Unveiled (12 page)

The master key was still threaded through the chain, the iron skin-warm where it had lain against her breasts. The door opened inward on silent hinges.

“The duke's study,” she announced. “Not currently in use.”

He stepped inside; Margaret took a lamp from a nearby side table before entering herself. The light flickered unevenly as she walked.

“This,” Margaret said, gesturing at a large wingback chair settled to the side of the room, “is the seat where Parford spent many an evening.” She looked Ash in the eyes. “Sit,” she commanded.

He sat.

“There, to your right, in that cupboard—those are the books Parford studied of an evening.”

Ash glanced at her and then at the ornate brass knob on the carved doors. He hesitated.

“Go on, then. Open it.”

The door opened silently.

Inside, her father's decanter stood next to three cups of cut glass. The glasses gleamed in the light. Amber liquid reflected the rays streaming from her lamp, setting colored lights to dancing about the room as she placed that lamp on the table.

“These books,” Margaret said dryly, “you, too, could study.”

“Oh.” He glanced at them again and then back at her.

Margaret crossed to stand before him and then leaned and took a tumbler. She poured an inch into the glass and held it out to Ash.

“Here,” she said. “This is the education most gentlemen receive at Oxford.”

He stared at the glass in her hands for a few moments, and then shook his head. “No. I don't believe I will. I'm no Dalrymple, to put pleasure before duty.”

She'd almost become inured to those comments about her family. “A shame,” she said calmly. “I am.”

“Putting pleasure before duty?” he asked quizzically.

No. A Dalrymple.
But the moment passed, overtaken by her hesitation. Instead, she raised the glass to her own lips and took a sip. The taste of brandy overwhelmed her—dark, tawny, heady. The alcohol volatilized in her mouth. She swallowed, and it burned on the way down. Just one taste, but it was enough to sweep away her last lingering inhibitions. She set the glass down.

Before he could say anything, she leaned over him in the chair. She set her hands on the linen of his shirt, feeling the roughness of the fabric. She could feel the whisper of his breath, and it was sweeter and more invigorating than her sip of spirits.

Last night, she'd kissed him because he'd made her smile. Tonight, she kissed him to make him laugh. Her lips found his. He exhaled as she did so; she felt it, more than heard it, felt his chest heave under her hands, his lips part beneath hers. His hands came to her side, clasping her waist.

The kiss last night hadn't lasted long—just a brief, heated exchange of air, their lips mingling for a few seconds. This was more. His lips parted for her. His tongue slipped into her mouth.

He was a heady mixture of taste and scent. She could feel the hard planes of his chest, the muscles beneath her hands. She forgot about everything that had transpired between them. She forgot that anything stood between them, besides the fabric of his shirt, separating her hand from the thud of his heart. The brandy had entered her blood, and it rose, warm and pounding, to flush her cheeks.

Another caress of his tongue on hers. His hands
drifted up her sides, awakening a deep yearning inside her. It was a want so fundamental she could not imagine how it had remained dormant in his presence until now. A need to have him close. To press herself against him.

He drew her down to straddle him in his chair. Her skirts tangled about her; her knees brushed his thighs through her petticoats. It shouldn't have been possible, but her want intensified to a primal thing, one that couldn't be satisfied by just his caress against her ribs.

As if he could taste her desire on her lips, his hand inched up, slowly, until he cupped her breast. Thumb and forefinger rolled; she felt that touch clear through the layers of fabric. A shot of pleasure went through her. It was almost too intense, too intimate for her to bear. She pulled away, just so that she could steady her hands on his shoulders.

He stared up at her, and then slowly, slowly, he gave her a brilliant grin—one that lit the darkest corners of her wary soul. He was all light, no darkness. It was Margaret herself who cast shadows.

“I take it,” he murmured, “this means my secret is safe with you.”

She couldn't answer. Instead, she reached out and placed her fingertips against his lips. His breath heated them with a kiss. Before he could do more than give her a gentle nibble, she took them away and curled her hand into a fist. As if she could somehow protect that newfound intimacy from the cold world out there.

“I can't read books,” he whispered, “but I have other skills. An instinct, if you will—this ability to
know
things, people, in the blink of an eye. It's how I made my fortune. It's how I knew, when I first saw you…”
He trailed off, and reached out and deliberately ran a finger down her arm. “I knew I could trust you,” he explained. “Instantly. Irrevocably.”

