted to run away again. She’d have done the latter, except he was standing in her way.

“Ash, are you trying to destroy my reputation? If we’re seen together alone, it won’t be marriage they’ll imagine we’re after. And the gossip would not help either of us—not you, for using me so, nor my brothers, for their scandal of a sister.”