Seductive Starts

by Courtney Milan

  When she pulled away, he watched her go.

  God, he ached all over. He needed a cold bath. He needed a good right hand. Preferably, the one before the other.

  He let out his breath. It was only then that he saw Mrs. Benedict standing, frozen, down the gallery from him. She must have ascended the stairs moments before. Her eyes were narrowed, and she looked as if she were about to do murder. Oh, hell. She’d seen Margaret leave his chamber—alone, with her dress rearranged. She’d likely seen that last kiss.

  “That wasn’t what you think,” he said.

  Her nose wrinkled in distaste. “I’m not a fool, Mr. Turner.”

  “At least,” he amended truthfully, “it wasn’t exactly what you believed.”

  “I’ve seen the way you look at her.”

  Ash shrugged helplessly. “You’ve seen her. You’ve listened to her. Can you blame me?”

  Mrs. Benedict tapped her hand against her skirts. “Yes,” she said shortly. “I can. That poor girl has had enough to contend with without—” She grimaced and cut herself off.

  “Without what?”

  “Without your taking what little she has left,” Mrs. Benedict said. Her voice had dropped, almost quiet, but there was nothing in her tone of softness. Instead, she spoke with a fierce promise. “Of all the girls for which I take responsibility, she is the one I most wanted you to leave in peace. You have no notion what you’re doing.”

  “I have some idea what she has suffered.”

  Mrs. Benedict’s lip curled. “I doubt it. I’ll be having my key back, then. If you please.” She said those last words in a tone that left no doubt: he had no choice in the matter.

  “I can’t.”

  She drew herself up—sheer bravado, for a woman who came not even to his shoulder—and marched toward him. “There is no can’t,” she scolded, her palm outstretched. “You will, or I shall—”

  “I gave it to Miss Lowell,” Ash confessed.

  That brought her to a standstill. “You what?”

  “I gave the key to Miss Lowell. I thought—well, I thought she ought to have it.” He shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know why. It just…seemed like something she ought to have.”

  She stared at him in disbelief, and then shook her head. “It isn’t enough. I doubt you’re the sort who needs to force your way into her room, when it comes down to it.” But she sounded less sure of herself. For a second, he had thought she was going to snap his head off for giving the master key to not only a servant, but a servant beneath the housekeeper. But then, this household was filled with surprises.

  Hell. The only thing Ash knew was that it would take only a few more nights like this one for Margaret to grant him that impassioned yes he so longed to hear. And then it would be a tumble, not a voyage—a glorious, wicked, unchaste tumble headlong into sin. It all sounded very well for him, but for a servant, with no prospects?

  No. She deserved better than that.

  “I know. That is to say…” Ash heaved a great sigh. “You’re entirely right, Mrs. Benedict.” He’d promised the housekeeper he wouldn’t despoil the staff. He’d promised himself the same, because these people were his dependents. He couldn’t just debauch Margaret. And yet now that she was willing, keeping his hands off her would prove nearly impossible.

  He shook his spinning head, trying to find his way out of this mess. And then he knew—simply knew, with an intensity that rattled him—how he could set this all to rights. How he could have Margaret and his tumble, too. Of course. Of course. He’d already understood it in some corner of his mind, since the day he’d seen her on the steps. He’d just needed to realize it.

  “Of course I’m right.” She set her hands on her hips and glowered at him. “But I was right the last time I admonished you on this score, as well. The only thing I need to know is what you’ll do about it.”

  She wanted more than a promise.

  “If I stay here…” Ash swallowed and shut his eyes. He might pontificate about honor all he wanted, but the next time he caught a glimpse of Margaret’s ankle, he might well lose his head again. “I’m going to London. Tomorrow. Don’t expect me back for at least another week.”

  IT WAS NOT QUITE NOON the next day when Margaret ducked out of her father’s chamber. The sun was shining so brightly that its rays bounced through the gallery, the windows almost alight. And deep inside her she felt a fierce, almost tremulous desire.

