Weston had not said “or else.” He’d not needed to. Without his promised money, she would have no way to survive except to find another protector.
And even that would only stave off the darkness for a little while. Once that man left her, she’d need another, and another, and another. Each time, she’d lose a little corner of herself. She had to do this. She hated to do this, to Sir Mark least of all. She liked him. But he looked up, away from—was that Mr. Parret he’d tossed in the water trough? Yes. Good. He saw her. His gaze fixed on her, and he strode forward until he stood before her.
“Sir Mark,” said a woman next to her. “Did my son James invite you to our shooting competition next week? I know that—”
Mark didn’t even look at Mrs. Tolliver. “He did,” he replied shortly.
“And will you be there?”
“As I told your son, I’ll be there so long as Mrs. Farleigh is invited, as well.”
Jessica’s breath sucked in.
“She…she was invited.” Mrs. Tolliver didn’t look in Jessica’s direction. “And…and she’s very welcome indeed. But can we be of help?”
Whatever emotion had prompted Sir Mark to dunk a man in water, it had left him angry. “In fact,” Sir Mark continued, “I had promised to see Mrs. Farleigh home earlier and never did make good on that promise.”
She didn’t want to like him more, didn’t want to bring him that much closer to his downfall. She didn’t want to think of George Weston, waiting for the lascivious details he expected her to divulge. “I don’t need—”
He glanced at her. “I know you don’t need the accompaniment. But I do.”
He was going to create a scandal, speaking to her like that. Scandal was precisely what she was supposed to want him to cause. The women watched him turn and leave, and Jessica gave them one last unapologetic shrug before hurrying after his retreating form.
“What are you doing?” she demanded. “Do you have any idea how…how much those women are going to talk?”
“Let them.” His shoulders were taut. “What are they going to do? Talk to Parret?”
Sir Mark made no attempt to moderate his steps to match hers, and Jessica found herself half running to keep up with his long stride. In the hot sun, she was overheated within several streets. Still, he kept the pace through the heart of town, past the point where the paving stones gave way to dust. Sir Mark stared fixedly at the horizon as he walked. It wasn’t until five minutes had passed that he addressed her again.
“I was rather too unfair. I’m not much company right now.” Droplets from the horse trough had splashed him all over; the darker spots that the water had left across his coat had almost faded.
Jessica didn’t say anything.
“In truth,” he said, “I’m in a bit of a temper.”
“I could never have guessed.”
He did look at her then—a slow, sidelong glance. His eyes fairly snapped with intensity. And her insides sparked with the fierceness of his gaze.
“You’re formidable when you’re angry,” she said. He jerked his head toward the front once more, and she breathed again.
Formidable didn’t quite cover it. She couldn’t imagine crossing him in this mood. She wouldn’t have known how to seduce him from it. There was something about the way he walked, the way he held himself—he seemed larger and more lethal than he usually did. As if his anger had stripped away some civilizing influence and left this version of him: less voluble and more vicious.
She should have been wary.
“I don’t trust myself when I’m angry,” he said, as if hearing her thoughts.
“Well,” Jessica said slowly, “I do. So that’s all right then.”
“Hardly reassuring. You’ve no familiarity with my temper.” Little clouds of dust rose up from the ground with his every footfall. He walked so quickly, he could have kept time with the beat of her own heart.
“I try not to lose my temper,” he said gravely, “because it is so very, very bad when I do. Even today, I nearly slammed that unfortunate scribbler into a wall. I only recalled myself at the last moment.”
“Consider me shocked.”
“I like balance,” he said. “I like quiet. I like calm.”
“You must hate me, then.”
“Hardly.” Sir Mark snorted. “When I was younger, I…I picked a fight with a distant cousin, Edmund Dalrymple. He’d been making some remarks about me, about my mother. I broke his arm in two places. The incident precipitated a rift between our two families. It took years to heal, simply because I couldn’t keep hold of my temper.”
“I’m stunned,” Jessica returned. “Boys, fighting? How outrageous. How abnormal.”
