The dirt in the bucket clumped in thick clods. She picked up a lump in her hands and then broke it apart into loose, dry soil in the pot before her. She could feel the dirt getting beneath her fingernails as she worked. She hadn’t realized why she had come here; she’d felt as if she were chasing some ephemeral spirit. But it felt right. If nobody else could remember her birthday, she would. She would have to transplant this new life, fragile and delicate though it was, in the dark of night.
It was a mindless task she performed, squeezing dirt into the pot. She worked methodically, two handfuls at a time. Squeeze and let fall; squeeze and let fall. There was a comforting rhythm to it. She felt as if her mother herself might have stood beside her, her hands covered with dust. Her body felt too rigid, her hands too small to contain the moment.
Her chest tightened with some inexplicable emotion, one that she didn’t dare name.
She crumbled dust into dust. And ashes…
The door to the conservatory squeaked open. She froze, but the dirt in her hand pattered into the pot. That rain of soil seemed immensely noisy in the silence of the night. Had someone heard it? Had someone seen her? Here at this little table in the back, nobody would find her, not without entering the room.
Footsteps came forward, traversing the maze of tables and troughs and orange trees.
That tightness in her chest grew.
Please, let those footfalls belong to Mrs. Benedict—someone comforting, who would look at her, clad in this thin wool wrapper, covered in dust. Someone who would understand without her having to voice a word of explanation. Let it be someone who would know that she needed this moment, that on this day of all days, she needed to feel a connection with her mother. Let it be anyone but— But him. He came round the little break of potted oranges, scarcely three feet from her. The moonlight had smoothed away the fine lines on his face. In the dark, he looked younger and less dangerous. He wore a pair of trousers and a fine lawn shirt, and not much else. He’d not bothered to tuck the tails in, but he’d rolled the sleeves to show his wrists. Manly wrists, thick and strong, with a fine layer of hair scarcely visible. His feet were bare.
His eyes widened as they came to rest on her. He looked into her face for one long second before his eyes dropped down—down her dust-covered shift, the robe cinched simply at her waist. She felt naked before him.
His gaze felt as unwelcome as an invading army.
“Miss Lowell. What in God’s name are you doing?”
He spoke as if it were his home, as if she were the interloper here. Of course he thought it true, under the circumstances. Still, bile gathered in her belly, and the tight knot in her chest squeezed even tighter. Who was he to question her? Who was he to interrupt her? He’d already taken her mother from her once. How dare he do it again? Her hands clutched around the heavy clods of dirt.
And then he took a step toward her.
It happened so fast that Margaret wasn’t even sure where the impulse came from. But before the thought had a chance to form in her head, she acted. “Go away,” she hissed fiercely. “Get out. Get out now.” As she spoke, she pulled her hand back, swiftly, and hurled one of the clods of dirt she was holding directly at him. It flew through the air—suddenly everything seemed so slow—she wished she could grab back that violent, raging impulse, but it was already too late.
The clod smacked into his chest with a sick sound, like an axe splitting a pumpkin. In the light of the moon spilling through the glass, she could see clumps of dirt clinging to the luminous white of his shirt. His mouth opened slightly, in shocked betrayal. She felt just as stunned as he looked.
Oh, no. She hadn’t really thrown it. She couldn’t have done.
But she had. Ever so slowly, he raised one hand to brush particles from his eyes.
She was panting, her fist clenched around the other clod of dirt. The rage had slipped from her grasp, leaving her with only the cold certainty of what she had just done.
It wasn’t his fault that her father had been a bigamist. It wasn’t his fault her mother had been ill. It wasn’t even his fault, really, that she was a bastard and her mother—her kind, gentle, graceful mother—had been made an adulteress. It wasn’t his fault that she was so dreadfully alone, that her future seemed so dreary. It wasn’t his fault.
It just felt as if it was.
He stood stock-still, as if she had turned him to stone when she struck him with that bit of soil.