But she had made no promise.

Her heart constricted. How could he make her feel so warm and so cold, all at the same time? She gazed at him, her thoughts floundering somewhere between desire and despair. And then, because she had no answer for him, no answer even for herself, she leaned down and kissed him one last time.

 

I
TAKE IT THIS MEANS
my secret is safe with you.

Even half an hour later, seated alone in the tiny garret she'd adopted, Margaret could feel his body pressed against hers, his mouth on hers.

Until that evening, she'd never quite understood his smile. She'd thought his expression arrogant, overly familiar, assuming. Against her better judgment, she'd also found it attractive. But until that evening, she hadn't understood precisely how much uncertainty he hid behind it. She'd never before realized how much vulnerability he harbored.

But with her lap desk laid atop her knees, she was about to puncture those vulnerabilities, to betray that trust. The steel nib of her pen stood poised above her paper, ready to spill his story in India ink. A drop balled on the tip and fell to splash, deep black, against the page below.

Dear Richard.

Her brother. Her own
brother.
She'd grown up beside him. When she had been still in pinafores, his friend had called her a scraggly little thing, and Richard had punched him. If anyone in the world deserved her loyalty, it was Richard. She
had
to write this letter.

The next sentence would have been so simple.

Mr. Ash Turner is essentially illiterate.

If only she could write that down, her life would right itself. The Act of Legitimation would pass. She would be Lady Anna Margaret once more, and the dowry she'd been supposed to receive from her mother would be hers again. She could rejoin society; even if she never married, she need not live as her brothers' dependent for the rest of her life. A few droplets of ink, a little sand… Such tiny things could not amount to a betrayal. Not when it was her own brother she fought for. She dipped her pen with trembling hands.

Dear Richard,

There is something you need to know about Ash Turner. He is—

She set her pen to the paper to form the next word. But the nib would not move. A dark blotch of ink formed at the tip and spread, little threads of black weaving into the paper, mocking Margaret's inability to continue.

There was a reason she couldn't finish her sentence. It was because it wasn't true. Oh, the letter would be composed of entirely true things. But the import—that Ash Turner was incapable of serving as a duke—would be entirely false. It felt disloyal for her to reveal what he'd told her. It would have been wrong to betray his trust. Not when he'd looked at her and seen…everything.

I want you to paint your own canvas.

The paper waited patiently, ready to absorb her words. Whatever she wrote next, she would be painting it over, indelibly declaring her loyalty. It seemed utterly wrong to fill this space with lies about Ash. After all, he'd told her that she mattered.

He'd trusted her.

He'd broken her into pieces, and with one smile, he'd knit her back together again. There was no path of honor for her to tread, no way to be true to both her brothers and her own burgeoning sense of self-discovery. There was nothing left for her but a little defiance. Nothing left but to tell the truth. But whom would she defy? And, if she was picking amongst truths, which one could she pick for herself?

She stared at the inkblot spreading on the page, hoping to see some secret in its tangled darkness.

And when she dipped her pen again, what she wrote was this:
Ash Turner is a more conscientious man than Father ever was.

She hadn't intended to write that sentence until her pen moved. But there it was, in solid letters on the page. It was truer than anything else she could have written. And she wasn't going to take it back.

In his first three days here, he solved that awful land dispute between Nelson and Whitaker. The land steward reports that he has already come up with a plan to modernize planting procedures. I know you hoped I would uncover some grave deficiency on his part, but we must face the truth. A man capable of building a financial empire from nothing has little to fear from the demands of the dukedom.

In fact, Margaret was beginning to entertain the sneaking suspicion that Ash would be a better duke than her eldest brother. Richard had always assumed that the ducal mantle would one day settle upon his shoulders; Ash had worked for everything he'd achieved. Richard believed that the running of the duchy was in his blood; Ash had no such preconceptions.

One could push a pack of truths together to make one despicable falsehood. She'd seen it, when it was done to her. Society had torn her reputation to tatters, starting with the truth that she was a bastard, and ending with whispered conversations, just loud enough for her to hear, stating, “I always knew there was something wrong with her.”

