Unclaimed

by Courtney Milan

  He paused. The sun had disappeared beneath the horizon; only a ring of red painted the hills.

  “Even starved, homeless and desperate, I knew what the right thing to do was. As little as my brother and I had, we had more than this wretch. We could have done something. And knowing Smite, he would have done it.” His hand balled into a fist. “I knew the right thing to do. And I also knew that if I picked that child up, my brother would not let it starve—even if it meant that we would. And so I walked away. And I didn’t tell him.”

  He stared off into the twilight.

  “You cannot blame yourself for that. How old were you?”

  “Old enough to know right from wrong.”

  “Fourteen? Fifteen?”

  “Ten.”

  She balled her hand and brought it to her mouth. Ten years old and starving on the streets.

  “Ash arrived that afternoon. I insisted that we go back, but the infant was gone by then.”

  “You were ten. You had nothing. And in any event, that baby needed a wet nurse, not your leftover scraps.”

  He said nothing in response.

  “While we’re at it, the reason it was gone was probably that someone else found it and brought it to the parish.”

  “But I didn’t. Every time I have been tempted to sin since—and I have been tempted a thousand times since—I have remembered that discarded, unwanted bundle of humanity. I think of the woman who left her newborn child in an alley. But mostly, I think about how alone she was. I think about the man who was not there in that alley at all. I am not going to be him.”

  Her hand was on his elbow. She let it slide down his forearm until his hand engulfed hers, warm and alive.

  “I see,” she said. He’d earned his knighthood years ago.

  His grip tightened around hers. “That’s what I mean when I say I’m not a saint.”

  “You’re a good deal better, Sir Mark.”

  He reached with his free hand and caught her other elbow. Their fingers twisted together. In the fast-fading light, his expression was shadowed. “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “I meant—no. After what I’ve told you, I had better be just Mark to you. Only Mark.”

  “You will never be only Mark to me,” she said fiercely. “Not in a thousand years. You’re—you’re—”

  “What, just because I know a little thing like chastity would make the world a better place? I’ve said nothing that every woman does not already know. Tell me, Mrs. Farleigh—if your Mr. Farleigh had kept to the laws of chastity, what would your life be like now?”

  There was no Mr. Farleigh. There never had been. But there had been a man, once…

  She shut her eyes. “He seduced me,” she finally said. “At that age, I didn’t think. Or if I did, I believed I was indomitable. When you’re young, nothing can ever go wrong. Bad things happen to other people—people far less clever, and far uglier—than I was. The rules of propriety existed for stupid, unlucky girls.”

  She swallowed. “I thought nothing would ever happen to me. Until it did. He kissed me, and I didn’t think about chastity or right or wrong. I didn’t think about the consequences, or what effect my choice would have on my parents or my sisters. Before I knew it, I was compromised so thoroughly that my family wouldn’t have me in the house. It did happen to me, and I was the stupid girl.”

  His hand twisted in hers, slipping, caressing her palm through her glove, her wrist. Then his fingers found the edge of her glove. Slowly, he stripped it off, baring her hand to the cool night air. To his touch. Skin slid against skin.

  “I’ve been miserable ever since,” she finished.

  “How old were you?”

  “Fourteen.”

  He didn’t say anything to that, just drew her closer, pulling her hand, leading her as if in a dance until she stood inches from him.

  His other hand moved to her chin and tipped it up.

  “Jessica,” he said gravely, “I will be your champion, if you let me. If I have to take on the role of knight, I want to be yours. Let me be your protector.”

  The words sent a flurry of confusion through her. “You’re offering to be my protector? You’ll get no honor from association with me.”

  In response, he kissed her. Not a short, chaste kiss. Not even a long, lingering kiss, sweet and yet still chaste. No. It was heat. It was fire. It was everything he’d been holding back. His body pressed against hers, hard, leaving no secrets. His mouth took hers without question.

  She dissolved in his touch, disappeared as his hands cupped her face, pulling her closer still. Not chastity, this, but an invitation. A prelude to sin and scandal. It made no sense, not with what he’d just told her.

  “Hang honor,” he whispered, pulling away to breathe kisses against her neck. “Hang my reputation. I don’t care what the world thinks of me.”

  He pressed against her once more. His words were as drugging as his kiss, threatening to overwhelm her.

  She set her hands on his chest and pushed away. “You can’t mean it. You’ve lost your head over a kiss. You can’t mean that you’d give up fame, your prestige, your rank in society—”

  “It will hardly be so dire. But yes, Jessica. If that’s what it means to have you.” He sighed, blew out his breath. “I’m getting rather ahead of myself.” His voice was rough. “I…I’d like a chance to do this properly. Might I call on you tomorrow evening?” His voice dropped. “Alone.”

  Tomorrow evening. She’d have precisely one day to ruin him, then. How…how convenient.

