He sighed. “No, Margaret. I’m not going to remonstrate with you. I should think you’ve had enough of that.” He shook his head. “Tell me—was Father as horrid the entire time I was away as he was this morning?”
“At least he’s speaking now.” Margaret shook her head. It had almost been a relief, when the first words out of his mouth had been to call Richard a girlish idiot. “He’s been worse. Far worse.”
“Egad.” Richard sounded tired. “Well. Edmund and I got ourselves as far away from him as we dared. And we gave not the first thought to what it meant for you to be left behind. It destroys me to say it, but that Turner fellow was right. We haven’t done well by you.” He turned his head to look at her thoughtfully.
That Turner fellow had another name, and Margaret could not but think it—Ash—without conjuring up his face in her mind. That cleft chin, those solid cheekbones. And best of all, that hint of a lazy smile that took over his face as he looked at her and called her a magnificent creature…
Her brother mistook her silence. “Did he hurt you badly, then?”
Margaret shook her head. “He didn’t hurt me. He didn’t hurt me at all.”
“He’s such a big, uncivilized brute of a man. And you’ve looked pale and wan these past hours. You’re a lady, Margaret—or, at least, a gentlewoman. And Turner always struck me as crude and…and earthy.”
“Earthy?”
Richard gestured uncomfortably. “Not used to speaking with ladies, or making accommodations for their more genteel requirements.”
“Ah. Yes. I suppose at first he seemed a little uncouth to me.” Her brother didn’t need to know precisely how uncouth. Had Ash really propositioned her within minutes of meeting her? At the time, she’d been outraged. Now, it just sounded like…like something Ash would do. Once he knew what he wanted, he was not apt to delay sharing his conclusion with others.
“You’re not happy, that’s for damned sure. I do wonder.”
“Richard…” She paused and looked across to her brother. He was still the same man who had fished her out of the fountain all those years ago. A little abstracted, yes, but kind. Quiet. He was listening to her. He didn’t want her hurt. And if sometimes her welfare failed to appear first on his list of concerns, it was natural absent-mindedness.
“Richard,” she finally confessed, “he told me I mattered.”
“That you what?”
“That I mattered. That I was important. After I was declared a bastard, nobody paid me any mind. But Ash Turner told me I mattered.”
Richard’s eyebrows drew down in confusion. “I understand,” he said, in direct contradiction to the puzzled quirk of his lips. “These past few months must have been difficult. But Margaret, after Parliament approves our Act of Legitimation, his opinion will be immaterial. That is why it is important—no, vital—that you and Edmund and I present a united front. I have no fear that the House of Commons will pass the bill when it’s presented to them. But the Lords, now…” He trailed off, tapping his lips. “It’s anyone’s guess what they will decide, and so far they are split down the middle, between those who want me legitimized, because I am innocent in this affair, and those who want me to remain a bastard, because our father so thoroughly scandalized them. The question of my legitimacy truly will come down to the votes of a bare handful.”
Margaret stared at him. “The question of our legitimacy, you mean.”
“Yes. Of course that’s what I mean.” He smiled at her and reached across the carriage to pat her hand. “You’ll see. Once we have been legitimized, everyone will know you matter once more. You won’t need Turner at all.”
Richard simply didn’t understand. Her own father had called her useless. Before she’d met Ash, she’d begun to feel flattened to the point of nonexistence.
But the sort of honor Richard was talking about was flattery, not truth. It wasn’t real. Honor that was given to you because of how you were born—that was just a delusion. She wasn’t going to rely on Parliament—or the people around her—to provide an assessment of herself. They were fickle and untrustworthy.
She shook her head mutely and looked out the window. Ash will not be the only one to value me for myself, she vowed. There will be others—Parliament or no Parliament.
“Why didn’t you tell me about the trick Frederick played on you?” Richard continued. “The wedding had been delayed so many times, I thought you didn’t wish to marry. And that I understood all too well. You should have spoken to me.”
“Truly? You would have wanted to hear that your sister let herself be despoiled?”
