“I can imagine.” He set his hand on her shoulder behind her. “Easily. I’m remembering every word I said to you, every last unkind, unwarranted comment I made about Lady Anna. You must have thought me the cruelest man imaginable. These past months…your mother, the ecclesiastical suit. Your fiancé. Of course, your fiancé. Your dowry. Your place in society. My God. I had you declared a bastard. Margaret, what have I done to you?”
She buried her face in her hands, her eyes burning. She’d imagined this moment a thousand ways. In her mind, he’d scorned her. He’d cursed her. He’d walked away in a huff. She should have known that Ash would always find a way to outdo her imagination. “Ash. Please don’t.”
“Is Anna your name, then?”
“Anna Margaret. But Anna is my mother’s name. Everyone has always called me Margaret.”
“You were standing in the room when Parford said he didn’t give a damn about his children. My God, Margaret. How can you bear it?”
“I bear it just fine, thank you, so long as I don’t need to think of it.” Her chin wobbled.
Ash accepted this in relative silence. He strode to the window and looked away. “Have you any doubt in your mind that I wish to marry you because I want you, not for any more mercenary reason?”
She looked at him, her mind jumbled. “Even you, Ash, could not be so ruthless. No. I don’t believe it of you.”
He paced to his chest of drawers. “But I am that ruthless, Margaret.” He let out a breath. “I know that of me, even if you have not yet come to the realization. And your brother will try to steal that certainty from you. He’ll tell you I’m lying. I want you to know in a way that your brother cannot steal from you.”
“I’m certain.” But she wasn’t. Certainty had been a thing for last night. The more time passed, the more doubts encroached.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he sifted through a pile of garments on his chest of drawers, until he found his waistcoat. Then he strode back to her. Silently he held it out, an arm’s length between them. “Look in the right pocket.”
Margaret took it gingerly. The fabric was rough against her hands. Her fingers slipped into the pocket and found a crinkling piece of paper. She pulled it out. For a second, she wondered if she, too, had somehow lost the ability to decode symbols. Then she realized she was looking at the reverse side, where ink had seeped through the foolscap. She flipped the paper over, and stared at the characters written in a crabbed hand on the other side. But even reading those words, she could not truly comprehend them. It was almost as if her mind had forgotten how to function, as if the symbols on it were written in an alphabet so foreign and distinct from her world that she could not understand its import.
“What is this? Why…why does it say Margaret Lowell on its face?”
“It’s why I went to London last week. It’s why I’ve been in a terrible dudgeon these last days, waiting for an express that never arrived. It’s a receipt from the Archbishop of Canterbury’s office in Doctor’s Commons, where I applied for a special license.”
“It’s dated nine days ago.”
“I know. And that is how you know that no matter what your brother tells you, no matter how he tries to make you doubt me, what I say is true. I wanted to marry you weeks ago. The great benefit I see to marrying you is that I would be married to you. I told you it didn’t matter who your parents were. I meant it. I want you. Nothing else matters.”
But everything else was pressing against her now. “Ash.” Margaret’s voice threatened to dissolve. She swallowed the lump in her throat, the incipient tears. “You are breaking my heart.”
That phrase had never made sense to her before, except in metaphor. But she was being pulled in two. Making love to Ash had been a little defiance—a statement that her body was hers, that her life and her virtue belonged to her. That she belonged to herself and nobody could ever take that away.
But he wasn’t asking for a little defiance any longer. He was asking for her allegiance. Her brother was right about one thing: if she married him, it would be a complete betrayal. Not of some unfortunate rules that society insisted upon, but of her brothers, her mother. If she married him, her brothers could lose their bid for legitimacy. They would be outcasts, sustained only by the tiny unentailed portions of the estate.
She had promised herself that she would be noble, even if she was no longer considered nobility. He was asking her to be selfish, to think only of her own future happiness. If she did that, she would be no better than her father.
He was asking for more than she could possibly deliver.