“Actually,” he said, “it was. Now my brother’s married to his sister—and doesn’t that make for the cheeriest of gatherings? Edmund and I still have not had a cordial conversation. By now, I suppose it will never happen.” Mark trailed off. “It’s more complicated than that. My elder brother, Smite, was once friends with Edmund’s elder brother, Richard. But after we fought, they argued. Now Richard won’t come to Parford Manor if Smite is there, and the same holds true in reverse. So, yes. I don’t trust my temper. When I truly lose it…”
“Smite,” Jessica said. “Your brother’s name is Smite?”
He let out a great sigh. “You see what happens when I’m in a temper? I can’t keep my mouth shut. He’ll hate that I mentioned that. These days, I’m Sir Mark, and Ash, of course, is Parford. Smite goes by Turner—just Turner. He hates his name, for reasons I am sure you can imagine.”
“Your eldest brother is named Ash? That’s an…odd name. How did your brothers come to be named Ash and Smite, and you were lucky enough to be called Mark?”
The ruddy flush of his complexion had faded. Now he blushed—ever so faintly, back to his quiet, slighter self. “Listen here, Mrs. Farleigh. This conversation is going rather far afield. And I’ve just talked to a newspaper reporter, who reminds me that every one of these details would be worth a fortune to the right man.”
“And yet I am the soul of discretion.”
He cast her an unreadable look. “My brothers and I all have Bible verses for names. Mark, Ash—those are just shorter versions of our real names.”
“What is your name, then?”
“Soul of discretion or no, I’m not stupid enough to tell you that.” He looked up at her again. “It’s not the sort of thing one discloses to a woman when one is trying to impress her.”
“Well.” She sighed. “I suppose you were lucky that your verse was chosen in the Gospel of Mark, instead of, for instance, the Book of Zachariah. You don’t much look like a Zachariah. Or a Habakkuk.”
He smiled, which had been her purpose in the first place. “Your father must have been quite devout,” Jessica continued. Even her own father, a straitlaced vicar, would never have considered such a path. And then she looked up into his face, remembering something he’d said earlier…
“My mother,” Mark said softly. “My mother actually had the naming of us. My father wasn’t around when any of us were born. And yes, she was very religious. She…” Mark trailed off. “She didn’t have much to believe in. What she did have, she believed with her whole heart.”
Jessica chewed this over slowly. “You said you wanted peace and balance, Sir Mark. Might that be why?”
Sir Mark looked at her for a good long while. His lips pressed together. His eyes met hers, and she suddenly was struck by the realization that while she knew his tailor and his record in school, she knew very little about him. For a man who had his every move trumpeted in the papers, there was a great deal more to him than anyone had ever reported. She’d not known that “Mark” was not his given name.
He smiled so often, spoke so easily. She’d thought him straightforward. Now, a shiver went through her—not fear, but an almost resonant sense of recognition. This was a man with secrets.
She knew what those felt like.
“There are some things,
” he said, “that I don’t want in any of the papers. Ever. I’ve had my life picked over often enough. Some risks I just can’t take. It’s not that I don’t trust you.”
He shouldn’t trust her. She was planning to seduce him and to proclaim that fact publicly. She held her breath, feeling appalled with herself.
“Some things,” he said slowly, “I should like to keep private.”
When she’d volunteered herself for Weston’s plan, she’d thought she was just going to ruin his reputation. He’d had his name picked over in the papers so often, she’d imagined it would be just another story to him. That was before she’d known him. Sir Mark was going to utterly hate her if she succeeded. She was going to hate herself.
“Then don’t tell me,” she said, with more airy unconcern than she would have believed possible. “We’re at my house anyway, and I see Marie in the window. So we’d not have any privacy to speak of.”
He gave her one sharp nod.
“I’ll see you…next week, is it, then? At Tolliver’s shooting competition.”
He let out a breath. “Hope that Mr. Parret is gone by the time someone hands me a rifle.” She thought he was joking. As she turned to go into her house, he caught her hand in his. “Mrs. Farleigh. Thank you.”
