Seductive Starts

by Courtney Milan

  Perhaps they could still find a way not to do so.

  “What are you doing?” her father asked.

  “Putting on your ring.” It felt well there. Right. Warm.

  “Richard’s ring,” her father corrected. “We’ll have to get it adjusted to fit him.”

  She had never wanted to be like her father, betraying her family. But from here on out, she was going to have faith in someone who deserved it. The man who had stood by her, who had never hurt her. Who had told her, from the very first, that she mattered, and demonstrated it by his choices.

  “Richard is my son now,” her father was saying.

  Margaret leaned over him. “No,” she said, her voice harsh. “No, he is not.”

  “He will be, when—”

  “By your definition, I am the only son you will ever have.”

  He blinked at her. “I beg your pardon?”

  She hadn’t known she was going to say it, but the words seemed right coming out of her mouth. “I am going to Saxton House to present my case. I am going to marry Ash Turner. If what Richard said is correct, the lords there are looking for any reason to abandon him. A continuation through the female line is not traditional, but the excuse will suffice. So understand this: I will choose the next Duke of Parford. I will inherit the estate. I will have the entailed property.” Margaret’s hand clenched into a fist.

  “I can’t believe I am hearing this.” Her father stared up at her in dim incomprehension. “What would your mother say, if she could see you now?”

  What would her mother say?

  Her mother had carefully tended the estate, training servants, choosing decorations, caring for the gardens. She’d built a home to pass on to her children. It had killed her to believe that Parford Manor would go to a stranger. But then, with Margaret married to Ash…it wouldn’t.

  Margaret’s hands balled into fists. “I believe,” she said softly, “that if she could speak at this moment—if she knew that I would inherit her house—I believe that she would be cheering.”

  Her father stared at her in stupefaction. She had waited all this time for some sign that the man she remembered was still inside her father. But maybe that part of him had vanished, along with his strength and ability to stand. Maybe he’d lost the piece of himself that cared for her. Maybe she would never see it again—at least not now.

  Margaret leaned forward to kiss him on the forehead. “Someday,” she said quietly, “when you truly understand everything that’s happened, you’ll be cheering, too.”

  And then, still wearing the ring, she turned and walked from the room.

  HOME. IT SEEMED a strange place for Ash to return to, after everything that had transpired that afternoon. After he’d left Saxton House earlier, he’d not wanted to return here. But when he stepped inside, Mark was waiting for him in the entry. Ash had felt so bruised, he’d not wanted to believe that time would continue to pass.

  But Mark smiled at him, all light and innocence. Ash felt a last bitter tinge. Seeing his brother only drove home how much he had really lost.

  “You would be proud,” he finally said. “I realized that I didn’t have to do any of this. I didn’t.”

  “The news has traveled even to me,” Mark said. A cryptic description, but Mark seemed unfazed by the loss of the dukedom.

  Ash looked at him. “I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I know you didn’t care about any of this for yourself. But—I just had this notion, see. I knew, somehow, that if I were the Duke of Parford, someday I’d have made things different for you. I didn’t want to give up on that. But then…”

  “I’ve always managed to take care of myself,” Mark said dryly. “Today should prove no exception. You know I would never be angry at you for doing the right thing.”

  “I’ve abandoned you enough.”

  “Abandoned me?” Mark’s hand was curled about itself, and he turned to Ash with a quizzical expression on his face. “When have you ever abandoned me?”

  “There was the time I went to India.”

  “Which you did in order to make enough funds for the family to survive. I can hardly begrudge you that.”

  “And there was that time at Eton. You’d told me that Edmund Dalrymple had begun to single you out. That he was pushing you around. And you begged me to take you home.”

  “I recall. You read me quite the lecture—told me, in fact, that I had to stay there.”

  “Two weeks later, I returned to find you battered and bruised, your face bloodied, your eyes blacked and your fingers broken. And all I could think was that I had done that to you. I’d abandoned you, for no reason other than my personal pique and vanity, and you paid the price.”