“I understand now,” he said, “why the license took so long to issue. The archbishop’s office wouldn’t send it out until they could verify that you were eligible to marry, and the parish here has no records of a Miss Margaret Lowell.”
“No. They wouldn’t.”
“Well, I’ll apply again.”
It wasn’t supposed to be like this, when he uncovered the truth. It was supposed to be easy. Her revelation was supposed to have been the death knell of his desire. There shouldn’t have been any need for her to choose between a future with him and her brothers’ survival. Who was she, if she abandoned them?
Who was she, if she walked away from him?
She had learned to withstand her father’s abuse. But this gentleness left her undone. There was no word in her lexicon for this sort of kindness, no space in her understanding to encompass it.
She simply shook her head. “No, Ash. I don’t know. I—I just don’t know.”
He let out a sigh and pulled her to him. She felt his arms around her. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
She had once thought she wanted to see him sorry. She’d wanted to punish him, to rip his heart out and stomp on it, so that he would know how it felt to have his world inverted about him.
She had been wrong. It killed her. Because he wasn’t hurting for himself. He was hurting for her.
His kindness robbed her of the cold outrage that had fueled her all this time. But for one last moment, she could pretend that they could be together. That his arms around her were solid and real, and it was the reality of her waiting life that was the evanescent, impossible dream.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
IF IT HAD BEEN embarrassing for Ash to greet Richard Dalrymple that morning, half-clothed, with his sister in his arms, it was even more awkward when the man appeared at breakfast. Dalrymple paused at the corner of the room and glanced in, a half sneer on his face. The expression of distaste was rather ruined by his eye, which had already begun to turn a dull red where Ash had struck him.
“I see,” he said, in an accent so rarified that it made Ash want to smack him again, “that this room is infested.” He sniffed at Ash, and then glanced at Mark and stiffened.
“With all of us vermin,” Ash said. “Your sister—the only interesting one among us—is off tending to your father.” Ash picked up his butter knife, and Dalrymple paled and flinched.
“Good God. What do you suppose I’m going to do? Eviscerate you with this thing? Look. It’s quite dull.” Ash shook his head, scooped a lump of butter from the crock, and applied it to his bread. “And apparently, it’s not alone. You might as well eat, Dalrymple. You need to keep up your strength, especially if you imagine you’re going to take on the Herculean task of bending Parliament to your will.”
Mark met Ash’s eye, and then bit his lip, as if holding something back. A suspicion intruded on Ash’s mind—a half-remembered statement his brother had made.
“By the way, Mark, did you realize that Margaret is actually Margaret Dalrymple?”
“Ah. So she told you, then.”
Ash’s fingers drummed against the table, a harsh beat that took the place of actual thought. He stared at his brother. “You knew.” His voice was low.
“I had my suspicions.” Mark glanced at him, and then with a sigh, he added, “and then Smite came down here and confirmed them. He saw her a few years ago.”
Dalr
ymple glanced up at this but said nothing. Instead, he sidled against the wall until he reached the sideboard, where he removed a plate. Ash ignored him.
“You knew, and you didn’t tell me.”
Mark gave him a half shrug. “Honestly, Ash. She said she would tell you. And I didn’t believe the small delay between my discovery and her divulgence would harm you in the long run. Besides, she was half in love with you already, and I know how you are.”
Ash felt a low burn of rage begin. “Perhaps you might have thought how it could hurt her.”
“You wouldn’t hurt her.” Mark sighed. “You might not…go about courting her in the manner I would prefer, but you don’t hurt women. Come, now, Ash. I know you better than that. Quite frankly, it’s refreshing to know you can be wrong.”
Dalrymple was piling kippers onto his plate with movements made awkward, because he was still flattened against the wall. He clearly wanted to keep as far from the brothers as he possibly could. He only managed to make himself look completely ridiculous. How had a family that produced such a fainthearted coward also come up with Margaret?
“I wasn’t wrong,” Ash said quietly.
“She did lie to you, Ash. Granted, she has other sterling qualities.”