His fingers twined with hers briefly. And then she pulled her hand away, thinking of all the things he wanted to keep private. “Don’t,” she said quietly. “Don’t thank me.”
Chapter Ten
THE SUN HAD BARELY BURNT away the morning mist when Mark arrived at the green beyond the river, where the shooting competition would start. James Tolliver—whose father was hosting the activity—greeted him enthusiastically as he walked up.
“Sir Mark!” He sounded genuinely excited, as happy as a puppy whose master had returned home. “You came! I set up targets two and four—when you see them, tell me if I’ve done a good job.”
“I’ll be sure to do that.”
“And I was the one to come up with the rules for the competition. It’s two rounds—shooting to be done in pairs. The first round will determine relative ranking, and then, everyone will be paired off based on ability.”
Mark wasn’t quite sure how that would work, but he’d little experience with such competitions. All he hoped to do was pull the trigger when they said shoot.
“That seems like a sound structure. You must have put quite a bit of thought into it.”
“Well.” Tolliver preened a bit. “Will you partner me, first round?”
Unbidden, Mark glanced across the lawn toward the knot of other contestants. He caught a glimpse of Mrs. Farleigh—a flash of a long gown of buttercup yellow with smart white cuffs.
“And you needn’t worry about her,” Tolliver continued innocently. “Dinah—Miss Lewis, I mean—has agreed to partner her. I did take what you said to heart.”
“Huh.” Perhaps the boy might actually have done so.
“And besides,” the young man continued, “Dinah wanted to talk with her. She wanted to know how she did her hair. Can you believe it?”
Mark took in Mrs. Farleigh again. Today her bonnet matched her gown—gold silk with white ribbons. Underneath it, her hair coiled in braids that glistened and intertwined, as impossible to unravel as a blacksmith’s puzzle. “I don’t blame Miss Lewis,” Mark said absently.
“Um.” Tolliver cleared his throat, and his tone turned sly. “Maybe we should go talk to them. See if Miss Lewis needs anything.”
Oh, the unsubtlety of a randy teenager. Mark glanced at Tolliver, and that false nonchalance evaporated in pink cheeks.
“That is to say—truly—I can resist—not that I am at all tempted! An upstanding member of the MCB—”
“What has the MCB to do with talking to a lady?” Mark asked. “You’re allowed to flirt. When have I ever said otherwise?”
“But the membership card!”
“Membership card?”
Tolliver fumbled in his waistcoat pocket and pulled out a rectangle not much larger than a calling card. The edges were fraying and soft, as if it had been carried around for a great while.
“There. Item number three. ‘I solemnly agree that I will not engage in flirtatious or other lascivious conduct, as such leads to Peril.’”
“Give that here.”
Tolliver handed it over. Mark fished in his own pockets and found a stub of pencil. With a flourish, he drew a line through number three and then added in tiny letters: Flirtation privileges restored, 21-6-1841. M947T.
“There,” he said handing the card back. “Just in time, too. The ladies are coming over.”
Tolliver stared at the card. “How is it that the MCB is…is so not in accord with your own beliefs?”
Because I was avoiding the entire organization. You were all embarrassing. But…he was beginning to understand that he’d let this happen through his inattention.
“Tolliver,” Mark said, “it’s because I made a mistake. A very bad one, and one that you’ve helped me realize.”
“You? A mistake?”
“I should have spoken with the MCB before this moment. Perhaps…” He sighed, looked at the confused look clouding the boy’s eyes. “Perhaps you’ll let me start here.”
“You want to give a speech to the MCB? Oh, brilliant! What of Tuesday next?”
Mrs. Farleigh and Miss Lewis were approaching. They’d been given rifles. Miss Lewis held hers delicately, between thumb and forefinger, as if she planned to drop it at any moment.
“Best get it out of the way. Tuesday it is. Now go say hello to your sweetheart.”
Tolliver blushed furiously. “She’s not my—oh. You’re having me on.”