  Desire—and defiance. Even if nobody else wanted her, Ash did. This was a space of time, carved out for her, a defiant little story she might tell herself during these summer weeks, one in which the scullery girl got the prince for at least one fleeting moment.

  It was a pretense—he wanted her the way all men wanted a pretty woman—but what did that matter? She’d had enough taken from her to realize that happiness never lasted. She’d savor these moments while she still had them.

  For now, she could feel a fierce, evanescent joy about what had transpired the prior evening. She would pay the price for it—eventually, when he discovered who she was.

  But until then… As Margaret was well and truly ruined, she had little to lose. They neither of them did; Margaret had no true reputation to think of, and even though Ash would undoubtedly despise her the instant he knew her true identity, affairs of this nature were ephemeral things. They didn’t last. His affection for her would waver soon enough, especially as she was the daughter of his enemy.

  As she passed by the chambers that Ash had taken over, she found the doors to the suite closed and locked forbiddingly. No sounds issued forth from within, and in Margaret’s experience, in the late morning, Ash always had his men in there, arguing.

  Perhaps they’d gone out to meet with tenants. Or to catalog the oaks.

  Margaret shook her head and descended the main staircase.

  The entry was flooded with light. That, Margaret realized, was because both doors were thrown open. Out on the gravel of the drive, a pair of footmen maneuvered a trunk into the boot of a carriage. Two valises stood beside them, waiting to be loaded. And standing next to them, dressed in sober brown traveling attire, was Ash.

  He should have been wearing the brown hat he carried, but instead he’d tucked it casually under one arm. He was laughing, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Standing next to him was his brother. Mark spoke with him, shook his head and then waggled a finger at him, mischievously.

  Margaret stood at the foot of the stairs, hidden from view by the relative shadow of the entry. Ash clapped his brother on the shoulder and then, without a backward glance, stepped into the carriage. She stared, her chest hollow.

  She’d known his affection for her would fade. She hadn’t realized quite how fickle it was, that he could touch her the way he had last night and then leave the next morning without saying a word to her in farewell. Margaret swallowed, but her throat remained dry.

  It seemed she was to lose this, too, before it had even been found. In that too-bright sunshine, the driver leaned forward; the reins jiggled and the team trotted off, smartly stepping down the circled drive, the carriage swaying slightly.

  Well. Perhaps she didn’t matter to him as much as he’d said.

  The thought should have depressed her. But it didn’t. Instead, her mouth curled up in amused chagrin. She had only to listen to herself. She didn’t need Ash Turner—Ash Turner, of all people, who had destroyed her life—to tell her she mattered. If she was important, she could be important without him.

  She dry-washed her hands and turned away. “Good riddance,” she muttered, wishing that she meant it more.

  “Pardon? What was that?”

  Margaret jerked back. Mark stood, silhouetted in the doorway. “Nothing. I said nothing.”

  He shrugged and stepped forward. “Ash wanted me to convey a message to you, Miss Lowell.”

  Margaret’s heart gave a treacherous little skip. No. She’d just decided she had no further need for him. But it wasn’t merely need she felt now. She wanted to k
now. And so what slipped out was: “Oh? What did he say?”

  “He apologized for not saying farewell in person. He’ll be back. And he said he would have left you a note to that effect, but…” Mark shrugged again.

  Margaret looked about to see if anyone was listening, and then dropped her voice. “Well, naturally he wouldn’t leave me a note.”

  Mark snorted and shook his head. “It’s not what you suppose,” he said dryly. “Believe me. I know. Ash might be aware that it would be highly improper to send an unmarried woman correspondence, but he is unlikely to care.”

  Perhaps Mark didn’t know his brother had revealed his secret. “I had something else in mind, actually. He told me—”

  “Ah. Did he feed you the excuse he always gives me? About how busy he is? Don’t believe it. The truth is, Ash makes an extremely poor correspondent.”

