“Oh,” he said lamely. “Margaret.”
“I didn’t come here to beg you to give up the dukedom simply because I wished to hand you an ultimatum. I came because no matter how much I love you—and I do love you, Ash—I simply could not bear knowing that I married the man who destroyed my mother’s dreams. I don’t know how I could look at myself again if I did.”
“Oh. Margaret.” He did come forward then, did take her in his arms. And he leaned forward, just enough to press his lips against her forehead one last time.
“God,” he said. “I can’t give my brothers up. I can’t.”
“I know,” she said softly. “Neither can I.”
Her words fell between them—so quiet, and yet so suffocating. There was nothing further to say, no way around this impasse. He held her. But when she gently removed his hands from her waist, he didn’t stop her. When she turned and left him, he did not follow after.
Now, with everything said, even Ash could no longer come up with a reason to pursue her.
THE AFTERNOON SEEMED ALMOST UNREAL to Ash. The pale light of a clammy autumn day cast ghosts of shadows across the carpet of Lord Lacy-Follett’s receiving room. Ash stood shoulder to shoulder with Richard Dalrymple.
An outside observer might have thought them joined in a common purpose. Dalrymple’s jaw was set, his shoulders drawn rigidly together. If the aching clench of Ash’s own muscles was any indication, he looked about as comfortable.
But despite that apparent solidarity, the only solid feeling between them was a mutual desire to defeat each other—at any price. Even, Ash thought, the cost that he could never forget: the sight of Margaret leaving him, and he left with nothing to offer that would make it better. He’d lain awake all night, twisting and turning, trying to upend everything Margaret had said. But she seemed impossible. Distant.
The nine lords Lacy-Follett had assembled sat in high-backed chairs, arranged in a half moon. Only a thin table separated Ash from them.
“Gentlemen.” Lord Lacy-Follett spoke from his seat at the very center. “There must be some sort of amicable agreement that we can come to.”
Ash glanced over at Richard Dalrymple. With Margaret gone, all hope of amity had fled. Dalrymple’s hands were clenched around a fat sheaf of papers, which he’d rolled up. His lips were pursed; his eye had purpled. And for the first time, Ash noticed a similarity between his profile and Margaret’s—a curve of the lips, a jut of the chin. He’d tried not to think what it meant, that Dalrymple was her brother. He’d tried to separate it out. It was damned unnerving.
“My lords,” Dalrymple spoke with a palpable unease. He cast a tight look at Ash, and then snapped his gaze forward to concentrate on the nine men in front of him. “If I can convince but one of you to support my suit, I’ll have all the support I need to pass the Act of Legitimation through Parliament. And I am wagering that I can convince one of you to support me.”
Lord Lacy-Follett glanced at Ash, as if measuring the effect of his words. He conferred, behind cupped hand, with the man sitting to his right, and then looked up at Dalrymple. “That is not our current estimate of the votes,” he said.
“The votes have changed.” A tight smile crept over Dalrymple’s face—one that seemed at odds with his clutched fingers. “Lord Forsyth, and five others, have come to support my suit.”
Ash felt a muscle in his jaw twitch, but he kept silent. Forsyth had teetered on the brink of a decision for weeks, before tentatively declaring himself for Ash.
There was another exchange of glances. And then a man behind Lacy-Follett—Lord Dallington—spoke up. “I spoke with Forsyth just three days ago. Given…ah, given his financial situation, I find this news very unlikely.”
That smile expanded across Dalrymple’s face—not a pleased one; almost a grimace. “The earlier version of the Act of Legitimation, which you might have seen circulated before this? It’s changed.” He unrolled the papers he’d been gripping and spread the sheets in his hand. “This is the current act, which will be put to the vote.”
He slid the papers across the table to the men who sat in front of him. After a pause, and with some hesitation, he handed Ash a sheet, as well.
