Unveiled (Turner, #1)

“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 efficacious 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.”



SOME HOURS AFTER STRONG 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.

He knew Miss Lowell less well, but he could intuit that had she been the least tempted by Mark, she’d never have agreed to the lessons. She had an unfortunate, innate sense of propriety—one that Ash was only beginning to break through himself.

But now, with her apology folded in his pocket, there was no reason for Ash to wait, banished on the outskirts. Not any longer. He stood and walked down the hall. He paused by the entry to the room and peered in. The doors to the gallery were wide open. Nothing untoward could happen. And while the exercise would have been highly improper for a lady, it was merely eccentric for a few servants.

Miss Lowell and the second upstairs maid stood in the center of the room.

“You’re aiming for the nose,” Mark said from his vantage point by the side. “You have to practice bringing your elbow up quickly. Anything else, and you’ll not have the advantage of speed or surprise—a big man would simply brush off such a strike. You can’t count on being stronger than anyone, so you must be faster.”

“I can’t,” protested the maid. “Without someone there, I just can’t see where I should be placing my elbow.”

Miss Lowell cast a sidelong glance at her companion and then looked away. There wasn’t a hint of agreement in her face, not a single echo of that lament. Instead she set her jaw almost fiercely. Of course. She wasn’t the sort to bemoan her fate, Ash realized, nor to make protests or excuses. Not when she could simply set things to rights. He hadn’t heard a complaint from her, not the entire time he’d spent in the house. She simply did what was necessary.

Even last night, she’d not made excuses for her behavior or accusations about his in justification. Anyone else in her place might have done so, but she hadn’t.