Margaret set her pen down and shoved her lap desk to the side. This cramped room, practically in the rafters of the manor, was the best she could expect for her future, if her brothers' suit did not prosper. Duke's daughter though she was, she would likely have to enter service. She would become a governess, a companion, a nurse in truth.

There would be no fine dresses. No house of her own. She stood and walked to the window. It was a tiny slit, cut out like all the servants' windows from atop the roofs. Up here, the pigeons woke her in the morning with their squabbling.

It was night, and from the window she could see nothing but the thick velvet of mist, blanketing the rose garden her mother had loved. It had broken her mother's heart to discover that her son would not inherit these lands.

And yet Margaret thought it would break something even more fragile inside herself to betray Ash's secret in that horrible way, to expose it—and him—to the censure of Parliament. She could live without society's blessing. She could not live with her own condemnation.

Betraying Ash's secret would be like spilling dark paint on the picture of herself that she was only now beginning to comprehend.

And so she ended her letter to her brother with another truth—and a different kind of betrayal.

I'm sorry, Richard. I can't help you as we had hoped.

D
ISCLOSING HIS SECRET
incompetence had made Ash feel more determined, not less. More determined that this time, if he tried hard enough, he would break through that hazy barrier of symbols, that he would see words and sentences instead of a shifting mass of ink. He'd finished his affairs for the day, and now it was time for more vital business: keeping his promise to his brother.

Everything he'd ever set out to accomplish, he had done. And while he hadn't been able to muster up the will to plow through an agricultural text, today he'd received something far more important—Mark's book, the copy finally finished.

Mark was different from agriculture. His book would naturally prove different. And Ash had made a promise. If he
wanted
it, he told himself, he would simply make it happen. There was no other choice.

Thus far, the force of his will had only managed to give him a raging headache. It shifted behind his eyes, the letters sliding off the page before he could pin them down, until all he wanted was to sleep—and he'd only managed to comprehend the first three syllables.

Well. Never mind with the title page—that wouldn't matter. It would all be better once he got to the meat of the argument. He flipped to the second page, ignoring
the fact that it was filled with even more dauntingly squiggled ink.

He felt as if he were trying to catch pigs in the rain using only a pair of metal tongs. He barely recalled what each symbol stood for. Piecing them together into some semblance of coherent understanding was impossible.

It took him two full minutes to get through
Chapter. One. Chastity. Is.

Before he could find out what chastity
was,
he heard footsteps behind him.

“Ash?”

Margaret's voice. Oh, hell. Ash inhaled in mingled hope and desperation. God knew it would take a miracle for him to bull his way through even the first page of Mark's book. He'd surely never manage it if Margaret distracted him with her lithe figure and the promise of more kisses. He shut his eyes, as much to ward off the incipient headache swimming behind his vision as to try to fend off that extra frisson of vitality he felt in her presence.

Behind him, he could hear her breath, could imagine the swell of her chest, rising and falling.

Shutting his eyes didn't help. He could still remember her intimate taste from last night—her mouth warmed by brandy tempered with a floral note, her body canted over his, pressing into him. But in the here and now, her hand touched his, and he reluctantly looked at her.

Even though he'd prepared himself, the sight of her still sent a little shock down his spine. Her lips were rose-pink, and oh-so-kissably full. A handful of kisses hadn't been enough. The faint color of her cheeks was broken up here and there by a hint of freckle. Her hair was braided and bound up, tight and proper, but her
mouth pursed, and that hint of impropriety made him think of unlacing her from the confines of her gown, unpinning her curling hair…

Damn. He was distracted already.

“This,” she said, tapping the pages in his hand, “is your brother's book. He mentioned to me earlier today you'd gotten the copy. He seemed nervous.”

Ash spread the loose pages in his hands. “As you see,” he murmured, “I've managed to take in so much of it already.”

She bit her lip. “I thought I might read it to you.”

The blood simply stopped in Ash's veins. His whirling thoughts came to a crashing standstill. His throat dried out, and he coughed. She looked down.

When he didn't respond, she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “I can see I've offended you. I didn't intend to imply— I apologize—”

“No.” He choked the word out, and she drew back further. “I mean, no, don't apologize.” He was stunned, too stunned to form a response. But he caught her hand in his. Their fingers intertwined, his grip saying what his mouth could not manage. He squeezed all his pent-up helplessness, his secret shame into her fingers.