What had she come to? How must this appear to him? She was wandering about the house—at night—in her shift and stockings, wielding a trowel and trying to find, hidden in this pot of dirt, a woman who had been buried in the churchyard months ago. He must suppose she teetered on the very brink of madness.
Not so far off, that. Deep inside her, for the first time in months, a knot dissolved and a well of emotion breached her rigid walls. It hit her with all the force of floodwaters, and it was only her determination not to cry in front of this man that kept her from being submerged by the power of the riptide. With that undercurrent of hot anger gone from her, she could understand what the feeling was that pressed against her chest.
It was grief, almost crushing. She wanted her mother back. Instead, she’d found…him.
He still hadn’t said a word to her. He didn’t criticize; he didn’t bellow in protest. She couldn’t make out his eyes, but she could imagine him watching her in the dark. Those eyes would be cold and calculating.
Perhaps he was trying to figure out how to best use this moment to his advantage. He’d shown her respect before. No doubt in the morning, that would disappear. She had no idea what would take its place.
Finally, he raised one finger to tap his forehead, as if miming a gentlemanly tip of the hat. And he turned and left her alone, just as he’d done on that dusty road more than a week before.
The gesture had to have been meant sarcastically.
If she knew anything about men, she knew she would eventually pay the price for her foolish, unthinking reaction. A man as ruthless as he was would find a way to use her lapse to his advantage, to turn that single instance of violence into a repeated threat which he might hold over her head. Margaret’s hands were shaking in the dirt. She felt on the verge of a fever. Still, she raised her chin and went back to her work—filling the pot with soil, patting it around the cutting, carefully continuing the work she had started.
Tonight, she had a new rose to plant. Payment could wait.
PAYMENT WAITED A SCANT fifteen minutes.
Margaret finished filling the pot with dirt and reached for the cutting. A thorn pricked her thumb as she pulled the slender branch from the water, but she had traveled beyond pain and into numbness now. She patted it into place and gently arranged the soil around the stem.
The door opened again. Soft footfalls again—his, no doubt. A little shiver went down her spine, but she straightened her back. So he wasn’t going to wait for morning to show her the ruthless side of his personality. No more benevolent, tolerant employer; no more sweet words whispered about her strength, her magnificence.
Margaret had few illusions about what would happen next. A man could put on any airs he wished when he had the desire to please. But strike a man in the middle of the chest after midnight, and all his cruelest impulses would come out. All she knew was that she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of weeping.
Now she would discover what sort of man Mr. Ash Turner really was. She could not bring herself to look up and meet his eyes. He crossed the room until he stood over her. In the night, he cast no shadows, but she could feel the darkness of him anyway, looming over her. She could feel the heat of his presence, as if he were a piece of solid iron recently removed from a blacksmith’s fire. She concentrated on the dirt in the pot, patting it unnecessarily into place. Her skin prickled under his gaze; the hint of some sweet thing tickled her nose.
The gentle clop of clay set upon wood sounded. She blinked and looked up—not to his face, but to the surface of the tab
le. He’d placed a cup on the bench before her. She stared at it, at his fingers on the handle. Fine hairs sprouted from the back of his wrist. His fingers seemed strong and capable. Fragrant steam rose from the vessel.
Of all the ways she had imagined him taking revenge, this had not appeared on any of her lists.
Her gaze traveled up his waist, his chest. He’d changed his shirt, thank God; she wouldn’t have to stare at a splotch of dirt marring his linen. Finally she met his eyes. “What is that?”
He pushed the mug toward her. “A toddy of steamed milk, honey and nutmeg. A jigger of rum, for good measure.”
“You woke the cook for this?”
“Mrs. Lorens? God, no. I can warm a little milk on the range myself.”
His arm returned to his side. Those hands could have been overpowering. Almost frightening in their strength, as ruthless as he was. She’d never thought before how gently he used them.