“No, of course I don’t wish to hear any such thing. But when such things are true, I ought to know them. So that I can bludgeon the fellow in question into coming up to scratch.”
“Under the circumstances, I’m rather glad you didn’t. I thought I loved him when I was nineteen. Now I’m aware of precisely how pitiful he is. I’m glad I’m not tied to him.” She cast her brother a look. “Thank you for not lecturing me.”
Richard shrugged. “Besides, I can understand what you mean. We left you here by yourself. No doubt you were lonely. And Ash Turner is such a brute of a man.” He glanced away uneasily, running a finger along the edge of the window. “I’ve heard some women appreciate that sort of thing. I wouldn’t know anything about that. In any event, I’m hardly the one to lecture you on chastity.”
Chastity. Margaret smiled and bit back a wave of bittersweet nostalgia. “I’ve heard Edmund gibe you about it from time to time about it, when he thought I wasn’t listening. No mistress? You could practically contribute a chapter to Mr. Mark Turner’s book on chastity.”
Richard looked up at her. “Mark Turner is writing a book on chastity? How strange. I wouldn’t have expected it of him. Do you recall the summer that Edmund returned home from Eton, his arm broken in three places?”
Margaret nodded. “He spent the entire first two months complaining bitterly about not being able to ride, not being able to swim. In truth, I think he enjoyed the opportunity to order the staff about.”
“Mark Turner broke Edmund’s arm—popped it right out of the socket, in fact, and cracked his elbow. He blacked his eye and sprained his ankle. Fights break out at school. But there’s a gentleman’s code that governs such affairs. One doesn’t break limbs. From what Edmund told me, it was done deliberately. So you’ll imagine my surprise when you tell me that such a fellow thinks about chastity. Both our father and I tried to have him tossed out of school. I can only imagine how much money Ash Turner had to lay out to stave off that eventuality.”
Margaret shut her eyes. If she had known only the Turners, she’d have said her brother was exaggerating, even lying. She couldn’t imagine Mark intentionally breaking anyone’s arm. He was physically capable of it. But mentally? Morally?
“I don’t blame you,” her brother said softly. “After all, I’ve been taken in by the Turners before, too. Once, I thought Mark was quiet and sweet.” He shook his head. “As for Smite…” Richard’s gloved fingers curled around the leather strap hanging from the carriage roof. “If you ever wish to hate someone,” he finally said, “befriend him first. I’ve found it works wonders.”
“But I’ve met him,” Margaret said.
Richard sat up. “You’ve met him? What did you think?”
“Harsh,” Margaret said. “Harsh, but fair.”
Richard shook his head. “Just wait until he sits in judgment over you. There’s not an ounce of mercy in him. Coupled with his eldest brother’s unholy talent for turning the world on its head…” Richard sighed. “After that fight, I talked with the headmaster and convinced him to toss Mark out, as soon as the boy was capable of walking again. But somehow, Turner walked in not twenty-four hours after the incident and performed his magic. I still don’t know how he could have arrived so quickly. There hadn’t been time for the news to travel. The whole thing must have been deliberate. And somehow, when he left, the headmaster was smiling, and the youngest Turn
er stayed on the rolls.” Richard shook his head. “Even then, everything he touched seemed to magically align. At the time, he seemed ancient. But now that I think of it, he wasn’t even an adult.”
Ash wouldn’t have let a little thing like age stop him. The only part of the story that rang true with Margaret was that Ash had come to his brother’s aid. But how could everything else be false? She couldn’t imagine Richard trying to have Mark ejected from school for a triviality. Richard rarely paid attention, but when he did, he was remarkably fair-minded.
“Maybe,” she said, “it was all a misunderstanding.”
Richard glanced at her, and let out a sigh. “Margaret, misunderstandings don’t break arms. Misunderstandings don’t file suit in ecclesiastical courts to bastardize the issue of a duke. Misunderstandings don’t get orders from courts of equity, allowing them to catalog the worth of an estate, so that the so-called untrustworthy offspring deliver his ill-gotten inheritance intact. I know that Ash Turner has got you all tangled about. But you are being used as a pawn on the board. The sooner you come to grips with that, the more likely we are to prevail. This is not a misunderstanding, Margaret. It’s a war.”
