Unveiled (Turner, #1)

ASH HAD NEVER ENTERED the north wing of the house before. The chambers there had been shut off during his visit. He had understood they belonged to the Dalrymple offspring; he had just never realized that one of them still resided in the household.

With Margaret’s charade at an end, she’d moved back to the room that was rightfully hers. The maid had guided him to her chamber—and then stayed.

So they were to have a chaperone. It seemed rather late for that.

Margaret sat at a table in her parlor, writing a letter. She was dressed in dark silk—not quite black, but a gray sufficiently dark to pass as storm clouds. A two-inch fall of dark lace touched her elbows. Her hair was no longer pinned up in a serviceable knot; instead, it had been braided and curled and arranged in an intricate pattern.

She wore the same gold necklace. He still wondered about that locket.

When he cleared his throat, she looked up at him. She held her pen, her eyes wary. She looked different—tidy and coiffed and sleek. But her eyes were still the same.

“My God, Margaret,” he said.

“It is a bit much to comprehend, I am sure.” Her voice seemed smooth and unruffled. It had taken him weeks to understand that this was just her way of hiding deep emotion. “This is the first time you’ve seen me as Lady Anna Margaret. Well.” She shrugged, and spread her arms. She’d looped a knit shawl over her shoulders, and it slipped as she did so. “Here I am.”

Lady Margaret’s gown fit rather better than those loose gray frocks. The fringe of her shawl shaped itself to her bodice, outlining curves he’d held early this morning.

“There are a great many things I don’t understand,” he said.

“I suppose you should like to know why I lied to you.”

He just looked at her. Now that he knew who she was, that secret sadness she always carried with her made sense. She’d told him in the very first hour why she disliked him. She’d never given him lies. Just truths that he hadn’t truly heard.

“If you must know,” she began, “and given what has transpired between us, I suppose you deserve the full story, the plan started weeks ago, when—”

“Hang the plan, Margaret. I don’t care about any of that. I want to know—she was your mother. Not the duchess. Not your employer. Your mother died. And you…you blame me. For good reason.”

Her mouth stopped, midword. Her lips worked, but no sound came out. Finally she set her pen down and put her fingers to her temples. “That night I threw dirt at you—the conservatory was her favorite place. I had wanted to feel close to her. And then you came along and disrupted everything.”

“You are in mourning.”

Margaret glanced at her dark silk. “I’ve worn gray the entire time I’ve known you, Ash.”

“I’m not referring to your clothing, Margaret. I’m referring to your spirit.”

She let out a tired sigh. “Ash, you’ve understood a great many things. But really—what would you know about mourning a mother?”

He glanced behind them to make sure that the arm of the sofa would hide the extent of what he was about to do from the maid’s watchful eyes. Then, he sat next to her and placed his hand on her knee. The gesture was casual, friendly—and yet intimate in a way that transcended mere physicality.

He leaned in and spoke in a near whisper. “My mother was complicated. Painful. At the end of it all, she was quite, quite mad. But I remember gentle moments, before she started to change. I remember when she was my safe haven. That’s what made her descent into madness so frightening. Not the beatings, nor even the illness. I could remember what she had once been, and I kept waiting for her to return. Instead, she slipped further away, every time I saw her.”

Margaret’s eyes rounded.

“Maybe,” he said, “that is part of what drove me in those early days of business. I kept thinking that if I accomplished more, maybe this time she would be proud of me. If I recovered the family fortune, she would value me. If my brothers went to Eton, she would honor what I had done. I kept waiting for her maternal instincts to overcome her madness.”

Margaret reached out and took his hand.

“But no,” he said. “It never worked.”

“I am certain,” Margaret told him, “that somewhere, somehow, she was aware of what you had accomplished. And that even if she couldn’t acknowledge it in her lifetime, she was—is—proud of you.”