Ash took it and glanced down at the meaningless letters. In front of him, the men were silent. Reading. Ash felt a slow beat of fear inside him. He tamped it down; he’d bluffed his way through similar situations before. He could do it again.
“My God,” Lacy-Follett said. “I suppose that would take care of Forsyth. And his financial problems.”
Beside him, Lord Dallington licked his lips and set the paper down. “Mr. Turner. What think you of the proposed act?”
Ash ran a hand down the paper. “I don’t understand how this would mollify Forsyth’s concerns.”
“You do know what Forsyth’s objection was, don’t you?”
Ash did, but the more he could make Dallington explain, the less he had to pretend. “Humor me with an explanation.”
“The Duchess of Parford’s marriage settlements—or at least, sixty thousand pounds of them—had been set in trust for her lawful female issue. If the Act of Legitimation fails to pass, his sister the duchess has no lawful female issue, and the trust reverts to him.”
“I see,” Ash said slowly. Even though he didn’t.
“Now that the suit no longer names Lady Anna Margaret,” Dallington continued, “there is no danger of Forsyth losing the money.”
It was all Ash could do to keep from gasping. As it was, he felt as if he had been punched in the kidneys. He bent slightly, his hands striking the table in front of him, before raising his eyes to Dalrymple. “You—” He bit back the epithet he’d been about to hurl. “You left your own sister off. You’ll leave her illegitimate, just so you can have your dukedom back.”
Well. At least that explained why the man’s expression of triumph seemed so unvictorious. At least he had the grace not to be proud of what he was doing. Margaret had gone to Ash and begged on her brothers’ behalf. She might have had Ash. She might have been the Duchess of Parford herself. But she’d refused to abandon her brothers to illegitimacy.
“I didn’t hit you nearly hard enough the other night,” Ash growled. “Is that what you Dalrymple men do? You abandon your women to bear the brunt of society’s hurt, just so that you can have an easy life?”
“You think this was an easy decision?” Dalrymple demanded.
Ash took a step closer—swiftly enough that Dalrymple flinched from him.
“Gentlemen!” Lacy-Follett said. “The point of this meeting is to avoid further violence, not to foment it.”
Hitting Dalrymple had done little good so far. Violence would only convince more men to support the man’s suit. Dalrymple’s faithless, ugly suit.
Ash turned away, his hands fisting at his sides. What was it going to do to Margaret when she discovered that her brother had betrayed her into illegitimacy, as her father had? What would she say? How would she feel?
He could imagine her pain with a startling intensity.
And for just one second, Ash could see how to use this. Dalrymple still needed one of these men for his suit to go forward. Instinct clamored inside him. A man who would betray a sister was no candidate for the dukedom. He could make the case. He could win all these men over to his side, settle the dispute once and for all.
But…but what if he did?
He had always thought of the suit in Parliament as pertaining to her brothers. Ever since Ash had met her, he’d been assiduously courting votes in Parliament to defeat the act that Dalrymple proposed. But until this afternoon, that act had included all the duke’s children. Including Margaret.
That little detail had seemed unimportant—so unimportant, in fact, that he’d never considered it, and she had never mentioned it. But if Ash won, he would be the one to betray her. He would make her a bastard, twice over. He’d been trying to keep her a bastard all this time.
He had not only destroyed her life unwittingly, before he’
d met her; he had continued to destroy it, even after he knew who she was. Even after he loved her.
Ash opened his eyes and glanced at his foe. The man stood, his shoulders drawn together. For all of Dalrymple’s flinching cowardice, Ash felt a shameful sense of kinship with him. They’d both been too foolish to realize what they were doing to Margaret—or, perhaps, too selfish to care.
The other lords were looking at Dalrymple in barely concealed distaste.
“I do love my sister, you know,” Dalrymple said defensively. “It was either this, or have nothing.”
Ash’s stomach burned. Inside him, irrepressible instinct clamored out.