And then the women joined them, and Tolliver began talking—explaining the system of the competition once again, this time in an even more disjointed fashion. After he’d managed to confuse everyone, he complicated matters by asking Miss Lewis about, of all things, her father’s intended sermon.
Flirtation privileges, Mark decided, were not about to lead Tolliver into Peril. They were more likely to take him toward Embarrassment.
Mrs. Farleigh glanced at the two and then over at Mark. They shared a half smile, poorly suppressed.
Mark reached forward and took the card from Tolliver’s hand. “I’m revoking these,” he said to Tolliver, “until such time as you learn to use them properly.”
“What?” asked Miss Lewis.
“Nothing,” Tolliver said urgently, waving at Mark. “It’s nothing.”
But Mrs. Farleigh glanced at the card over his shoulder and burst into laughter.
It wasn’t fair. He’d never seen her laugh before. When she did, her whole face lit. She held nothing back. Mark felt utterly, stupidly bereft of intelligence. He’d have babbled about sermons to her in that moment, if he could have thought of a word to say.
“Ignore him, Mr. Tolliver,” Mrs. Farleigh plucked the card from Mark’s hand and slid it into Tolliver’s pocket. “You’re doing quite well, considering. And you—” she pointed at Mark, and he felt his breath come to a rumbling halt inside his lungs “—I’ve a question to put to you.”
She turned and walked away. When they were a few steps distant, she shook her head. “Poor boy. He can’t impress both you and Miss Lewis at the same time. You are his hero, you know. Show some compassion.”
“You’re quite right. I shouldn’t have teased.”
“No.” She sighed, and then looked up at him. “You signed your initials to that card, didn’t you?”
“Yes?”
“Mark 9:47? Isn’t that rather a gruesome name to attach to a young child?”
Mark felt his smile fade. “My brothers are named Ash and Smite. My mother wasn’t concerned with choosing happy names for her children.” He paused. “You know what verse that is offhand? You keep trying to tell me that you’re wicked.”
“I am.”
“You’re the worst fallen woman I’ve ever met.”
“My father was a vicar,” she returned with as
perity. “I can’t help it if some of my early childhood lingered, despite my best intentions. And really—you were named after the verse that suggests that in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, you have to—”
“I know. You don’t need to tell me,” he said with a growl. “Really. Next time, I’m just signing Sir Mark, do you hear? Forget it.”
There was a long, awkward pause. From this distance, Mark could hear Tolliver burbling on to Miss Lewis. By the way she was looking up at him, Tolliver was doing better than Mark was. He could even hear the rector, twenty yards away, talking about the same catechism that Miss Lewis had recounted to Tolliver.
A new subject of conversation was definitely warranted.
“Are you a good shot?” It was a fumble, but as soon as he said it, he knew it would distract her. There was something about the way she held her rifle. She didn’t seem to be conscious that she was holding it at all, and yet it seemed as if she might close the breach and raise the weapon to her shoulder at any moment. That bespoke a facility with firearms, one that had been trained so consistently that it was now beyond thought.
But Mrs. Farleigh simply shrugged, still looking at him. “I’ve not spent much time shooting rook rifles,” she said absently. “You?”
Ah. So these were rook rifles. They all looked basically the same to Mark—long barrels, wood stock.
“Indifferent,” Mark confessed. “When I was young, we had no shooting range. And over the last years, I’ve spent most of my time with my eldest brother in London, which means I’ve had little chance to shoot in the country. I hope only to avoid coming in dead last.”
She let out a little gasp. “Wha-at?” She drew the word out, making a mockery of her surprise. “The indomitable Sir Mark has an imperfection? Oh, dear. And here I left my hartshorn and vinegar at home.”
It had been a long while since anyone aside from his brothers had teased him. It felt good now—better than he dared admit—to look into her dark eyes, glowing with humor.
He schooled his own expression to sobriety. “Well, it’s only the one flaw,” he said. “And if I speak very loudly, surely nobody will notice.” His eyes darted across the lawn to the rector, who stood across the lawn, still pontificating.
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