Unclaimed

by Courtney Milan

  “For instance,” Mark said, sweeping his gaze over the blue-arm-banded boys who sat in self-satisfied honor in the front of the room, “the members of the MCB are the biggest lot of liars I have ever met.”

  There was a pained silence at that—as if several hundred people had suddenly forgotten how to breathe.

  Mark glared at Tolliver beside him. “You claim that you’ve committed my book to memory, but as far as I can tell, you haven’t bothered to read a single word. At least, I must presume you haven’t, because the MCB has failed to understand the central message. Let me start by revealing your secrets.”

  He made the hand signal Tolliver had showed him at the picnic earlier. “That is not a signal that appears in A Gentleman’s Guide. Not anywhere. And yet I was told that it is a warning. A signal that men might use, to let each other know that a woman is dangerous.”

  Tolliver’s nose crinkled, and he frowned at Mark.

  “The import of the whispered accusations, those sly hand signals, is that a man who has been unchaste is a man in need of saving, and he can redeem himself by a renewed adherence to principle. A woman, however, who makes a mistake—well, she is unclean, and must be forever cast from good society.”

  A few fans rose at this and worked the air furiously.

  “I don’t blame any of you,” Mark said. “It’s not as if you could learn proper conduct from a rector who sees nothing wrong with manhandling a woman, simply because he thinks that nobody will notice.”

  Across the distance, Jessica lifted her eyes to his. She smiled faintly, but her eyes were still sad. The rector started, his chin lifting suddenly, as he pulled his eyes from her bosom. Good.

  “And so,” Mark continued, “I will explain this to you, since you seem to never have heard the concept. There is no such thing as a dangerous woman. If a woman makes you want to lose your head and forget what is right, it is you who are dangerous—to yourself, and even more possibly, to the woman in question. I simply do not believe that any of you who claim to hold me in adulation could have read my book, if you do not understand that basic principle.”

  He was caught on the tide of his fury now. For once, he felt no need to restrain his temper.

  “There are no unchaste women, or profligate men.” He set his hands on the podium. “There are no saints. None of you men want to hear me say that. After all, if it’s not a woman who’s led you astray, you’ve gone down the wrong path all on your own. If I am just an ordinary man, it means that chastity is attainable for everyone. It means that you are all responsible for your own mistakes, that you must own up to the wrong you have done without laying the blame on anyone else’s doorstep. It means you can never hold a woman scapegoat for your shortcomings again, not even if she is pretty and lively and intelligent.”

  Jessica had not taken her eyes from him. They were wide and luminous—and still sad.

  “When you make the secret hand signal that suggests that a woman is dangerous, you do not prove yourself strong. You prove yourself weak. What kind of man hides his weaknesses behind a woman? What kind of man places the blame on someone else, rather than admit that he is fallible? And so, yes, I don’t think much of the lot of you right now. I think you’re a pack of cowards and cheats.”

  Jessica’s mouth was ajar. Had nobody ever taken her side, then? Who had ever stood as her advocate? Who had defended her? An emotion besides rage presented itself—something cold and prickly, rising up from the depths of him.

  “There is one other basic concept that I think you have failed to comprehend,” Mark said. “If you think that women are your nemesis in some struggle for your soul…well. You’ve bungled everything. Completely.”

  Mark met her gaze and delivered the next words for her and her alone.

  “Women are the point of chastity, not the enemy of it. You should hold to chastity not because you fear what your cohort will say, but because when you indulge your own lusts, the woman you indulge them with is hurt. She is the one who will weather the censure of society. She is the one on whom the burden and expense of an unanticipated pregnancy will fall. She is the one who will be cast out. Men? Men will survive the temporary opprobrium of society. Only an unfeeling cad ignores the plight created by his passing desire. Only a juvenile lets the weight of his actions fall on someone else, and then blames her for his own weakness.”

  The crowd had disappeared from his vision. He could see no one but Jessica, could think of no one but her. She watched him like a stone statue, her cheeks marble.

  “I know what integrity looks like,” Mark said. “A person with integrity takes responsibility for his own failings. And I respect and admire that more than any number of false protestations of honor.”

  If he’d not known better, he’d have thought her on the verge of tears. He looked away. Proud as she was, he didn’t think she’d want him to see it.

  “And so when you say a woman has caused your downfall?” Mark swept his gaze back to the members of the MCB. “You’re acting like a pack of irresponsible infants.”

  Tolliver actually cringed under Mark’s glare. And for the first time since Mark, swept up in his rage, had begun to speak, cold reality asserted itself. He’d truly let his anger get the better of him. He’d called them all cowards and babies, as if he were the worst sort of hellfire pulpit-thumping preacher.

