Unveiled (Turner, #1)

Shutting his eyes didn’t help. He could still remember her intimate taste from last night—her mouth warmed by brandy tempered with a floral note, her body canted over his, pressing into him. But in the here and now, her hand touched his, and he reluctantly looked at her.


Even though he’d prepared himself, the sight of her still sent a little shock down his spine. Her lips were rose-pink, and oh-so-kissably full. A handful of kisses hadn’t been enough. The faint color of her cheeks was broken up here and there by a hint of freckle. Her hair was braided and bound up, tight and proper, but her mouth pursed, and that hint of impropriety made him think of unlacing her from the confines of her gown, unpinning her curling hair…

Damn. He was distracted already.

“This,” she said, tapping the pages in his hand, “is your brother’s book. He mentioned to me earlier today you’d gotten the copy. He seemed nervous.”

Ash spread the loose pages in his hands. “As you see,” he murmured, “I’ve managed to take in so much of it already.”

She bit her lip. “I thought I might read it to you.”

The blood simply stopped in Ash’s veins. His whirling thoughts came to a crashing standstill. His throat dried out, and he coughed. She looked down.

When he didn’t respond, she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “I can see I’ve offended you. I didn’t intend to imply— I apologize—”

“No.” He choked the word out, and she drew back further. “I mean, no, don’t apologize.” He was stunned, too stunned to form a response. But he caught her hand in his. Their fingers intertwined, his grip saying what his mouth could not manage. He squeezed all his pent-up helplessness, his secret shame into her fingers.

“I promised Mark,” he explained awkwardly. His inability to read was a guilty, secret part of him, something to be hidden away from the light of day under a mass of lies and misdirection. He’d invented excuse after excuse, pleaded his schedule a thousand times, ordered employees to summarize numerous documents.

But this…this, he couldn’t hide.

She’d looked into his darkest degradation and whispered that he was not alone. Maybe this was what he’d felt, that fine morning when he’d first seen her out on the steps. He’d felt an echo of this moment—as if he were somehow, finally, coming home.

He nodded at Margaret. “Very well,” he said. He knew his voice sounded harsh, almost devoid of emotion. It was merely because she had no idea how long he’d carried that burden in solitude. To think he might trust someone with his secret—and that she might offer to help, that she might bridge the gap between Ash and his brothers… He couldn’t even contemplate it. If he hid behind gruffness, it was because his throat felt scratchy, as if he were on the verge of weeping.

Not that he would.

That would have been ridiculous. Almost as ridiculous as the rush of vulnerability that overtook him, as if he were some nocturnal insect blinded by the sudden light of her regard. If it had been anyone else at this moment, he might have scuttled away. But then…it was Margaret.

Instead he simply nodded at her. She took the pages from him and shuffled them into order.

“A Gentleman’s Practical Guide to Chastity,” she began to read. “By Mark Turner.” She cocked her head and looked at Ash. “A practical guide to chastity? What does that mean?”

Ash shrugged. So that was what the words on the front page had said. “I suspect we are about to discover that.” He put his hands on the arms of his seat, readying himself. It may have been a dry philosophical text of intellectual import, but it was his brother’s dry philosophical text. He was not going to think about the juxtaposition of her full lips and the words of chastity. He was not going to make some juvenile witticism.

“‘Chapter One,’” Margaret read. “‘Entitled: Chastity is hard.’”

Ash sniggered despite himself. So much for keeping his juvenile thoughts at bay. “Yes,” he murmured. “Hard is usually how I find myself after an unfortunate bout with chastity.”

She flicked a glance at him, her lips curving upwards in amusement, and then she shook her head and read once more. “‘Too often, moralists stress the need for upright behavior. But this emphasis is often impractical in its effect. When a man fails to meet one overly rigorous standard, his usual reaction is to give up on all of them.’”

With the words spoken aloud, Mark’s book wasn’t hard to follow. In fact, it even made sense. Ash nodded, and Margaret went on.