Unveiled (Turner #1)(16)
“You do realize,” he said, “you are allowed to speak to me.”
“I can’t possibly. You’re kicking up dust. I can scarcely breathe, let alone carry on a conversation.”
It wasn’t true. There’d been a fine rain last night, which had left the ground moist and springy—not so wet as to be muddy, but not so dry as to toss up clouds of dirt.
He didn’t contradict her obvious lie, however. Instead, his smile broadened. “If I take you up on my horse, no doubt you’ll breathe more freely.”
Just the thought of being lifted onto that beast made her lungs tighten. He would set her before him. She would feel his thighs pressing into her, his hands straying against her body… No. She’d never been one for foot kissing. She wasn’t about to start now.
“Why do you persist in saying these things?” she asked. “I have been perfectly clear on the matter. A true gentleman wouldn’t wait for a second dismissal.”
“No.” His voice filled with a dark humor. “A gentleman would have just taken you to bed to begin with, without bothering to ask for permission. Luckily for you, I was too busy making my own way in the world to learn to be a gentleman.” He tossed his head back. “If you want to know why I keep pestering you, it’s because you remind me of Laurette.”
“Laurette?” Margaret repeated the name with distaste. It sounded tawdry, the sort of half-Frenchified affectation a mistress would adopt. “I doubt it can be quite proper for you to speak of her.”
“I met her in India.” His eyes sparked at her in amusement, as if he knew precisely how discomfited she was. “I kept her for a little more than a year, before I realized she needed more than I was able to give.”
“Mr. Turner.” She could imagine Laurette now—a beautiful Indian woman, her skin dark, her limbs entangled with his. And why, oh, why did that image fill her with heat instead of disgust? Another yank of her bonnet strings, but this adjustment served only to drive the pins harder into her scalp.
He grinned at her discomfort. “It’s Ash, if you recall, not Mr. Turner. As for Laurette, at first she was wary, but as time went on, she came to sleep with me at nights.”
“Mr. Turner! I won’t listen to this.” She put her hands over her ears, but she could not keep out the sound of his voice.
“When she was young, I had to cut her meat into very small cubes. Even then, though, her teeth were needle-sharp. My hands were perpetually in bandages.”
Margaret stopped dead in the path. Her hands fell to her side. The sensual image that had persisted in her head disappeared in a swirl of impossibility, just as Laurette grew tiny fangs. An unpredictable bubble of laughter almost escaped her, before she managed to convert it into a mere disbelieving puff of air. “Mr. Turner,” she said, investing his name with all the starchy scorn she could muster. Under the circumstances, it wasn’t much.
Mr. Turner drew up his horse a few paces ahead. He wheeled to face her, his eyes bright. “Yes. That was very bad of me. Laurette was a tiger. I was…accompanying a man who shot her mother for sport. He took the pelt and left the cub barely able to feed herself. It took me hours of searching before I finally found her hiding in the underbrush. She was the tiniest thing—barely the size of a ship’s cat. And she looked into my eyes from the bramble with the most baleful glare. What I thought was if I could win this magnificent creature’s regard, it would truly mean something.”
On those last words, he looked into Margaret’s eyes. For just one second, Margaret wished she were the sort to tumble into love over a pair of handsome brown eyes and a lovely set of shoulders. That she could ignore who she was—who he was—and what he’d done. But she couldn’t.
Maybe he could manufacture the ring of sincerity in his voice, could manipulate the warm directness of his gaze. But it didn’t matter even if he meant what he said.
He might make her forget the itch of her hairpins. But when he left, they would still be there, piercing her scalp. He couldn’t change reality, and she wouldn’t forget.
She glanced up at him reluctantly. “What happened after you found the cub, then?”
“I reached for her. She bit me.” He smiled, looking off into the distance. “It was worth it.”
She had to look away, as well. More dangerous, even, than those piercing brown eyes was that implied compliment. He’d just told her that she was worth it—she and all her prickles.
And he hadn’t said it because he wanted sixty thousand pounds in the five-percents. Nor because she was the key to forging an alliance with an old, noble family. No; he could have any of the other women who no doubt had signaled their willingness to kiss his feet. Instead, he’d chosen to pursue her. And no matter how impure his motives, she felt all the force of that compliment. Not going to her head, like bubbles of champagne, but sinking deep into her skin.
She tugged on her bonnet strings again. “Is that how you see me? Wild? Savage?”
“Fierce. Protective. Implacable when angered, but I believe your affection can be earned. And you’ve been hiding in a veritable thicket of rules made for you by society. You’re cribbed about by the requirements of gentility, when genteel society has never done you any favors. Why do you even wear a bonnet, when you hate it so?”
Margaret sniffed, her hair pins itching once more. “I don’t know what you could mean,” she said untruthfully. How had he known?