Unveiled (Turner, #1)

“Maybe,” she said, “it was all a misunderstanding.”


Richard glanced at her, and let out a sigh. “Margaret, misunderstandings don’t break arms. Misunderstandings don’t file suit in ecclesiastical courts to bastardize the issue of a duke. Misunderstandings don’t get orders from courts of equity, allowing them to catalog the worth of an estate, so that the so-called untrustworthy offspring deliver his ill-gotten inheritance intact. I know that Ash Turner has got you all tangled about. But you are being used as a pawn on the board. The sooner you come to grips with that, the more likely we are to prevail. This is not a misunderstanding, Margaret. It’s a war.”





CHAPTER NINETEEN




London. November, 1837

LONDON LOOKED DIFFERENT to Margaret than it had the last she’d been here.

Then, the news had come at her all in a rush, too fast for Margaret to comprehend. The suit in the courts. Her illegitimacy. The dissolution of her betrothal, her mother’s death and the sudden, inexplicable onset of her father’s illness. She’d felt barely able to keep her knees from buckling beneath her. And so when the women she had called her friends her entire life had simply turned their collective backs on her, she had given up. She’d fled back to Parford Manor and buried her own bewildered hurt in caring for her ailing father.

The change of the seasons had exerted some little effect on the scenery. Now, instead of being dark gray, foggy, drizzly and clouded over with coal dust, the city appeared to be light gray, foggy, drizzly and clouded over with coal dust. The flowers sold by the vendors had altered; fruit sellers walking the streets had a few baskets of late berries, instead of sacks of wizened apples.

But the biggest difference was not in the weather or the wares. It was something Margaret held deep inside her. London looked different when you came back looking for a fight. Over the past week, all of the best people had returned to town once again. Parliament prepared to sit once again. As a result, knockers had been hung on doors and invitations had begun to flourish, scattering on the wind like seeds from some great plant of etiquette.

This time, Margaret wasn’t going to retreat to the countryside to let her wounds fester.

Which was why for the fourth time in twelve days she stood on the threshold of the townhouse where Lady Elaine Warren lived. Margaret’s maid waited on the pavement behind her. When Margaret had first begun tilting at this particular windmill, her maid had been wary and uneasy. After over a week of battle, the woman had become inured to the prospect of rejection. Now she sported only a dour expression, shifting from foot to foot. From the slouch in her chaperone’s shoulders, Margaret could guess her thoughts: Can’t she hurry up and get tossed out on her ear again, so that we may finally return home?

Not, Margaret thought grimly, until they’d made their rounds. She’d visited twelve houses today. Twelve doors had remained closed to her; doors that would have sprung wide open for her a year ago.

Margaret’s dove-gray silk morning gown, trimmed with yards of fine-knit black lace, was a far cry from the sensible nurse’s frocks she’d worn back at Parford Manor. Her cloak was soft and warm. Her hair had been curled and arranged, and ringlets bounced about her shoulders in gentle sways as she lifted her hand and rapped the knocker. The sound echoed against the wood: firm, but polite. Margaret was always polite when she went out to do battle.

A jaunty little bonnet stood atop her head, tied in place. As she stood on the stoop, waiting for a response, she could feel the long, navy ribbons slithering down her shoulders. She shifted slightly, and the silk tickled her skin.

The door opened—one battle won. The dark-clad butler took one glance at Margaret and compressed his lips. He held a silver salver, which he normally would have extended at this point. Over the many years when Margaret had visited Lady Elaine, he’d often done so—if he hadn’t ushered her in immediately.

But everything had changed. This time, when the butler looked at her, he no longer saw a lady.

Margaret raised her chin. He would. He would.

It seemed as if she had been knocking at doors, and being turned away, for far more than two weeks. It seemed as if it had been years since she had last seen Ash, when in truth, scarcely two months had passed. The dreadful thick fog that blanketed London in the mornings had crawled over more than just the streets. It had swallowed up her memories of his features, dimmed them in cotton until he seemed an impossibility: a fairy-tale hero, too large for the life she had to live.

No, here in the clammy fog, there was only a dour-faced butler. He stood, wordlessly barring Margaret’s entry into her erstwhile friend’s home.