Unveiled (Turner, #1)

Cottry nodded weakly. It was weak assent—but it was assent.

Ash gave him one last nod. “I know you can do it,” he said quietly. Cottry met his eyes, and a ripple of panic passed over his face. Ash had seen that look a hundred times at this stage, and he knew precisely what it meant: Dear God, please don’t let me fail.

As his men left, Ash realized that Margaret was right. His method of doing business had started out as a way for him to hide his weakness. But since then, he’d met too many other tradesmen who became trapped by their own myopia. They’d been too bogged down by details to successfully handle an empire.

Ash hadn’t been able to comprehend all the details, and so instead, he had learned to comprehend other people. People wanted to believe they were capable, and when you told them they were, they leaped to prove it.

Ash was never going to be a scholar. But then…he didn’t have to be one. He was good enough, as himself. Ash stood and brushed off his coat. It was time to give it one last try.

His brothers had been set up, along with a tray of sandwiches, in a parlor decorated in stuffy pinkness. He wondered if Mrs. Benedict had put them here out of some perverse sense of humor—the femininity of the room, with its embroidered roses and gold-scrolled wallpaper, along with a bewildering array of lace-edged pillows, was almost overwhelming.

He swung the door in. Smite was sitting alone. Of course he was reading a book.

A decanter of port sat on a nearby table, and glasses were ready beside it. Likely that was Mrs. Benedict’s doing, too—although this had substantially less to do with humor and more to do with a certain practicality that understood the typical gentleman of Ash’s station all too well.

Smite had not drunk the port. Instead, he sat reading his book. He turned a page and glanced down. He almost seemed to be simply staring at it for a few seconds, before he transferred his gaze to the next one and then turned again.

Ash had never really been scared. Not even in India, where on one memorable occasion, he’d found himself alone and surrounded by natives who brandished spears. He’d always had a sense of things, a knowledge of what to say—or, as was the case in that instance, how to gesture. He’d been able to look at people and intuit what they wanted, what they feared and how to provide them with the former in a way that profited everyone. But with his brothers…he had no notion of how to proceed. It was as if they were an extension of him, so close to his heart that he could not guess at the topography of their emotions. He could see no secret way into their hearts.

Smite looked up at Ash’s footsteps. He simply stared at him for a second, and then, slowly, a smile crawled over his face. Ash’s stomach lurched.

God, he loved his brother so much.

“I’ve met your Miss Lowell,” Smite said.

His younger brother deployed words precisely. He’d done so even before he took articles in Bristol, but legal training had accelerated the tendency. Smite’s use of the possessive was not happenstance.

His Miss Lowell. Ash liked that thought very well.

“I see,” Smite said dryly, “that you don’t bother to disclaim her. I do wonder if she is possibly good enough for you.”

Good enough for him? Ash held his breath. He wasn’t sure if this was a conscious slur on his brother’s part, denigrating her station, or a shocking compliment to himself. “And your conclusion?”

Smite simply shook his head. “No. She is not.” He turned away. Nothing more to bolster Ash’s hopes. That bare dismissal felt like a slap in the face.

“Don’t make hasty judgments,” Ash said. “Look, stay a few nights. A week, if you dare. Talk with her some more.”

Smite let out a long sigh.

It was cowardly, but Ash added, “I know Mark would enjoy your company.”

“I’m leaving in the next hour.”

“For God’s sake, it’s barely September. The courts are closed. I’d be willing to wager that the man you work under isn’t even in town at the moment. Could you not stay even one night? You won’t make it to Bristol by nightfall, and we’re due for a storm any moment now.”

Smite’s lips pressed together, but he said nothing. Compliment or insult, there was no way to interpret his hasty departure as anything other than another rejection. Ash let out a pained breath. It had always been like this between them, ever since Ash had come back from India. Mark at least tried to talk with Ash.

“What must I do?” He strode forwards. “What must I do, that I offend you no longer, Smite? Do you want me to beg? I’ll grovel. Do you want me laid low? I’ll cast myself at your feet.”