Unveiled (Turner #1)(40)

He drew her down to straddle him in his chair. Her skirts tangled about her; her knees brushed his thighs through her petticoats. It shouldn’t have been possible, but her want intensified to a primal thing, one that couldn’t be satisfied by just his caress against her ribs.

As if he could taste her desire on her lips, his hand inched up, slowly, until he cupped her breast. Thumb and forefinger rolled; she felt that touch clear through the layers of fabric. A shot of pleasure went through her. It was almost too intense, too intimate for her to bear. She pulled away, just so that she could steady her hands on his shoulders.

He stared up at her, and then slowly, slowly, he gave her a brilliant grin—one that lit the darkest corners of her wary soul. He was all light, no darkness. It was Margaret herself who cast shadows.

“I take it,” he murmured, “this means my secret is safe with you.”

She couldn’t answer. Instead, she reached out and placed her fingertips against his lips. His breath heated them with a kiss. Before he could do more than give her a gentle nibble, she took them away and curled her hand into a fist. As if she could somehow protect that newfound intimacy from the cold world out there.

“I can’t read books,” he whispered, “but I have other skills. An instinct, if you will—this ability to know things, people, in the blink of an eye. It’s how I made my fortune. It’s how I knew, when I first saw you…” He trailed off, and reached out and deliberately ran a finger down her arm. “I knew I could trust you,” he explained. “Instantly. Irrevocably.”

But she had made no promise.

Her heart constricted. How could he make her feel so warm and so cold, all at the same time? She gazed at him, her thoughts floundering somewhere between desire and despair. And then, because she had no answer for him, no answer even for herself, she leaned down and kissed him one last time.

I TAKE IT THIS MEANS my secret is safe with you.

Even half an hour later, seated alone in the tiny garret she’d adopted, Margaret could feel his body pressed against hers, his mouth on hers.

Until that evening, she’d never quite understood his smile. She’d thought his expression arrogant, overly familiar, assuming. Against her better judgment, she’d also found it attractive. But until that evening, she hadn’t understood precisely how much uncertainty he hid behind it. She’d never before realized how much vulnerability he harbored.

But with her lap desk laid atop her knees, she was about to puncture those vulnerabilities, to betray that trust. The steel nib of her pen stood poised above her paper, ready to spill his story in India ink. A drop balled on the tip and fell to splash, deep black, against the page below.

Dear Richard.

Her brother. Her own brother. She’d grown up beside him. When she had been still in pinafores, his friend had called her a scraggly little thing, and Richard had punched him. If anyone in the world deserved her loyalty, it was Richard. She had to write this letter.

The next sentence would have been so simple.

Mr. Ash Turner is essentially illiterate.

If only she could write that down, her life would right itself. The Act of Legitimation would pass. She would be Lady Anna Margaret once more, and the dowry she’d been supposed to receive from her mother would be hers again. She could rejoin society; even if she never married, she need not live as her brothers’ dependent for the rest of her life. A few droplets of ink, a little sand… Such tiny things could not amount to a betrayal. Not when it was her own brother she fought for. She dipped her pen with trembling hands.

Dear Richard,

There is something you need to know about Ash Turner. He is—

She set her pen to the paper to form the next word. But the nib would not move. A dark blotch of ink formed at the tip and spread, little threads of black weaving into the paper, mocking Margaret’s inability to continue.

There was a reason she couldn’t finish her sentence. It was because it wasn’t true. Oh, the letter would be composed of entirely true things. But the import—that Ash Turner was incapable of serving as a duke—would be entirely false. It felt disloyal for her to reveal what he’d told her. It would have been wrong to betray his trust. Not when he’d looked at her and seen…everything.

I want you to paint your own canvas.

The paper waited patiently, ready to absorb her words. Whatever she wrote next, she would be painting it over, indelibly declaring her loyalty. It seemed utterly wrong to fill this space with lies about Ash. After all, he’d told her that she mattered.

He’d trusted her.

He’d broken her into pieces, and with one smile, he’d knit her back together again. There was no path of honor for her to tread, no way to be true to both her brothers and her own burgeoning sense of self-discovery. There was nothing left for her but a little defiance. Nothing left but to tell the truth. But whom would she defy? And, if she was picking amongst truths, which one could she pick for herself?

She stared at the inkblot spreading on the page, hoping to see some secret in its tangled darkness.

And when she dipped her pen again, what she wrote was this: Ash Turner is a more conscientious man than Father ever was.

She hadn’t intended to write that sentence until her pen moved. But there it was, in solid letters on the page. It was truer than anything else she could have written. And she wasn’t going to take it back.

In his first three days here, he solved that awful land dispute between Nelson and Whitaker. The land steward reports that he has already come up with a plan to modernize planting procedures. I know you hoped I would uncover some grave deficiency on his part, but we must face the truth. A man capable of building a financial empire from nothing has little to fear from the demands of the dukedom.