“I promised Mark,” he explained awkwardly. His inability to read was a guilty, secret part of him, something to be hidden away from the light of day under a mass of lies and misdirection. He'd invented excuse after excuse, pleaded his schedule a thousand times, ordered employees to summarize numerous documents.

But this…this, he couldn't hide.

She'd looked into his darkest degradation and whispered that he was not alone. Maybe this was what he'd felt, that fine morning when he'd first seen her out on
the steps. He'd felt an echo of this moment—as if he were somehow, finally, coming home.

He nodded at Margaret. “Very well,” he said. He knew his voice sounded harsh, almost devoid of emotion. It was merely because she had no idea how long he'd carried that burden in solitude. To think he might trust someone with his secret—and that she might offer to
help,
that she might bridge the gap between Ash and his brothers… He couldn't even contemplate it. If he hid behind gruffness, it was because his throat felt scratchy, as if he were on the verge of weeping.

Not that he would.

That would have been ridiculous. Almost as ridiculous as the rush of vulnerability that overtook him, as if he were some nocturnal insect blinded by the sudden light of her regard. If it had been anyone else at this moment, he might have scuttled away. But then…it was Margaret.

Instead he simply nodded at her. She took the pages from him and shuffled them into order.

“A Gentleman's Practical Guide to Chastity,”
she began to read. “By Mark Turner.” She cocked her head and looked at Ash. “A
practical
guide to chastity? What does that mean?”

Ash shrugged. So that was what the words on the front page had said. “I suspect we are about to discover that.” He put his hands on the arms of his seat, readying himself. It may have been a dry philosophical text of intellectual import, but it was his
brother's
dry philosophical text. He was
not
going to think about the juxtaposition of her full lips and the words of chastity. He was
not
going to make some juvenile witticism.

“‘Chapter One,'” Margaret read. “‘Entitled: Chastity is hard.'”

Ash sniggered despite himself. So much for keeping his juvenile thoughts at bay. “Yes,” he murmured. “
Hard
is usually how I find myself after an unfortunate bout with chastity.”

She flicked a glance at him, her lips curving upwards in amusement, and then she shook her head and read once more. “‘Too often, moralists stress the need for upright behavior. But this emphasis is often impractical in its effect. When a man fails to meet one overly rigorous standard, his usual reaction is to give up on all of them.'”

With the words spoken aloud, Mark's book wasn't hard to follow. In fact, it even made sense. Ash nodded, and Margaret went on.

“‘For instance, we have all heard that if a man lusts after a woman, he has already committed adultery in his heart. This admonition is rooted in good intentions—after all, one ought to keep one's thoughts uplifted at all times. Unfortunately, the base male mind, always keen on having its own way, often inverts the principle.
Well,
a man reasons to himself,
if I am already damned for committing adultery in my heart, I might as well have the enjoyment of committing adultery in the flesh.
'”

Ash let out a surprised bark of laughter—both because what his brother said was all too true, and because he could see Mark saying those words, his face lighting with irrepressible good humor. Margaret was smiling as she read, too. Dimples had come out on her cheeks.

He liked her dimples.

“‘The truth,'” she intoned, “‘is that chastity is
hard.
It is particularly hard for the young, unmarried gentleman who is besieged on the one hand by admonitions that he not even so much as
consider
a woman's ankle,
and on the other, by invitations to avail himself of the great multitude of opportunities available to any man with a few coins to his name. For most such young gentlemen, a choice between the impossible and the pleasant is no choice at all. That is why I have written this first
practical
guide to chastity.'”

“You know,” Ash remarked, “my brother is either going to win instant accolades with this book, or he's going to be charged with blasphemy and these pages will join Thomas Paine and
Fanny Hill
on the list of forbidden titles.”

“Both, in fact, are possible.” Margaret stared at the pages in her hand. “For a book on chastity, he has already touched on adultery and ankles. It seems surprisingly outré, given the subject matter.”

“Only because you're reading it. The word
ankle
is a thousand times more provocative when spoken by a beautiful woman.”