  “Well, of course he does. After all—”

  “Don’t you defend him, too. When I was at Eton, for years I used to send him lengthy letters. He’d respond—with a letter written by his secretary. At the end, he’d generally scrawl a few words in his own hand, as a poor pretense of closing. In fact, he had only two or three short phrases he used. They rarely changed. Smite and I used to make a game, guessing which phrase he would slap on to the end. ‘All my love’ was one. ‘Be well’ was another. They don’t mean anything when they’re offered by rote. No. I have no illusions about my older brother. You…you shouldn’t either.”

  No doubt Mark thought he spoke out of kindness, to spare her feelings. But his disclosure had the opposite effect. All her fantasies of impermanence went up in smoke. Mark didn’t know. He didn’t know that Ash couldn’t read, couldn’t write. Her talks with Ash had seemed such harmless flirtation—heated, of course, and filled with pretty words she wanted to believe. She’d been telling herself he whispered sweet nothings all this time.

  She couldn’t think it any longer. Ash adored his brother. But it was Margaret he had trusted with his secret. That didn’t smack of a temporary love affair. She had no notion what he intended at all any longer.

  Her infatuation had seemed harmless and bright, when it couldn’t last. It was just a little defiance, one that would hurt nobody at the end of the day.

  Now her emotions felt too large to fit in her tight skin. This wasn’t supposed to mean anything. Her relationship with Ash was supposed to draw to a close.

  “I tell you this because you should know not to do anything irrevocable. I know Ash can be overwhelming,” Mark said conspiratorially. “But—really, there’s no need to be overwhelmed. He’s human, just like the rest of us.”

  As he spoke, Margaret realized that Mark couldn’t have known. He’d mentioned to her the other day that Ash had begun to read his book. If he’d had any notion of the truth, he’d have realized how impossible that was. No; until two days ago, Ash had kept his secret entirely to himself. He’d been alone.

  Alone, and still determined to reach out to a brother who wanted him to communicate via letter.

  “He makes mistakes. He’s fallible.” Mark glanced sideways at her. “I overheard the maids talking about him, and based on their chatter, I wanted to make sure that you understood.”

  So the maids were talking about Ash. She knew Mrs. Benedict had threatened dire consequences on any who let slip the truth of Margaret’s identity. But that charade could last only so long. She could feel her sunlit summer drawing to a close, even now.

  “It’s easy to forget,” Mark continued. “I do it, too. When I’m in his company, I simply cannot remember anything else. He’s warm and kind. It’s only when he’s absent that it becomes obvious from his conduct that he’s not sparing me another thought. I’m out of sight, and thus out of mind.” He shrugged and glanced back at her. “I barely notice, these days.”

  It took Margaret a moment to realize that his last words were a lie. He didn’t even try to hide the unhappy quirk of his lips.

  “After all,” he continued, only a trace of bitterness leaching into his voice, “a few scribbled words, in his illegible hand—well, at least he remembers I exist, some of the time. Even if all I get is a half-legible promise of his brotherly affection, attached to someone else’s impersonal reply.”

  The truth clutched at Margaret’s throat.

  I’ve learned to pen a few phrases—if I shut my eyes, I can scrawl them out by memory. But it took so long, just to learn a handful of words. I’ve only bothered to memorize the ones I can’t get by without. She knew how much those few scrawled words had cost Ash, even if Mark did not.

  “I’m sorry,” Mark said. “I’ve upset you. I didn’t intend to. Truly, I thought it was kinder for you to learn this way.”

  The truth itched at her. She wanted to scream it out, to shake Mark, to make him realize just how hard it had been for Ash to etch out his love on the bottom of his secretary’s letters. How could he not know? How could he not realize?

  But then, she’d fooled herself, too. She wasn’t sure what she was to Ash. Not his lover, at least not physically. But she was something more frighteningly intimate than she’d supposed.

  He’d been telling the truth to her all along, and she had been the one spinning falsehoods. She looked at his brother, at that half-defiant smile on Mark’s face, as if he were daring himself to care about his brother’s desertion.

  “I thought,” he said, “I would be glad if Ash left, because I could simply focus on my work. Turns out, it still bothers me. He promised he’d spend this last portion of the summer with me. And here we are. I don’t even mean that much to him.”

