Unclaimed (Turner #2)(36)

“What are you doing?” she demanded. “Do you have any idea how…how much those women are going to talk?”

“Let them.” His shoulders were taut. “What are they going to do? Talk to Parret?”

Sir Mark made no attempt to moderate his steps to match hers, and Jessica found herself half running to keep up with his long stride. In the hot sun, she was overheated within several streets. Still, he kept the pace through the heart of town, past the point where the paving stones gave way to dust. Sir Mark stared fixedly at the horizon as he walked. It wasn’t until five minutes had passed that he addressed her again.

“I was rather too unfair. I’m not much company right now.” Droplets from the horse trough had splashed him all over; the darker spots that the water had left across his coat had almost faded.

Jessica didn’t say anything.

“In truth,” he said, “I’m in a bit of a temper.”

“I could never have guessed.”

He did look at her then—a slow, sidelong glance. His eyes fairly snapped with intensity. And her insides sparked with the fierceness of his gaze.

“You’re formidable when you’re angry,” she said. He jerked his head toward the front once more, and she breathed again.

Formidable didn’t quite cover it. She couldn’t imagine crossing him in this mood. She wouldn’t have known how to seduce him from it. There was something about the way he walked, the way he held himself—he seemed larger and more lethal than he usually did. As if his anger had stripped away some civilizing influence and left this version of him: less voluble and more vicious.

She should have been wary.

“I don’t trust myself when I’m angry,” he said, as if hearing her thoughts.

“Well,” Jessica said slowly, “I do. So that’s all right then.”

“Hardly reassuring. You’ve no familiarity with my temper.” Little clouds of dust rose up from the ground with his every footfall. He walked so quickly, he could have kept time with the beat of her own heart.

“I try not to lose my temper,” he said gravely, “because it is so very, very bad when I do. Even today, I nearly slammed that unfortunate scribbler into a wall. I only recalled myself at the last moment.”

“Consider me shocked.”

“I like balance,” he said. “I like quiet. I like calm.”

“You must hate me, then.”

“Hardly.” Sir Mark snorted. “When I was younger, I…I picked a fight with a distant cousin, Edmund Dalrymple. He’d been making some remarks about me, about my mother. I broke his arm in two places. The incident precipitated a rift between our two families. It took years to heal, simply because I couldn’t keep hold of my temper.”

“I’m stunned,” Jessica returned. “Boys, fighting? How outrageous. How abnormal.”

“Actually,” he said, “it was. Now my brother’s married to his sister—and doesn’t that make for the cheeriest of gatherings? Edmund and I still have not had a cordial conversation. By now, I suppose it will never happen.” Mark trailed off. “It’s more complicated than that. My elder brother, Smite, was once friends with Edmund’s elder brother, Richard. But after we fought, they argued. Now Richard won’t come to Parford Manor if Smite is there, and the same holds true in reverse. So, yes. I don’t trust my temper. When I truly lose it…”

“Smite,” Jessica said. “Your brother’s name is Smite?”

He let out a great sigh. “You see what happens when I’m in a temper? I can’t keep my mouth shut. He’ll hate that I mentioned that. These days, I’m Sir Mark, and Ash, of course, is Parford. Smite goes by Turner—just Turner. He hates his name, for reasons I am sure you can imagine.”

“Your eldest brother is named Ash? That’s an…odd name. How did your brothers come to be named Ash and Smite, and you were lucky enough to be called Mark?”

The ruddy flush of his complexion had faded. Now he blushed—ever so faintly, back to his quiet, slighter self. “Listen here, Mrs. Farleigh. This conversation is going rather far afield. And I’ve just talked to a newspaper reporter, who reminds me that every one of these details would be worth a fortune to the right man.”

“And yet I am the soul of discretion.”

He cast her an unreadable look. “My brothers and I all have Bible verses for names. Mark, Ash—those are just shorter versions of our real names.”

“What is your name, then?”

“Soul of discretion or no, I’m not stupid enough to tell you that.” He looked up at her again. “It’s not the sort of thing one discloses to a woman when one is trying to impress her.”

“Well.” She sighed. “I suppose you were lucky that your verse was chosen in the Gospel of Mark, instead of, for instance, the Book of Zachariah. You don’t much look like a Zachariah. Or a Habakkuk.”

He smiled, which had been her purpose in the first place. “Your father must have been quite devout,” Jessica continued. Even her own father, a straitlaced vicar, would never have considered such a path. And then she looked up into his face, remembering something he’d said earlier…

“My mother,” Mark said softly. “My mother actually had the naming of us. My father wasn’t around when any of us were born. And yes, she was very religious. She…” Mark trailed off. “She didn’t have much to believe in. What she did have, she believed with her whole heart.”