Unclaimed

by Courtney Milan

  He smiled at her indulgently. “I know why you came. You always did want to make sure the details were squared away. Here.” He pulled a piece of paper from his jacket pocket and slid it across the table. “You’ve earned it.”

  She waited until he pulled his hand away before she looked at the paper. It was a bank draft. She hadn’t come here to take his money. She’d come here to denounce him.

  But that was before she’d seen that he’d made the cheque out in the amount of three hundred pounds. She tasted bitter charcoal. She lifted her eyes to him. “How odd. We agreed on fifteen hundred.”

  He gave her a negligent smile. “Come, Jess. You know I’m not overly wealthy. Besides, I’ve a reputation to maintain—I can’t be throwing all my free capital into whores, no matter what sort of benefits they offer me.”

  Jessica tapped her fingers against the paper. “I don’t see how the state of your funds is any concern of mine. I certainly don’t care about your reputation. We had a deal, you and I. It was spelled out. Quite clearly.”

  “What are you going to do?” he asked. “Take me to court? You know that our little bargain is quite unenforceable.” He leaned across the table, his hand reaching to brush against the side of her cheek. “If you want to earn the rest, you know how you can get it.”

  She slapped his hand away. “Why would you suppose that you could motivate me to enter into one contract with you by reneging on another?”

  He didn’t say anything, simply shaking his head.

  It wasn’t as if it was the first time he’d done this to her. She’d had a contract with him before—she’d insisted on it. And when it had come down to it, he’d broken that one, too—splintered it clean in half, nearly killing her in the process. He wasn’t a bad man. He was just…an unthinking pinchpenny. He’d put his pocketbook before his obligations once before. She shouldn’t have been surprised that he’d done so again.

  “I wouldn’t touch you for twice that amount.” She glanced down at the bank draft. “For any sum.”

  “Come now, I wasn’t that bad. I would think that after being pawed over by a virgin, you’d welcome a man of some experience.”

  She stood. “Sir Mark made me feel more when he touched my hand than you ever managed.”

  His jaw worked, and he reached for the cheque. Without thinking, Jessica slammed her hand over it and glared at him. She hadn’t earned it—he only thought she had. In truth, she had no right to the funds. But then…

  The memory of those months after he’d so casually broken their last contract came to mind. The illness. The darkness. The feeling that she would never hope for the future again. He could never repay her for those months. He could never banish the sadness she would carry, not with every penny in his accounts. He owed her.

  She couldn’t collect. But she had already humiliated him; he just didn’t know it yet. When he read the final chapter in the serial she’d written, he would understand precisely what she’d done.

  By the time that happened, she’d have taken his funds. He didn’t know where she was staying, and in a few weeks, she would leave London for good. It wasn’t justice—she could never get justice for what he’d done to her. But it was indubitably right.

  “Jess,” he said. “Do be reasonable.”

  She folded up the draft and slipped it into her pocket. “My name isn’t Jess.”

  “No? Then what should I call you?”

  “Weston,” she said simply, “you’re not going to see me. If you look for me, I’ll leave.”

  “And what if I insist?”

  She lowered her voice. “I’ll shoot you. Stay away from me.”

  “Jess!” he called after her.

  But she wasn’t turning back, not for him. Not ever. She held her head high and marched onward.

  AFTER M ARK’S WALKING trip, London was…gray.

  Even though they’d not talked about Jessica, Smite must have sensed Mark was still unhappy, because he’d accompanied Mark and Ash to London without a word of explanation. He’d even agreed to attend a soiree. He’d probably done so to make sure Mark had no time to think on that first evening back.

  It was the first time that all three of the Turners had ever appeared at a soiree together. They’d arrived in town only just in time to wash and dress for the event that evening. They entered the room, Mark’s brothers flanking him on either side.

  Heads turned as they were announced. Mark shouldn’t have been surprised. Ash was a duke; Mark still seemed possessed of an inexplicable popularity. And Smite was wealthy, good-looking…and never around, which made everyone wonder about him.

  Mark had been away from London—away from polite society in its entirety—long enough that he’d forgotten what it was like to attend one of these events. Everyone was looking at him. This was normal, he reminded himself. Everyone was always looking at him; it was only his imagination that found a trace of pity in their gazes. They didn’t know what had happened while he was gone. None of them did.

  This was just the usual adoration that he collected, simply because he was a knight, because he was popular and because he was wealthy. It chafed more than usual tonight.

  But when he looked to either side of him he realized that he was wealthy. Just not in the way that these people thought. There had been lean years before Ash had made his fortune; Mark could still bring to mind the feeling of hunger, not so much a memory as an occasional itch that sometimes tickled the back of his mind from time to time. And yet…if there was luxury in this world, it wasn’t velvet waistcoats or top hats. It wasn’t a perfectly sprung carriage or marchpane delicacies served on silver platters.

