The Turner Series

by Courtney Milan

  And Jessica still didn’t understand. She didn’t understand what had happened. Oh, she knew the mechanics of it. And she understood ecstasy. But this…this had been a new kind of pleasure. Something Jessica had never experienced before, something strange and inexplicable. She didn’t quite understand what it meant at first. Her fingers intertwined with his, her body wrapped around his. His forehead pressed against hers, and their mingled breaths waxed and waned in an intimate rhythm.

  It took her a few moments to hit upon the difference. Normally, a man took, and she gave. He owned her, for those minutes. The pleasure was his. And if his desire provoked her physical response—well, that, too, belonged to him.

  But this…this pleasure hadn’t been his. It hadn’t been hers, either.

  No. It had been something that seemed both foreign and intimate all at the same time.

  It had been theirs.

  Chapter Eighteen

  MARK TOOK HER TO BED afterward.

  There was nothing that quite compared to the glory of her bare skin.

  In the tepid light of the candle, his fingers had to fill in what his eyes could not. The smooth curve of her shoulder. The silk of her hair, softer than he’d imagined.

  He didn’t understand how men could flit from woman to woman. He had thought he was infatuated back in Shepton Mallet. That had been nothing compared to this—to the feel of her spine against his hands, each vertebra dear to him. Then there was the taste of her neck, subtly different than that of her collarbone. The flickering illumination showed bits of her in turn: pale skin and dark hair and pink lips, all enticing.

  He wasn’t sure how long he spent afterward just touching her. Trying to memorize the feel of her. Long enough that the candle in the other room eventually guttered out. Long enough that wonder turned into lust once more, that he positioned himself over her, sliding into a heaven that he’d tried to imagine before and had utterly failed.

  Her body. Her hands, grasping his. Every thrust he took, every gasp he wrung from her, was a precious gift. Her desire magnified his want. Instinct merged with intuition. He waited for the change of her breath, for the moan she tried to hold back. He waited until her body clenched around his, and he lost all sense of anything but her, her, her.

  When sanity returned, he found himself collapsed atop her, chest to chest, her hands clasped around his lower back.

  “Try as I might,” she said, “I can’t make you out.”

  He caught her lips in his. “What’s to make out? I’m not so complicated.” He disengaged himself from her as best he could without relinquishing her. Now that he’d had her once—well, twice—he didn’t plan on letting go again.

  She said nothing in response, simply waited.

  “I suppose there are two things you really should know,” Mark said. “About the past. And about the future.”

  At the word future, her breath sucked in. He could almost feel the tension steal into her limbs. But all she said was, “Hmm?”

  “The near past,” he said. “You must know that I would never have risked making love with you, if there were any chance that you would be unprotected afterward. There are always risks, and even if I intend to make it right…well, I could have been struck by lightning. I wouldn’t risk the possibility that you might not have the funds to care for a child.” He could still remember that infant in Bristol and the woman who had walked away. He needed to know it wouldn’t be her. That it wouldn’t be his son there, one day.

  “I—I had wondered about that.” Her hand found his face.

  “Which is why this morning, I went to my solicitors and signed five thousand pounds over to you.”

  She sat up abruptly, pulling the covers with her. “You did what?”

  “I gave you five thousand pounds.” His words were calm, but his pulse beat wildly.

  She curled in on herself. “I don’t need it. I don’t want it. I refuse.”

  “Too bad. It’s already been done—the money’s signed into a trust. I couldn’t take it back, even if I wanted it.” He reached a tentative hand to touch her back.

  She inched away. “I hope you don’t think you’re paying me for services rendered.”

  “That would be ridiculous. You hadn’t rendered anything at that point, and by the time I touched you, you were already a wealthy woman.”

  She huffed. “Your pardon. I…I don’t quite comprehend what you’ve done.”

  He let the silence flow between them, unsure how to respond to that.

  “I had some money,” she said stiffly. “I wouldn’t have needed it.”