  But thinking of Jessica, sitting isolated and scarcely tolerated, infuriated him. He couldn’t even feel a mild regret.

  What was left?

  “There,” he said, brushing his hands together as if he were Pontius Pilate disclaiming all responsibility. “I’m done with you.”

  He began to walk away. For his first three steps, there was silence. Then the crowd surged to its feet, applauding, shrieking wildly.

  He couldn’t believe it. “Are you mad?” he protested aloud. “I just called you all fainthearted infants!”

  But they didn’t hear him, not over the whistled accolades. It hadn’t done any good—they still sprang from their places as he tried to escape, slapping his back, thanking him—even though he’d done his best to make them hate him.

  “Brilliant speech, Sir Mark!” Tolliver was saying.

  “Such heartfelt conviction!”

  “I feel inspired,” someone was saying by his elbow. “Truly inspired to live a righteous life.”

  “Everyone loved it.” That was Tolliver again. “Except, um, Mr. Lewis. I think he’s looking a bit angry. And Mrs. Farleigh—she’s leaving already.”

  Mark turned toward the exit. In this crowd, he could scarcely see more than elbows and hats, wide sleeves and cloaks being claimed in the entrance. But he didn’t need to see more than her elbow—more than the tip of her finger—to recognize her.

  She was leaving. After all that, she was leaving without saying a single word to him.

  “Tolliver,” Mark said, “do me a favor, there’s a good lad. Tackle anyone who tries to stop me.”

  “What, sir?”

  But there was no time to explain. Mark shoved through the crowd after her. Not a chance he’d let her go, not now.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “JESSICA!”

  She didn’t want to turn, especially not at the sound of his voice. She didn’t want to look at him, didn’t want to have to sort through the confused welter of emotions that coursed through her.

  But his footfalls pounded on the dirt road behind her. He must have run clear from the center of town.

  “Jessica,” he repeated as he came up to her.

  “Sir Mark. I told you not to make a romance of me. You…you are the dearest idiot.”

  He didn’t flinch. “Is that what you think I’m doing, then? Seeing some idealized version of you? Didn’t you hear a word I just said? It’s not about you.”

  “No? Then you must have been making a champion of yourself.”

  “Jessica.”

  “I’d quite forgot,” she said, “you are a knight, are you not
? I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that you occasionally play the part.”

  He shook his head and rubbed at one eye. “Are you yelling at me because I like you?”

  “Yes!”

  “Well, get used to it,” he shot back. “Because I can’t get you out of my mind. I think of you all the time. And you can’t shout loud enough to make me stop.”

  “Would you care to place a wager?”

  “Just go ahead and try,” he said coldly, rummaging in his pockets. “Here.” He pulled out his fob watch, flicked the gold face open. “It’s three past eight. Now go on. Scream as loudly as you like. Don’t mind me. I’ll just stand here and keep time until you’re bored.”

  He didn’t need to tell her about the ticking of time. She had two days to seduce him, and she couldn’t bear to do it any longer. He stared back, tapping his foot. And it was only then that the utter, impossible ridiculousness of it swept over her and she began to laugh. He was by her side in a trice, his arms around her. Her shoulders shook. She wasn’t sure if she was laughing or crying until his hand ran down her head.

  “There now,” he said. “Has it really been so long since someone took your side?”

  “It’s been ages. Too long for me to remember.” It had long ago ceased to be a matter of if she would have to rely on herself—just how much it would sting when her legs were kicked out from under her.

  After they left the buildings behind them, she took a deep breath.

  “Sir Mark. What you said at the meeting tonight—it struck me.” That didn’t describe what she’d felt. He’d looked like an avenging archangel, ready to rain fire and brimstone down on the men around him.

  “You don’t say.” His tone was dry.

  “Why have you chosen to champion male chastity? Why not focus on—oh, the Corn Laws or suffrage or education? There are myriad social causes you could champion. Most of them are easier than the one you’ve chosen.”

  “Well.” He slanted her a look. “When men are unchaste, women bear the burden. You see—”

  She moved in front of him swiftly, and he stopped. She raised one hand to his mouth, touching his lips. Cutting off those words, before he could speak them. His breath wafted through the knit of her gloves.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t want to hear the theory. I’ve read your book. But when you spoke today… A man doesn’t get so angry about something unless it’s personal. I am not asking why someone should be chaste. I am asking why you in particular have dedicated so much of your life to the pursuit.”

  He stared at her. No warm breath touched her fingers.

  Slowly, she pulled her hand away, wondering if he was about to denounce her.

  Instead, he shook his head. “You know, nobody has ever asked me that question before. Not even my brothers.”

  “I have always been particularly impertinent.”

