Seductive Starts

by Courtney Milan

  Ash pulled his weight against his brother’s hand, and Mark braced himself. As he scrambled to his feet, he whispered. “Did you really believe that claptrap about my not being young any longer? For a genius, you can be terribly idiotic sometimes.”

  And with one swift movement, he pushed his brother off balance, grappled his legs out from underneath him and, after a gratifying scuffle, succeeded in pinning Mark to the floor. For a second, they met eyes.

  Mark smiled at him. And victory was complete.

  Chapter Seven

  WHEN MARGARET LEFT HER FATHER’S sickroom that evening, Ash Turner was waiting for her. He leaned against the wall, his bulk a muscled shadow clad in brown wool. She had known this moment was coming, ever since she’d left him that written apology on his desk. He was going to find her, talk to her. He might do substantially more.

  But he didn’t move to do anything. Instead, he nodded at her. “Good evening, Miss Lowell.”

  It was impossible for her to ignore the deep rumble of his voice, impossible not to feel the palms of her hands prickle with awareness. He had treated her with kindness. True, he hadn’t given her the prim and proper respect to which she’d become accustomed. But he’d given her something solid and quite a bit more reliable.

  She swallowed. Her toes curled in her slippers. But then, she had decided this morning what she had to do.

  “Good evening.” She wasn’t finished, but she felt her throat closing about the last syllable. Before she could choke on the words, she started again. “Good evening. Ash.”

  He didn’t smile at that, but his eyes lit. A little defiance, he had called that. But it was a bigger defiance than he could imagine, to flout her family and to address him with such familiarity.

  He’d earned it. Twice over.

  He straightened. As he did so, the light from the oil-lamp behind him caught his features. With his head held high, the points of his collar no longer cast his chin in shadow.

  And now she could see it. She stepped forward without thinking, her breath hissing out. “Oh, no.” Her thumb found his jaw; it was harsh with a day’s worth of stubble. And the skin beneath those coarse, rasping hairs was discolored. She lightly ran her fingers over that bruise. “Did I do that?”

  She raised her eyes to his and only then realized how close she stood to him. Inches away. She was up on her tiptoes, caressing his face. She could smell his subtle musk—masculine and earthy, with a tang of bergamot. She could feel the heat of him against her fingertips. She should step away. Her breath was burning in her lungs, her lips tingling under his appraisal. Her whole body was coming to life, this close to his. Her breasts tightened, her thighs tensed and that bud between her legs warmed.

  “Yes, Margaret.” He drew out the syllables, converting her name from a mere appellation into a verbal caress. “You did.”

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t intend—”

  “Oh, no apology needed. I’ve found it a most useful decoration. Would you know, it has actually driven one particularly lovely woman to touch my cheek?”

  Her hand stopped on his chin, where she’d been tracing an unconscious circle. “You’re putting a good face on it. But—”

  “None of that, now. It’s as I told you—this is how men make friends. If you know what drives a man to anger, you know him.”

  She shook her head. She still hadn’t moved her fingers from his skin. She wasn’t sure she wanted to. “That can’t be rational.” Even less rational was the fact that she was still staring into his eyes.

  “We are speaking of men, are we not? Most of us are base creatures, little more than bundles of animal instinct. Friendship is one of our least rational responses.”

  As close as he was, he’d made no move to touch her. Another man who’d shown half of Ash’s interest would have closed his arms about her by now and assaulted her lips. But despite the husk in his voice, he didn’t strain toward her.

  Her fingers still rested against his skin.

  “Friends?” Margaret said. “Is that how you think of me?” She pulled her hand away, and lowered herself down from the tips of her toes.

  He followed her down that inch and a half, canting his head over hers. A light sparkled in his eyes. “I spoke only by way of analogy. When I think of you, I want nothing so pale as friendship. I want more. I want decidedly more.”

  He was going to kiss her. She could feel it in the greedy hunger of her lips, tilting up to his. She could feel it in the clamorous beat of her heart, yearning for that completion.

