Unclaimed (Turner #2)(44)

Mark had thought about his ideal wife before. He’d not yet found her, not in the myriad subdued and pliable debutantes that had been pushed his way. Mark’s ideal wife was intelligent. She would be a perfect companion: clever enough that he would never tire of her company, outspoken enough that she did not simply bow to his whims. She would challenge and confront him when necessary.

But there was another, more important component to this wistful dream. He wanted a woman who would calm him. She needed to be level-headed enough that he might trust her with the truth about himself. She would bring him to balance. She would be a source of peace and quiet.

Yes. Of course, he also hoped that his wife would satisfy his physical desires, too. Still, every time he’d imagined marital intercourse—far too often for his peace of mind—he’d imagined it as a rational endeavor. Heated, of course, and pleasurable, naturally. He had no problem with pleasure regulated by reason. But sexual congress was supposed to leave his head clearer at the end.

When he’d met Mrs. Farleigh, he had wanted time to consider her. She’d seemed…possible.

She was beautiful. She was intelligent. And most important of all, she challenged him. She hadn’t believed all the folderol about his perfection. She was the first woman in a very long while who had seen through the claptrap of his inexplicable success to discover that underneath, he was still just a man like any other man. He needed someone who could turn to him and say, “Sir Mark, you are failing, and you must get yourself under control.”

Mrs. Farleigh might have done. He’d begun to hope that she was the woman he’d been waiting for, no matter what the townspeople said.

But now it was quite clear that he would have to discard that hope. There was one way in which Mrs. Farleigh was completely wrong for him. She didn’t calm him. No; she enflamed him. When he let his eyes flicker shut, he could see the fall of her eyelashes, the look she’d given him over her shoulder. He could see the pink of her lips, her mouth opening to his. He could still taste her sweetness on his lips.

She made him smolder. She took his logical thoughts, and instead of arranging them in calm and clean order, she shook them until he could not tell up from down, right from wrong—could only think in terms of her and not her.

No. Despite her intelligence, despite the connection he felt to her, there was no question about the matter. She was wrong for him. Utterly, completely, and in all other ways wrong.

His reason knew it. But the rest of him was discontent with that decision.

Mark turned off the dusty track onto a lane. It headed straight down the hill, through a path lined by birch trees. The way was shaded; it wended down until it ran parallel to the briskly moving water of a mill-leat. Cool air rose around him, the temperature welcome against his skin. The walk, if nothing else, helped to bleed the edge from his sexual frustration. Deliberately, he kept walking past his mother’s house. He needed to regain his equanimity, to find the smooth imperturbable silk that normally surrounded him. Nothing like physical exertion to work his wants out of his system.

Glass bricks. He imagined them, cool against his skin. Distancing. Anything seen through glass must be far away, unable to touch him. If he laid them just right, he would be able to block off this smoldering powder keg of desire. He would be in control once again. He’d no longer sense the echoes of his mother but would again be a man whose emotions were all that was proper and gentlemanly.

He concentrated only on the distorting wave of the glass. It would mute out color, heat, shape—everything, really, except that which was sober and seemly. In his mental exercise, he built those glass walls high, higher, stretching until his mental tower of bricks rivaled that of Babel. It didn’t help that at every step along the way, he was confronted by reminders. The shadow of oak on water recalled the dark gleam of her hair. An errant beam of light, cutting through the gloom, brought to mind the sun-warm lips he’d touched. He waited until his breathing evened out. Until his wants fitted inside his skin once again.

It was only then that he let himself observe his surroundings. He’d traveled miles upstream from his mother’s house. In the distance, he could see the blackened bricks of a factory—one that no doubt had been burned back in the troubled times. Times his own family had precipitated. If he’d needed another reason to avoid the dangers that awaited him if he gave in to his animal needs, those dark stones stood as a whispering reminder. This wasn’t about him or his selfish, burning want for a woman.

Mark wasn’t his father. He wasn’t his mother. But…he might duplicate their mistakes, if he let himself slip.

Even with an hour between him and that kiss, even with his every thought bent toward expunging the sense of heat, he could still feel the pressure of her lips against his. No. There was nothing for it. He was going to have to stop indulging himself. He was going to have to stop pretending that his want for her was anything other than animal desire.

He was going to have to stop seeing her.

So why did that decision feel so wrong?

That twinge of regret he felt, that soul-deep gasp that filled him…

That was only further proof that she was the last woman on earth he needed to be thinking about.

With that decision firmly in hand, he turned and headed for home. The walk back took longer, now that he was no longer trying to outrace his own desires. If anything, he was almost reluctant to turn to his house again. It was cold and empty, filled with the ghosts of his childhood: precisely not the calm comfort he needed to keep his life in regular order.