Fight. Win. He could still have the dukedom. He could have his vengeance. He could raise his brothers high—give them every last thing they’d ever dared to want. He would never fear again that he had nothing to offer. And all he would have to do was to betray the woman he loved. Ash swallowed, but his throat remained dry. He could look back over his shoulder and finally understand the devastation he’d wrought. So. This was how it felt to be a conquering hero.
There was no way to repair the damage, no way to heal what he’d done to her.
“Let me see if I understand this,” Ash said to the lords in front of him. “If the lot of you support Dalrymple, he won’t need Forsyth and the votes he carries any longer.”
“That is correct.”
When it came down to it, he had no choice at all.
Ash strode over to Dalrymple and yanked the last paper from his hand. “You sicken me,” he said. He ripped it into quarters and threw the pieces to the ground.
“My lords,” he said. “Here is your amicable solution. You vote for Dalrymple’s bill. But only—and I do mean only—on condition that he rewrite it to include his sister.”
Dalrymple’s jaw went slack.
Lord Lacy-Follett stared at Ash. “So there is some truth to those rumors after all. Mr. Turner, if you want a different solution, something else might be arranged.” He cast a glance at Richard, and sniffed. “I, for one, am not best pleased with the first scenario that was proffered to us. There are some things gentlemen ought not do, and sacrificing women for personal gain stands high on my list.”
Dalrymple flinched. But Ash simply shook his head, too weary to fight any longer. Not now. Not when he’d finally understood what he was doing to her.
Lord Lacy-Follett tapped his lips. “We shall be here all afternoon discussing the matter. But gentlemen, unless you have anything further to add, you are excused.”
Dalrymple took one shaky step toward the doors. As he did so, Ash grabbed his lapels. Not hard, not violently, but Ash twisted them just enough to let the man know that, had he wished, he could have sent him flying across the room. He leaned in. And then, as Dalrymple’s eyes widened in terror, Ash whispered, “If you don’t take care of her, I shall truly hunt you down. You won’t be duke long enough to enjoy it.”
Chapter Twenty-three
“IT’S OVER.”
Margaret stood from the seat by the side of her father’s bed as Richard stepped into the room. The afternoon light fell on a lavender bruise on his face. The decoration made him look tired. Tired and almost limp. “That is, my part in this is finished.” He was looking down at the carpet, and so she could not see his eyes. She couldn’t tell whether he was weary in victory or weary in defeat.
The towel cut into her hands. She wasn’t even sure which outcome she should pray for. For Ash? For Richard? Either one would tear her in half. Her tongue felt too thick to actually use for anything so mundane as speech. Instead, she stared at him.
He sighed and shook his head.
“What happened?” she managed to croak.
Richard shook his head. “Turner, damn his eyes, abdicated.”
Her head seemed light, very light. She might have floated away in dazed, uncomprehending wonder. “Pardon?”
Richard came to stand near her. “He told them to support my suit, on condition that you be included in the bid for legitimacy.”
Those words returned her to earth swiftly, painfully. Her ears rang. Her knees threatened to wobble, and she locked them, grabbing hold of one of the oak posters on her father’s bed.
“What do you mean, on condition that I be included in the suit? I thought I was included.”
Richard picked up her father’s signet ring from where it lay on the table. Idly, he turned it about, and the sword carved in the stone reflected afternoon light at Margaret. As Ash had done long ago, he tried to slip the band around his finger.
It didn’t fit him either, and he set it once more on the table. Finally, he looked up. It wasn’t victory she saw in his eyes. It was something deeper, and just a little more shameful. “No,” he said softly. “I had you taken out of the bill to win Forsyth over.”
He couldn’t be saying this. It couldn’t be true. Margaret’s hands clenched. “Tell me it was Edmund’s idea.” It had to have been—Edmund was a little more hasty, a little less thoughtful. Only Edmund would have—
“No, Margaret.” Richard shook his head slowly. “It was mine. I knew when I suggested it that if I did, I would regret it the rest of my days. I just supposed that I would rather regret being a duke than regret being a bastard. I didn’t expect Turner to give it all up,” he added bitterly. “Just like that. And then what do you suppose that idiot did?”
