Unclaimed (Turner #2)(78)

“Ah,” he said. “That feels good.”

She’d scented the water with herbs. They released their sweet aroma into the air. It made the atmosphere take on the aspect of a dream—as if this were some wooded glen, taken from her imagination and not a room in dirty London. Her hands moved to his shoulders, and she rubbed them.

“Did Weston scream?” she asked. “Did he grovel?”

“Indeed.”

“How gratifying.”

He snorted under the damp cloth. “It was, actually. I wish you could have been there.”

“Oh, the account in the paper was lovely.” She sighed again. “I wish…I wish…”

“What do you want?”

Her hands were cool and moist from the compress. His fingers reached up and intertwined themselves with hers, warm and dry.

“It’s lovely what you did, Mark.” She shook her head. “I…I never thought he’d pay for what he’d done.”

But. She left the word unspoken. But it didn’t make it any better. Mark couldn’t make the man give back what he’d stolen—not with any number of beatings. She still felt sick when she thought of Weston, like some creature cowering in the underbrush. It hadn’t made her feel any better. It had just made Weston feel worse.

A cause for celebration, to be sure. Still…

“Dearest,” Mark said, taking the cloth from his eye. “You will marry me, won’t you?”

She could choke on the hope he made her feel. Her hands shook. “I— Even if Weston stays silent and hidden, someone might recognize me. And the paper—it says you’re likely to be appointed Commissioner of the Poor Laws, with Weston in disgrace. You’ll constantly find yourself in the public’s eye. Perhaps even more than you are now, hard as that is to believe. Someone will speak out about me. We would be disgraced.”

“You haven’t met my elder brother.” Mark smiled. “The Duke of Parford. He’ll make sure nothing goes wrong.”

“Even a duke can’t stop gossip.”

“Stop worrying.” He said the words lightly, but she could see the tic in his cheek, the tension in his hand as it balled lightly into a fist.

“And you’re going to be Commissioner now. You didn’t even want to be Commissioner.”

“Well.” He didn’t deny this. “But I did want you.”

Jessica had suffered the waning of a man’s interest often enough to know the course of want. At first, a man was willing to give up almost anything. But soon enough, want settled into familiarity. Soon, those little deprivations would start to sting and then fester.

She could barely accept Mark’s regard. She couldn’t manage his resentment.

She held out her hand to him. There was no hope to be had, not in this. There was only tonight.

“Will you come to my bed?” she asked. It wasn’t an answer to his question. It was, instead, a different sort of offer. He looked at her hand. Slowly, he raised his own to touch her fingertips. His fingers curled about hers again, so warm, so confident.

“Yes,” Mark said, his voice low and throaty. “Yes, I will.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

WHEN J ESSICA AWOKE, Mark was asleep beside her. In the pale light of morning, he looked innocent. Young. She was almost afraid to touch him, lest she break the spell that had brought a man like this to her.

It felt like Christmas morning as a child—that sense of unreal anticipation, that feeling that something good might be waiting for her, if only she hurried to meet the day. But it was only in bed that they could be together like this. For all his fine words last night, he had to know that she didn’t fit in his life. He didn’t fit in hers. He was a knight, Her Majesty’s own moralist. He was London’s proper darling. He was Sir Mark Turner—and she was still the woman who had seduced him.

Everything innocent about her was dead—almost literally. She could shut her eyes and remember the obituary her father had placed in the paper. She wasn’t Guinevere to his Lancelot. She was a courtesan. No knight, however skilled he was in the art of war, could take on the field of windmills that had taken her prisoner.

Still, she placed her hand against his chin. His skin was warm and rough with stubble. Whatever had happened that fate had brought her this man? How was she to send him away? And had he really given her five thousand pounds? What an idiotic, absurdly…romantic…gesture.

On that thought, his eyes fluttered open. He blinked twice and looked at her.

“There’s nothing to eat,” she told him gravely.

“Just as well.” He sat up, rubbing his eyes. She waited for him to come to his senses. Surely now, he must have reconsidered.

“Good morning,” he said, and he leaned over and touched his lips to hers.

For one lovely second, she could believe the promise in his kiss: that this would not fade, that she would wake up to him for a thousand mornings to come. Ten thousand mornings.

She pulled back abruptly. It had seemed safe to love him, when she’d believed him far beyond her touch. But she didn’t know what she believed any longer. She only knew that everything she held dear eventually crumbled to dust.

“I wish we’d put some thought into your clothing last night,” she mumbled. “It’s been lying on the floor all evening, and it’s probably wrinkled.”