Unclaimed

by Courtney Milan

  But now, seeing Weston cower before him, he realized one last thing. After he’d beaten those boys, they’d never set on anyone else again. He’d been ashamed for no reason. There was a place for righteous anger. And sometimes the only way to balance the worst kinds of wrongs was to meet them head-on. He didn’t stuff the tide of his anger behind a glass wall. Instead, he stalked forward.

  “You misunderstand,” he said, his voice low. “I know what you did to Jessica Farleigh.”

  “What I did? Hired her to seduce you. That bitch—she took my money, and—”

  Mark grabbed the man by his hair and twisted. Weston hissed in pain. “I’m talking about the tea,” Mark said.

  “Ouch!” Weston tried to pull away and winced instead. “Good Christ almighty, is she still going on about that? I saved her the pain of having to make the decision herself.”

  “You stole the decision from her. You nearly killed her.”

  “It was an accident.”

  Mark let his anger take hold of him. He gripped Weston’s hair, then slammed the back of the man’s head against the tree trunk.

  “Ow!” Weston groaned. “You can be commissioner. Just…just don’t hurt me anymore.”

  There was a time for mercy. This wasn’t it.

  “You’re pathetic,” Mark informed the man and slammed his head against the tree one last time. Weston’s knees crumpled underneath him. Around them, the crowd gasped. Mark let go of his hair, and Weston fell the rest of the way to the ground. For a long moment, Mark stared at the still body at his feet. He couldn’t hear anything except the rushing in his ears, could barely feel the cool breeze of afternoon insinuating itself around them. Finally, he knelt and found the man’s pulse. It was strong and steady.

  He wasn’t going mad. He’d not lost control of his temper. He’d used it, and he was glad.

  “Someone fetch a physician,” he said over his shoulder. “He’ll do very well, but he’s going to have a monstrous headache when he awakes.”

  He pushed to his feet and walked away. Behind him, he heard the murmurs of the crowd.

  “That was Sir Mark,” someone was saying.

  “Weston must have truly deserved it,” another responded, “for Sir Mark to hit him that way. He’s a gentle, kind-spoken soul, Sir Mark is.”

  “What did he do, then?”

  “Something awful,” a third person responded. “Besides, I saw him. He attacked Sir Mark for no reason—he can’t be a steady character, can he?”

  So easily was a reputation ruined. There was a peculiar sense of justice in that. Mark shook out his hand, which was just now beginning to sting, and headed for his next destination.

  “GUESS WHAT I have?”

  Mark stood in Jessica’s doorway that evening. He’d donned a wide, worn hat—one that shielded his face from view. Still, this close, even in the gathering shadows, she could see the bruise forming on his cheekbone.

  She stepped aside, and he came in, shutting the door behind him.

  “You forget,” she said grimly. “It’s already in the paper.” She held up the offending item, letting the headline show.

  Sir Mark: Fights Weston, Obtains Special License.

  “Be thankful,” Jessica said. “Parret made no untoward speculation about the object of your license, and he could have.”

  Mark took off his hat and gave Jessica an unapologetic grin. “Well. So much for the surprise, then.”

  “Don’t you think it’s a little premature to be purchasing a special license?”

  “I’m never premature,” he told her. “I’m always precisely on time.” He pulled his greatcoat from his shoulders and set it on a hook.

  She’d once dreamed of a little country cottage, of a life spent in solitude with only Amalie to keep her company. Perhaps…perhaps she’d been afraid to wish for anything else. Hope was painful, after all. But now, she couldn’t beat it back, couldn’t shove it away. She could almost make herself believe in a future that contained Mark. And not only Mark—a family.

  Because when she’d seen the headline across the square, her thoughts had flown for the first time to her sisters. Surely, married to Sir Mark, she might see them again? Perhaps, with the news of her death, they’d have to meet in secret. But she wouldn’t have to be dead to them entirely, would she?

  She squelched those thoughts viciously. Best not to want; that way, she’d feel no disappointment. Hope hurt.

  So, she imagined, did that dark bruise on his face.

  “Come here,” she said severely, taking his hand and leading him to a chair that she’d set near a basin. He sat, looking at her in bemusement. Jessica concentrated on the task before her. She steeped a cloth in the cool water of the basin and then laid it on his face.

  “Ah,” he said. “That feels good.”

  She’d scented the water with herbs. They released their sweet aroma into the air. It made the atmosphere take on the aspect of a dream—as if this were some wooded glen, taken from her imagination and not a room in dirty London. Her hands moved to his shoulders, and she rubbed them.

  “Did Weston scream?” she asked. “Did he grovel?”

  “Indeed.”

  “How gratifying.”

  He snorted under the damp cloth. “It was, actually. I wish you could have been there.”

  “Oh, the account in the paper was lovely.” She sighed again. “I wish…I wish…”

  “What do you want?”

