Unveiled (Turner, #1)

“I cannot allow it—although I wish I could. Newton has the strictest instructions. None of you are to pass through our doorway. I fear my father intends to side with that simply awful Mr. Turner, and he’s afraid that Turner, uncivilized brute that he is, will become horribly angry if he shows you any favor.”


“Mr. Ash Turner?” Margaret frowned. “Uncivilized? Are we speaking of the same man?”

He was not the one who kept her standing on the cold threshold, in this dank, unhealthy weather. He was, perhaps, not always conversant in the rules of etiquette. Nothing he ever said was quite within the bounds of propriety. But he’d not even blinked an eye when she hurled a ball of dirt at him.

But then, when he’d thought that Richard had harmed her, he had tossed her brother across the room. Perhaps there was a bit of the barbarian in him, after all.

Lady Elaine simply stared at her. “Really, Margaret. You’re the last person I would expect to be protesting the designation. He’s practically a commoner. He knows nothing of genteel behavior. Gentlemen, of course, would never do anything outré, but commoners have not been taught to control their emotions. They are simply incapable of tamping down their base urges. It’s bred into them.”

Margaret glanced at Newton, who absorbed this news without a flicker of an eyelash. She forbore from mentioning that the commonest one among them was the only one who was not reacting emotionally.

“Let me set your mind at ease,” she finally said. “I haven’t come to ask you to cross your father. We’re women, Elaine. We don’t vote in Parliament. We don’t enter into successions. We know our place. I would never expect you to intervene on my behalf. I don’t believe I could have any effect on the outcome, in any event.”

Lady Elaine stared at her. “I suppose…well. You make a good bit of sense. What is it you want, then?”

“Why, the pleasure of your company.”

Lady Elaine laughed—that long string of wheezy chuckles, terminating in an indelicate snort. “Oh, Margaret. Even I am not such a goose as to swallow that tale.”

“I mean it, Elaine. I’ve missed you—silly goose that you are—all these months. I’ve missed your histrionics. Your gossip. Your friendship. I’ve even missed your ridiculous laugh. I miss all my friends, and I will not be banished to the country. Not now. Not any longer.”

“Oh, Margaret.” Lady Elaine raised the tips of her fingers to her lips. She gave her head a bit of a shake.

“I am a duke’s daughter. A duke’s bastard daughter, yes.” Margaret’s voice trembled, but she raised her chin high. “But I am his daughter nonetheless. No matter how the suit is resolved—no matter whether Mr. Turner prevails or is defeated—I want to be accepted again. I don’t expect to go everywhere. But I want more than I have now.”

As she spoke, Margaret knew the obstacle was insurmountable. She could as soon beat down the Tower of London with a feather duster as foist herself on to society. That didn’t mean she would give up, though.

But Elaine pursed her lips. “What do you want?”

“I want,” Margaret said slowly, “an invitation.”

And instead of breaking into nervous laughter again, Elaine nodded slowly.

“Perhaps,” she said quietly, “I might help after all.”



“YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO THIS.”

Ash didn’t answer his brother’s bare statement. He couldn’t so much as look in his direction, as his valet was carefully knotting his cravat in a style that the man assured him was the latest fashion—sure to impress the lords he’d scheduled a meeting with this afternoon. Instead, Ash glowered in front of him, pretending he had not just had news that Margaret was in town.

“Really, Ash. You don’t have to do this. Richard and Edmund Dalrymple—they’re not worth doing this to yourself.”

His valet stepped away to contemplate his work. Ash stared in front of him. “There is what they did to you. There is what Parford did to Hope. Hell, there’s what they did to Margaret herself. You tell me—would you trust either Dalrymple with the responsibility of a dukedom?”

“I’ve forgiven them.”

“You,” Ash enunciated carefully, “don’t really understand what happened to Hope.”

Behind him, he heard his brother move to one side. “Revenge isn’t meant for us mortals, Ash.”

The valet reached to adjust Ash’s collar. Just as well, because he could feel it shift. “Don’t you preach at me.” Ash’s voice was low. “I should think that we have had quite enough of that for one lifetime.”

There was a longer pause, and then Mark walked round to look him in the eyes. There was no avoiding the soft censure on his brother’s face. “Enough?” he asked. “What do you mean, enough?”

“You almost died because of our mother’s absolutist adherence to dead words. I can’t stand to see you imprisoned by them.”