  Yes, Sir Mark. I’ll ruin you.

  Yes, Sir Mark. I’ll meet you alone and take you to bed.

  Yes, Sir Mark. I’ll steal your honor and your good name, and trade it for thirty pieces of silver.

  “Don’t freeze up on me. I’ve been thinking of nothing other than you for days. Nights, too.”

  Oh, yes. She’d won. But this wasn’t the victory she’d hoped for when she first came up with this plan. She needed it to be strictly lust that drove him to her bed, not this quiet consideration. She wanted her own emotion to be calm and disengaged. She wanted his surrender to be nothing but the cold, clinical slide of male into female.

  There was nothing clinical about the touch of his hand on her face. It wasn’t lust that had her sipping the air he breathed. And it wasn’t just her body he wanted.

  You are not alone. Let me be your protector.

  Victory was bitter. It hurt.

  She looked up into his eyes. There’s an odd sort of integrity to you.

  He was wrong. He was so wrong. Still, what was she to do? If she walked away from him now, she’d have nothing. If she did this to him…

  But what choice did she have? Nothing awaited her in London but more debts, more dishonor. She couldn’t do this to him, but she couldn’t go back to London, couldn’t resume her old life. She just couldn’t.

  No, Jessica. If you can survive Amalie’s death, you can survive this, too.

  “Jessica?” His hand touched her cheek. “I want this. I want you.”

  It would utterly damn her to destroy the trust of the only good man she’d ever met. But then, she was already damned. If she was going to be hanged for a lamb, she might as well be hanged for the entire flock.

  “Yes, Mark,” she said softly. “You may call on me. Shall we say seven in the evening? I’ll make sure we’re alone.”

  He nodded briefly and then leaned in and touched her lips once more with his. The contact was quick, warm—and yet it felt like a death knell, sealing her fate.

  She was going to ruin him. She only prayed that she didn’t destroy herself in the process.

  JESSICA HAD HOPED Mark would change his mind. Instead, he brought her flowers. He’d even picked them himself—a riotous mess of cow parsley and lilies. She could almost hear her heart crack when he handed the bouquet over.

  While she found a container to put them in, he removed his hat and glove
s. He held them in his hands, turning them about uneasily before setting them in a heap on a side table. It was the first time he’d seemed visibly uncomfortable.

  “You’re nervous,” she remarked. “Don’t be.”

  He smiled faintly. “I’m still unsure of my reception.”

  She raised one eyebrow. “Truly, Mark?”

  His smile flickered, fading into resolve. His chin rose. And he took a step toward her. But he didn’t take her in his arms. He didn’t press his body full-length against hers. He didn’t even press a kiss on her. Instead, he took her hands in his. His fingers were warm and smooth.

  And then, to her horror, he sank to one knee in front of her. He fumbled with the ring on his finger and slipped it into her waiting hand. “Jessica,” he said, his voice low, “will you do me the very great honor of granting me your hand in marriage?”

  Her whole body went cold.

  She hadn’t ruined him. She’d thought herself prepared for the evening, but she hadn’t expected this. Even if she’d never fallen—even if she’d been Jessica Carlisle, the virtuous vicar’s daughter, Mark would have been miles above her station. He was a duke’s brother. Queen Victoria had knighted him. She was nobody.

  She didn’t know what to do.

  Say yes.

  She wouldn’t have to ruin him. He could obtain a special license in a few days with his brother’s help. They could be married before the truth of her background was discovered. She would never have to sell herself again. She could have her freedom and Mark, too.

  But there was a difference between ruining his reputation and ruining his life. The gossip she would stir up by seducing him would blacken his name for months, but it would pass. Entrapping him into marriage? She’d be robbing him of all chance of future happiness under a cloud of lies. And that would be a lie she couldn’t escape, if she were bound to him—not with any amount of money.

  She couldn’t do that to him. She couldn’t do that to herself.

  “Jessica, darling,” Mark said, still on one knee, “you have to say yes before I can kiss you again.”

  She hadn’t let herself think the words before. Love had seemed as futile an emotion as hope. What had been the point? But she knew it now. She loved him—loved that he would care so little for the difference in their stations, loved that she hadn’t been able to seduce him from his principles after all.

  But love was not gentle. Love was not kind. And love was furiously, powerfully jealous. She couldn’t have him, and in just a few minutes, he wouldn’t want her. Every good thing that touched her life had always been ripped away. And Mark had been more wonderful than…than everything she’d had since Amalie.

  She pulled her hand from his. “Sir Mark—”

  “Mark.” His eyes clouded slightly.

  “Sir Mark,” she continued, “I didn’t think you were coming here to offer marriage.”

  He frowned in puzzlement. “What else would I offer?”

  She met his eyes. “You told me yesterday you wanted to be my protector. You said you wanted me.”

  “I did. I do.” He pushed up off the floor, awkwardly coming to his feet. “Whatever is the matter?”

