Unveiled (Turner, #1)

“But—but—you!” Mark shook his head. “I could kill you, if I didn’t want to hug you right now. You great big bullying angel.”


“One day, Mark, you will doubtless discover that I am not a particularly cruel man, dedicated to frustrating your every ambition. I actually would like to help you with your chosen career. Even the parts that make me uncomfortable. You want me to read your work? Then I’ll read it. You had only to ask.” He wasn’t sure precisely how he was going to keep that promise, but he would find some way to accomplish it.

Mark inhaled. “But—this is just draft form, Ash. I still have so many changes to make, so much work still to be done. You’ll tell me if there are any parts that don’t make sense, will you?” Protests finished for the mere sake of form, Mark ducked his head shyly. “When do you think Farraday will be finished with his copying?”

“Cottry?”

“He’d finished the first ten pages when I left him an hour ago. It’s slow going, sir. He keeps being overcome with laughter.”

“About chastity?”

“Apparently so.”

Mark’s face lit even more, but he looked down at the floor and blushed, as if he were a schoolboy unused to praise. He couldn’t understand what Ash had just promised to do. Ash might as well have offered to send him to Jupiter for a brief visit. But then, if Mark had wanted to flap his wings and embark on a voyage to distant planets on holiday…

Well. Ash would have found a way.





CHAPTER EIGHT




THE CANDLELIGHT CAST flickering shadows in Margaret’s father’s room, doing little to combat the dusk. Margaret tapped her foot impatiently as she studied the man. He sat, his hands clasped together, not looking at her. As if he were unaware of her presence.

“The maids say you are making faces at them.” Margaret set her hand on her hip and tried to look forbidding. Likely, it only scrunched up her face. It was rather difficult to discipline a man more than three times her age, especially when he had nothing to lose.

“Bah” was her father’s less-than-articulate response. He sat staring up at the ceiling, his gaze tracing the gilded plaster. “Unnatural faces. You’re scaring them.”

“They’re too easily frightened, then. I want servants, not rabbits.” He glared at her, as if it were somehow her fault that he’d upset the household.

“Must you be so difficult about everything? Don’t you think you’ve caused enough hardship already?”

The lines on his cheeks deepened as he settled in for a protracted bout of glowering. “Oh, no,” he said sullenly, folding his arms about his skinny chest. “Am I making your life difficult, Anna?”

Margaret dropped her hand in the act of reaching to smooth out his hair. Instead, she turned to the bottles on the table at the side. There were six or seven of them, all lined up. It was her task to make her father take his medicines. Today it looked as if she was to have a battle on her hands. She unstoppered the first, pulling the cork out with perhaps more vengeance than the bottle deserved. The liquid sloshed with the fury of her movement, and as it did, the fumes from the acrid mixture seemed to burn directly from her nostrils into her brain. She stifled a cough.

“Don’t call me Anna,” she said, once she was sure she could speak without sounding upset. She poured out a generous spoonful of dark green liquid. “Nobody calls me that.”

“I named you, Anna. I can call you what I wish. If I wanted to rename you something utterly horrid—something like—”

Margaret tightened her grip on the spoon and turned slowly back to him. “Margaret. You used once to call me Margaret.”

“Only because Anna was your mother’s name. As she’s dead now, I see no reason to—mmph!”

He glowered at her again as she popped the spoon between his lips. For a second, the nasty medicine did the trick, and he simply screwed up his nose in silent, undignified protest. She pulled the spoon away—and he spat it out. Green viscous liquid sprayed in her face.

Margaret’s hands trembled as she reached for a cloth. She could not do him violence. She could not. He was old. He was frail. He was her father. She wiped the disgusting residue from her eyes, and then looked at him. He sat, his smile perhaps a bit broader than before, his arms folded once more in self-satisfaction.

“It is almost as if you were five years old.” She spoke calmly, but inside, she was fuming. “Do you know what happens to five-year-olds who do not take their medicine?”

He gave her a cold smile. “Let me guess. They are told to behave in a very stern tone of voice by someone who has no ability to control them?”

Margaret reached for the bottle and uncorked it a second time.