She shook her head. Anything was possible—anything other than Ash giving up his claim on the duchy of Parford.
“He pulled me aside and ordered me to take care of you. As if I would do any differently.”
Margaret simply looked back at him. “No, Richard. I think you’ve demonstrated precisely how well you would look after me.”
He looked away, and it was as if that set her emotions free at last. Pain came first, scalding hot. And then the realization of what Richard had done really hit her. He’d been about to make her a bastard again. Her loyalty had meant everything to her. She’d been determined to prove that she wouldn’t betray her brothers the way her father had betrayed them all.
It seemed she had been the only one.
Richard heaved a great sigh. “And now, after what he’s done, I’m beholden to that impossible ass. For the rest of my life. It doesn’t sit well with me.”
Her own brother had just told Margaret that he’d tried to barter her place in society for his dukedom, and his primary concern was that because he’d failed to do so, he found himself in Ash’s debt?
And then there was Ash. Margaret swallowed hard. He’d given it up. He’d given it all up—for her. And she knew, more than anyone else, what the dukedom had meant to him. It meant his brothers. His security. His certainty.
From behind him, her father stirred. Richard shook his head. “Well,” he said. “I should let you get back to…get back to looking after him. Margaret, for what it is worth…I am sorry. The lords will be discussing the matter at Saxton House all the rest of the afternoon, and it makes me ill to think matters could have gone as I’d intended. To be honest, I think if Turner hadn’t acted as he had, they would all have spoken against me, and I’d have lost it all for nothing. It was that close.” He shook his head. “They’re still deliberating, but they’ll come round to me.” He spoke more as if he were still trying to convince himself than to convey information to Margaret.
“And if you had it to do over again, what would you tell them?” Margaret asked.
He looked at her and then shook his head ruefully. “Precisely what I did before,” he said. “Some things cannot be changed.”
Margaret shut her eyes. Richard was gentle. Richard had been kind to her in the past. But every time he’d had to choose between his own skin and Margaret’s well-being—it had been Margaret he had sacrificed. He hadn’t given his loyalty to Margaret, the way Margaret had delivered hers to him.
Behind them, her father stirred. In the months since his apoplectic fit, he’d improved. Which was to say, that tiny hint of vulnerability that she’d seen in him that l
ong-ago night had disappeared, replaced by this irascibility.
“There you are,” her father said, meeting Richard’s eyes. “And how did the meeting go? Do I have a man for a son?”
Richard’s gaze slid to Margaret and then back to his father. “You do,” he said quietly. “I’ll inherit everything.”
Margaret waited for her father to come up with some cutting rejoinder, some harsh remark. But instead, her father’s gaze rested on Richard. “That’s good,” he said. And then, more softly: “That’s my boy.”
Margaret’s vision swam in front of her. Her brother stood, paused before her, his hand raised in benediction. He wiped at his eyes suspiciously and then he shook his head and turned away. “Yes,” he said quietly, standing at the door. “I suppose I am.”
The door closed behind him.
“What, Anna? You’re not sulking, are you?”
Loyalty was a curious thing, Margaret realized. She’d placed it in the care of someone who did not return the favor. She stood up and set her towel in front of her. As she did, her gaze fell on her father’s signet. The heavy, carved sapphire twinkled up at her.
She reached for it. The gold was warm in her hands, heavy. Not so heavy as it had once been; the band had been resized for an invalid’s hand.
Or perhaps a woman’s.
It slid neatly over her knuckle, clasping her finger. The sword in the sapphire winked up at her.
I think if they could find a way to disinherit me, after the trick I played… Somewhere out there, Lord Lacy-Follett and his companions were still discussing the matter. With no intervention, they would settle on supporting Richard.
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