Unveiled (Turner, #1)

He gestured to a chair. “Sit,” he commanded.

She glanced at him—no doubt wondering why he was barking orders at her—and sat. He wasn’t quite sure what it meant that she didn’t take the seat he’d gestured to, an embroidered chair, but instead sat on the low-backed sofa where he’d kissed her the other night. There was room on there for him to sit, room for him to slide next to her, his thighs touching hers… He could still send Mark away.

He shook his head, but while he could banish that image from his mind, he could not dispel the faintly floral scent that had swept into the room with her.

“Ash was telling me,” Mark said, “about how he got Lord Talton to agree to take his side in the upcoming battle in Parliament. You do know about the pending legislation, don’t you?”

Her jaw set. Ash could not guess whether that was because of Mark’s assumption that she might not know what must have been basic household gossip, or because even now she still held some unfortunate loyalty to the Dalrymples. She gave a jerky nod, though, and Mark continued.

“Well, Talton had refused to even see him, and—”

Ash held up his hand. “Miss Lowell doesn’t want to hear about my ruthlessness.” He emphasized that last word.

Margaret looked down, her hands clasped together in a tight grip. “I suppose you found a way to charm him,” she said. There was a hint of bitterness as she spoke. Was she annoyed with him for leaving her without saying his goodbyes, or for disrupting their renewed acquaintance with Mark as a chaperone? He needed to speak with her alone to find out.

And no sooner had he thought that, than thoughts of what he would do with her when he found her alone intruded. Last time he’d had her here, he’d had her skirts to her waist, and his hand between her thighs.

God. He was a lustful idiot.

“You know,” Margaret said, cutting into his reverie, “I don’t think you’re ruthless at all. I think it’s a sham. You pretend at it quite well, but what harsh thing have you ever done?”

“You’ve never seen me crossed,” Ash said softly.

Mark made a sour sound. “You’ve never seen me crossed,” he said. “Smite said once—”

But his brother shut his mouth and glanced across the table, as if thinking better of completing that sentence. That abrupt stop felt like a fist to Ash’s throat. He’d never been able to read his other brother, and Smite was closemouthed on all things.

Ash sometimes suspected that Smite held him in acute dislike. He had every reason to do so.

“What did Smite say?” Ash choked those words out past the ache in his gut.

“Smite said you were our personal avenging angel.” Mark dropped his eyes guiltily.

Well. It could have been worse. It could have been a lot worse. “That’s true.” He met Margaret’s gaze and wagged a finger at her. “Cross my brothers, and I’ll salt the earth under your feet. I’ll raze your defenses and reduce everything you love to rubble. There. Now you’ve been warned.”

She smiled. There was a touch of unease to that tentative curl of her lips.

“Oh, you think he’s joking?” Mark said. “You cannot have forgotten, Miss Lowell, the circumstances that brought us here. This—” he waved his hands expansively at the room around them “—this is Ash’s revenge on the Dalrymples.”

Margaret’s face shuttered. There was no other word for the pallor that crept across her skin, the sensation that she had just slammed the storm windows shut in preparation for a great gale. Her body drew subtly in on itself. “Oh?” That single word wasn’t a query, but another line of defense.

But Mark didn’t understand that. Likely, Mark hadn’t spent time studying the moods that crept across her face. He didn’t understand her vulnerabilities. He didn’t understand that she was still a wild creature, a little hesitant to eat from his hand. Ash cast Margaret an apologetic glance, but she wasn’t looking his way.

Mark leaned forwards. “He can’t forget some small slight, delivered years ago. One that was met with more than sufficient punishment at the time. He saw the opportunity to bring the Dalrymples down—”

She would think Ash was the most capricious fellow ever if Mark continued to tell the story in that way. “You call that some small slight? Miss Lowell, judge the truth for yourself. My brother sent me a note when he was six months at Eton, begging me to take him home. Naturally—” Ash heard the scorn in his own voice “—I undertook to ride out to see him. Not to take him home—I was determined that he would have the education that I did not.”

She nodded, understanding what Mark did not know.