Unclaimed (Turner #2)(73)

When sanity returned, he found himself collapsed atop her, chest to chest, her hands clasped around his lower back.

“Try as I might,” she said, “I can’t make you out.”

He caught her lips in his. “What’s to make out? I’m not so complicated.” He disengaged himself from her as best he could without relinquishing her. Now that he’d had her once—well, twice—he didn’t plan on letting go again.

She said nothing in response, simply waited.

“I suppose there are two things you really should know,” Mark said. “About the past. And about the future.”

At the word future, her breath sucked in. He could almost feel the tension steal into her limbs. But all she said was, “Hmm?”

“The near past,” he said. “You must know that I would never have risked making love with you, if there were any chance that you would be unprotected afterward. There are always risks, and even if I intend to make it right…well, I could have been struck by lightning. I wouldn’t risk the possibility that you might not have the funds to care for a child.” He could still remember that infant in Bristol and the woman who had walked away. He needed to know it wouldn’t be her. That it wouldn’t be his son there, one day.

“I—I had wondered about that.” Her hand found his face.

“Which is why this morning, I went to my solicitors and signed five thousand pounds over to you.”

She sat up abruptly, pulling the covers with her. “You did what?”

“I gave you five thousand pounds.” His words were calm, but his pulse beat wildly.

She curled in on herself. “I don’t need it. I don’t want it. I refuse.”

“Too bad. It’s already been done—the money’s signed into a trust. I couldn’t take it back, even if I wanted it.” He reached a tentative hand to touch her back.

She inched away. “I hope you don’t think you’re paying me for services rendered.”

“That would be ridiculous. You hadn’t rendered anything at that point, and by the time I touched you, you were already a wealthy woman.”

She huffed. “Your pardon. I…I don’t quite comprehend what you’ve done.”

He let the silence flow between them, unsure how to respond to that.

“I had some money,” she said stiffly. “I wouldn’t have needed it.”

He shrugged. “Now you have more.”

She let out a puff of laughter. “Oh, honestly. I can’t understand this. I just can’t understand what is happening. Yesterday, I was alone. And now…” She shook her head. “Things like this do not happen to women like me.”

And there were those words again. “Women like you?” he asked, forcing his voice to calm. “What kind of woman do you suppose you are?”

“Mark, I’m a woman who has been unchaste outside of marriage.”

“Jessica,” he parroted, “in case you failed to notice—I am a man who has been unchaste outside of marriage.”

She fell silent.

“Why do you think I came to you like this?” he continued. “I told you once—you are the point of chastity, not its enemy. What was the use holding on to principles that only served to make you feel as if you were beneath me? When I marry you, I want you to know you’re my equal.”

“Marry you? You can’t really want to marry me. You shouldn’t feel obligated, just because we were intimate.”

“I gave up twenty-eight years of chastity. It wasn’t on a whim. I’m not asking for your hand out of a fleeting sense of obligation or regret. I want you in my life. I want you to meet my brothers. I want you to bear my children.”

She took a shuddering breath. “You can’t convince me that you’ve dreamed of marrying a courtesan. And—oh, I’m trying to imagine it, but I just can’t.”

“Hmm.” He reached out a hand to her, found her fingers. “True. I never dreamed of this. But now that I’ve found you, anything else seems a nightmare. Dreams change with circumstances. Often for the better.”

“Not in my experience.” Her voice was still and flat, but she let her fingers twine with his. “Two months ago, my dearest dream was to never sell my body again. A far cry from my childhood fantasies.”

“Am I so far from your childhood dreams, then?”

She shook her head. “I always believed I would be married. I was pretty. Everyone told me so. So I thought that one day, my perfect husband would find me. He’d ask me to marry him. We’d call the banns in my father’s church, and three weeks later, I would walk down the aisle.”

Her nails bit into his hand.

“That’s right.” Mark kept his tone carefully neutral. “Your father is a vicar.”

“He was very formal, you see. Very proper. He…he never knew quite what to do with us. I don’t believe he’d expected to have beautiful daughters. My mother is pretty. But…the three of us, we were something else. We turned heads, and it confounded him.” She shook her head in wry bemusement. “I was a confounding child, even before I ruined myself.”

“Was he angry, when it happened?”

“Angry? No. He was very frightened. He was not wealthy. A poor vicar with three beautiful daughters must be very careful. Gossip will magnify the slightest mistake. If my reputation had the tiniest blemish, it would have reflected on my sisters and damaged their prospects. Perhaps it might have ruined them altogether.”