  “I lied to you that first evening we spoke.” His breath felt like little brushes of butterfly wings against her lips, sweet and tremulous.

  “Oh?”

  His voice had gone deep, so deep it seemed to reverberate in her bones. His finger reached up to trace her mouth. “I do want to take that kiss.”

  Her heart stopped. Her lips parted. She felt a flush rise through her—and still he didn’t press his lips to hers. Instead, he exhaled and she drank in his scent, sweet and warm.

  “Oh,” she breathed.

  “But—” he said, and it seemed an unfair word, that but “—I want you to give me one more.”

  It would have been easy to shut her eyes and let him kiss her. To have the choice taken from her in one heated, passive moment, with nothing for her to do but comply. But he was asking for more than her artless submission. Not deference, not docility, but…defiance.

  “I want you to choose me,” he said, “well and truly choose me of your own accord. I don’t want you to wait at the crossroads in the hopes that I will force the choice upon you.”

  What he wanted was more perilous than a kiss, more fraught with danger even than letting him slide his hands down her aching body.

  “And why must I be the one deciding?”

  “Because I decided upon you more than a week ago.”

  At those words, she drew back. He didn’t look as if he were joking. In fact, he seemed almost solemn in that declaration. Still, his words jarred her back to reality. They weren’t sweethearts, exchanging promises. They were not lord and lady, agreeing to court. He believed she was a servant, and Ash Turner was a wealthy, handsome duke’s heir.

  “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t tell me falsehoods. You’ve treated me like this since—”

  “Since the first time I laid eyes on you?” His words came out on a growl. “There’s not much to me but animal instinct. Don’t look to me for a logical discourse on your charms. I like the set of your chin. I like the way your eyes beckon me to follow you down dark, forested paths. I like that I can’t bend you to my will—that you’ll send me to the devil if you think I’m in the wrong.” She wanted to be wrong, wanted to believe that he proposed more than a simple joining of bodies. But one didn’t decide such a thing the instant one clapped eyes on another person.

  “You know almost nothing about me.” Not even her name.

  “I don’t need to line up a collection of facts to understand how magnificent you are. I’m not wrong. I’m never wrong. Not about this.”

  “Such humility, Mr. Turner.” Her disappointment tinged her words with bitterness. “Everyone’s wrong, eventually.”

  “I’m not. I’ve no education to speak of. I know nothing of the classics. But I have this: I can look into someone’s eyes and see the truth. It’s how I made my fortune, you know.”

  She swallowed. If he’d seen the truth in her eyes, he’d not stand so close to her now. “How do you mean?”

  He must have heard the warning note in her voice, because he straightened and expelled a sigh.

  “Everyone else is hampered by figures and facts, projections based on rationality. Every contract must be examined for soundness by a horde of solicitors; every word in it laid upon a coroner’s table and prodded until it divulges its last secrets. It takes days for most people to reach an accord. Sometimes months.”

  “And you?”

  “I make up my mind in seconds. Speed matters, these days. Prices fluctuat
e, rising and falling with every ship that comes into port.”

  “What do you do, then? Sign contracts without having them looked over?”

  He bit his lip. For a long time, he pressed his lips together, his expression abstracted. Then he whispered, as if imparting a very great secret, “If I trust a man, I’ll sign without reading it at all. Words on a page can’t stop a true betrayal. All they can do is muddy up the aftermath in Chancery. And as I’ve said, I’ve never been wrong.”

  Margaret took another stunned step backward. “Doesn’t that frighten you? To judge so quickly with so little evidence?”

  He shook his head slowly—not an answer to her question, but a thorough rejection of her premise.

  “I don’t think that is at all what you mean. I think what you really want to know is whether you are frightened to have been judged so swiftly. You fear you might come up wanting. You fear that when all is said, and a great deal more has been done, you’ll have nothing else I want, and I’ll be done with you.”

