Unclaimed

by Courtney Milan

Men had complimented her beauty, and she’d stayed detached. They’d written poems about the timbre of her voice, and she’d been unmoved. But just the thought of Mark, saying in a voice roughened by desire that she could do better…that had brought her to the edge.

  It was the first time in years that she’d liked it when a man kissed her. And therein lay the danger.

  Maybe she could seduce him simply by not thinking too hard, by letting herself slide into an infatuation that came all too naturally to her. But could she then turn around and heartlessly betray him to Weston?

  She’d done a great many stomach-churning things in the name of survival. She could do this, too. It wasn’t as if she had so much choice. All she had to do was let herself feel the heady thrill of attraction. She could tumble headlong into…into like with him, letting that nascent admiration grow. And then, when she respected him—when she appreciated him—when she longed for his touch and couldn’t bear to see him hurt, why, then all she had to do was betray him.

  She wanted to vomit.

  Instead, she sighed, took a deep breath to settle her stomach and collected her rifle.

  THERE WAS ANOTHER letter from her solicitor when she stopped by the post office on the way home from the competition. The envelope was thicker than usual; it must have contained several pages. She ripped it open as soon as she was in private.

  The first sheet was little more than an introduction—a few more bills left off the last note sent and a final tally of her accounts. The amount—something under nine pounds—was not something she cared to contemplate.

  That sense of nausea had not dissipated, and the truth of her finances did nothing to ease her worries.

  There was another letter from Weston enclosed—a terse note, really, demanding that she give him news. She passed over that one quickly and turned to the final sheet.

  It was filled with her solicitor’s writing. She frowned and began reading as she walked.

  I regret to inform you…

  Her steps slowed in the path, then came to a standstill.

  She read on. Her hands didn’t dare to tremble. Her feet didn’t dare to misstep. She could not look away from the page—the words it contained seemed impossible.

  She’d had one good thing in her life, and while she’d been here in Shepton Mallet, flirting with Sir Mark, it had been ripped away. And Jessica hadn’t even had the chance to say farewell.

  She should have been crying, but her eyes stayed dry. There was nothing tears could do to change the situation in any event.

  Amalie had taught Jessica all the rules of being a courtesan. Stupidly, they came to mind now.

  Never trust a man who gives you diamonds; whatever he needs to apologize for isn’t worth the jewelry.

  Every new man is a risk; better the man of moderate means, who stays for two years, than the wealthy protector who abandons you after a month.

  And most importantly of all: Every courtesan needs a friend. We would never survive without each other.

  For the past seven years, Amalie had been that friend. Amalie had taken the place of Jessica’s sisters. She’d been the constant warmth in Jessica’s life.

  But Amalie wasn’t here, and none of her advice could see Jessica through this blow.

  Don’t think. Act. That wasn’t Amalie’s advice; it was what Jessica had told Sir Mark earlier today. And like that, she was turning in the path, fighting the burn in her lungs for breath. It might feel like a mistake tomorrow, but tonight, she needed a friend.

  IT HAD BEEN a mistake.

  That was all Mark could think as he made his way home from the competition, his long strides sending up clouds of dust around him. He forced himself to keep to a walk, even though he wanted to run, to put as much distance as he could between himself and what had just happened.

  Rationally, logically, he knew that it was the sort of slip that anyone might make. Mrs. Farleigh was a widow, not some virginal miss. It had been nothing but a kiss—a heady kiss, to be sure, but he’d not shoved her against a tree as he’d wanted. He’d not flung her to the ground and lifted her skirts. He hadn’t even let his hands stray past her waist, and he’d wanted to drink her in.

  It was just a kiss. A flirtation gone too far. If he’d been any other man, he’d have enjoyed the feel of her lips on his and then thought nothing more of the matter.

  But Mark knew himself better. For him, it had been a catastrophe.

  He’d lost his head before, and he hated the feeling. He knew what it was like to act without thinking, to have no control over what came next. It felt like close kin to madness, plain and simple. And he had seen what madness could do.

  His mother, in her madness, had beaten his brothers. She’d done good works, yes, but she’d also nearly killed his brother.

  He didn’t fear that he would become mad. He’d never detected the slightest propensity toward unreason in himself. Still, he hated the feeling of rage overtaking him, hated the feeling of want overpowering his intellect. It reminded him that no matter what he did, a piece of his mother had lodged inside him. He’d inherited a fragment of her temperament alongside her hair and her eyes.

  As he’d grown older, he’d watched his mother ossify into a shell of a woman, nothing to her but rage and anger. He’d eaten porridge throughout his childhood, too; today, he could no longer stomach oats. He’d developed a distaste for excess emotion to go along with his dislike for gruel.