  Mark met her eyes again. There was nothing importunate about his gaze—no ogling, no sense that he was measuring her for his bed. Still, she saw in him a fierce, possessive hunger. “Impertinence suits you,” he finally said and held out his arm for her. She took it once more, and they began walking again.

  He said nothing more for a few minutes, but by the tense jump of the muscles in his arm, she could tell that he’d not forgotten her query.

  “It was my mother,” he finally told her.

  “I’ve heard of your mother. People talk of her sometimes.”

  His tone grew warier. “What have you heard?”

  “She was a generous, godly woman.” Jessica didn’t want to say much more. Men reacted strangely when you criticized their mothers—even if they’d just done it themselves.

  “Ha. Surely the gossips have told you more than that.”

  “She was a mill owner’s wife. I heard that when your father passed away, she grieved. And that in her grief, she became a little…strange.”

  “She went mad.”

  Jessica nodded in acquiescence. “It must have been difficult, to have a mother so overtaken with sadness—”

  “She didn’t go mad with grief,” Mark interrupted. “She hated my father. She was always quite religious—extraordinarily so. He, in turn, scarcely cared to attend service. That alone wouldn’t have done the trick. But he was not faithful to her. She got the notion in her head that he’d forced the women who’d worked in his mill years before to whore for him in exchange for a position. And that when they complained, he brought in laborsaving machinery, so he could sack the ones who caused the unrest.”

  “Oh.”

  “She wasn’t entirely wrong about that,” he added. “A handful, certainly. All of them? No. But she had this notion that our entire family wealth was built on his debauchery. She began to see sin everywhere. She began to hate money, to hate every thing that reminded her of him. If she saw a woman on the streets, she instantly believed her to be a victim of my father’s profligacy. She began to sell…at first, just things. Then she started to give away the respectable competence my father had left. When my sister fell ill, she refused to pay a physician, saying it was God’s will whether she lived or died.”

  The sun was setting. It hung, red and warm at the edge of the field. It painted his cheeks in orange, his hair in rust.

  “She died. I scarcely remember that. I was still young at the time. But I think my mother took her death as a sign of God’s judgment. After that, she became very strange indeed. Soon, very little remained of the legacy my father had left. Very little except my brothers. Have I mentioned that my brothers look a great deal like my father? That didn’t help. I take after her more. So she beat them, and took me along with her on her errands of mercy. I met the poor, the weak, the afflicted.”

  “She was mad.”

  “I know,” he said quietly. “But…underneath that insanity, there was a core of truth to everything she said. I’ve seen the ones who are destroyed in the wake of profligacy. The man takes his pleasure, and women and children suffer. My mother most of all. I don’t know what she would have been like if he’d been faithful. She never would have been comfortable, I don’t think, but at least she might not have tried—”

  He caught himself and stared off into the distance, his shoulders pinched together. He looked miserable, so lost in memory.

  “Ah,” she said softly. “Is that all, then?” She’d meant to interrupt his grim reverie, to put a soft smile on his face. Instead he looked at her, his eyes haunted.

  “No,” he said softly. “It is not.” He turned from her and began to walk down the path again.

  She followed.

  “She nearly killed my brother, Smite. It was a…a matter of punishment and neglect. Not intentional, I don’t think. But she’d gone so far beyond rationality. She put him in the cellar and hid the key from me. Ash had been in India at that time, and we’d gotten word that he’d be coming home soon. When I managed to get Smite out, we walked the thirty miles to Bristol to wait for him.”

  He wasn’t looking at her, but when she put her hand on his arm, his fingers closed around hers.

  “We waited three months. We ran out of the shillings we’d taken within the first month. We spent the next two months on the streets. I don’t know if you can understand what it means to be starving—not merely hungry, nor even famished, but slowly starving. You stop caring about anything except food—not laws, not manners, not right nor wrong. The world disappears, until there is nothing but you and the constant struggle to put something— anything—in your belly.”

  She’d never got to that point. She’d never come near. All she could do was listen in horror.

  Mark didn’t look at her. “At least,” he said, “that was how it felt to me. My brother, now…Smite would have fed his last scrap to a hungry cat. He had no sense of self-preservation, not even when matters were at their worst. We hid in an alley one evening. I woke in the middle of the night, to see a woman walking through the gloom. She didn’t see me. There was a pile of refuse in t
he back of the alley—moldering bits of food that even I would not have tried to eat, discarded fabric that had worn so thin it was little more than a collection of threads—that sort of stuff. She set a bundle on the heap, and then, without looking back, walked away.”

  Jessica felt a pit in her stomach. She could feel her hands start to shake. She knew what was coming. In the wretched sisterhood of whores and courtesans, there were some things that never changed.

  “I went,” he said. “I looked. Of course I looked. But the bundle was an infant—tiny and red. It could not have been more than a few hours old.”