  He described them so precisely that she could almost believe he had seen her fears. But these were not just idle nightmares, to be dispelled by the coming dawn. Once he discovered her name, he would turn his back on her. And this—whatever it was—would be finished.

  He tapped one finger against her lips. “Kiss me,” he said, “when you’re sure that foolishness is wrong.”

  Margaret retreated to her room in the servants’ quarters with a pounding heart. She could feel the pulse in her neck beating in confused arousal. She eased the door shut behind her and stared at the yellowing whitewash.

  There were very few truths in this world. One of them, though, she understood deep in her bones. A man like Ash, with his fortune and his prospects, could have anyone. She doubted he intended anything so casual as a single night’s seduction—he’d devoted far too much of his energy to wooing her to discard her so quickly.

  But he couldn’t want her honorably. Dukes’ heirs didn’t marry their mistresses.

  She had no sooner to think that than realization struck. Dukes’ heirs did marry their mistresses. She could think of one who had once done so: her father.

  The sordid tale had been in all the papers when Ash had filed suit in the ecclesiastical courts. The events had been no less salacious for their being fifty years old. It was hard to imagine her father young and headstrong, but he must have been so once. When he had turned twenty-one, he’d married his mistress in a hushed-up ceremony held in a tiny town in Northumberland. He’d quietly brought his wife to meet his parents—and they had just as quietly threatened him with penury if he persisted in his foolishness.

  But parents—even parents who were a duke and a duchess—could only do so much. There were no legal grounds for annulment. And so that impetuous, imprudent wedding had never been spoken about. The girl had been threatened with God only knew what—destitution, dismemberment, dyspepsia. She’d been bundled off to America, where she had wed a wealthy financier.

  She’d shown neither hide nor hair in England in the decades that followed, until she made more than a minor sensation of herself, testifying on the matter at Ash’s behest.

  So, yes. Dukes’ heirs did sometimes marry their mistresses. But Ash surely knew that it never turned out well. Not for the duke in question, nor for the mistress, and most especially not for the family waiting in confusion on the margins.

  Thoughts of family made Margaret think of Richard’s letter. She’d tucked it into her lap desk, so that she might answer it at a more fortuitous time. She was supposed to tell him what she’d discovered about Ash. She was supposed to be finding evidence to undermine his claim before Parliament, not yearning for his kiss.

  And yet, without attempting to do so, she’d succeeded. All she would have to do was write a letter that looked something like: Mr. Ash Turner believes the notion of class is an antiquated delusion. Additionally, he is so hasty that he doesn’t read his contracts before he signs them.

  Two pieces of very valuable information. The first sentiment alone was frightfully revolutionary. Nobody would install a lord who espoused such radical sentiments. And if he hadn’t meant his comments in a political way…why, that was simply the price that was sometimes paid in these fracases. A little twist of the truth, and she could end this farce right now. All she would have to do was write the words down.

  A simple prospect to set pen to paper. There was only one problem.

  She could still feel the heat of his presence, an unconscious echo reverberating through her. She could still feel him leaning over her, his lips so close to hers. She could hear her own protest: You know almost nothing about me. This time, as she went over the memory, she added the truth. I’m Lady Anna Margaret Dalrymple, and I have been lying about my identity so that I can better ferret out your faults. You mustn’t trust me.

  Still, in her mind, he gave her that enigmatic smile. I don’t need facts to understand how magnificent you are, how eminently trustworthy. I’m not wrong. I’m never wrong.

  He was this time. He was utterly mistaken. She was going to betray him, and in doing so, she would tear all his calm certainty to shreds.

  Except…she didn’t want to do it. If he was wrong about her trustworthiness, he would have no special insight. He might be wrong about every last thing, starting with his assertion that she mattered. Margaret wanted to matter.

  More than that. She didn’t want to betray Ash. She didn’t want to twist his words of kindness into weapons of war. She didn’t want to be the one who first introduced doubt into his eyes. She wanted to kiss him, and she couldn’t do that with a conscience sullied by betrayal.