She swallowed.
“It’s a remedy for sleeplessness,” he continued. “I used to make it for my brothers when I found them up and about at night.”
He spoke casually, as if the nocturnal lobbing of soil was a regular occurrence in the Turner household, one usually met with hot drinks and a comfortable discussion. She could almost see him, puttering by the cast-iron heating plates.
“And did you often find your brothers wandering about at night?”
His eyes glinted at her. “In the first few months when I was back from India? I found them living on the streets, you know. They’d almost forgotten how to sleep.”
“On the streets? A duke’s cousins? That can’t be correct.”
“Fifth cousins, twice removed. And while I am correct, it certainly was not right. Parford didn’t care.” He spat those words out.
It took her a moment to realize that he wasn’t angry at her. This wasn’t some form of complicated revenge. She couldn’t yet think what to say.
He shook his head. “Speaking of whom, I’ll have someone look in on the duke in the early morning. Sleep late. You’ll need it.”
She looked up at him, but he was already turning away, as if dukes’ heirs had nothing better to do than to deliver hot drinks to their dependents and tell them to sleep past the morning bells.
“Mr. Turner. You do realize I’m a servant, don’t you?”
He cast a tolerant glance over his shoulder. “I was one, too. Before I made my fortune. If I lost it all, I’d be one again. This notion of class that we English hold to—it’s an interesting delusion. You don’t have to be a servant, Miss Lowell, just because you were born as one.”
She shook her head blankly.
“I crossed three oceans in a cramped hammock hung in the bilge, utterly besieged by rats. And yet here I am now. What does that tell you?”
“That you were lucky?”
He smiled again, this time with a little shake of his head that indicated he knew what she’d not said. She couldn’t have missed that aura of confidence he radiated. The air around him was simply more invigorating. Mr. Turner wasn’t lucky. He was strong—so strong that he had no need to be jealous of power in others.
“When I looked at myself, I never saw a servant. What do you suppose I see when I look at you?”
For months, everyone who had looked at her had seen a bastard.
What did he see? She couldn’t answer. She didn’t know. She wasn’t even sure what she believed of herself, when she passed by a looking glass. These days, she tried not to look. Under his perusal, she had no response.
What he dismissed with that lazy shrug of his shoulders was more than a delusion. It had been the guiding light of her life, the true constant of the North Star. Her belief that she’d been better than others because of her birth had seemed an unshakeable foundation. But that light had snuffed out and north had disappeared in a dizzying whirl. She’d been left fumbling in the dark for some hint of direction.
She hadn’t spoken yet, and he just smiled at her one last time and walked away.
Margaret had always thought a man seduced a woman by making her aware of his charms: his body, his wealth, his kisses. How naive she had been.
Ash Turner seduced her with the promise of her own self. She longed to believe him, longed to believe that the nightmare of the past month was nothing more than a delusion, that if she simply screwed her eyes tightly shut, she would be important again. And that desire was more alluring than any promise of wealth, more irresistible than any number of heated kisses pressed against her lips.
In her life, she’d met indulgent men, autocratic men, absent-minded men who forgot her existence when she was not around. But a man like him… He stood so far outside her experience that she’d not been able to recognize him. But there it was, the conclusion inescapable. He thought she was magnificent. And he meant it—really meant it—beyond all possibility of fabrication.
Of all the recent disasters to befall her, this one—that this man, of all men, admired her—seemed the most devastating. Could he not have been someone—anyone—else? For a long while, Margaret stared at the cup in front of her, the steam curling upward and away.
She mattered. She was important. She clutched those thoughts to her heart, and they made her grief bearable. Slowly, she reached out and pulled the mug forward.
The contents were every bit as sweet as she’d imagined.
Chapter Six
ASH HAD INSTRUCTED MISS LOWELL to sleep late, but he’d been up at first light himself. Work wouldn’t wait. And indeed, it did not. His morning messenger arrived just after the clock struck half-ten in the morning.
