Unveiled (Turner, #1)

But everything else was pressing against her now. “Ash.” Margaret’s voice threatened to dissolve. She swallowed the lump in her throat, the incipient tears. “You are breaking my heart.”


That phrase had never made sense to her before, except in metaphor. But she was being pulled in two. Making love to Ash had been a little defiance—a statement that her body was hers, that her life and her virtue belonged to her. That she belonged to herself and nobody could ever take that away.

But he wasn’t asking for a little defiance any longer. He was asking for her allegiance. Her brother was right about one thing: if she married him, it would be a complete betrayal. Not of some unfortunate rules that society insisted upon, but of her brothers, her mother. If she married him, her brothers could lose their bid for legitimacy. They would be outcasts, sustained only by the tiny unentailed portions of the estate.

She had promised herself that she would be noble, even if she was no longer considered nobility. He was asking her to be selfish, to think only of her own future happiness. If she did that, she would be no better than her father.

He was asking for more than she could possibly deliver.

“I understand now,” he said, “why the license took so long to issue. The archbishop’s office wouldn’t send it out until they could verify that you were eligible to marry, and the parish here has no records of a Miss Margaret Lowell.”

“No. They wouldn’t.”

“Well, I’ll apply again.”

It wasn’t supposed to be like this, when he uncovered the truth. It was supposed to be easy. Her revelation was supposed to have been the death knell of his desire. There shouldn’t have been any need for her to choose between a future with him and her brothers’ survival. Who was she, if she abandoned them?

Who was she, if she walked away from him?

She had learned to withstand her father’s abuse. But this gentleness left her undone. There was no word in her lexicon for this sort of kindness, no space in her understanding to encompass it.

She simply shook her head. “No, Ash. I don’t know. I—I just don’t know.”

He let out a sigh and pulled her to him. She felt his arms around her. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

She had once thought she wanted to see him sorry. She’d wanted to punish him, to rip his heart out and stomp on it, so that he would know how it felt to have his world inverted about him.

She had been wrong. It killed her. Because he wasn’t hurting for himself. He was hurting for her.

His kindness robbed her of the cold outrage that had fueled her all this time. But for one last moment, she could pretend that they could be together. That his arms around her were solid and real, and it was the reality of her waiting life that was the evanescent, impossible dream.





CHAPTER SEVENTEEN




IF IT HAD BEEN embarrassing for Ash to greet Richard Dalrymple that morning, half-clothed, with his sister in his arms, it was even more awkward when the man appeared at breakfast. Dalrymple paused at the corner of the room and glanced in, a half sneer on his face. The expression of distaste was rather ruined by his eye, which had already begun to turn a dull red where Ash had struck him.

“I see,” he said, in an accent so rarified that it made Ash want to smack him again, “that this room is infested.” He sniffed at Ash, and then glanced at Mark and stiffened.

“With all of us vermin,” Ash said. “Your sister—the only interesting one among us—is off tending to your father.” Ash picked up his butter knife, and Dalrymple paled and flinched.

“Good God. What do you suppose I’m going to do? Eviscerate you with this thing? Look. It’s quite dull.” Ash shook his head, scooped a lump of butter from the crock, and applied it to his bread. “And apparently, it’s not alone. You might as well eat, Dalrymple. You need to keep up your strength, especially if you imagine you’re going to take on the Herculean task of bending Parliament to your will.”

Mark met Ash’s eye, and then bit his lip, as if holding something back. A suspicion intruded on Ash’s mind—a half-remembered statement his brother had made.

“By the way, Mark, did you realize that Margaret is actually Margaret Dalrymple?”

“Ah. So she told you, then.”

Ash’s fingers drummed against the table, a harsh beat that took the place of actual thought. He stared at his brother. “You knew.” His voice was low.

“I had my suspicions.” Mark glanced at him, and then with a sigh, he added, “and then Smite came down here and confirmed them. He saw her a few years ago.”

Dalrymple glanced up at this but said nothing. Instead, he sidled against the wall until he reached the sideboard, where he removed a plate. Ash ignored him.

“You knew, and you didn’t tell me.”

Mark gave him a half shrug. “Honestly, Ash. She said she would tell you. And I didn’t believe the small delay between my discovery and her divulgence would harm you in the long run. Besides, she was half in love with you already, and I know how you are.”