Unclaimed (Turner #2)(51)
“You know,” he said softly, “it’s not a romance I want to make of you.”
“What do you want?”
His gaze slipped down her form. She could feel where he’d touched her last night. More, she could feel where he hadn’t—the untouched skin of her belly, the nakedness of her inner thighs. But he didn’t move. “For now?” His tone was nonchalant, so at odds with the heat of his gaze. “For now, I’ll be satisfied if you call me Mark. And I wanted to ask if you’d…if you’d heard about the address I agreed to give tonight. I’m talking to the MCB.”
“About chastity.”
He nodded. “These days, I think I should deserve a medal for my restraint.” He shook his head. “Come. Let me see you home afterward. I thought…I thought you might want the company.”
She’d warned him. She’d told him to take himself away. If he insisted on throwing himself, mothlike, into her flame, who was she to tell him no? It must have been her fate to ruin him, her destiny to lead him astray as surely as Guinevere had ever seduced Sir Lancelot.
“Yes,” Jessica said softly. “I’ll be there.” The words sounded like blasphemy on her lips.
THAT EVENING, Mark noted, the church was filled well before the appointed time. There was nothing quite like the hum of whispers before one addressed a crowd. Before he started to speak, he could imagine anything happening. Riots could break out. Or, more likely, he might put everyone to sleep.
The rector had ceded the church this evening for the use of the MCB, the town hall being insufficient for the size of the crowd. The pews had filled up. It seemed as if everyone in the parish—in fact, everyone in every neighboring parish—had found their way here to attend the lecture that Tolliver had arranged, even on so short a notice.
Jessica sat near the front. They were beginning to accept her now. He liked that. No longer ostracized, she was seated next to Mrs. Metcalf. But Mark still could not help but noticing that the nearest man to her was three feet away. The nearest man, that was, excepting Mr. Lewis, who sat next to her. Jessica looked straight ahead, her face blank, as the rector spoke to her. He couldn’t hear a word, but he seemed to be lecturing her. Jessica was accepted but not trusted. It made him ache inside. He wanted her to have more than that.
The very front rows were taken up by young, male faces—eager, eyes shining, intent on hearing Mark’s words. They sported the blue armbands that designated them members of the MCB. The armbands, he’d once been told, were for indoor use, when hats—and their cockades—were not allowed. James Tolliver stood to Mark’s immediate right, and as the crowd finally found their places, he motioned for silence. It took very little time.
“Our guest tonight needs no introduction,”
Tolliver began. “We are all familiar with the great, the magnificent, the inestimable Sir Mark.”
Mark wanted to bury his head in his hands. Magnificent? Inestimable? He’d have preferred less effusive praise—“decent” was all he strove for, and considering how close matters had come with Jessica over the past week, he didn’t even merit that any longer. The thought should have made him feel guilty.
“Sir Mark, as you all know, is the author of that famous tome, A Gentleman’s Practical Guide toChastity. We here in Shepton Mallet are familiar with every sentence in that holy book.”
Holy? Mark imagined hitting Tolliver with the oversize prayer book that lay open on the podium before him.
“We have memorized its every commandment,” Tolliver intoned. “We have committed its advice to memory.”
They had made membership cards distorting said advice. It was a book, a human-written one, not deified advice engraved on stone tablets.
Tolliver continued, solemnly. “We have adopted its creed as our own—as members of the Male Chastity Brigade—and, having solemnly sworn ourselves to righteousness, we have learned to cast out temptation. Wherever we may find it.”
Mark thought of Jessica, and the way they’d cast her out at first. His fists curled.
“Tonight,” Tolliver said, “Sir Mark will address us, and tell us how best to keep to chastity. I, for one, plan to listen.”
Applause rang out, accompanied by cheers. Mark’s thoughts churned.
He couldn’t count the people who had turned out to see him. Several hundred, at least. If it was the entire parish, it might have been thousands. Mark had delivered lectures before. He never enjoyed the prospect. The only thing worse than being forced to make idle conversation with one person was to have to address hundreds. The crowd’s expectant stares stabbed into him like a hundred tiny knives.
They always expected him to be some kind of extraordinary orator. In truth, he usually managed to be an indifferent one. He’d prepared his usual remarks for tonight, a summary of a few important points he’d made in his book, followed by a plea to remember that he was just a regular man and not some kind of a saint.
The first few times he’d mouthed the latter sentiments, he had waited for the disappointed buzz. Perhaps he’d secretly hoped that someone would stand up and say, “He’s right! Did you hear what he just said? Sir Mark is a horrible fraud—why on earth have we been listening to him?”
There would be riots. The papers would turn on him as quickly as they’d taken his side, and in a few months, everyone would have forgotten him and turned their inexplicable zeal toward some more worthy object.