“Well. That rather explains the first message I am supposed to deliver to you. Mr. Jeffreys has sent up a handful of agricultural texts for you, in answer to your last query, which he said betrayed a great deal of ignorance that could not be answered by a mere sentence or three. He told me to tell you to…to…” Strong paused and looked away.
“Out with it.” Ash paused at the library door. “I know they aren’t your words.”
“To be a man and just read through them. Apparently, he, uh, appreciates your views on reports.”
Ash smiled bitterly, feeling the exact opposite of appreciation. “Well, your first order of business when you get back to London is to tell him to go to hell. No—write that down. I don’t want you to forget. Here, I have paper—”
He stopped, looking at the makeshift desk he’d made in the parlor. He’d left it clear last night, all the spare scraps of paper bundled away to whence they’d belonged—not that he had much use for paper as it was.
But set atop the oak surface of his desk was a solitary sheet, folded in two. It was weighted down by a clay mug. A familiar clay mug, he realized as he picked it up. It smelled faintly of honey and nutmeg. In that instant, his remaining fatigue dissolved in a cloud of anticipation.
“Wait a minute,” Ash said softly. He felt a prickle of excitement in his fingertips—an echo of the surprise he’d experienced on finding Margaret last night in nothing but a linen shift and a thin wrapper. Her hair had been down. Unbound, it had curled, and he’d longed to sink his hands in the silk of it. She’d looked like an apparition from one of his more sensual dreams. Even now, a part of him longed to go back to the conservatory, to start that conversation over again, and this time, to give in to his lust-filled imaginings. He was getting aroused, just remembering the pattern the moonlight had made on her skin.
But he’d found something better than mere animal satisfaction last night. Just as the natural curves of her body had been revealed by the night, so, too, she had slipped beyond the starchy disdain she’d directed at him these past days. There had been something raw and honest about that late-night conversation—something that had transcended the formal boundaries she’d insisted must stand between them. With those walls destroyed, anything could happen. Everything could happen. Ash felt as if he stood on the precipice of some tall cliff, readying himself to jump. In a few moments, he would know if the rush of wind he felt about him meant he was flying or falling.
He picked the paper up. And here he’d already refused one report. But then, this wasn’t a dry, business communication. He could hardly ask Strong to read this aloud.
He could imagine her slipping in here, just before dawn. She would have leaned against his desk, here, bending over the inkwell. A welcome image, that, if entirely distracting—the smooth fabric of her gown falling over the sweet swell of her buttocks, framing curves that were made to be cupped in the palm of his hand. And how had she got into this locked room? Ah, yes. The master key. With that, she might have stolen into his bedchamber. She might have come to him on silent feet, to press those beguiling curves against his chest, his groin… Hell. If he’d contemplated that possibility last night, he truly wouldn’t have slept. Not one wink.
But now was not the time to indulge in fantasy—not with Strong looking on, not when he held a more tangible—if less physically gratifying—reality in his hands. He unfolded her note gingerly. Only two short words on that paper, and a signature. Ash took a deep breath—it would have been idiotic to be nervous, and he tried to avoid idiocy—and read.
Two short little words. He read them, one by one. I’m. Sorry. He read it again to be sure, and the second time it said the same thing: I’m sorry, plainly spelled out for anyone to see. The apology was followed by an M and a wavering squiggle of ink.
Margaret? Or Miss Lowell? He couldn’t tell, and for a moment he almost considered asking Strong for his interpretation. But it didn’t matter what she’d called herself. That moment when she’d lobbed that bit of dirt at him—well, he’d wanted to see her in the throes of passion. Now he had. Not the passion he’d hoped for, true, but still it had been a candid, unstudied response. There would be more of those. Many, many more. Next time she looked at him with that much emotion shimmering in her eyes, he’d have better comfort to offer than a mug of warm milk.
When he looked up at Strong, Ash felt a tight little smile on his face. Those two words had warmed him more than the thought of her bending over his desk, her skirts touching the wood paneling. Her feet had been on the floor where he now stood. She had tiptoed into his suite, in the dark of night, while he lay sleeping a scant handful of yards away.
