Unveiled (Turner, #1)

There was a long pause. “Hmm. I believe I wished Miss Lowell a good day.”


Margaret took a deep breath and descended the stairs. Ash was standing in the entry next to his brother, his arms crossed, his toe tapping impatiently. “How many times?”

“Um. Once a day?” Mark scrubbed a hand through blond hair that had grown too long to be fashionable and gave his brother a helpless smile.

Ash shook his head. “This is why I don’t like leaving you,” he groused. “I go away, and you retreat into your shell as if you were a little crab at the seashore. You’re intelligent. You’re amusing. You ought to see people—no, I don’t mean all the time, so you can stop curling up like a hedgehog! Once or twice a day. You like people, Mark. Talk to them. Tell me that you at least said more to Margaret than a passing ‘good day.’ I suspect that she, unlike you, actually notices when she fails to talk to people for an entire day.”

“In more important news, just this morning, I finished a really fantastic chapter. It’s all about practical ways to rid oneself of a—” Mark turned as he heard her footsteps on the final stretch of stairs, and swallowed whatever he’d been about to say.

“Rid oneself of what?” Margaret asked.

The two men had turned to her as one. It was only with the greatest difficulty that Margaret did not miss her next step. When Ash saw her, his face lit. In the dreadful heat of the oncoming noon, any additional warmth ought to have felt disagreeable. But instead, the flush that burned her cheeks felt welcome. As if he were a cool breeze and a raging inferno all at once. He didn’t say her name. He didn’t reach for her. Instead, he simply watched her as she descended the staircase, his eyes following her down. He placed one hand over his waistcoat pocket.

“You know what you need, Mark?” Ash said, not taking his eyes off Margaret. “You need a wife.”

She missed the last step at that, and barely caught herself from sliding to his feet by clutching at the banister.

“What?” Mark sputtered. “I’m too young to marry.”

“Women manage matrimony at a far younger age. And besides, with a wife, you’d discover more practical ways to rid yourself of…of lustful thoughts than whatever it is you came up with for your book. More importantly, if you had a wife, you would be forced to have at least ten minutes of conversation, once a day.”

“I haven’t met anyone I wish to marry.”

Ash slanted Margaret a sly look and winked at her, and she felt a stab of confusion. That early talk of tumbling women, she had understood. But this? Her brothers had never talked about other women like this. In fact, Edmund had complained bitterly when she told him to dance with her friend Elaine. He’d feared that Elaine might enlarge upon a single waltz until she believed herself about to be married.

Marriage, so far as Margaret had been given to understand, was a consummation devoutly to be avoided by men of good title and ordinary character—at least, until the passage of time and the complaints of female relatives made it inevitable.

“Is something the matter, Margaret?” Ash glanced at her. “Surely you’re not opposed to the concept of matrimony. I was thinking I ought to drag my brother with me to some of the society events this upcoming Season, so he can find a woman virtuous enough to satisfy his practical needs.”

“In point of fact,” Mark said dryly, “a wedding would be of little practical use, if she remained virtuous after marriage.”

At the thought of Ash and Mark descending upon polite society… Margaret wasn’t sure whether to laugh or to cry. A duke’s heir with several hundred thousand pounds, and his angelic-looking brother? Oh, the schemes that would arise. The women who would swoon. The furor that would rise up, if it were bruited about that either was actively seeking a wife.

Margaret shook her head. “Aren’t you worried?”

“Worried?” Ash’s eyebrows rose in confusion. “Ought I be? About what?”

“About…” Margaret spread her arms wide. “You know. Women. You’re wealthy. You’re young. You’re handsome, and if…if matters go your way, the two of you will be in line to inherit one of the most respected titles in all of England. Aren’t you worried that some scheming chit will trap you into matrimony?”

Ash and Mark both looked up at her, their expressions mirror reflections of concern.

Then Ash shook his head. “You have the strangest ideas in your head. In your experience, how many women are there who are intelligent enough to scheme me or my brother into matrimony, but also foolish enough to force a marriage with a man who doesn’t wish to have her?”

Margaret simply stared at him. “I don’t—that is to say—”