A light flush touched her cheeks. But she gave him a dry stare. “Do stop these compliments, or I might find myself sinning in my heart instead of reading.”

“Are you just starting that, then? My heart has been sinning for a very long time.” The dimple on her cheek deepened, but she pursed those sensual lips in a pretense of primness and gathered up the pages again.

“Now, where were we? Ah, yes. ‘I have written this first practical guide to chastity.'”

Her voice was warm and filled with humor. As she spoke, she lifted her slippered foot, pointing her toe and then flexing it in an unconscious rhythm. Every so often, the slipper would fall, and he'd catch a glimpse of her bare foot. Not so much skin to get excited about, but then, it was
her
skin. And her ankle.

Mark was right. Thoughts of ankles lead to thoughts
of pushing skirts aside, following the line of that leg…

She read on.

When she spoke of sin, he thought of her. When she mentioned chastity, breathing the word at him over lowered eyelashes, she could not help but evoke thoughts of the opposite. Her voice was low and seductive, and Ash realized that his brother was right. Chastity was hard.

He was ready to take her to his bed now.

She must have felt his eyes on her, because halfway through, she glanced up at him and stopped speaking. Her tongue darted out to touch her lips, and he could not help but imagine the softness of that caress against his aching erection. And if he had been stiff before, he was rigid now.

“Ash?” she asked uncertainly. “Shall I continue?”

He cleared his throat. “I'm listening.”

It wasn't just her voice or the words that brought him to this fist-clenching arousal. It was the intimacy of what they were doing. They were separated by three feet, yes. But he'd admitted to her his most private secret, and instead of flinching from him in horror, she'd made him feel whole in a way he'd never felt before.

That intimacy made a subtle, erotic counterpoint to her reading on chastity—through page after page, punctuated by her laughter mingled with his.

He hadn't realized how funny his brother was. Oh, he'd known Mark had a sharp wit and a flair for a turn of phrase, but this was that keenness of observation, condensed. The work reminded him of his brother: chaste, moral…and yet tinged with a sense of
humor that elevated the pages from sober rectitude to something almost wicked.

Margaret turned to the last page that had been copied from Mark's manuscript.

“‘There is no need to belabor the reasons for chastity, of course. But as a mere reminder to my readers, I outline the most important points. Male chastity is absolutely vital for three reasons.'”

Vital
was the shape of her lips, making those words.
Vital
was that flash of skin covered by silk, peeking from under the dark hem of her dress.
Vital
was the ache he felt, something deeper than the mere wants of his flesh.

“‘First,'” Margaret said solemnly, “‘it is commanded by God and Holy Scripture.'”

Ash waved a hand.

“‘Second,'” she started, and then stopped. The amused light in her eyes faltered. She glanced over at him, suddenly wary. “‘Second,'” she said, “‘profligacy in such relations causes harm to the families who must endure such infidelity, and to the children who result from the union.'”

He had forgotten that
she
was illegitimate. But was that something she could overlook? Her life would have been very different, had matters been otherwise. He wanted to say something to her, to remind her how little such things mattered to him. But she set her chin stubbornly, bent her head and read on.

“‘And third—and most important to a chaste, practical gentleman—'” Her eyes scanned ahead once more, but this time she burst out laughing.

“What? What is it?”

She didn't respond for a few seconds, but her shoulders shook with mirth. When she finally spoke, she
could barely force the words out. “‘Third, as the ladies have clearly mastered the female art of chastity, our masculine inability to control our urges rather weakens our claims to be the stronger sex.'” She looked up at Ash. “He's not serious. Truly?”

Of course Mark wasn't. It was a subtle joke, precisely the sort of sly, tongue-in-cheek suggestion his brother might drop. But a more serious-minded audience might take his words to be pure truth.

Ash shook his head. “That alone will get him banned.”

“I've lost count of the number of times your brother has made me laugh. Chastity is far more amusing than I had anticipated.”

“Chastity,” Ash said dryly, “is far more
arousing
than I had anticipated.”

Margaret flushed. She sat primly on the velvet sofa, and at his words, she rearranged her ankles underneath her. “I do believe we are straying into the improper,” she said.

“Oh, no,” he contradicted. “We aren't straying. I had hoped we had embarked on a deliberate voyage.”