Unveiled (Turner #1)(57)
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
His gaze strayed out the window once more, to Mark and Smite. They were happy, chattering back and forth between themselves. He wasn’t so selfish as to wish them miserable.
“No.” He swallowed the accompanying sigh. It sat like a lump of indigestible gristle, deep in his belly. “Nothing’s wrong. Everything is precisely as it should be.”
It must not have been an especially convincing denial, because she raised one eyebrow and placed her hand on her hip. “Usually,” she said, “when one speaks the truth, one answer suffices. You just answered me three times.”
He held up his hands in surrender. “Well, then. Come see what has me in such a state.”
She came to stand by him. From this vantage point, they could see the shrubs of the formal gardens, trimmed into precise low squares. Rosebushes waved pink heads in the wind. And beyond that…
Smite’s hair was a shade darker than the bark of the walnut tree just beyond him. It gleamed in the sunlight. He was slightly taller than Mark, and he bent his head towards his brother as they talked.
“You see?” Ash said in his cheeriest tone. “My brothers are both here. What could I possibly have to grieve over?”
“You’re not grieving,” Margaret said. “I know that look on your face.”
“Do you, then?” He asked the question out of genuine interest. He’d not been faced with both his brothers before this moment. How could she possibly have seen it?
“Intimately.” Her voice was low. “I know what it’s like to stand on the outside and look in, believing I will never be accepted. I know what it’s like to yearn to be a part of something, and yet to know that it will never come. Trust me, Ash. I know.”
Of course she would know. Ash put little faith in labels; in his experience, a title had never made a man worthwhile. You judged a man—or a woman—by what he did, how he spoke, the way he met your eyes…or failed to do so. But too many others eschewed actual observation in lieu of proxies. Who your father was. Whether your parents had been married. How much wealth you had, and how long it had been in your family.
“I understand,” he said softly. “Your life would have been very different if you’d been Parford’s daughter, instead of his servant.”
She looked up at him, a sad tilt to her eyes. He had a sudden urge to burn every one of those dull, severe frocks. He wanted to replace them with vibrant silks—something to draw attention to her, to bring out the intelligent light in her eyes. Anything to chase away the haunting sadness that touched her features. It felt as if his own grief echoed through her.
She reached out and set her hand atop his. It was, perhaps, the first time she had deliberately touched him since he’d returned from London. He sucked in his breath, hoping. He could feel the warmth of her against him. He turned his hand to press hers. He hadn’t meant to grip so hard, but she did not pull away.
“I know precisely how you feel,” she said. “What I do not know is why you are in here, watching them, instead of out there forcing your way in. I can attest to the efficacy of your charm.”
She turned her face up to his, her dark eyes glinting.
“Can you, then? Attest to my charm?”
He had not let go of her hand. He ought to have, but he didn’t dare—and she was gripping him back so hard, her fingernails cutting into his palm with the best kind of pain.
“Intimately,” she said again.
He wasn’t displaying any of that vaunted charm now. He dropped her hand and looked away. “I wish to God,” he said passionately, “that I had never gone to India. I wish I had never left them. But I did, little knowing that the gulf my actions would open would be wider than a handful of years and a few thousand miles of ocean. I wish I had not gone.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Pardon?” She’d spoken so matter-of-factly that he could scarcely believe what he had heard.
“You heard me. You don’t wish any of this undone—not your time in India, not your stupendous fortune, nor even the suit in the ecclesiastical courts. Certainly not your place as a duke’s heir. I know you, Ash. Had you stayed in England with your brothers—had you merely accepted your lot in life and sunk into poverty, you wouldn’t be happy. You enjoy your wealth. You live to shower your brothers with presents. You would despise being a poor man.”
He let out a sigh. “It’s a hard woman who won’t even let a man indulge in a little unreasonableness. That seems most unfair.”
“What is unfair is that you want to have the benefits of your voyage to India without paying the price. That’s what makes this world so damnably awful—the choices you must make that cost you what you most desire.”
“It’s more than that, though. When I went to India…it was as if I chose to be an entirely different person. I gave up the chance to be a person like my father. He was a mill owner and a tradesman—but he loved to read. He would be gone on business for weeks, and when he returned, he’d bring back all sorts of books. I used to believe he knew everything. And now, my brothers take after him. I can’t. I’ve tried to figure it out. I’ve tried to become that person. But what you do when you’re young has a way of sticking with you. At fourteen, my brothers were reading. I was making my first five thousand pounds.” He shrugged. “I would trade every penny I had, if it would mean that I could walk down that path with them and talk like that.”