Unveiled (Turner #1)(24)

Her gaze traveled up his waist, his chest. He’d changed his shirt, thank God; she wouldn’t have to stare at a splotch of dirt marring his linen. Finally she met his eyes. “What is that?”

He pushed the mug towards her. “A toddy of steamed milk, honey and nutmeg. A jigger of rum, for good measure.”

“You woke the cook for this?”

“Mrs. Lorens? God, no. I can warm a little milk on the range myself.”

His arm returned to his side. Those hands could have been overpowering. Almost frightening in their strength, as ruthless as he was. She’d never thought before how gently he used them.

She swallowed.

“It’s a remedy for sleeplessness,” he continued. “I used to make it for my brothers when I found them up and about at night.”

He spoke casually, as if the nocturnal lobbing of soil was a regular occurrence in the Turner household, one usually met with hot drinks and a comfortable discussion. She could almost see him, puttering by the cast-iron heating plates.

“And did you often find your brothers wandering about at night?”

His eyes glinted at her. “In the first few months when I was back from India? I found them living on the streets, you know. They’d almost forgotten how to sleep.”

“On the streets? A duke’s cousins? That can’t be correct.”

“Sixth cousins, twice removed. And while I am correct, it certainly was not right. Parford didn’t care.” He spat those words out.

It took her a moment to realize that he wasn’t angry at her. This wasn’t some form of complicated revenge. She couldn’t yet think what to say.

He shook his head. “Speaking of whom, I’ll have someone look in on the duke in the early morning. Sleep late. You’ll need it.”

She looked up at him, but he was already turning away, as if dukes’ heirs had nothing better to do than to deliver hot drinks to their dependents and tell them to sleep past the morning bells.

“Mr. Turner. You do realize I’m a servant, don’t you?”

He cast a tolerant glance over his shoulder. “I was one, too. Before I made my fortune. If I lost it all, I’d be one again. This notion of class that we English hold to—it’s an interesting delusion. You don’t have to be a servant, Miss Lowell, just because you were born as one.”

She shook her head blankly.

“I crossed three oceans in a cramped hammock hung in the bilge, utterly besieged by rats. And yet here I am now. What does that tell you?”

“That you were quite, quite lucky?”

He smiled again, this time with a little shake of his head that indicated he knew what she’d not said. She couldn’t have missed that aura of confidence he radiated. The air around him was simply more invigorating. Mr. Turner wasn’t lucky. He was strong—so strong that he had no need to be jealous of power in others.

“When I looked at myself, I never saw a servant. What do you suppose I see when I look at you?”

For months, everyone who had looked at her had seen a bastard.

What did he see? She couldn’t answer. She didn’t know. She wasn’t even sure what she believed of herself, when she passed by a looking glass. These days, she tried not to look. Under his perusal, she had no response.

What he dismissed with that lazy shrug of his shoulders was more than a delusion. It had been the guiding light of her life, the true constant of the North Star. Her belief that she’d been better than others because of her birth had seemed an unshakeable foundation. But that light had snuffed out and north had disappeared in a dizzying whirl. She’d been left fumbling in the dark for some hint of direction.

She hadn’t spoken yet, and he just smiled at her one last time and walked away.

Margaret had always thought a man seduced a woman by making her aware of his charms: his body, his wealth, his kisses. How naive she had been.

Ash Turner seduced her with the promise of her own self. She longed to believe him, longed to believe that the nightmare of the past month was nothing more than a delusion, that if she simply screwed her eyes tightly shut, she would be important again. And that desire was more alluring than any promise of wealth, more irresistible than any number of heated kisses pressed against her lips.

In her life, she’d met indulgent men, autocratic men, absent-minded men who forgot her existence when she was not around. But a man like him… He stood so far outside her experience that she’d not been able to recognize him. But there it was, the conclusion inescapable. He thought she was magnificent. And he meant it—really meant it—beyond all possibility of fabrication.

Of all the recent disasters to befall her, this one—that this man, of all men, admired her—seemed the most devastating. Could he not have been someone—anyone—else? For a long while, Margaret stared at the cup in front of her, the steam curling upwards and away.

She mattered. She was important. She clutched those thoughts to her heart, and they made her grief bearable. Slowly, she reached out and pulled the mug forwards.

The contents were every bit as sweet as she’d imagined.

CHAPTER SIX

ASH HAD INSTRUCTED Miss Lowell to sleep late, but he’d been up at first light himself. Work wouldn’t wait. And indeed, it did not. His morning messenger arrived just after the clock struck half-ten in the morning.

The fellow was one of the new men Ash had hired just a few months before—what was his name again?— Isaac Strong; yes, that was it. The man walked stiffly, his legs no doubt learning to move properly once again after being cramped in a carriage all the long voyage from London. The whites of his eyes were shot through with red, and as he was conducted into the front sitting room of the suite Ash had taken, he rubbed the black skullcap on his head wearily. He didn’t see Ash sitting on a sofa near the window. He looked as tired as Ash felt.