  “Protection isn’t synonymous with marriage. It’s what a man offers his mistress.”

  He simply shook his head, still baffled. “Having never offered for a mistress, and having had no occasion to do so, I’m unfamiliar with the precise vocabulary. But, Jessica, I’ve been talking to you of marriage since the first day we walked to the Friar’s Oven.”

  He had.

  She’d noticed, too. Perhaps she shouldn’t have been taken by surprise. But somewhere in her mind, after every one of his sentences, she’d appended a but. He told her he was making a promise, and her imagination whispered but not that sort of promise. He’d said she wasn’t alone, and she’d heard an unspoken for now.

  He’d flat out said he wanted to know her beyond the space of three dances, so he could determine if she was the sort of woman he would marry. But the notion that he would actually decide to marry her had never entered her mind. She wasn’t the kind of woman men married. She knew that. Apparently, he didn’t.

  If she could go back to the beginning, start over by telling him the truth… No. There was no way to roll her past into a neat, honest ball. Her lies trailed behind her, hard and unflattering.

  “I had no first marriage,” she said, turning from him. She walked away, so he couldn’t see the betraying liquid collect in the corner of her eyes.

  “What was that?” She could hear him following after her, drawing close.

  “You heard me correctly,” she said to the whitewash on the wall. “I have never been married. Just ruined. Again and again and again. I’ve been lying to you from the start.”

  “Perhaps—that is—surely you had a good reason.” A note of uncertainty crept into his voice. “A very good reason.” He took a step toward her.

  Stay away.

  “I’m not a lady, down on her luck. I’m a courtesan. A whore. George Weston offered a bounty to any woman who seduced you, and I put myself forward for the task. I planned to announce the particulars to the ton, and to destroy your reputation.” She swallowed her tears. Love was angry, furious that he could make her feel such dreadful hope again and rip it from her in the same breath. She turned to face him, her hands in fists. “I thought you’d come today to hand me my victory.”

  He had gone pale. Worse than pale; his eyes glittered, freezing, losing all the kindness she’d grown accustomed to seeing. “George Weston?” he repeated. “You kissed me because George Weston paid you to do it? What the devil does Weston have to do with any of this?”

  “What does it matter? If you’d come here to take me to bed,” she told him, “I would have betrayed you. I would have let you tumble me any way you wanted, every way you wanted, as much as you wanted. And then I would have written an account and sent it in to the papers.”

  “Ah.” His voice was arctic. “I see. But—but didn’t you— Surely you—” He swallowed. “No. I can’t believe that you’ve been telling me lies this whole time.”

  It had been hard to tell him the truth. It was harder still to force her lips into the semblance of a smile, to let her eyes reflect nothing but smug satisfaction. She turned back to him. “Yes,” she said, “I was very believable, wasn’t I? I can’t believe you ate up every word.”

  And, oh, how she wanted him to protest again.

  Foolish, foolish hope. He looked at her with the tiniest curl to his lip, as if she were a snake polluting his garden and he was about to cast her out. “And here I thought that you’d overcome your initial distaste of me. Apparently I was wrong. You must have been laughing at me dreadfully, then, behind my back—mocking my lovesick ways—”

  “Lovesick?” Her temper flared. “You don’t know what love means. If you think you have been sick with love, you must never have had the influenza. You’ve held yourself back at every turn. Every time I provoked a passionate response from you, you drew away. And why did you do it, Sir Mark? Because you’re not that kind of man. Because you wouldn’t stoop to letting yourself want. Do not pretend that I have done anything other than hurt your pride, substantial as that is.”

  He stared at her grimly, his hand contracting at his side. “I would have forgiven almost anything—”

  “Yes,” she said. “And how lovely that would have been for me, ten years down the road. To know that my husband had condescended to forgive me. To know that he always thought himself above me, that my sins were always a blot on my record, one that I could never make up. That every day he woke up knowing that he was my superior. I wager it made you feel quite proud of yourself, knowing that you were good enough to stoop to my level.”

  His jaw set. But he didn’t deny what she’d said.

  “You know,” she said, “I had some moral qualms about my role in this piece. It didn’t seem right to me to use you so. But truly, Sir Mark, you could s
tand to be knocked into the dust once or twice. Then you might think twice about how magnanimous you are in forgiving me my sins.”

  “You have no idea.” His voice was low. “You have no bloody idea where I’ve been. And you have no idea what I want—wanted of you.”

  Jessica raised her chin in the air. “I know enough to know that whatever it is you wanted, deep inside your skin, you’d never have let it out. Just as I know that as much as you’d like to smack me at this moment, you never will. No, Sir Mark. I do believe that whatever you might be feeling right now, you’ll bottle it up with the rest of your sentiment. You’ve kept yourself in too much of a cage to let a whore like me truly overset you.”