Unveiled (Turner #1)(74)

She had learned to withstand her father’s abuse. But this gentleness left her undone. There was no word in her lexicon for this sort of kindness, no space in her understanding to encompass it.

She simply shook her head. “No, Ash. I don’t know. I—I just don’t know.”

He let out a sigh and pulled her to him. She felt his arms around her. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

She had once thought she wanted to see him sorry. She’d wanted to punish him, to rip his heart out and stomp on it, so that he would know how it felt to have his world inverted about him.

She had been wrong. It killed her. Because he wasn’t hurting for himself. He was hurting for her.

His kindness robbed her of the cold outrage that had fueled her all this time. But for one last moment, she could pretend that they could be together. That his arms around her were solid and real, and it was the reality of her waiting life that was the evanescent, impossible dream.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

IF IT HAD BEEN embarrassing for Ash to greet Richard Dalrymple that morning, half-clothed, with his sister in his arms, it was even more awkward when the man appeared at breakfast. Dalrymple paused at the corner of the room and glanced in, a half sneer on his face. The expression of distaste was rather ruined by his eye, which had already begun to turn a dull red where Ash had struck him.

“I see,” he said, in an accent so rarified that it made Ash want to smack him again, “that this room is infested.” He sniffed at Ash, and then glanced at Mark and stiffened.

“With all of us vermin,” Ash said. “Your sister—the only interesting one among us—is off tending to your father.” Ash picked up his butter knife, and Dalrymple paled and flinched.

“Good God. What do you suppose I’m going to do? Eviscerate you with this thing? Look. It’s quite dull.” Ash shook his head, scooped a lump of butter from the crock, and applied it to his bread. “And apparently, it’s not alone. You might as well eat, Dalrymple. You need to keep up your strength, especially if you imagine you’re going to take on the Herculean task of bending Parliament to your will.”

Mark met Ash’s eye, and then bit his lip, as if holding something back. A suspicion intruded on Ash’s mind—a half-remembered statement his brother had made.

“By the way, Mark, did you realize that Margaret is actually Margaret Dalrymple?”

“Ah. So she told you, then.”

Ash’s fingers drummed against the table, a harsh beat that took the place of actual thought. He stared at his brother. “You knew.” His voice was low.

“I had my suspicions.” Mark glanced at him, and then with a sigh, he added, “and then Smite came down here and confirmed them. He saw her a few years ago.”

Dalrymple glanced up at this but said nothing. Instead, he sidled against the wall until he reached the sideboard, where he removed a plate. Ash ignored him.

“You knew, and you didn’t tell me.”

Mark gave him a half shrug. “Honestly, Ash. She said she would tell you. And I didn’t believe the small delay between my discovery and her divulgence would harm you in the long run. Besides, she was half in love with you already, and I know how you are.”

Ash felt a low burn of rage begin. “Perhaps you might have thought how it could hurt her.”

“You wouldn’t hurt her.” Mark sighed. “You might not…go about courting her in the manner I would prefer, but you don’t hurt women. Come, now, Ash. I know you better than that. Quite frankly, it’s refreshing to know you can be wrong.”

Dalrymple was piling kippers onto his plate with movements made awkward, because he was still flattened against the wall. He clearly wanted to keep as far from the brothers as he possibly could. He only managed to make himself look completely ridiculous. How had a family that produced such a fainthearted coward also come up with Margaret?

“I wasn’t wrong,” Ash said quietly.

“She did lie to you, Ash. Granted, she has other sterling qualities.”

Ash hadn’t realized how much he must have already hurt her. When he’d met her, he’d known she was sad. This morning, he’d been too dazed to truly understand what her parentage meant. But with a little time to sort things out, and food in his belly, he’d begun to comprehend. Now he was no longer surprised that she’d thrown a clod of dirt at him on that long-ago night. Daggers would have been rather more appropriate.

“I stormed into her life, destroyed her parents’ marriage and made her a bastard. And you think that when I faced her down, holding the remainder of her life in my hands, that she should have blithely spouted out the truth? For all she knew, I would have stolen away the little that remained. I was an utter beast to her. I just didn’t realize it.”

From his vantage point against the wall, Dalrymple raised one finger, almost hesitantly. “As a point of order, you did the same to me, and I’ve yet to hear your apology.”

“Oh, shut up,” Ash snapped. “You’re different. You deserved it. You still do.”

Dalrymple’s mouth snapped shut.

Mark’s eyes blazed at this. “Oh, yes. Still set on revenge, are you, after all of this? Wishing now that perhaps when I told you to think about what you were doing to the Dalrymples, you’d listened? I said you didn’t have to do this. I said you were wrong. But no—the great Ash Turner doesn’t need to listen to logic. Or ethics.”