For the past week he’d been mired in place, making no progress with his brothers, the upcoming debate in Parliament, or her.
But he felt it now, a certainty burning deep inside him. It was all going to come right, and she was the key.
“Good news, sir?”
Ash folded her note in quarters. “The best, Mr. Strong. The absolute best.”
“MISS LOWELL. Have you the time for another lesson?”
Margaret stopped in the hall. She’d not been sure how to face Mr. Ash Turner again after last night—after her outburst and his too-kind response. But his younger brother posed no such difficulties. Still, she remembered her brother’s letter.
He’s a dangerous beast. She turned to him.
“Mr. Turner—”
“Mark.” He looked as innocent and unassuming as always, and dressed in white and silver, he seemed to glow with positive innocence in the sunlight.
“Mark,” she acquiesced. “I’ve been wondering. You aren’t exactly teaching me to fight by gentleman’s rules, are you?”
He shrugged. “What use would that be? You’ll never need to use what I’m teaching you against a gentleman who follows the rules.”
“I’m merely wondering how you learned to fight this way.”
He looked at her. “My brother—my other brother, the one you’ve not yet met—and I spent a bit of time on the streets of Bristol. You learn a great deal when survival is foisted upon you. Served me a few good turns when I was at Eton.”
Mr. Turner had made the same claim, that Mark had spent time on the streets. Perhaps that was why Richard had called him dangerous. This was yet another confirmation of the unsettling disclosure Ash had made last night.
But looking into Mark’s face, she saw nothing of the street waif in him. She didn’t know what to think. “From the streets of Bristol to Eton. That must have been…different.”
“Not so much. I made an excellent target those first few months at school. All the bullies looked to prove themselves.” His smile widened, ever so slightly. “If you have to fight off five boys at once, you can’t fight fairly.”
A small knot coalesced in Margaret’s stomach. “By chance, did you ever have to fight off Richard Dalrymple?”
“Him? Oh, no.” He smiled at her.
She took a breath in relief. Somehow, if he’d struck her brother, it would make her tentative friendship with him seem all the more disingenuous.
“Just Edmund.”
Her hopes fell again. “And did you fight him fairly?”
“No.” His expression shuttered. “I fought him once, and that sufficed for both of us. After that, the Dalrymples bedeviled my brother and me in other ways.”
He looked so innocent—his hair so blond, his eyes so blue. He was like an archangel.
Did archangels advise women on the most efficacious way to pop a man’s arm from his socket? Generally, Margaret supposed, they didn’t.
“You’re perturbed by that, aren’t you?”
“The Dalrymples are my employers. It would be odd if I felt no loyalty to them.”
He cocked his head and looked at her, his eyes narrowing. “If it makes you feel better, I haven’t struck a Dalrymple in the better part of a decade. Surely, after what my brother has done to them, a little physical harm hardly signifies.”
Her brother had
told her to beware this man. And yet… Her brother was not always right. Richard wouldn’t have understood last night either—why a clod of dirt and a hot drink had brought Margaret around to an understanding that even now, she was afraid to probe.
And then, it was her birthday, and Richard hadn’t even remembered. She deserved defiance—a little defiance.
And so she smiled back at Mark. “You’re quite right,” she finally said. “It shouldn’t bother me at all.”
SOME HOURS AFTER STRONG had given his reports—orally—and been sent to rest, Ash heard his brother and Margaret talking. Her laughter floated down the hall, twining with Mark’s tenor chuckle.
His thoughts of jealousy had leached from him overnight. All things considered, he didn’t disapprove of his brother making friends with her. It was just as well, and he knew Mark would pursue nothing more than friendship.
He knew Miss Lowell less well, but he could intuit that had she been the least tempted by Mark, she’d never have agreed to the lessons. She had an unfortunate, innate sense of propriety—one that Ash was only beginning to break through himself.
