Unveiled (Turner, #1)

“Imprisoned?” Mark’s voice was growing dangerous. But Ash was tired of tiptoeing about his brother’s sensibilities.

“Yes. Imprisoned. You and Smite both. Living in abstemious denial, when you could have the entire world laid out before you. Turning down every advantage, even before it’s offered. Our mother imprisoned you all those years ago, and even if you escaped her then, neither of you can free yourselves enough to accept what might be yours today.”

Mark moved again, out of Ash’s sight, and he was left to stare at the blank wall in front of him.

“Do you really suppose Smite and I are alone in that imprisonment?” Mark said from his side.

“Oh, any number of fools are as afflicted, I’m sure.”

“Listen to you and your talk of revenge. ‘Ye shall tread down the wicked, for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet.’ You’re doing an excellent job of living up to your name.”

“Don’t call me that,” Ash said.

“Don’t call you what?”

“That.”

But Mark simply snorted. “Oh, you mean this? ‘And ye shall tread down the wicked, for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet.’ That is your name, no matter how much you wish to forget it. And how do you feel, playing the avenging angel, Ash?”

Ash’s fists tightened, and his valet murmured in protest as his shoulders drew together. It took an enormous effort to keep from drawing in on himself, from curling up into a tight little ball, no matter what such a thing would do to the line of his coat.

Those words brought back childhood memories, none of them good. The smell of a fire, burning cheap and pungent coal; the feel of his mother’s hand, almost all bone, on his wrist. And the flat despair in her voice as she regaled him with his name, chapter and verse.

It made him think of those last days with Hope, of that sure, certain knowledge of his failure.

“Stop,” Ash said, feeling ill.

“You always were so stubborn. One of my earliest memories is—”

“Stop,” Ash begged. He didn’t want to remember that sick pit of despair in his own stomach, that feeling that if he stepped out of line, if he made the slightest mistake, the thing that had taken her place might actually hurt her own children.

“She was wrong,” Mark said gently. “Later, she went completely mad. She saw demons and believed that angels whispered violence in her ears. She named you for vengeance, Ash. Are you really going to pursue it?”

“What about you?” Ash croaked. “If you knew she was mad—and wrong—why do you cling to her beliefs?”

Mark glanced at him dryly. But he didn’t respond to that needling. Instead, he was relentless. “Is that who you are, Ash? Are you the man she made you?”

Ash shook his head. “I’m—I’m just me.”

“So am I.” Mark looked up at him, speaking softly. “I am who I am despite Mother, not because of her. I choose to do what I believe to be right, despite the fact that my mother’s madness ought to have poisoned the thought of all goodness. I choose to keep to chastity, for all that Mother’s ranting made me want to go out and do just the opposite in rebellion. I choose to be the man I am, Ash. You should, too.”

“But I did. I did choose.”

Mark simply glanced at him and then looked away. It was disquieting, that look—as if he’d evaluated all of Ash’s work and dismissed it. As if he had calculated its ethics, summed up its philosophies, dissected its morality, done whatever those things were that Mark had learned to do while at Oxford. Subjected to that searching analysis, Ash would never win.

“No,” he said roughly. “Don’t you dare look down on me. I haven’t your education. God knows I haven’t your intellect. But I’ll be damned if you look at me as if all my experience means nothing. It may have been instinct instead of intellect that made me understand what I had to do, but don’t you belittle that. My instinct purchased the clothing on your back, the education that lets you sneer at me in such learned precision. My instinct brought me back to Eton when the headmaster was on the verge of tossing you out on your ear. And now, my instinct tells me that you and Smite are desperately unhappy, for all that I’ve tried to remedy it.”

“Ash, I—”

“And now,” Ash said, overriding whatever it is Mark had been about to offer up, “my instinct says that I should pursue Parford. Tell me, Mark. Tell me my instinct is wrong.”