  Mark had thought about his ideal wife before. He’d not yet found her, not in the myriad subdued and pliable debutantes that had been pushed his way. Mark’s ideal wife was intelligent. She would be a perfect companion: clever enough that he would never tire of her company, outspoken enough that she did not simply bow to his whims. She would challenge and confront him when necessary.

  But there was another, more important component to this wistful dream. He wanted a woman who would calm him. She needed to be level-headed enough that he might trust her with the truth about himself. She would bring him to balance. She would be a source of peace and quiet.

  Yes. Of course, he also hoped that his wife would satisfy his physical desires, too. Still, every time he’d imagined marital intercourse—far too often for his peace of mind—he’d imagined it as a rational endeavor. Heated, of course, and pleasurable, naturally. He had no problem with pleasure regulated by reason. But sexual congress was supposed to leave his head clearer at the end.

  When he’d met Mrs. Farleigh, he had wanted time to consider her. She’d seemed…possible.

  She was beautiful. She was intelligent. And most important of all, she challenged him. She hadn’t believed all the folderol about his perfection. She was the first woman in a very long while who had seen through the claptrap of his inexplicable success to discover that underneath, he was still just a man like any other man. He needed someone who could turn to him and say, “Sir Mark, you are failing, and you must get yourself under control.”

  Mrs. Farleigh might have done. He’d begun to hope that she was the woman he’d been waiting for, no matter what the townspeople said.

  But now it was quite clear that he would have to discard that hope. There was one way in which Mrs. Farleigh was completely wrong for him. She didn’t calm him. No; she enflamed him. When he let his eyes flicker shut, he could see the fall of her eyelashes, the look she’d given him over her shoulder. He could see the pink of her lips, her mouth opening to his. He could still taste her sweetness on his lips.

  She made him smolder. She took his logical thoughts, and instead of arranging them in calm and clean order, she shook them until he could not tell up from down, right from wrong—could only think in terms of her and not her.

  No. Despite her intelligence, despite the connection he felt to her, there was no question about the matter. She was wrong for him. Utterly, completely, and in all other ways wrong.

  His reason knew it. But the rest of him was discontent with that decision.

  Mark turned
off the dusty track onto a lane. It headed straight down the hill, through a path lined by birch trees. The way was shaded; it wended down until it ran parallel to the briskly moving water of a mill-leat. Cool air rose around him, the temperature welcome against his skin. The walk, if nothing else, helped to bleed the edge from his sexual frustration. Deliberately, he kept walking past his mother’s house. He needed to regain his equanimity, to find the smooth imperturbable silk that normally surrounded him. Nothing like physical exertion to work his wants out of his system.

  Glass bricks. He imagined them, cool against his skin. Distancing. Anything seen through glass must be far away, unable to touch him. If he laid them just right, he would be able to block off this smoldering powder keg of desire. He would be in control once again. He’d no longer sense the echoes of his mother but would again be a man whose emotions were all that was proper and gentlemanly.

  He concentrated only on the distorting wave of the glass. It would mute out color, heat, shape—everything, really, except that which was sober and seemly. In his mental exercise, he built those glass walls high, higher, stretching until his mental tower of bricks rivaled that of Babel. It didn’t help that at every step along the way, he was confronted by reminders. The shadow of oak on water recalled the dark gleam of her hair. An errant beam of light, cutting through the gloom, brought to mind the sun-warm lips he’d touched. He waited until his breathing evened out. Until his wants fitted inside his skin once again.

  It was only then that he let himself observe his surroundings. He’d traveled miles upstream from his mother’s house. In the distance, he could see the blackened bricks of a factory—one that no doubt had been burned back in the troubled times. Times his own family had precipitated. If he’d needed another reason to avoid the dangers that awaited him if he gave in to his animal needs, those dark stones stood as a whispering reminder. This wasn’t about him or his selfish, burning want for a woman.

  Mark wasn’t his father. He wasn’t his mother. But…he might duplicate their mistakes, if he let himself slip.

  Even with an hour between him and that kiss, even with his every thought bent toward expunging the sense of heat, he could still feel the pressure of her lips against his. No. There was nothing for it. He was going to have to stop indulging himself. He was going to have to stop pretending that his want for her was anything other than animal desire.

  He was going to have to stop seeing her.

  So why did that decision feel so wrong?

  That twinge of regret he felt, that soul-deep gasp that filled him…

  That was only further proof that she was the last woman on earth he needed to be thinking about.

  With that decision firmly in hand, he turned and headed for home. The walk back took longer, now that he was no longer trying to outrace his own desires. If anything, he was almost reluctant to turn to his house again. It was cold and empty, filled with the ghosts of his childhood: precisely not the calm comfort he needed to keep his life in regular order.

  When he was a child, there had been scant opportunity for quiet and comfort. But still, there had been times when his mind cleared, when the everyday bustle had been taken away. In times like this, with his fears cascading about him with no escape, he found an almost meditative calm in reciting words he’d long memorized.