Chapter Nineteen
London, November, 1837
LONDON LOOKED DIFFERENT to Margaret than it had the last she’d been here.
Then, the news had come at her all in a rush, too fast for Margaret to comprehend. The suit in the courts. Her illegitimacy. The dissolution of her betrothal, her mother’s death and the sudden, inexplicable onset of her father’s illness. She’d felt barely able to keep her knees from buckling beneath her. And so when the women she had called her friends her entire life had simply turned their collective backs on her, she had given up. She’d fled back to Parford Manor and buried her own bewildered hurt in caring for her ailing father.
The change of the seasons had exerted some little effect on the scenery. Now, instead of being dark gray, foggy, drizzly and clouded over with coal dust, the city appeared to be light gray, foggy, drizzly and clouded over with coal dust. The flowers sold by the vendors had altered; fruit sellers walking the streets had a few baskets of late berries, instead of sacks of wizened apples.
But the biggest difference was not in the weather or the wares. It was something Margaret held deep inside her. London looked different when you came back looking for a fight. Over the past week, all of the best people had returned to town once again. Parliament prepared to sit once again. As a result, knockers had been hung on doors and invitations had begun to flourish, scattering on the wind like seeds from some great plant of etiquette.
This time, Margaret wasn’t going to retreat to the countryside to let her wounds fester.
Which was why for the fourth time in twelve days she stood on the threshold of the townhouse where Lady Elaine Warren lived. Margaret’s maid waited on the pavement behind her. When Margaret had first begun tilting at this particular windmill, her maid had been wary and uneasy. After over a week of battle, the woman had become inured to the prospect of rejection. Now she sported only a dour expression, shifting from foot to foot. From the slouch in her chaperone’s shoulders, Margaret could guess her thoughts: Can’t she hurry up and get tossed out on her ear again, so that we may finally return home?
Not, Margaret thought grimly, until they’d made their rounds. She’d visited twelve houses today. Twelve doors had remained closed to her; doors that would have sprung wide open for her a year ago.
Margaret’s dove-gray silk morning gown, trimmed with yards of fine-knit black lace, was a far cry from the sensible nurse’s frocks she’d worn back at Parford Manor. Her cloak was soft and warm. Her hair had been curled and arranged, and ringlets bounced about her shoulders in gentle sways as she lifted her hand and rapped the knocker. The sound echoed against the wood: firm, but polite. Margaret was always polite when she went out to do battle.
A jaunty little bonnet stood atop her head, tied in place. As she stood on the stoop, waiting for a response, she could feel the long, navy ribbons slithering down her shoulders. She shifted slightly, and the silk tickled her skin.
The door opened—one battle won. The dark-clad butler took one glance at Margaret and compressed his lips. He held a silver salver, which he normally would have extended at this point. Over the many years when Margaret had visited Lady Elaine, he’d often done so—if he hadn’t ushered her in immediately.
But everything had changed. This time, when the butler looked at her, he no longer saw a lady.
Margaret raised her chin. He would. He would.
It seemed as if she had been knocking at doors, and being turned away, for far more than two weeks. It seemed as if it had been years since she had last seen Ash, when in truth, scarcely two months had passed. The dreadful thick fog that blanketed London in the mornings had crawled over more than just the streets. It had swallowed up her memories of his features, dimmed them in cotton until he seemed an impossibility: a fairy-tale hero, too large for the life she had to live.
No, here in the clammy fog, there was only a dour-faced butler. He stood, wordlessly barring Margaret’s entry into her erstwhile friend’s home.
But there was one thing that Margaret carried with her from those enchanted weeks. They were words she held in her heart, words she repeated to herself every night, and again on waking. I matter. I am important. And I am not giving up.
Perhaps that was why, the fourth time she was faced with Lady Elaine’s butler, she reached forward and placed a card on the salver the butler had not yet proffered.