  She took a deep breath and reached for a sheet of paper. She would write her letter—but she would leave out what she had learned. Nobody would understand his words, not as he had meant them. If she was going to betray him, she would have to betray him with the truth, not with some twisted version of it. And so her letter was simple—uninformative, plain and, at the end, the only lie she told was when she sent her brother their father’s love.

  When she was done, she snuffed the single candle flame and let darkness fall.

  “ASH!” MARK’S VOICE INTERRUPTED Ash’s morning conference. His usually even tones were tinged half with despair, half with anger.

  Ash turned slowly in his chair. His brother stood in the open doorway, his hands clenched into fists. He hadn’t donned a coat yet, and his gray waistcoat was unbuttoned. His hair was wild, as if he’d pulled it into blond little knots, and his eyes were wide.

  “What have you done with it?” he demanded.

  Ash had been waiting for this moment. He’d been waiting for it ever since last night, when he’d issued the order. But instead of answering directly, he pretended puzzlement. After all, the role of an elder brother was to make a younger one pull out his hair—just a little bit—before smoothing everything over.

  Mark’s spine straightened and he stalked forward, placing his hands on the table. “Is this your way of punishing me for yesterday’s events?”

  Two of the clerks Ash had brought up from London sat next to him. They had turned to look at Mark. At this query, they schooled their faces to careful blankness. They were, after all, in on the joke.

  Ash let his look of bewilderment grow. “What sins did you commit yesterday that cried out for punishment?” he mused aloud. “Did I miss an opportunity?”

  “Nothing that would justify this!” Fists came up before him in an unconscious fighting stance. “Where, in the name of all that is holy, is my book, Ash? I’ve been working on it for two full years. Do you want me to get down on my knees and beg for its safe return? I will, if only—”

  “Ohhhh.” Ash let the syllable slide from his lips, as if he’d had no notion of what they were talking about up until this moment. “Your book. Cottry, can you enlighten my brother as to the whereabouts of his book?”

  Mr. Cottry slid him an unamused look but replied evenly. “I believe Farraday has it, Mr. Turner.”
/>   “Farraday has it?” Mark echoed. “Why ever would Mr. Farraday have it?”

  Ash gestured at Cottry.

  “Mr. Farraday,” Cottry said simply, “is making a copy.”

  The fury on Mark’s face smoothed out into gratifying confusion. He glanced from Ash to the clerk and then back again, but made out nothing other than careful blankness.

  “Well, then.” Mark’s hands unclenched. “Why is he making a copy?”

  Ash leaned back in his chair. “So I can read it. Obviously.”

  There was a reason he loved tweaking his younger brother. Mark’s mouth dropped open in stunned bewilderment. And then his eyes lit with every ounce of the happiness that Ash had wanted to see.

  “But—but—you!” Mark shook his head. “I could kill you, if I didn’t want to hug you right now. You great big bullying angel.”

  “One day, Mark, you will doubtless discover that I am not a particularly cruel man, dedicated to frustrating your every ambition. I actually would like to help you with your chosen career. Even the parts that make me uncomfortable. You want me to read your work? Then I’ll read it. You had only to ask.” He wasn’t sure precisely how he was going to keep that promise, but he would find some way to accomplish it.

  Mark inhaled. “But—this is just draft form, Ash. I still have so many changes to make, so much work still to be done. You’ll tell me if there are any parts that don’t make sense, will you?” Protests finished for the mere sake of form, Mark ducked his head shyly. “When do you think Farraday will be finished with his copying?”

  “Cottry?”

  “He’d finished the first ten pages when I left him an hour ago. It’s slow going, sir. He keeps being overcome with laughter.”

  “About chastity?”

  “Apparently so.”

  Mark’s face lit even more, but he looked down at the floor and blushed, as if he were a schoolboy unused to praise. He couldn’t understand what Ash had just promised to do. Ash might as well have offered to send him to Jupiter for a brief visit. But then, if Mark had wanted to flap his wings and embark on a voyage to distant planets on holiday…