Unveiled (Turner #1)(33)
“There,” she said briskly, closing up the bottle. “Only slightly less exasperating than dosing a cat. You should be proud of yourself.”
He cast her a baleful glare when she finally stepped back. “I don’t want any more medicine,” he whined, his voice a thin, reedy echo of what it had once been. “I don’t want you anymore, either. You’re sacked. You’re all sacked, this entire household.”
“You can’t sack me. I’m your daughter, not your servant.”
“Hmm.” He frowned at her again as she straightened the bedclothes about him. “Well, I refuse to acknowledge you, then. I don’t have to.”
“Congratulations,” she offered dryly. “I’m so distressed.” She turned to the basin to wash her hands and her face. The last of the sticky green residue that had stuck to her eyelids disappeared in a swirl of cold water.
It was at this moment that a scratch sounded at the door. She turned in confusion, but it was already opening—Tollin, one of the footmen who was stationed outside her father’s rooms in the evening, had swung it wide.
Ash stood in the doorway. He’d shed coat and cravat for the evening, and the sight of him in white linen shirtsleeves only emphasized how broad his shoulders were. Her face felt sticky and hot all over again. She had gotten all the green liquid off. Hadn’t she?
“Miss Lowell,” he said formally. Not Margaret; not with another servant and her father present. “I’ve something I need to discuss with Parford. Do you suppose now would be a good time?”
It was coming on evening. Her father was difficult—but then, he grew in difficulty with every passing day. As if to underscore that, the duke gave a sharp, negative jerk of his head. He was alert, active and irascible. There would never be a good time.
“Of course,” Margaret said. “He would love to talk with you. I wish you the best of luck. If you can get him to converse in an intelligent fashion for more than five seconds altogether, you will have my greatest admiration and astonishment.”
“Hmm.” Ash met her eyes. “Now that would be a prize worth having, wouldn’t it?”
She had no response to that. She simply gestured him in. He entered, brushing past her as he did so. As before, he looked around the room. It hadn’t changed much. The chamber was still littered with basins and bottles of medicines. A table stood by her father’s bedside. In preparation for the evening, he’d shed the Parford signet—a gold ring, crowned by a sapphire. The blue stone had been carved with the stylized sword that graced the Parford coat of arms. Margaret had played with it, once, as a child. It had seemed large in her hands then—massive and weighty.
When Ash picked it up and turned it over, it seemed a tiny thing. He slid it onto his finger—but it stuck at his first knuckle.
“Ha!” her father said. “Sent that off to the jeweler months ago, to have it resized to fit my hands in my illness.” He spread his fingers, thin insubstantial sticks. “It won’t fit you now. Not until I’m dead.”
Ash pursed his lips at this morbid observation, but simply set the ring back on the table. “Oddly,” he said, “I’ve come to speak to you about that.”
“My death? How kind of you to inquire. When I expire, I should like to have two women in my bed, both naked—”
Margaret had never felt gratitude quite so intense when Ash raised his hand. That was not an image she wanted embellished upon.
“I came here to examine the books, to make sure the entailed properties were not despoiled before I took title.”
“What of it?” her father asked. “Why should I care?”
“Because by my estimation, the unentailed properties amount to little more than a few thousand pounds.”
So little? It made Margaret feel almost dizzy. Why, Richard and Edmund would not just be demoted to commoners—they would be almost poor. As for herself…
Ash continued, not realizing he was detailing the grim state of her possible future. “Most of the estate’s excess wealth came from your second marriage, and with that dissolved, the money returns to her family. What other provision have you made for your children?”
Her father leaned back. “Welcome to your revenge, Turner. You begged me to help your family, and I did not. Now you have the satisfaction of reducing mine to penury. There’s an admirable symmetry. Do you enjoy it?”
Ash looked at her father for a very long time. He seemed transformed from the warm, easy man she was beginning to know. Instead, his eyes glittered, hard and cold as jet. “Yes,” he finally said. “Yes, I do. I will enjoy making your pitiful children an allowance. I will relish being the one person who stands between them and penury. Every single quarter, they will know they live at my mercy. So yes, Parford, I am enjoying the chance to prove that I’m your superior. And all you need to do to guarantee their future is this: ask me for it.”
Margaret’s stomach hurt. It was so easy to forget that Ash hated her family. Her father. That if he knew who she was, he would never speak with her again—or would ask her to beg, in that cold, calculating tone.
But her father seemed unaffected. “Ask you for what?”
“Ask me for their future. No need to grovel. No need to beg. All you need to guarantee their financial security is to deliver one sentence. Consider using the word please.”