Unveiled (Turner #1)(39)
The truth would sink him, in their minds. Instantly and without question. Confirming a commoner as one of their own was one thing, if they begrudgingly admitted he had the bloodlines in his distant past. Confirming a near illiterate? It would never happen. They’d legitimize her brothers in an instant. She should have been singing for joy.
So why did she feel like weeping instead?
He gestured at the table. “One of my men is copying out the book Mark is writing,” he said quietly. “I keep hoping that somehow, after everything I’ve accomplished, this time the words will come out right. I promised Mark, after all.”
A flicker of emotion crossed his face—something powerful and vulnerable at the same time. The look of a man who had been knocked down but was determined to get up as many times as necessary to march on ahead.
“Besides,” he added mulishly, “I heard that until Parford’s setback, he spent hours in the evening in his study.”
A hint of jealousy, too. She could take this opportunity to insinuate doubt into the conversation—something to magnify the vulnerability she saw on his face. It wouldn’t take much. A sentence. A few words, even, to plant seeds of uncertainty in his mind.
That seemed a shabby recompense for what he’d given her.
Instead, Margaret took his hand. The cut across his palm was a brief line of red—not even bleeding. His fingers were warm and dry, and as she touched him, he lifted his eyes to hers. For all his vulnerability, there was an unquenchable relentlessness in his eyes. He wouldn’t give up, no matter how much doubt she planted. And she didn’t want him to give up on her.
She stood and silently tugged him to his feet and led him out the door. In the gallery, she dropped his fingers, lest a passing servant spot them. She padded through the columned space, Ash’s footfalls echoing behind her.
She stopped at the door before her father’s bedchamber and fumbled with her necklace.
The master key was still threaded through the chain, the iron skin-warm where it had lain against her br**sts. The door opened inward on silent hinges.
“The duke’s study,” she announced. “Not currently in use.”
He stepped inside; Margaret took a lamp from a nearby side table before entering herself. The light flickered unevenly as she walked.
“This,” Margaret said, gesturing at a large wingback chair settled to the side of the room, “is the seat where Parford spent many an evening.” She looked Ash in the eyes. “Sit,” she commanded.
He sat.
“There, to your right, in that cupboard—those are the books Parford studied of an evening.”
Ash glanced at her and then at the ornate brass knob on the carved doors. He hesitated.
“Go on, then. Open it.”
The door opened silently.
Inside, her father’s decanter stood next to three cups of cut glass. The glasses gleamed in the light. Amber liquid reflected the rays streaming from her lamp, setting colored lights to dancing about the room as she placed that lamp on the table.
“These books,” Margaret said dryly, “you, too, could study.”
“Oh.” He glanced at them again and then back at her.
Margaret crossed to stand before him and then leaned and took a tumbler. She poured an inch into the glass and held it out to Ash.
“Here,” she said. “This is the education most gentlemen receive at Oxford.”
He stared at the glass in her hands for a few moments, and then shook his head. “No. I don’t believe I will. I’m no Dalrymple, to put pleasure before duty.”
She’d almost become inured to those comments about her family. “A shame,” she said calmly. “I am.”
“Putting pleasure before duty?” he asked quizzically.
No. A Dalrymple. But the moment passed, overtaken by her hesitation. Instead, she raised the glass to her own lips and took a sip. The taste of brandy overwhelmed her—dark, tawny, heady. The alcohol volatilized in her mouth. She swallowed, and it burned on the way down. Just one taste, but it was enough to sweep away her last lingering inhibitions. She set the glass down.
Before he could say anything, she leaned over him in the chair. She set her hands on the linen of his shirt, feeling the roughness of the fabric. She could feel the whisper of his breath, and it was sweeter and more invigorating than her sip of spirits.
Last night, she’d kissed him because he’d made her smile. Tonight, she kissed him to make him laugh. Her lips found his. He exhaled as she did so; she felt it, more than heard it, felt his chest heave under her hands, his lips part beneath hers. His hands came to her side, clasping her waist.
The kiss last night hadn’t lasted long—just a brief, heated exchange of air, their lips mingling for a few seconds. This was more. His lips parted for her. His tongue slipped into her mouth.
He was a heady mixture of taste and scent. She could feel the hard planes of his chest, the muscles beneath her hands. She forgot about everything that had transpired between them. She forgot that anything stood between them, besides the fabric of his shirt, separating her hand from the thud of his heart. The brandy had entered her blood, and it rose, warm and pounding, to flush her cheeks.
Another caress of his tongue on hers. His hands drifted up her sides, awakening a deep yearning inside her. It was a want so fundamental she could not imagine how it had remained dormant in his presence until now. A need to have him close. To press herself against him.