  Lo, thou requirest truth in the inward parts: and shall make me to understand wisdom secretly.

  The words were familiar, restful. A muttered incantation, offered to his own fitful spirit.

  Thou shalt make me hear of joy and gladness. Renew a right spirit within me.

  That was what he wanted more than anything—to be refreshed, to not fear his own thoughts. But peace didn’t come. Nothing eased the turmoil he felt. No quiet. No calm. His thoughts made a whirlpool around him.

  He made his way along the embankment of the mill-leat, the water running fiercely beside him, until he saw the familiar shape of home. It was just as he remembered it: gray and chilly in the late afternoon, fading into the brackish fenlike underbrush around it. Tonight, it would be dank and lonely. Mark sighed, wishing for the first time that one of his brothers had come with him.

  When he was within a few yards of the entrance, movement off to the side distracted him.

  He turned.

  There was a moment of staggering stillness, as if the maelstrom of his discontent had simply frozen in place. As if every argument he’d conducted with himself had fallen in on itself. As if she had come here in answer to his desperation.

  She brought him no calm. No quiet. If he hated excess, he should despise the sight of her.

  He didn’t.

  Jessica, his body whispered.

  “Mrs. Farleigh,” he said instead.

  “Sir Mark.” She was wearing a heavy cloak, covering her from neck to ankle. Her head was bowed, not in reverence, but as if she were carrying a heavy burden. She looked up, and her eyes sought his.

  At the look in them—that haunted, sad look—he wanted to go to her and put his arms about her. He wanted to turn and barricade himself behind the heavy wooden planks of his door. He wanted her never to feel sorrow again. He wanted to make it all better. He wasn’t sure if she was the answer to his desperate prayer, or temptation sent from the other side.

  “I know how improper this must seem,” she said. “Particularly after what transpired earlier today. I know what you must think. But I did not come here to enlarge on our prior…discussion. Truly. I came because there is no one else I can turn to.”

  She took another step toward him, and he could make out the tight lines around her eyes, the tremble of her hands. There was nothing fabricated about her distress.

  “Mrs. Farleigh,” he repeated. He should send her away. He’d just decided that he could have nothing more to do with her. He should tell her to unburden her problems on the rector and be shut of the situation.

  Right. And the man would no doubt paw at her breast and then blame her for tempting him.

  No. Mark was many things, but he was not the sort of man who would walk away from a woman in trouble. Especially not this woman. This maddening, tempting, arousing woman.

  He hadn’t responded, and she clasped her hands in front of her—not in entreaty, but in an unconscious movement. “We can speak out here, if it makes you more easy. I brought my cloak and an umbrella, just in case. But I want—no, I need—to talk with someone.”

  And that’s when Mark knew that he was in even more trouble than he’d believed. Because all it took was that one plea, and the objections he’d had against her, so carefully considered, disappeared in smoke. And all he could think of was her.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  JESSICA GASPED in relief when Sir Mark silently opened the door and ushered her inside. He took her cloak and hung it on a hook. But he didn’t say anything as he conducted her down the long hall she’d walked once before. Once they’d reached the parlor, he silently gestured her to a seat in front of the fireplace. It was beginning to cool down; inside, it was actually cold. He set logs in the cavern of a fireplace with easy assurance before reaching for a small bellows and encouraging the embers to spark to life.

  He did all of this without touching her, without a brush of his fingers against her neck. She was glad of it.

  Flames licked up, devouring wood. He pulled the grate in front of the fire once more and turned to her. His gaze touched her eyes, dropped to her hands, pale and clasped together.

  “You’re chilled,” he said. He spoke so matter-of-factly, she would never have known they’d kissed earlier. She might have thought there was nothing between them but bare facts. “Would you like some tea?”

  “No.” Her fingers spasmed, and she burrowed them into her skirt. “No. I don’t like tea.”

  He must have heard something in her voice, because he cocked his head and looked at her. But he didn’t press her any further. “Coffee?” he asked. “Warmed milk?”

  “I don’t suppose yo
u have any port.” The words escaped her.

  But he didn’t look offended at the notion that a woman might do something so unladylike as take strong spirits. Instead, his eyes crinkled in amusement, and he turned and left. Rustling sounds, and then a long creak, floated into the room. He came back a few minutes later, with a pair of tumblers and a dusty bottle.

  “No port,” he told her. “But—” he hefted the green glass “—I do have a bottle of the local apple brandy. Have you ever tried any?”

  She shook her head.

  He wrested the cork from the bottle and then poured a splash of the caramel-colored liquid into a glass. “It’s a local tradition.” He handed this over—their fingers did not touch—and then he poured himself a more generous measure.

  She just needed to steady her nerves. A sip, that’s all. She was beginning to feel foolish for having come here.