  “Vanity?” Mark shook his head. “I thought that was one of your ridiculous instincts, Ash. Horrible to hear about. Impossible to argue with. And as usual, entirely right.”

  Ash felt his throat go dry. “That wasn’t instinct.”

  Mark raised one eyebrow. “Really? Nonetheless, it was still the right thing for you to tell me.”

  Ash had to say it. He had to tell him, before his nerve gave out and he let another decade slip by. “That,” Ash said quietly, “was fear. You had to go to school. I didn’t want you to turn out like me.”

  “Oh,” Mark said with a roll of his eyes, “I see. Because you’re so unimpressive a specimen.”

  Ash took a deep breath. “No. Because I’m illiterate.”

  “Well, you don’t even appreciate Shakespeare, and that does rather speak against you.” Mark shook his head and reached for Ash’s hand. “Here. I have something—”

  Ash pulled his fingers away. “I meant that in the most literal of senses. I can’t read. Words don’t make sense to me. They never have.”

  Mark fell silent. He looked at Ash as if his world had been turned on his head. He frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “I can’t read. I can’t write. Margaret read your book aloud to me.”

  “But your letters.” Mark leaned heavily against the wall. “You—you sent me letters. You wrote on them. I know you did.” He paused, and then said in a smaller voice, “Didn’t you?”

  “There are a few phrases I’ve committed to memory. I wrote them over and over, hour after hour, until the words came out in the right order. Until they said what I intended, without my having to look at what I wrote. There were some things I needed to be able to tell you, when you were away.”

  “Your postscripts always said the same thing,” Mark said. “‘With much—’” he broke off.

  “‘With much love,’” Ash finished hoarsely. “With more than I could possibly write.”

  Mark passed his hand briefly over his face. When he looked up at Ash, he lifted his chin.

  “Nobody knows,” Ash warned him. “If anyone were to find out, it would—it would—”

  “You protected me.” Mark’s voice was uneven. “All these years, you protected me. From Mother. From the Dalrymples. From my own wish to go build a cocoon and stay there. Do you think I don’t know that?”

  “I— Well—”

  “Do you truly think that after all this time, after everything you have done for me, that I would not protect you?”

  He’d been the elder brother for so long, had been carrying that burden for all these years. It wasn’t just recent events that had fatigued him. But with that light shining in Mark’s eyes, suddenly the future seemed manageable. Ash had been exhausted before; now, he felt refreshed.

  “And next time you need someone to read to you, if— But, oh. You distracted me. Here. I’m supposed to give you this.”

  “Give me what?”

  In answer, Mark held out his fist and unfurled his fingers. Cradled in the palm of his hand was a black key—its bow a curlicue of iron, crossed by a sword. A master key. The master key to Parford Manor.

  Mark smiled knowingly at him. “Margaret brought this by.”

  Ash felt a dizzying flush. She’d been by? His heart rose. But then—she hadn’t stayed
to see him. His stomach sank. And she was returning his gift—not good.

  But what use would she imagine he would have for the master key to Parford Manor, with her brother lord there? His emotions warred between elation and despair. “What do I do?” he asked Mark. “No—never mind. I already know. I have to see her.” He was halfway to the door before Mark’s voice arrested him.

  “Ash, you cannot call on a lady looking like that.”

  Ash looked down. His trousers were spattered with mud he’d collected over the course of his perambulations. He’d discarded his cravat hours ago. “I can’t?”

  “Even you cannot.” Mark’s eyes glinted with humor. “I am protecting you, recall.”

  A few minutes’ delay. Ash juggled that with the prospect of looking civilized for her. He supposed the time wouldn’t matter anywhere except in his own racing heart.

  “Damn,” he swore, and he raced up to his room.

  “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” he heard Mark calling from behind him. He ignored that.

  He didn’t bother ringing for his valet—the man was too fastidious, and the toilette he would insist on putting Ash through too time-consuming. Instead, Ash shrugged off his sodden coat and tugged at the sleeves of his linen shirt, eager to remove it.