  Margaret shook her head, a mixture of pity and anger suffusing her. When she was finally able to speak past the lump in her throat, what she said was: “For an intelligent man, Mr. Mark Turner, you can be extremely stupid.”

  Chapter Eleven

  MARK WAS NOT THE ONLY STUPID ONE. Days passed, and then a week—and still Ash did not return. August bled into September. For Margaret, the time felt strangely isolating. With Ash no longer present, Mark secreted himself in a room and worked as if in a fever. She saw him occasionally, but only in passing—and even then, he walked by her, an abstracted expression on his face, as if he were already planning out the next chapter in his book. With the Turners either physically gone or not mentally present, it was almost as if Margaret were still an honored daughter of the house.

  In the days since Ash had absented himself, she had taken to walking the upper gallery in the late mornings. The wide windows faced east; in the baking heat of late summer, the room was too warm for comfort. But from that second-floor vantage point, she could catch glimpses of the London road, winding its way down green-covered hills before it dipped into the valley where her home stood. She could stand alone, and think.

  As she watched the road one morning, a spiral of dust shimmered up. Margaret had felt her heart leap several times over the past days, imagining similar plumes to be horsemen. Usually, it was nothing—an illusion born of heat and dryness, or a raven, landing on the road.

  Parford Manor was situated near the bottom of the hills, and the road wound in and out of view. She scanned the hills, guessing where a horseman might appear next. If he were walking at a gentle trot, he would be right there….

  Nothing. Nothing but the wave of browning grasses, broken by stone walls and dark green hedgerows.

  She wasn’t sure why she bothered looking.

  She watched the next stretch of road avidly, but nothing appeared. It was foolish of her to hope for him, even more foolish to believe that he would appear. But then, she’d recognized for weeks that where Ash was concerned, she was a fool—a conflicted, confused, yearning fool.

  She watched the hills for ten minutes before turning away to care for her father.

  She hadn’t waited long enough. Moments after she entered the sickroom, a commotion rose up outside. While she measured out medicine—her father was too hot to object—her pulse pounded.

  When her father waved her idly away, sh
e scurried from the room. The initial hubbub of the arrival had died away, and the gallery upstairs seemed preternaturally silent. It was only when she reached the far end that she caught Ash’s voice, echoing up the stairwell.

  “And how is your book coming along?”

  Oh. She’d missed him. She hadn’t realized quite how much until she heard him once again. His voice was warm and lilting, the sound of it sending a little shiver down her spine. She stopped on the first landing, just to take it in. The palms of her hands trembled, and she pressed them against the cool stone of the stairwell.

  “Swimmingly. I’ve only the final conclusion to write,” Mark responded. “Really, you ought to leave more often—you would be shocked at my ability to produce pages when I haven’t anyone to bother me.”

  That rude noise could only have come from Ash. “You know, interacting with others is good for you. Man cannot live by writing books on chastity alone. Speaking of which, I don’t suppose you tumbled any women while I was gone?”

  Margaret knew Ash well enough to understand that this was a joke.

  “As I’m not married,” Mark said dryly, “then, no. I haven’t.”

  “Futile hope. Ah, well. Good thing I was pinning all my hopes on the real question—did you talk to anyone at all while I was gone?”

  There was a long pause. “Hmm. I believe I wished Miss Lowell a good day.”

  Margaret took a deep breath and descended the stairs. Ash was standing in the entry next to his brother, his arms crossed, his toe tapping impatiently. “How many times?”

  “Um. Once a day?” Mark scrubbed a hand through blond hair that had grown too long to be fashionable and gave his brother a helpless smile.

  Ash shook his head. “This is why I don’t like leaving you,” he groused. “I go away, and you retreat into your shell as if you were a little crab at the seashore. You’re intelligent. You’re amusing. You ought to see people—no, I don’t mean all the time, so you can stop curling up like a hedgehog! Once or twice a day. You like people, Mark. Talk to them. Tell me that you at least said more to Margaret than a passing ‘good day.’ I suspect that she, unlike you, actually notices when she fails to talk to people for an entire day.”