The fellow was one of the new men Ash had hired just a few months before—what was his name again?— Isaac Strong; yes, that was it. The man walked stiffly, his legs no doubt learning to move properly once again after being cramped in a carriage all the long voyage from London. The whites of his eyes were shot through with red, and as he was conducted into the front sitting room of the suite Ash had taken, he rubbed the black skullcap on his head wearily. He didn’t see Ash sitting on a sofa near the window. He looked as tired as Ash felt.
“Mr. Strong. It’s your first visit out, yes?”
As he addressed Strong, the man jerked to attention, all signs of his weariness evaporating in a flurry of consternation.
Operating at a few days’ remove from London had numerous disadvantages. Most of them, Ash had been able to alleviate by dint of having well-trained, competent men in London. A smaller number of them were needed here, though, and so his men took turns traveling out to speak with him.
Not so efficient as some of the alternatives. But then, the alternatives were rendered problematic by other considerations.
“It is Strong, isn’t it?”
Strong nodded, puffing his chest out. “Sir,” he said tightly, as if he were some newly commissioned subaltern. And then, like that selfsame hapless officer, he fumbled with the brass buckles on the satchel slung about his shoulder. Before Ash had a chance to ask him whether he needed to rest or refresh himself, he pulled out a fat sheaf of papers and held it out, as if an entire war depended on whatever was in those pages.
“Sir,” Strong barked out, “your report, sir.”
“My report?” Ash felt a prickle of consternation along the skin of his thumbs. “That’s my report?”
The words must have come out harsher than he’d intended, because Strong ducked his head farther. “The report you requested on the current inclinations of the members of the House of Lords regarding the proposed act. I—” he looked up into Ash’s face and must have read the distaste Ash felt curling his lips, because he swallowed, his throat bobbing “—I h-have a detailed listing, and that, along with the alphabetical appendix, should suffice to—”
“Ah,” said Ash, enlightenment dawning suddenly. “You made an alphabetical appendix, did you?”
That explained the ink-stained forefinger, the thick sheaf of papers. It certainly explained the rumpled wild-eyed look that Mr. Strong was giving him. Ash
suppressed a grin. “Did you include the Latin translation in triplicate?”
“The Latin translation?” Strong’s eyes widened in abject fear. “Jeffreys made no mention of—oh.” Strong snapped his mouth shut, almost viciously.
Ash had never hired fools. Gullible geniuses, now…
Strong swallowed. “Please tell me you wanted a list of every invitation the Dalrymple brothers have accepted over the past two months, complete with an inventory of the nearest coaching-houses, and a calculation of the shortest distance from London by stagecoach.”
“That,” Ash said, “was an exceptionally creative addition. I’ll have to talk to Jeffreys. He’s not usually quite so…so aggressive with the new men. Come. Let’s talk in my study.” He jerked his head toward the room to the right—a former parlor that he’d converted for his use.
As Ash pushed himself to his feet, Strong let out a sigh. “Sir, how much were they having me on about, then?”
“The whole report.”
If silence could blaspheme… Paper crinkled as Strong’s knuckles clenched about his alphabetical appendix.
Ash shrugged. “I abhor lists. I despise reports, written on paper. If I wanted a useless stack of pages, I would just have you all send couriers out to deliver them, and never mind the expense of carting my men about England. But I don’t. The last thing I want to do, ever, is to sit down and read through a tangle of letters, just so that I can get to the point. I want all my reports delivered orally—that way, I can ask you questions as I wish, and I don’t have to trudge through extraneous material that will be of no use to any of us.”
“Did they…” Strong rubbed his skullcap again, a grimace on his face. “That is, is this because…?”
“You mean, were they trying to get you sacked?” Ash shook his head. “Jeffreys was having me on as much as you. He knows how I feel about paper.” Mostly. Even his right-hand man didn’t understand the true extent of it.
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