  And that was when he heard a gentle, feminine clearing of a throat. He froze, his hands at the buttons of his neck.

  “You know,” a voice said behind him, “if you rush the disrobing, I don’t get nearly so much enjoyment from it.”

  He was almost afraid to look about, lest her voice prove to be a product of his fevered imagination. Slowly, he turned around anyway.

  If this was his imagination, he realized, his imagination had produced a gray silk dress and hung it over the back of his dressing chair, not six inches from him. He reached out and touched the silk gingerly. It felt real. It smelt of roses.

  And then he lifted his eyes from the chair to his bed. If this was his imagination, his imagination was glorious. Margaret lay on his coverlet, stretched out full length. She still wore a corset and petticoats, but they’d been hiked up so that he could see where her garters tied at the knees. She crooked one finger at him and smiled.

  “Margaret. What are you doing here?”

  “I,” she said, “have been procuring my future.”

  His mind went blank. He didn’t know how to take it. She’d decided to have him, after all. She’d realized she didn’t need him, not one bit. His head pounded. His heart swelled in a mix of hope and despair.

  “I want you.”

  Hope. Hope. It was all hope. He took a careful step toward her.

  “Wait. There’s a condition.”

  “You know,” Ash said, his throat closing, “that if you are half-naked on my bed, all conditions will be met. Instantly.”

  “Ah, but this is one of the conditions I did not deliver to Lord Lacy-Follett earlier today.”

  If he’d been overwhelmed by her appearance before, he was stunned now. “You talked to Lacy-Follett? You cannot be serious.”

  “Oh, but I am. I had to renegotiate, after I’d heard what you had done. I had been so blinded by my loyalty to my brothers that I could not see that I owed loyalty to you, as well. I was wrong. I love you, Ash.”

  He swallowed.

  She smiled up at him. “I love that you make me feel as if I’m the only woman in the world. I love that you’ll always be there for me.” She sat up on the bed, and her petticoats fell, so that only her toes peeked out at him from underneath those layers of fabric. “I want to paint my own canvas, Ash. And I want you on it with me.”

  Delicately, she stretched out one leg. Her foot flexed, and then her toes found the floor. He was helpless. Just seeing her push to her feet got him hard. And seeing her in his room—on his bed—made every part of him reverberate with the rightness of it.

  She shook her head at him. “Still nothing to say? Lord Lacy-Follett and his group will vote down the bill in Parliament. I told them to do it. They agreed—every one of them—but to get them all on board, they wanted to ensure the duke’s line would continue. They insisted that we marry.”

  “Have you any plans tomorrow?”

  She held up one hand. “I’d like to ask for a wedding gift. Not—not an allowance for my brother. But an independence. I know it’s possible to obtain titles, if you make a donation to the Crown. If you know the right people. Could you do that for him?”

  “After what he did to you?”

  “Yes. After what he did to me.” She tilted her head, and her unbound hair spilled over her shoulders. “Because we’ve had enough of vengeance between us. Because I don’t want to be so caught up in what has been done that I forget what we could have in the future instead.”

  “And what of you?” Ash asked hoarsely. “When we talk of what could be, what of you?”

  “Yes, indeed.” Her smile broadened. She minced toward him, stopping mere inches from him. He could have reached out and drawn her against him. He might have leaned down and taken her lips in a kiss. “What of me, Ash?” she asked.

  Instead, he laid one finger on the gold chain of her necklace. He hooked his little finger underneath it and then undid the clasp. “Here,” he said, dropping the master key back onto the necklace. “That’s yours, my love.” He let it drop, and the key slid down the chain. It hit her locket with a clank.

  Ash fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, until he found what he was looking for. “And this—” he pulled a second key from his waistcoat “—this will unlock my rooms in town.” He let it fall down the chain, as well, and it slid to clank against the other key.

