Unveiled (Turner #1)(89)

She merely looked puzzled.

“Truly, Ash,” she said, “I— You can’t mean what you just said. I know you wouldn’t use my affection for you as a tool to achieve your own ends.”

She sounded so certain. But he’d had two months—two damned empty months—to think of this. To contemplate what he was missing. To imagine what he would say when he saw her again.

“I know you,” she was saying. “You would never use me this way. You wouldn’t.”

“You’ve forgotten. If I’m Duke of Parford, I’ll be able to do anything for my brothers. If I pursue you openly, it raises the chances I’ll become duke. I want you. I want the dukedom. It turns out, my interests coincide and I can have both.” He looked her in the eyes. “I intend to do so.”

She didn’t look away. Instead, her eyes sparked and her lips compressed. “How efficient of you.” Her hand pressed into his shoulder, cutting more deeply than it ought in a polite waltz.

He merely smiled at the epithet. In the months since he’d last seen her, he’d thought far worse things. He hadn’t enjoyed the separation. Particularly as it was altogether unnecessary. He had only managed patience because his instinct had whispered that she would still be his.

He could wait. He could wait a little while longer for her.

“You told me once I was cheerfully ruthless.” He looked down into her eyes. “After two months without you, I’m not feeling quite so bloody cheerful, myself. If it takes ruthlessness, I’ll be ruthless. But yes, Margaret, I will have you.”

She swallowed and looked away. “You told me once I had only to ask. Ash, I’ve made my choice. I’m asking you now: if you care for me at all, don’t make overtures to me. This is tearing me to pieces. Leave me be, because I request it of you.”

He was calm. He was patient. So why did his left hand, holding her, cramp with the effort of not squeezing her to him? He let out a sigh. “Your request is denied,” he replied.

Her breath hissed in.

“I’ll apologize a thousand times, but leave you be? No. If I thought you truly indifferent, I would surely step away. But you are not indifferent. You are not even unwilling. You are just—temporarily—unavailable. And I’ll be damned if I give you up.”

“Don’t.” She looked away. “Don’t do this to me. Not when I can’t stamp away without occasioning even more talk. What you’re doing—it’s not sporting. I have never used anything you told me as fodder for my brothers’ suit in Parliament. Not even when I thought that all you wanted was to seduce me into your bed.” She looked up at him. “I could have used you, Ash. I could have. So don’t you do this to me.”

Ash bit his lip. It turned out he was just not a well of patience. He’d won her affections. After two months spent without her—after two months when she’d walked away from him—he was actually a little angry.

“Tell me,” he said as he spun her about, “tell me I am not the best thing that has ever happened to you. Tell me you don’t wish to have me in your life. Tell me I don’t belong.”

She didn’t look at him. But she was silent. He felt an almost grim satisfaction, even though winning an argument under those circumstances was all victory, no triumph.

Still, as the musicians brought the piece to a close, he leaned in and whispered into her ear. “That is what I thought, Margaret. Don’t you do this to yourself.”

THE SILENCE IN THE CARRIAGE after the ball was almost unbearable. Margaret sat, the dark enfolding her, silently glad that she could not see her brothers’ faces.

“The good news,” Richard said, “is that we have been positively inundated with invitations.”

Margaret bit her lip.

Edmund responded. “The bad news is, it is because everyone wishes to see you and Turner again. Margaret, what could you have been thinking? Talking with him. Introducing him to your friends. Dancing with him.”

“What was I supposed to do? It would have been dreadfully impolite to refuse. It would have created a scene.”

“And it wasn’t a spectacle when he practically kissed you in front of everyone?” Edmund snapped. “At a minimum, you ought not to have appeared so eager to comply. Everyone is talking—absolutely everyone. Have you any idea what could happen if the gossips start marrying you to Ash Turner in their minds?”

“It was a waltz, not a wedding!”

Edmund sighed. “It’s never just a waltz, Margaret. Matters are already touch and go, even without this latest complication. For one, we had thought Forsyth would support our suit.”

The current Lord Forsyth was their mother’s brother. He’d always seemed an indulgent, loving uncle. Indeed, he had doted on his sister, and by extension, his sister’s offspring. He was the last person Margaret could imagine supporting Ash Turner.

“But no,” Edmund continued. “He’s furious at Father for what he did, and he’s all too aware that with the marriage between Mother and Father dissolved as if it had never happened, the sixty thousand pounds that had been set aside for Mama’s lawful female offspring reverts to him. He has convinced a group of five others to vote down the bill. Your sixty thousand pounds means that we need every last one of the undecided votes. We can’t have you squandering a single one out of misguided romanticism.”