  He shrugged. “Now you have more.”

  She let out a puff of laughter. “Oh, honestly. I can’t understand this. I just can’t understand what is happening. Yesterday, I was alone. And now…” She shook her head. “Things like this do not happen to women like me.”

  And there were those words again. “Women like you?” he asked, forcing his voice to calm. “What kind of woman do you suppose you are?”

  “Mark, I’m a woman who has been unchaste outside of marriage.”

  “Jessica,” he parroted, “in case you failed to notice—I am a man who has been unchaste outside of marriage.”

  She fell silent.

  “Why do you think I came to you like this?” he continued. “I told you once—you are the point of chastity, not its enemy. What was the use holding on to principles that only served to make you feel as if you were beneath me? When I marry you, I want you to know you’re my equal.”

  “Marry you? You can’t really want to marry me. You shouldn’t feel obligated, just because we were intimate.”

  “I gave up twenty-eight years of chastity. It wasn’t on a whim. I’m not asking for your hand out of a fleeting sense of obligation or regret. I want you in my life. I want you to meet my brothers. I want you to bear my children.”

  She took a shuddering breath. “You can’t convince me that you’ve dreamed of marrying a courtesan. And—oh, I’m trying to imagine it, but I just can’t.”

  “Hmm.” He reached out a hand to her, found her fingers. “True. I never dreamed of this. But now that I’ve found you, anything else seems a nightmare. Dreams change with circumstances. Often for the better.”

  “Not in my experience.” Her voice was still and flat, but she let her fingers twine with his. “Two months ago, my dearest dream was to never sell my body again. A far cry from my childhood fantasies.”

  “Am I so far from your childhood dreams, then?”

  She shook her head. “I always believed I would be married. I was pretty. Everyone told me so. So I thought that one day, my perfect husband would find me. He’d ask me to marry him. We’d call the banns in my father’s church, and three weeks later, I would walk down the aisle.”

  Her nails bit into his hand.

  “That’s right.” Mark kept his tone carefully neutral. “Your father is a vicar.”

  “He was very formal, you see. Very proper. He…he never knew quite what to do with us. I don’t believe he’d expected to have beautiful daughters. My mother is pretty. But…the three of us, we were something else. We turned heads, and it confounded him.” She shook her head in wry bemusement. “I was a confounding child, even before I ruined myself.”

  “Was he angry, when it happened?”

  “Angry? No. He was very frightened. He was not wealthy. A poor vicar with three beautiful daughters must be very careful. Gossip will magnify the slightest mistake. If my reputation had the tiniest blemish, it would have reflected on my sisters and damaged their prospects. Perhaps it might have ruined them altogether.”

  “Was there a great deal of gossip?”

  “No.” She shook her head. Her hair covered his hands momentarily, before she flicked it away again. “Just sympathy.”

  His eyebrows flickered downward in confusion.

  “Nobody ever found out. My father threw me out of the house. Then he put it about that I had become ill, that I went to stay with relatives in Bath for m
y health. After a month, they told everyone I had died.”

  His breath sucked in. “Oh, Jessica.”

  He’d thought the other night that he was rich because he had his brothers. He felt it doubly now. He set his hands on the curve of her shoulders.

  “Don’t. Don’t feel sorry for me. It doesn’t sting any longer.”

  He didn’t believe that, not one bit.

  “And he was right,” Jessica said. “He was right when he told me I should not take risks with my reputation. He was right when he told me I should not go driving with an older man. And he was right to throw me out of the house and disown me entirely. I was born Jessica Carlisle. Since then, I’ve called myself Jessica Farleigh. I relinquished all rights to my family name when I lost my family.”

  The silence ate into him, caustic as acid.

  “Your father. The man who first ruined you.” He tallied marks on her shoulder as he spoke. “And when you finally told me, I walked away from you. Jessica, has anyone ever stood by you?”

