Unveiled (Turner #1)(80)

“Why didn’t you tell me about the trick Frederick played on you?” Richard continued. “The wedding had been delayed so many times, I thought you didn’t wish to marry. And that I understood all too well. You should have spoken to me.”

“Truly? You would have wanted to hear that your sister let herself be despoiled?”

“No, of course I don’t wish to hear any such thing. But when such things are true, I ought to know them. So that I can bludgeon the fellow in question into coming up to scratch.”

“Under the circumstances, I’m rather glad you didn’t. I thought I loved him when I was nineteen. Now I’m aware of precisely how pitiful he is. I’m glad I’m not tied to him.” She cast her brother a look. “Thank you for not lecturing me.”

Richard shrugged. “Besides, I can understand what you mean. We left you here by yourself. No doubt you were lonely. And Ash Turner is such a brute of a man.” He glanced away uneasily, running a finger along the edge of the window. “I’ve heard some women appreciate that sort of thing. I wouldn’t know anything about that. In any event, I’m hardly the one to lecture you on chastity.”

Chastity. Margaret smiled and bit back a wave of bittersweet nostalgia. “I’ve heard Edmund gibe you about it from time to time about it, when he thought I wasn’t listening. No mistress? You could practically contribute a chapter to Mr. Mark Turner’s book on chastity.”

Richard looked up at her. “Mark Turner is writing a book on chastity? How strange. I wouldn’t have expected it of him. Do you recall the summer that Edmund returned home from Eton, his arm broken in three places?”

Margaret nodded. “He spent the entire first two months complaining bitterly about not being able to ride, not being able to swim. In truth, I think he enjoyed the opportunity to order the staff about.”

“Mark Turner broke Edmund’s arm—popped it right out of the socket, in fact, and cracked his elbow. He blacked his eye and sprained his ankle. Fights break out at school. But there’s a gentleman’s code that governs such affairs. One doesn’t break limbs. From what Edmund told me, it was done quite deliberately. So you’ll imagine my surprise when you tell me that such a fellow thinks about chastity. Both our father and I tried to have him tossed out of school. I can only imagine how much money Ash Turner had to lay out to stave off that eventuality.”

Margaret shut her eyes. If she had known only the Turners, she’d have said her brother was exaggerating, even lying. She couldn’t imagine Mark intentionally breaking anyone’s arm. He was physically capable of it. But mentally? Morally?

“I don’t blame you,” her brother said softly. “After all, I’ve been taken in by the Turners before, too. Once, I thought Mark was quiet and sweet.” He shook his head. “As for Smite…” Richard’s gloved fingers curled around the leather strap hanging from the carriage roof. “If you ever wish to hate someone,” he finally said, “befriend him first. I’ve found it works wonders.”

“But I’ve met him,” Margaret said.

Richard sat up. “You’ve met him? What did you think?”

“Harsh,” Margaret said. “Harsh, but fair.”

Richard shook his head. “Just wait until he sits in judgment over you. There’s not an ounce of mercy in him. Coupled with his eldest brother’s unholy talent for turning the world on its head…” Richard sighed. “After that fight, I talked with the headmaster and convinced him to toss Mark out, as soon as the boy was capable of walking again. But somehow, Turner walked in not twenty-four hours after the incident and performed his magic. I still don’t know how he could have arrived so quickly. There hadn’t been time for the news to travel. The whole thing must have been deliberate. And somehow, when he left, the headmaster was smiling, and the youngest Turner stayed on the rolls.” Richard shook his head. “Even then, everything he touched seemed to magically align. At the time, he seemed ancient. But now that I think of it, he wasn’t even an adult.”

Ash wouldn’t have let a little thing like age stop him. The only part of the story that rang true with Margaret was that Ash had come to his brother’s aid. But how could everything else be false? She couldn’t imagine Richard trying to have Mark ejected from school for a triviality. Richard rarely paid attention, but when he did, he was remarkably fair-minded.

“Maybe,” she said, “it was all a misunderstanding.”

Richard glanced at her, and let out a sigh. “Margaret, misunderstandings don’t break arms. Misunderstandings don’t file suit in ecclesiastical courts to bastardize the issue of a duke. Misunderstandings don’t get orders from courts of equity, allowing them to catalog the worth of an estate, so that the so-called untrustworthy offspring deliver his ill-gotten inheritance intact. I know that Ash Turner has got you all tangled about. But you are being used as a pawn on the board. The sooner you come to grips with that, the more likely we are to prevail. This is not a misunderstanding, Margaret. It’s a war.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

London. November, 1837

LONDON LOOKED DIFFERENT to Margaret than it had the last she’d been here.

Then, the news had come at her all in a rush, too fast for Margaret to comprehend. The suit in the courts. Her illegitimacy. The dissolution of her betrothal, her mother’s death and the sudden, inexplicable onset of her father’s illness. She’d felt barely able to keep her knees from buckling beneath her. And so when the women she had called her friends her entire life had simply turned their collective backs on her, she had given up. She’d fled back to Parford Manor and buried her own bewildered hurt in caring for her ailing father.