Unveiled (Turner #1)(34)

Her father looked up. He looked behind Ash and found Margaret standing in the shadows. She couldn’t imagine what he saw in her. Her hands felt cold. The color had no doubt drained from her cheeks. She knew that Ash was as good as his word—if he said he would care for her brothers, he would.

“So all I have to do,” her father mused, “is just mouth a few words, and you’ll provide for my brats?” Ash nodded.

If Ash’s gaze had seemed hard stone, her father’s was glass, clear and cutting. “No,” he said quite distinctly. “I don’t believe I will. My children are all imbeciles. I said I would sack the lot of them if I could.” He looked up at Margaret as he spoke, a faint air of triumph about him. “And look at this. I can.”

It took her a moment to understand what he’d said. What he’d done. And when she did—when he betrayed her so easily once more, for nothing but a fit of pique—she couldn’t bear it any longer. If Ash were to turn around in that moment and see her face, he would know everything.

She couldn’t stay. And so she turned and fled.

ASH TURNED AT THE SOUND of her footsteps, but he saw nothing more than the swish of Margaret’s gray skirts as she slipped through the door. He wasn’t sure why she was leaving. And he didn’t know why the few brisk steps he saw her take made him think of some palpable hurt.

It was hardly the first time she had confused him. He knew just enough to understand that he didn’t understand her. He felt as if he had walked into an opera in the midst of the second act. He was baffled by the relationships on the stage, confused as to the particulars of the plot, and unlikely to decipher what had come before, as the libretto had been written entirely in Estonian. He could only surmise that she’d been wounded—deeply wounded.

When he was around her, he felt as if he were falling. As if he had once misstepped, and now, no matter how hard he tried, he could never quite set things right again. He just didn’t know why.

The problem with working off instinct was that he wasn’t always certain what he was working towards. He’d known he wanted her in his bed. But he was beginning to realize that he wanted more. He wanted to rid her of those lines around her eyes. He wanted to soothe the clench of her fists. He wanted to draw her to him, as gently as he could. And once he had her there…

Ash shook his head and looked up. It had been only a moment since the door had closed behind her, but Parford was looking at him. Watching Ash watch the place where she’d been.

The duke smiled knowingly, as if he knew what Ash was only just coming to realize: he was falling. Harder and faster than he’d anticipated. “Now that,” Parford said, “is truly amusing. All that effort to set yourself above me, and what has it got you?”

Ash cast him a dirty look. “After what you’ve done to the dukedom, I could hardly sully it further.”

Parford waved his hand. “No, no. Carry on.” It took Ash a moment to realize that the hoarse wheeze that emanated from his chest was a guffaw. “Good luck, Turner.” He shook his head. “For all the good it will do you.”

Ash stared at him one moment longer. It took only that instant to crystallize what was important. Not a further attempt to bludgeon some kind of an apology from this old washed-up scarecrow of a man, but to find Margaret. She’d left because she was hurt, and a large part of that had been this man’s fault.

He left the room after her. He could still hear her footsteps in the gallery; he quickened his pace, turning the corner just as she reached the staircase.

“Margaret.” He called as loudly as he dared, which was not loudly at all.

She stopped and turned to him. She seemed a little dazed, unwilling to look at him. But she stopped, at least, staring at the painting nearest her on the gallery wall. He walked towards her, unsure how to proceed.

“What is it,” she finally asked, “between you and Parford? That seemed as if it were the tenth such disagreement, not the first.”

Ash wanted to ask her the same question. “When I was young, my mother began to go mad. She sold the family concerns and gave what little funds remained to the poor. We went from living comfortably with a few scattered servants to living in squalor.”

He didn’t like remembering those days. He’d been so young and helpless then. He never wanted to feel that way again.

“My sister was bitten by a rat and developed a fever. And my mother refused to have a physician in. She claimed that if God wanted Hope to live, she’d do so. So I walked to Parford Manor, laid my claim of family before the duke, and begged for his intercession. For enough to pay a doctor, some medicine…for anything, really.”

“Walked to Parford Manor? How far was it?”

He shrugged. “Twenty miles. It can be done.”

“And how…how young were you?”

“Fourteen.”

“Parford didn’t provide any assistance.”

“No. He laughed at me, and told me that the fewer Turners there were in this world, the happier he would be. And then he gave me a sixpence to hire myself a bath. So I returned home. Over the course of the next weeks, I watched my sister fade away. When she was gone—when she was buried outside the churchyard, in a pauper’s grave—I vowed I would never be helpless again. I would never have to beg for my brothers’ well-being.”