  Her hands were cool and moist from the compress. His fingers reached up and intertwined themselves with hers, warm and dry.

  “It’s lovely what you did, Mark.” She shook her head. “I…I never thought he’d pay for what he’d done.”

  But. She left the word unspoken. But it didn’t make it any better. Mark couldn’t make the man give back what he’d stolen—not with any number of beatings. She still felt sick when she thought of Weston, like some creature cowering in the underbrush. It hadn’t made her feel any better. It had just made Weston feel worse.

  A cause for celebration, to be sure. Still…

  “Dearest,” Mark said, taking the cloth from his eye. “You will marry me, won’t you?”

  She could choke on the hope he made her feel. Her hands shook. “I— Even if Weston stays silent and hidden, someone might recognize me. And the paper—it says you’re likely to be appointed Commissioner of the Poor Laws, with Weston in disgrace. You’ll constantly find yourself in the public’s eye. Perhaps even more than you are now, hard as that is to believe. Someone will speak out about me. We would be disgraced.”

  “You haven’t met my elder brother.” Mark smiled. “The Duke of Parford. He’ll make sure nothing goes wrong.”

  “Even a duke can’t stop gossip.”

  “Stop worrying.” He said the words lightly, but she could see the tic in his cheek, the tension in his hand as it balled lightly into a fist.

  “And you’re going to be Commissioner now. You didn’t even want to be Commissioner.”

  “Well.” He didn’t deny this. “But I did want you.”

  Jessica had suffered the waning of a man’s interest often enough to know the course of want. At first, a man was willing to give up almost anything. But soon enough, want settled into familiarity. Soon, those little deprivations would start to sting and then fester.

  She could barely accept Mark’s regard. She couldn’t manage his resentment.

  She held out her hand to him. There was no hope to be had, not in this. There was only tonight.

  “Will you come to my bed?” she asked. It wasn’t an answer to his question. It was, instead, a different sort of offer. He looked at her hand. Slowly, he raised his own to touch her fingertips. His fingers curled about hers again, so warm, so confident.

  “Yes,” Mark said, his voice low and throaty. “Yes, I will.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  WHEN J ESSICA AWOKE, Mark was asleep beside her. In the pale light of morning, he looked in
nocent. Young. She was almost afraid to touch him, lest she break the spell that had brought a man like this to her.

  It felt like Christmas morning as a child—that sense of unreal anticipation, that feeling that something good might be waiting for her, if only she hurried to meet the day. But it was only in bed that they could be together like this. For all his fine words last night, he had to know that she didn’t fit in his life. He didn’t fit in hers. He was a knight, Her Majesty’s own moralist. He was London’s proper darling. He was Sir Mark Turner—and she was still the woman who had seduced him.

  Everything innocent about her was dead—almost literally. She could shut her eyes and remember the obituary her father had placed in the paper. She wasn’t Guinevere to his Lancelot. She was a courtesan. No knight, however skilled he was in the art of war, could take on the field of windmills that had taken her prisoner.

  Still, she placed her hand against his chin. His skin was warm and rough with stubble. Whatever had happened that fate had brought her this man? How was she to send him away? And had he really given her five thousand pounds? What an idiotic, absurdly…romantic…gesture.

  On that thought, his eyes fluttered open. He blinked twice and looked at her.

  “There’s nothing to eat,” she told him gravely.

  “Just as well.” He sat up, rubbing his eyes. She waited for him to come to his senses. Surely now, he must have reconsidered.

  “Good morning,” he said, and he leaned over and touched his lips to hers.

  For one lovely second, she could believe the promise in his kiss: that this would not fade, that she would wake up to him for a thousand mornings to come. Ten thousand mornings.

  She pulled back abruptly. It had seemed safe to love him, when she’d believed him far beyond her touch. But she didn’t know what she believed any longer. She only knew that everything she held dear eventually crumbled to dust.

  “I wish we’d put some thought into your clothing last night,” she mumbled. “It’s been lying on the floor all evening, and it’s probably wrinkled.”

  “I hung it in front of the fire,” he offered. “After you’d gone to sleep.”

  She cast him a baleful look. Really. He was too good, sometimes.

  “I’m sure there’ll be some wrinkles,” he continued, “but nothing too unseemly. Can you tie my cravat?”

  “Tight around your neck,” she muttered.

  He shrugged away her foul mood. “Oh, stop worrying. Come. Break your fast with me.”

  “I told you—”

  “Not here.”

  “You want to have breakfast with me, out there? You are mad.”

  His eyes glittered at that last word, and she almost called it back.

  But he spoke in precise tones. “I want to have an entire life with you, out there. Do keep that in mind.”