“Newton,” Margaret said in her most commanding voice, “do tell Lady Elaine that Lady Anna Margaret Dalrymple has come to call.”
It was both a gamble and a brazen lie. She wasn’t Lady Anna Margaret any longer, even though her card proclaimed her as such in raised letters on thick, creamy stock.
From behind Newton, Margaret could hear scraps of conversation wafting to her. They came from inside the house—murmurs, and then a peal of feminine laughter. Margaret recognized that high-pitched nervous giggle, ending on a snort. Her friend’s laughs were legendary. Margaret could imagine everything about the conversation Lady Elaine must be engaged in now—everything from the length of the visit (always long) to the number of times she would poke her head out of the room and call for more biscuits (often).
The butler cleared his throat, forcibly reminding Margaret that she wasn’t in the front parlor, partaking of tea.
“Lady Elaine,” he stated inflexibly, “is not at home to visitors.”
From the sound of things, Lady Elaine was in fact at home. With visitors.
Margaret looked the man in the eye and shook her head in disappointment. He didn’t blush—a man as well-trained as he would never show so much emotion—but after a few seconds, his gaze cut away.
“Newton,” Margaret said quietly, “you will at least deliver my card, and allow Lady Elaine to refuse me entry personally.”
Newton didn’t blink. He didn’t sigh. And most important, he didn’t move from his post, blocking the door. But his shoulders shifted—a tiny amount, not so much as to hunch. For him, it was a clear declaration of regret.
“How many times have you escorted me to Lady Elaine’s parlor? How many years have you known me?”
“Ma’am,” he replied, “you’ll have to take your card back.”
“No, Newton. It’s my lady,” Margaret corrected softly. “If you are going to refuse me entry, you will at least do me the honor of calling me by the title I was born with.”
Newton let out a pained breath. “My lady. I am not sure if I mean this as a compliment. You are the most politely relentless individual I have ever turned away from my mistress’s doorstep. Refusal does not deter you. Embarrassment does not stop you. What will work?”
“I’ll tell you what might work,” Margaret mused. “Perhaps you might refuse me entry. And perhaps we might converse about it, politely, with me out here, standing harmlessly on the step. You can continue to valiantly refuse. I
shan’t raise a fuss, but because we are both polite, I might simply stand here and discuss the terms of my potential entry.”
Newton’s lips tugged down, in a hint of a scowl. “Terms of your entry? But your entry has no terms. You aren’t entering.”
She had only to wait just long enough. “Of course not,” Margaret sued. “But how am I not entering? Might I come in through the servants’ entrance?”
“Naturally not!”
“I don’t suppose I could crawl in through a window, left obligingly open.”
“Never.”
The tenor of that half-heard feminine conversation shifted in front of her, from murmurs to rustles.
“I suppose I am also not entering through the back garden, then.”
“N—” Newton started, but as he spoke, the parlor door behind him opened, and Lady Elaine poked her head out.
“Newton,” said the woman, “could you be a dear and—oooh.” As she spoke, Lady Elaine’s pale eyes fell on Margaret. For days, the woman had refused to see her. Margaret had wagered that it was because her friend lacked the personal fortitude to cut her to her face. Lady Elaine was, after all, a good sort of person. A bit silly, yes, and more than a bit frivolous. But she was sweet by nature. That she was unmarried at the age of twenty-five had more to do with her lack of dowry—and her very unfortunate laugh—than anything else. She was pretty enough, in a plump, soft way, and her lips rounded at the sight of Margaret.
Confronted with the sight of her friend for the first time in months, Elaine’s hand flew to her pale ringlets. “Oooh,” she repeated. “Margaret. My father has ordered me not to say another word on your brother’s behalf. He has literally ordered it.”
Margaret could almost see her friend’s italics, hanging in the air.
“It’s lucky, then, that I don’t wish to speak to you on my brother’s behalf. I wish to speak to you on mine. May I come in?”
Seductive Starts Page 35
