Unveiled (Turner #1)(48)
But then, she’d fooled herself, too. She wasn’t sure what she was to Ash. Not his lover, at least not physically. But she was something more frighteningly intimate than she’d supposed.
He’d been telling the truth to her all along, and she had been the one spinning falsehoods. She looked at his brother, at that half-defiant smile on Mark’s face, as if he were daring himself to care about his brother’s desertion.
“I thought,” he said, “I would be glad if Ash left, because I could simply focus on my work. Turns out, it still bothers me. He promised he’d spend this last portion of the summer with me. And here we are. I don’t even mean that much to him.”
Margaret shook her head, a mixture of pity and anger suffusing her. When she was finally able to speak past the lump in her throat, what she said was: “For an intelligent man, Mr. Mark Turner, you can be quite, quite stupid.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MARK WAS NOT THE ONLY stupid one. Days passed, and then a week—and still Ash did not return. August bled into September. For Margaret, the time felt strangely isolating. With Ash no longer present, Mark secreted himself in a room and worked as if in a fever. She saw him occasionally, but only in passing—and even then, he walked by her, an abstracted expression on his face, as if he were already planning out the next chapter in his book. With the Turners either physically gone or not mentally present, it was almost as if Margaret were still an honored daughter of the house.
In the days since Ash had absented himself, she had taken to walking the upper gallery in the late mornings. The wide windows faced east; in the baking heat of late summer, the room was too warm for comfort. But from that second-floor vantage point, she could catch glimpses of the London road, winding its way down green-covered hills before it dipped into the valley where her home stood. She could stand alone, and think.
As she watched the road one morning, a spiral of dust shimmered up. Margaret had felt her heart leap several times over the past days, imagining similar plumes to be horsemen. Usually, it was nothing—an illusion born of heat and dryness, or a raven, landing on the road.
Parford Manor was situated near the bottom of the hills, and the road wound in and out of view. She scanned the hills, guessing where a horseman might appear next. If he were walking at a gentle trot, he would be right there….
Nothing. Nothing but the wave of browning grasses, broken by stone walls and dark green hedgerows.
She wasn’t sure why she bothered looking.
She watched the next stretch of road avidly, but nothing appeared. It was foolish of her to hope for him, even more foolish to believe that he would appear. But then, she’d recognized for weeks that where Ash was concerned, she was a fool—a conflicted, confused, yearning fool.
She watched the hills for ten minutes before turning away to care for her father.
She hadn’t waited long enough. Moments after she entered the sickroom, a commotion rose up outside. While she measured out medicine—her father was too hot to object—her pulse pounded.
When her father waved her idly away, she scurried from the room. The initial hubbub of the arrival had died away, and the gallery upstairs seemed preternaturally silent. It was only when she reached the far end that she caught Ash’s voice, echoing up the stairwell.
“And how is your book coming along?”
Oh. She’d missed him. She hadn’t realized quite how much until she heard him once again. His voice was warm and lilting, the sound of it sending a little shiver down her spine. She stopped on the first landing, just to take it in. The palms of her hands trembled, and she pressed them against the cool stone of the stairwell.
“Swimmingly. I’ve only the final conclusion to write,” Mark responded. “Really, you ought to leave more often—you would be shocked at my ability to produce pages when I haven’t anyone to bother me.”
That rude noise could only have come from Ash. “You know, interacting with others is good for you. Man cannot live by writing books on chastity alone. Speaking of which, I don’t suppose you tumbled any women while I was gone?”
Margaret knew Ash well enough to understand that this was a joke.
“As I’m not married,” Mark said dryly, “then, no. I haven’t.”
“Futile hope. Ah, well. Good thing I was pinning all my hopes on the real question—did you talk to anyone at all while I was gone?”
There was a long pause. “Hmm. I believe I wished Miss Lowell a good day.”
Margaret took a deep breath and descended the stairs. Ash was standing in the entry next to his brother, his arms crossed, his toe tapping impatiently. “How many times?”
“Um. Once a day?” Mark scrubbed a hand through blond hair that had grown too long to be fashionable and gave his brother a helpless smile.
Ash shook his head. “This is why I don’t like leaving you,” he groused. “I go away, and you retreat into your shell as if you were a little crab at the seashore. You’re intelligent. You’re amusing. You ought to see people—no, I don’t mean all the time, so you can stop curling up like a hedgehog! Once or twice a day. You like people, Mark. Talk to them. Tell me that you at least said more to Margaret than a passing ‘good day.’ I suspect that she, unlike you, actually notices when she fails to talk to people for an entire day.”
“In more important news, just this morning, I finished a really fantastic chapter. It’s all about practical ways to rid oneself of a—” Mark turned as he heard her footsteps on the final stretch of stairs, and swallowed whatever he’d been about to say.