  She opened her hand, and he let the tangled mass of chain and keys and locket fall into her waiting palm.

  “It’s yours,” he said. “As am I, Margaret. Always. Now what are you going to do with me?”

  Her mouth curled up. But she turned from him and glided to the door. For a second, he thought she might actually walk through it—but instead of turning the handle, she jiggled the key he’d just given her into her hand. And she locked the door.

  “You mean, before I marry you?” She gave him a saucy smile, freed of sadness. “Until you can get that license, what are you doing for the next few hours?”

  He walked forward, his steps finally sure.

  “Margaret.” He meant to say her name softly, but it came out on a growl. She watched him come close, and she smiled as he did so. He didn’t stop, not until he’d placed his hands on each side of the door, until he’d pressed his chest against hers, until she was flattened against him, her heart beating in concert with his.

  He breathed in the scent of her hair, as intoxicating as a sweet white wine. His lips found her neck; his hands slid down her body to rest on her waist. He drew back just enough to look into her eyes.

  “For the next few hours,” he said quietly, “I believe I shall be occupied with you. Only you.”

  Epilogue

  Parford Manor, June, 1840

  THE SUN WAS HIGH in a blue sky untroubled by clouds, but Margaret could not relax. The servants had set the al fresco luncheon off to the side of the house. A pile of old rugs and a low table, brought out for this occasion, graced the north lawn, just beyond the waving heads of the rosebushes.

  They’d lunched outside often enough in the nearly three years since Margaret’s marriage—when the weather was fine, when Ash’s brothers visited. There was nothing unusual about the sight of that old, dented wood, graced with uneaten crusts and the green tops of strawberries. What made this day different was the sight just beyond the table.

  Ash had stripped off his coat and his cravat, and had rolled his cuffs to his forearms. And he was circling Richard, who was garbed similarly.

  “Keep your fists up,” Ash advised. “No, up—what part of up makes you think you should let them hang by your belt?”

  “The part that wants to protect the bits just below my waist,” Richard shot back.

  Margaret held her breath. For years, s
he’d been inviting her brother to visit. For years, he’d refused. He’d been angry with her and ashamed of himself, all at the same time, which hadn’t made for fond conversations. But after a year, they’d begun to exchange letters. At first, they had been tentative, awkward missives.

  This year, he’d finally accepted her invitation to visit. And on this, his last full day at Parford Manor, somehow Ash had inveigled him into a sparring match. A friendly sparring match.

  Or so she hoped. Her heart stood still.

  “Don’t mind me,” Richard said as he circled her husband. “I’m just trying to determine how to bring you to your knees without causing permanent damage. I shouldn’t wish to upset my sister.”

  “That’s for damned certain.” Ash’s remark stirred the unspoken tension that had hung in the air since Richard’s visit—the too-polite conversations, the glances her brother cast her way. There was still a great deal left unresolved. If this went badly, it might take years before he visited again.

  Margaret had a great deal of hope for the coming years—that Edmund might come around; that her own family, a mere two strong at this moment, might take root and grow.

  Beside her, Mark stirred. “Don’t worry about that,” he called out. “This is how Ash makes friends—by beating you into a pulp, or getting beaten in turn.”

  Ash didn’t take his eyes from Richard. “True,” he said shortly.

  Circling opposite Ash, Richard seemed pale and thin. He lacked Ash’s sense of vitality, his sense of grace. Margaret wondered briefly how terrible a mistake she’d made. She didn’t want this visit to end with a hasty ride to the physician. She reached for Mark’s hand and gripped it tightly.

  “So simple?” Richard asked. “Fight with you, and we’re friends? Never seemed to work before.”

  Ash smiled faintly. “That’s because it will only work when you win.”

  Richard’s jaw set, and he brought his fists up. Not high enough—Margaret could see that—but at least a little higher.

  Ash gave him a light tap on the shoulder with his fist. “If you’re going to be my brother,” he said, “you’ll have to learn how not to embarrass yourself in a fight.”