  “My sisters.” A tiny whisper. “Charlotte and Ellen.” Jessica smiled. “We used to talk. If they’d been asked, I don’t want to think what they would have sacrificed for me—but I know they would—” She cut the sentence short. “Maybe it does still hurt a little.”

  She drew in careful breaths, as if measuring them precisely would stave off tears.

  “I send my father letters,” she continued. “So they’ll know I’m alive and well. But I’ve not heard one word from my family in seven years. Every year, I check the church records, just so I know where they are.”

  Seven years. Mark tried to imagine what that would feel like, tried to envision himself cut off from his brothers for even so many weeks. He couldn’t comprehend it. Even when he and Smite had spent those months on the streets of Bristol, his brother had protected him. He couldn’t imagine a world in which his siblings didn’t exist. He had never been alone.

  “Oh, Jessica.”

  She smacked him on the shoulder—not hard, but enough to get his attention. “Look at me, Mark. Look at me, and stop feeling sorry for me. I’m not fourteen any longer. I lived. I survived. I did what had to be done. And it could have been worse.”

  “How?”

  “He might not have taken me to London,” Jessica said simply. “And I might have ended up in the hands of a procuress, or in a brothel. I…I may have been fourteen when I left home, but I met Amalie the first week I arrived. She had had the same protector for five years. She taught me how to get by. How to avoid the worst mistakes. Don’t you feel sorry for me, Mark. I survived.”

  “Stop simply surviving. Marry me. Forget all of that—”

  She leaned back into him. Her fingers found his lips, cutting off his words. “Don’t. Don’t. The most important thing that Amalie taught me is when it was safe to stay, and when you have to walk away.”

  “You’re going to walk away from me?” Mark felt something dangerous building in his chest. “Not a chance.”

  “No. You don’t know the worst of it.” Her voice was small. “There is something else. Something you don’t know.”

  “Something worse than being cast out at fourteen?”

  She didn’t answer right away. He reached out to her and pulled her to him. He could feel the subtle tremble of her hands. But she didn’t push him away. And when he held her, stroked her hair, she leaned against him. That was an illusion, though; he could feel her tension.

  “It happened when I discovered I was pregnant.”

  He started in surprise, and she stopped speaking. Her breath grew shorter. His had, too.

  “I had taken precautions, of course, but no precaution is ever entirely effective. By the time I realized what was happening and told my…protector, I was months along.”

  Mark’s throat closed, swallowing all the words he could imagine. He breathed, forcing them out anyway. “Did he cast you off?”

  “No.” Jessica swallowed the lump in her throat. “He was actually quite kind. Or so I thought. He told me he would take care of the matter, that I should have nothing to worry about. I thought—I thought he meant…”

  She didn’t say anything for a while. She had, perhaps, thought he meant to care for her. To keep her, in a more permanent capacity—to make some provision for her.

  “The next time he saw me, he offered me a cup of a special blend of tea. He told me it had been mixed particularly for him, and he wanted me to try some. It was supposed to be a flavored tea, he said. An experiment, released only to a few.”

  He couldn’t speak at all, could only hold her.

  “It wasn’t just tea leaves in there. It was pennyroyal and lady’s lace and I don’t know what else from the apothecary, all brewed to bitterness, and then mixed with milk and sweetened. I didn’t know what was in the pot. He said he liked it. And so I drank it all. Just to be polite. You always have to be polite.”

  Mark’s mind had descended into utterly horrified confusion.

  “I didn’t know,” she said again. And this time, he could hear the edge of tears in her voice. “I didn’t know what he’d mixed in.”

  “What—what had he—” But he already knew.

  “The mix promoted female bleeding,” she said. “When taken in sufficient quantities…”

  He could feel the wet of her tears against his shoulder. In fact, he could feel his own eyes prickle. His hands stung. He held her as tightly as he could, not daring to let her go.