  She couldn’t even imagine breakfast. She tried to envision Sir Mark entering a public house and asking for kippers and tea. Here in London, he would be besieged within minutes. One look at his wrinkled shirt and his disreputable companion, and his good name would cease to be so good. And once he’d tasted the censure of society, he’d not be so sanguine about linking himself to her.

  “In any event,” he said, “I don’t intend to go out precisely. I had in mind somewhere private.”

  “But the servants—”

  “Will say my intended is beautiful and gracious.” He glanced up at her. “You do recall how to be gracious, do you not?”

  Jessica winced and set her hands over her face. She was being uncivil and for no other reason than that Sir Mark had not yet given her up. He was anticipating marriage; she, despair.

  “You’re quite right,” she finally said. “I’ll feel more myself once I’ve had something to eat.” After all, it wasn’t fair to punish him for sins he had yet to commit. “Help me dress,” she added, “and I’ll help you.”

  It took Jessica too long to get ready—in part because Mark’s help was of dubious value. She had no sooner pulled on her shift than his hands fell on her hips, smoothing the fabric into place. And instead of pulling her corset tighter when she asked, he put his own arms about her, holding her tight. Kissing the back of her neck. His hands roamed the front of her body. She twisted in his grasp—she’d intended to tell him to get on with it, then—but even her foul mood couldn’t last when he held her face and kissed her as if she were some precious thing.

  It felt fragile, that kiss. As if this, too, would break. As if the future could rise up and choke the life from even this mutual desire. But he pressed her against the wall, and there was nothing delicate about his want. She couldn’t envision the future, but she comprehended this now—the hard ridge of his lust against her belly, the demands of his mouth, her own lust rising, hard and fast. She brought one leg up to draw him in. “Hold me,” she explained, guiding his hands to her hips. It took a few moments for him to get the idea—a few seconds until he slid inside her once more.

  Each thrust speared through her uncertainty, each kiss grounded her. His hands held her up. When she came, it shattered her anxiety, splintering dark fears away.

  His orgasm followed, fierce and relentless. Jessica shut her eyes and held on to his arms, letting the fury of his pleasure sweep everything else away. When he was done, he pressed another kiss against her skin.

  He was the first man who had ever cared to kiss her afterward. Maybe this would work. She opened her eyes to see him watching her.

  “Mark,” she whispered.

  “Yes?”

  “Good morning.” And she smiled at him then.

  This time, they really did manage to dress. Jessica found a threadbare cloak for Mark—one that would keep off the drizzle and simultaneously shield him from public view. And it turned out that nobody looked twice at him under his immense hat. Mark spoke to the driver outside Jessica’s hearing; the carriage jerked to life shortly after he entered. For the first ten minutes, Jessica made no sound. Their hands tangled together in slow, steady exploration.

  Finally, she spoke up. “Where are we going? I should have thought we could find a private hotel not half a mile away.”

  Mark ran his thumb over her fingers. “It will take longer. We’re not going to a hotel.”

  “Perhaps you should have let me arrange it,” she continued. “After all, I have considerably more experience in anonymity than you.”

  His fingers covered her lips. “I never said I was looking for a place where I would be anonymous. I said I was looking for one that was private.”

  “There is a difference?”

  The carriage jolted over a rut in the road.

  “Yes. It has never been my plan to hide you away,” he told her. “You aren’t some hideous, shameful secret of mine.”

  A curl of unease crept into her. Jessica shook her head. “What on earth do you have planned? Where are we going?”

  There was a window in the door, but the glass did not appear to have been cleaned anytime in the past eight months. It was so smudged over that she could only make out vague impressions of shadows passing her by.

  “We’re going to Mayfair.”

  “Mayfair?”

  Mark shot her a strangely reluctant look before he confessed. “My brother’s house.”

  Jessica stood, cracking her head on the top of the carriage and biting her tongue in the process. The physical pain stung, but it only increased the abject horror that filled her. “Your brother!” Her wounded tongue didn’t seem to be working quite right. “You cannot be theriouth.”

  “But I am.” He pulled her down to sit beside him once more. And then he ran his hand over her head, finding the sore spot where she’d whacked herself. He rubbed it gently, soothing away the hurt.

  “Stop it.” Jessica pulled from his arms. “You’re mussing my hair. I didn’t dress to visit a duke.” Her panic was beginning to rise. “He’s going to toss me out the instant he claps eyes on me. What are you thinking, bringi
ng a courtesan to see the Duke of Parford?”

  Mark simply shook his head. “You misunderstand. I’m not bringing a courtesan to visit a duke. I’m bringing my future wife to see my brother. It just so happens that he is also a duke. But Ash is… Ash is… Look, he just doesn’t care about that sort of thing. He’s not the kind of person who will toss someone out simply because she doesn’t fit some preconceived notion of his. Trust me, Ash will be delighted to be able to do something for me.”