  It was this—this certainty that without his even asking, his brothers would stand at his side. Even Smite. Even in this crowd. All his life, his brothers had protected him. He’d been born rich.

  Perhaps that was why he found the strength to paste a false smile on his face, to clasp hands with a friend he’d not seen in months. Perhaps that was why he could dismiss the sidelong glances, the murmurs behind shielded hands. Perhaps that was why he could converse easily and pretend that nothing had happened in his absence. He knew that his brothers were there for him, a foundation that would never crumble no matter what he faced.

  It was even easy to ask a young lady to dance, although he somehow missed her name when they’d been introduced. He could pretend perfectly; all he had to do was act by rote, like a clockwork knight wound up for a performance.

  But he had only to think of what he was not pretending about, and the memory returned, shocking and vivid. The women at the ball were faded portraits of femininity compared to Jessica. She was warmer, more vibrant. And though the woman he was waltzing with—a debutante who watched him with a puzzled look on her face—was quite pretty, he could hardly attend to her conversation.

  It still hurt to think of Jessica. But that pain was beginning to fade to the dull ache of a wound that was healing.

  “Do you still think of her, then?” the young lady asked.

  Mark frowned at her. Had he spoken those last words aloud? He hadn’t. He was sure he hadn’t. He shook his head uncertainly.

  The young lady was looking at him. She didn’t have the usual look of adoration that a debutante in her position might have exhibited. “Did you love her?” she asked breathlessly. “It is the question everyone wants answered, after all.”

  He barely managed not to trip over his own feet. “What are you talking about?”

  “The woman in the papers,” she said, “of course. What else should I be talking about? Nobody has been talking about anything else for days. And now that the last of the serial has run—”

  “The serial? What serial do you mean?”

  “You haven’t seen it?” Her eyes widened. “And here all my friends had deputized me to get the particulars from you. You must have seen it.”

  “I’ve been out of town for weeks.” He felt faintly sick. Why hadn’t anyone told Ash?
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  But, no—they’d arrived hours after his men of business would have departed. Mark could see precisely what had happened. No doubt they’d deputized Jeffreys, Ash’s right-hand man, to deliver the bad news. No doubt Jeffreys had left Ash a report, and the remainder of the servants, delighted to know they would not need to bring it up, had kept quiet.

  Or not so quiet. Was that what his valet had meant when he said Mark had been busy in the country?

  “My brothers and I—we’ve been out of town these last few days. We’ve been utterly unreachable.”

  They’d purposefully traveled through isolated villages, on roads with little traffic. Mark hadn’t wanted to meet one of his hangers-on. They’d shared the road with cattle drivers and peddlers—people who didn’t care about polite society and did not read the gossip papers. On the train into London, people had stared at him and whispered. He’d not thought anything of it, though. People always stared. These stares had seemed more pointed than before, but then, he felt all the more vulnerable.

  “What was her name?” he heard himself ask. He already knew. Jessica.

  “Nobody knows,” she replied. “But surely you can tell me.”

  Mark could remember his last words to her with almost cold clarity. Print that you brought me to my knees. Fine words, then. Now…

  Did all of London know of his courtship, his disappointment? Had everyone truly been looking at him with pity? How was he ever supposed to forget her under those circumstances?

  “Who printed it? What was it called?”

  “It’s—it was called—” She gulped and then glanced across the room. Mark couldn’t see what she was looking at—probably her friends, waving her on, urging her to find out more of the sordid tale. What on earth had Jessica said? His dancing companion had a faint blush across her cheeks, and she whispered all in one breath, “It was called ‘The Seduction of Sir Mark.’”

  “Seduced, was I?” That much, at least, was true—in mind and soul, if he’d managed to barely restrain himself from the final physical act.

  “Oh, no, sir!” she said innocently. “That is to say—it was the most romantical tale. I wept buckets at the last installment. Can you tell me, is there any truth to it? We all want to know,” she explained earnestly, gesturing toward the side of the room. Indeed, there were five ladies sitting there, watching them intently—they raised fans to cover their faces as he turned in their direction.

  “I can’t know if it’s true. I haven’t read it. What is it that I have purportedly done?”

  “Why… You encountered a woman, not knowing that she’d been hired by your dastardly enemies to ruin your name. And you—you treated her kindly, in the most Christian manner, and made her decide to change her ways.”

  Mark looked at her. “That’s the entirety of it? I treated her kindly?”

  She nodded.

  No mention of kisses? No mention of that moment when she’d curled her fingers around his? Kindly did not begin to cover the truth. He could almost feel the humiliation creep over him. Still, she might have mentioned his own feelings. He’d told her about his mother. He’d told her about Smite—or at least, some portion of that. Had he mentioned Ash’s secret? That would be more devastating.

  No. No. He didn’t think he had. That much, at least, was safe. Still.