  “He told me later that he didn’t know how strong a dose I’d need. To be certain, he tripled the apothecary’s suggestion. That evening, I began to bleed, and it didn’t stop. It just came and came. I nearly died. And when the physician arrived and examined me, and was made to understand precisely how I’d been dosed…” She trailed off. “The physician…he’s one that a great many courtesans have used. He’s not the sort to make cruel remarks, or make us feel uncomfortable.”

  He stroked her forehead, the side of her face, not sure what else to say.

  “It was so idiotic of me.” Her voice caught. “When I discovered I was pregnant, I was scared. I was worried. I didn’t know what to do. But there was also part of me that was secretly pleased because I wasn’t going to be alone any longer.”

  He didn’t know what to say to this.

  “He took that from me. Without asking. He made me weak and powerless—made me into so much nothing, that I could not even decide my own future.” She was shaking now, her hands trembling in his. “Every time I think of it, I remember that. I survived everything else. But that…that nearly killed me.”

  “Jessica. Don’t cry. Please don’t cry. You did survive, and thank God for that.”

  “I knew I had to get out. Had to stop being a courtesan. That’s why I had to seduce you—I needed the money so I wouldn’t have to go back. I couldn’t go back. Not to that.”

  “Hush,” he said. “Don’t worry about that now. I understand.”

  “There’s more. The physician told me there was a good chance I’m barren because of that. You want a family. I’m not sure I can give you one.”

  Mark thought of a dark alley and a deserted street, many years ago. “If it comes down to it, there are children enough in need of parents. As for family…I have a family. I want to share mine with you.”

  “But what would happen to them if you wed me?” Her fingers bit into his arms. “The man…the man who did this to me was George Weston.”

  Of all the surprises Mark could have had at the moment, this was the least welcome. His mind washed blank. “George Weston,” he repeated. “George Weston. George Weston?”

  “If we were to marry, I could not avoid him. He’s a part of your social set.” Her hands clenched into his arm. “He hates you—he’d tell everyone who I was. You can claim that I’m your equal in sin all you like, but you know society will not agree.”

  “Hang society,” Mark said thickly. “I don’t care.”

  “But I do. If I were in society, I couldn’t escape him. I cou
ldn’t escape myself. And most of all, Mark…I can’t bear to remember.”

  Alongside his horror, another emotion was growing. It was white-hot in its fury. It would consume him, if he let it. It was offensive that Weston had ever offered a reward for Mark’s seduction. But it was downright repulsive what he’d done to Jessica. He remembered Jessica flinching when he’d reached for her. Weston had committed an assault without fists, as determined an act of violence as rape. He had nearly killed her.

  “To hell with Weston,” Mark heard himself say fiercely. “To hell with all of that. We’ll figure it out.”

  “There isn’t any we.”

  Maybe there hadn’t been, for her. But this wasn’t the time to dispute what she’d said with words. No; he had better arguments. Now was the time for him to hold her, to whisper soft reassurance in her ear. Now was the time to nuzzle her neck and tell her that everything would be all right.

  “I will not leave you. Not for my reputation, not for my wealth, not for my hope of heaven. We’ll work it out in the morning. I refuse to give you up just because one man happens to be an unmitigated ass.”

  “And if I ask you to leave?”

  His lip curled. He shook his head. “Bollocks on that,” he said.

  And then, despite everything she’d said, despite everything she’d told him, he felt her smile against his shoulder.

  Balance. Calm. That’s what he gave her now, what she needed from him. But deep inside himself, something dangerous whispered.

  Calm now; retribution tomorrow.

  Chapter Nineteen

  TOMORROW CAME ALL TOO SWIFTLY, and with it, Mark’s plan for revenge. It didn’t take long to find his quarry. Weston was too much of a creature of habit to escape.

  The sun was high overhead, and Weston was scurrying across the lawn of Hyde Park when Mark found him. Ironic, that he was headed to meet with men whom he hoped would put him forward for the position on the Commission on the Poor Laws. The upcoming vacancy had been announced today; the nomination to fill it would soon be made.