But now, with her apology folded in his pocket, there was no reason for Ash to wait, banished on the outskirts. Not any longer. He stood and walked down the hall. He paused by the entry to the room and peered in. The doors to the gallery were wide open. Nothing untoward could happen. And while the exercise would have been highly improper for a lady, it was merely eccentric for a few servants.
Miss Lowell and the second upstairs maid stood in the center of the room.
“You’re aiming for the nose,” Mark said from his vantage point by the side. “You have to practice bringing your elbow up quickly. Anything else, and you’ll not have the advantage of speed or surprise—a big man would simply brush off such a strike. You can’t count on being stronger than anyone, so you must be faster.”
“I can’t,” protested the maid. “Without someone there, I just can’t see where I should be placing my elbow.”
Miss Lowell cast a sidelong glance at her companion and then looked away. There wasn’t a hint of agreement in her face, not a single echo of that lament. Instead she set her jaw almost fiercely. Of course. She wasn’t the sort to bemoan her fate, Ash realized, nor to make protests or excuses. Not when she could simply set things to rights. He hadn’t heard a complaint from her, not the entire time he’d spent in the house. She simply did what was necessary.
Even last night, she’d not made excuses for her behavior or accusations about his in justification. Anyone else in her place might have done so, but she hadn’t.
There was something straightforward about her. He liked that. He already liked far too much about her, from the curve of her snub nose to the way she nodded at Mark’s criticism and squared her shoulders, as if determined to get it right.
“I agree,” Ash said from the doorway, “you need to see it done. You need to see someone smaller take on someone larger, so you can have a feel for what it ought to look like.”
Miss Lowell whirled to look at him. Her eyes widened and a faint flush lit her cheeks. But she didn’t point her finger and demand he leave. And had she been dead set against any further interaction with Ash, he was sure she would have. Instead, she glanced at Mark, as if seeking permission.
Mark pursed his lips and looked his brother up and down. Had they grown up in each others’ company, they might have grappled together sometimes, as brothers did. But Ash had left for India when Mark was barely seven years of age; when Ash had returned he’d been a man, with a man’s body, and his brother had been a wiry, too-skinny child of eleven. In the more than a decade that had passed since, Ash had been busy working and Mark had been off at school. They’d never had the chance to do this. He’d so carefully protected his younger brother that perhaps he’d missed the opportunity to make friends with him. There’d been no scrambling; no wrestling nor boxing. Not a hint of fencing practice. None of the usual chances that an older brother had to beat his brother into benevolent harmony.
Words on a page would never bring them together, no matter what Mark believed. But this…this might.
“Come now, Mark,” Ash said. “Why don’t we show the ladies how it’s done?”
As an added benefit, perhaps Ash might show Miss Lowell a few things himself.
Mark smiled enigmatically and shook his head. “What do you think, Miss Lowell? Suppose a big man—a man the size of Ash—were to come after you? What would you do?”
That was not what he’d intended. As pleasant as it might have been to grapple with her, he’d prefer not to have an audience when he did so. And besides, the last thing he wanted her to playact with him was unwillingness.
“Mark, I can hardly strike a lady.”
“Of course not. Perhaps you might simply reach for her wrist. Gently, if you wish.” Mark dropped an eyelid in a mysterious wink, and Ash suddenly understood his brother’s ploy. It was a simple matter. He would have to steel himself for the inevitable—a slap on the cheek, perhaps even a feminine blow to the gut. She couldn’t hurt him, not if he were ready for whatever puny little punch she managed to deliver. But he could let her think she had hurt him. Build up her confidence. Build up her trust. And, in the meantime, get close enough to touch her wrist.
No possible drawbacks to that one. There was no getting around it. His little brother was a genius.
“I don’t know, Mark,” Miss Lowell was saying. “I—I really shouldn’t like to hurt your brother. I’m not the violent sort.” She glanced uneasily in Ash’s direction, as if aware that the events of last night left him more than able to contradict her. “Not usually,” she amended.
