Unveiled (Turner #1)(47)

“Pardon? What was that?”

Margaret jerked back. Mark stood, silhouetted in the doorway. “Nothing. I said nothing.”

He shrugged and stepped forwards. “Ash wanted me to convey a message to you, Miss Lowell.”

Margaret’s heart gave a treacherous little skip. No. She’d just decided she had no further need for him. But it wasn’t merely need she felt now. She wanted to know. And so what slipped out was: “Oh? What did he say?”

“He apologized for not saying farewell in person. He’ll be back. And he said he would have left you a note to that effect, but…” Mark shrugged again.

Margaret looked about to see if anyone was listening, and then dropped her voice. “Well, naturally he wouldn’t leave me a note.”

Mark snorted and shook his head. “It’s not what you suppose,” he said dryly. “Believe me. I know. Ash might be aware that it would be highly improper to send an unmarried woman correspondence, but he is unlikely to care.”

Perhaps Mark didn’t know his brother had revealed his secret. “I had something else in mind, actually. He told me—”

“Ah. Did he feed you the excuse he always gives me? About how busy he is? Don’t believe it. The truth is, Ash makes an extremely poor correspondent.”

“Well, of course he does. After all—”

“Don’t you defend him, too. When I was at Eton, for years I used to send him lengthy letters. He’d respond—with a letter written by his secretary. At the end, he’d generally scrawl a few words in his own hand, as a poor pretense of closing. In fact, he had only two or three short phrases he used. They rarely changed. Smite and I used to make a game, guessing which phrase he would slap on to the end. ‘All my love’ was one. ‘Be well’ was another. They don’t mean anything, when they’re offered by rote. No. I have no illusions about my older brother. You…you shouldn’t either.”

No doubt Mark thought he spoke out of kindness, to spare her feelings. But his disclosure had the opposite effect. All her fantasies of impermanence went up in smoke. Mark didn’t know. He didn’t know that Ash couldn’t read, couldn’t write. Her talks with Ash had seemed such harmless flirtation—heated, of course, and filled with pretty words she wanted to believe. She’d been telling herself he whispered sweet nothings all this time.

She couldn’t think it any longer. Ash adored his brother. But it was Margaret he had trusted with his secret. That didn’t smack of a temporary love affair. She had no notion what he intended at all any longer.

Her infatuation had seemed harmless and bright, when it couldn’t last. It was just a little defiance, one that would hurt nobody at the end of the day.

Now her emotions felt too large to fit in her tight skin. This wasn’t supposed to mean anything. Her relationship with Ash was supposed to draw to a close.

“I tell you this because you should know not to do anything irrevocable. I know Ash can be overwhelming,” Mark said conspiratorially. “But—really, there’s no need to be overwhelmed. He’s human, just like the rest of us.”

As he spoke, Margaret realized that Mark couldn’t have known. He’d mentioned to her the other day that Ash had begun to read his book. If he’d had any notion of the truth, he’d have realized how impossible that was. No; until two days ago, Ash had kept his secret entirely to himself. He’d been alone.

Alone, and still determined to reach out to a brother who wanted him to communicate via letter.

“He makes mistakes. He’s fallible.” Mark glanced sideways at her. “I overheard the maids talking about him, and based on their chatter, I wanted to make sure that you understood.”

So the maids were talking about Ash. She knew Mrs. Benedict had threatened dire consequences on any who let slip the truth of Margaret’s identity. But that charade could last only so long. She could feel her sunlit summer drawing to a close, even now.

“It’s easy to forget,” Mark continued. “I do it, too. When I’m in his company, I simply cannot remember anything else. He’s warm and kind. It’s only when he’s absent that it becomes obvious from his conduct that he’s not sparing me another thought. I’m out of sight, and thus out of mind.” He shrugged and glanced back at her. “I barely notice, these days.”

It took Margaret a moment to realize that his last words were a lie. He didn’t even try to hide the unhappy quirk of his lips.

“After all,” he continued, only a trace of bitterness leaching into his voice, “a few scribbled words, in his illegible hand—well, at least he remembers I exist, some of the time. Even if all I get is a half-legible promise of his brotherly affection, attached to someone else’s impersonal reply.”

The truth clutched at Margaret’s throat.

I’ve learned to pen a few phrases—if I shut my eyes, I can scrawl them out by memory. But it took so long, just to learn a handful of words. I’ve only bothered to memorize the ones I can’t get by without. She knew how much those few scrawled words had cost Ash, even if Mark did not.

“I’m sorry,” Mark said. “I’ve upset you. I didn’t intend to. Truly, I thought it was kinder for you to learn this way.”

The truth itched at her. She wanted to scream it out, to shake Mark, to make him realize just how hard it had been for Ash to etch out his love on the bottom of his secretary’s letters. How could he not know? How could he not realize?