  No wonder everyone was casting such pitying looks at him. They all knew that he’d been stupid enough to fall in love with a liar.

  “Sir Mark,” his companion said earnestly, “I think I speak for every lady here when I tell you that I could have fallen in love with you myself, except I so want you to love her.”

  From across the room, he caught Ash’s eye. His brother’s expression was grim, and he jerked his head. Get over here quickly.

  The waltz was winding to a close.

  “Do you love her, Sir Mark?”

  He’d thought his emotion had begun to burn down, to sputter and fade. But this news had fanned it to life, had made his every wound feel raw once more.

  “Love her?” Mark said, his voice low. “When I find her, I’m going to kill her.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THEY GATHERED in Ash’s study, the three brothers.

  A report was there, on Ash’s desk. “‘Urgent,’” Mark read aloud. “‘Read immediately upon arrival.’” Immediately was underlined three times. There was a scrawl on the bottom, too, a note to Ash from Jeffreys, telling him that this time, as he’d been eccentric enough to have disappeared entirely, he’d have to settle for a written report.

  Ash looked over at Mark. “I—I didn’t see it.” He glanced over at his other brother. “Truly. I had no idea. I don’t know why—”

  Mark reached over and pushed his brother’s shoulder. “I know precisely what you mean, Ash. Nobody could hold it against you.”

  Mark shuffled through the first pages of summary to find the newspaper clippings that had been so carefully collated. The paper seemed too flimsy to contain anything of so much weight. For the first time in days, his brothers’ presence annoyed him. He’d managed to barely talk about the matter at all. To have someone else talk to his brothers about it…it seemed even more horrible than having all of London know.

  Read it when I’m done, he wanted to say. But then he looked up into Ash’s eyes. Ash was looking at that report with something like regret in his eyes. Mark’s brothers had stood by him all these past days. They didn’t deserve to be pushed away now.

  “There’s just the one copy,” he said instead. “I suppose…I suppose it’ll go fastest if I read it aloud, yes?”

  “If…if you could.” Ash didn’t meet his eyes.

  Mark sank into a seat on a settee. His brothers settled to either side of him as he flipped through the sheaf of papers. Jeffreys had included not only the original serializations, but the commentaries thereon. Mark didn’t care what anyone else said. He just wanted to know about…well, about Jessica.

  There. This flimsy newsprint was the start of it.

  “‘When I first met Sir Mark,’” Mark read, “‘he said he spoke with the tongues of angels.’” Mark had forgotten that. He didn’t glance to either side. He didn’t want to know what his brothers thought of that introduction.

  “‘But it took me a week to understand that he spoke not as a saint, nor as an ascetic, but as a man. He was just a very, very good one.’”

  If he’d had any doubts that Jessica had written this account, they vanished with those words. He could almost hear her speak them. What he hadn’t imagined was the swell of emotion he felt in response. Not anger. Not betrayal. Just a sensation of recognition—as if he’d jumped into deep, cold water. It felt as if she were telling him something he didn’t want to hear but had known all along.

  He read on. “‘I must admit that at first, I wanted to hurt him…’”

  It was disconcerting to see himself through someone else’s eyes. For the past days, he had thought she’d been laughing at him. She’d watched him fall in love with an illusion. He had supposed that she had somehow intuited what he most wanted in a woman and had presented it to him. He’d felt trapped and angry, furious that even knowing all that, he still desperately longed for her.

  But as he read, her version of the story corresponded with the woman he’d believed she was. Even though she did not voice them, he could hear her doubts. Even though she did not speak of it, he could sense her falling under his spell as surely as he’d fallen under hers. He felt as if he was rediscovering her in those pages. She was still the woman he’d come to know. There was that familiar prickly integrity.

  All the hurt he’d nursed this past week…it was beginning to feel a little childishly resentful. Because if she had told the truth, she’d been seduced. She’d been thrown out of her home. She’d lost her dearest friend, had no family to speak of. He glanced at his brothers to either side of him.

  In truth, she’d had no wealth at all. Not of any kind.

  He read on and
on, unable to stop. He didn’t stop hurting; the pain just began to alter. She left off all accounts of their physical intimacy—the touches, the kisses, everything except the moments when he’d looked in her eyes and found himself unable to look away—but still he could sense their echo. She kept his secrets through every installment. The narrative went through to his ill-fated proposal.

  And then Mark scanned the last words she’d written and set the page down before he read them aloud. He felt as if he’d had the breath knocked out of him.

  He couldn’t say those words. Next to him, Smite leaned against him, offering unspoken comfort. Ash’s hand touched his shoulder.

  If she could write these words, all alone, he could surely speak them aloud to the people who loved him best. Mark picked up the account again. “‘I left. What else could I do? I hated him for the same reason I loved him: because I could not break him, and because no matter how hard I tried, a woman like me could never have a man like him.’”