Ash hid a smile. If she could hurt him, it was surely not by laying her hands on him. “I acquiesce in a good cause,” he said soberly. “I can withstand a few bruises.” And then, because he couldn’t help himself, he added, “Besides, I don’t mind the occasional bout of violence.”
She colored.
Mark nodded enthusiastically at this. “Too true. He’s a man. Men like pain. It’s how we make friends, you know.”
It was as if Mark had lifted the thought from Ash’s head. Ash grinned. “The measure of male familiarity is the degree of barbarism to which one reverts in the absence of female companionship. A man knows he’s among friends when he feels free to hoot like a heathen and bash heads like a ram.” Perhaps he was overdoing it.
“Additionally, how many nurses can say they’ve brought the Duke of Parford to his knees?” Mark added, a glint in his eyes.
No doubt that was intended as a subtle hint to Ash. Very well. He’d let her strike him, he’d stagger about a bit, then he’d fall to the floor. An easy victory for her, and his pride could withstand the blow. Especially since he would know precisely how much her victory would mean.
“You’ll be able to tell your grandchildren one day,” Mark said.
“Let’s start this nice and easy.” Ash reached out and took hold of her wrist, pulling her to him—not harshly, but gently. She looked up into his face, her eyes wide, her lips parted, subtly. He was aware of her whole body, scant inches from his. He could feel the heat of her. If his brother hadn’t been looking on, Ash might have been tempted to lean down and touch his mouth to hers. As it was, he could almost taste her, she was so close. The sweet scent of her whispered against his lips—
Bam.
Something struck his chin, and his mouth clipped shut, his teeth closing about his tongue. He tasted the tang of copper. He was blinking back the stinging pain when—
Whap.
He crumpled to the floor, his knees slamming against hard parquet before he had the chance to brace himself. It took him a second to realize she’d kicked his legs out from under him.
And then he felt a touch against his groin. Not a blow, thank God, but no soft caress, either. He opened his eyes. He was splayed on his knees. Miss Lowell stood above him, her eyes sparkling.
“This,” she said, her slippered foot against the fall of his
trousers, “is where I would have kicked you, had you actually meant me harm. Notwithstanding your stated preference for violence and pain, I assumed I should refrain.”
“Clever girl.” His throat was raspy; he had to gulp in air. Part of his shortness of breath he could attribute to the bruising fall. Part of it was that she’d revealed an inch of delicate, stockinged ankle. But mostly, it was the placement of her foot, a gentle brush against an organ that was all too pleased to be touched by her, even in so hazardous a manner.
Her smile was not wide, but her pleasure encompassed her in a full-body glow. She’d taken him well and truly by surprise with that elbow to the jaw. He almost pitied the man who tried to steal a kiss from her now.
“Oh, dear. Did I fail to mention that Miss Lowell was a quick study?” There was a too-innocent tone in his brother’s voice. Mark had done it on purpose—he’d put Ash at ease, set up this whole scenario, just to have him brought to his knees.
Ash could hardly disapprove.
“Miss Lowell,” Ash said, “is an entrancing little witch. As well she knows.”
She raised her chin smugly and stepped back, shaking her gown out to fall over her ankles.
If Ash hadn’t already been on his knees before her, he’d have gone on them now. Her hair was slightly disheveled, little strands escaping from her pins. She seemed incandescent—a sharp contrast to the inexplicable grief she’d worn last night. Victory suited her, and all the more because it had been actually won, not handed over in pretense.
He shook his head and gestured to his brother. “Come and help me up,” he said. “I’m not as young as I used to be.”
“Whatever you say, older brother.” Mark strode forward, that delighted look in his eyes. Oh, Mark had won, all right—bamboozled Ash into underestimating Miss Lowell. It was as if Mark had wrestled him to the floor himself. Ash couldn’t have been prouder. Mark reached out a hand and Ash grasped it. For a moment, it was a brotherly affirmation—hands clasped together in something akin to friendship.
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