Ash hadn’t realized how much he must have already hurt her. When he’d met her, he’d known she was sad. This morning, he’d been too dazed to truly understand what her parentage meant. But with a little time to sort things out, and food in his belly, he’d begun to comprehend. Now he was no longer surprised that she’d thrown a clod of dirt at him on that long-ago night. Daggers would have been rather more appropriate.
“I stormed into her life, destroyed her parents’ marriage and made her a bastard. And you think that when I faced her down, holding the remainder of her life in my hands, that she should have blithely spouted out the truth? For all she knew, I would have stolen away the little that remained. I was an utter beast to her. I just didn’t realize it.”
From his vantage point against the wall, Dalrymple raised one finger, almost hesitantly. “As a point of order, you did the same to me, and I’ve yet to hear your apology.”
“Oh, shut up,” Ash snapped. “You’re different. You deserved it. You still do.”
Dalrymple’s mouth snapped shut.
Mark’s eyes blazed at this. “Oh, yes. Still set on revenge, are you, after all of this? Wishing now that perhaps when I told you to think about what you were doing to the Dalrymples, you’d listened? I said you didn’t have to do this. I said you were wrong. But no—the great Ash Turner doesn’t need to listen to logic. Or ethics.”
“Oh, God,” Dalrymple moaned from the side of the room. “Ethics. At ten in the morning. And you wonder why you were so constantly set upon at Eton?”
Mark and Ash turned to Dalrymple as one. “He’s championing you, you dolt,” Ash remarked.
“I don’t truck with what’s happened to you,” Mark added. “But if you ever wondered why Smite outdid you so consistently at Oxford, here is one explanation. It’s because you are an idiot. And perhaps because you feel free to suspend your ethics before breakfast.” Dalrymple flushed.
“If you must know,” Ash said, turning back to Mark, “I don’t regret what I did to the Dalrymples one bit—this incomparable ass over here deserved it. And while no doubt it hurt Margaret temporarily, once I’ve married her it shall all be resolved.”
Dalrymple stepped forwards. “Like hell you’ll marry her.”
“As if you have anything to say on the matter. She’s of age. She’s chosen me—or at least,” Ash added with a grimace, “she will.”
“She won’t choose you over her own brothers, you uncivilized brute. And once word gets out that you’re the sort of man who ruins a lady—”
Ash wasn’t quite sure how he got across the room. But he did—slamming Dalrymple against a wall for the second time that day. Eggs and pickled fish went flying.
“How,” he growled, his arm at the man’s throat, “do you imagine word will leak out?”
Dalrymple, held against the wall, up on tiptoes, squeezed his eyes shut. “I don’t know?” His voice was very high.
“Because if you were suggesting that you would sacrifice your sister’s reputation to serve your own purposes, think again. If you do, I won’t just steal your title and your lands. I will run any bank that holds your funds into the ground. I will bribe your servants to slip nettles into your bed. I will hire trumpets to stand outside your home every evening, where they will sound notes at irregular intervals. You will never have a solid night’s sleep again.”
“You’re mad.” Dalrymple licked his lips.
“Perhaps. But as the putative head of the family, I can have you declared mentally incompetent and committed to an asylum, if you choose to say one word against Margaret.”
“I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t hurt my own sister.”
“Ash,” Mark said from behind him. “Give over. You don’t have to do this.”
It was either the threats, or he’d bodily pull the man to pieces. Margaret probably wouldn’t approve of either. Ash lowered his arm, and Dalrymple’s heels thumped to the floor.
He let out a sigh. And then he cast his brother a reproachful look.
“I’ll send you both to asylums,” he growled.
Richard bit his lip and stepped back in fear. But Mark knew him rather better. He rolled his eyes in unconcern. “Choose a quiet one for me. I should like to get some writing done.”
ASH HAD NEVER ENTERED the north wing of the house before. The chambers there had been shut off during his visit. He had understood they belonged to the Dalrymple offspring; he had just never realized that one of them still resided in the household.
With Margaret’s charade at an end, she’d moved back to the room that was rightfully hers. The maid had guided him to her chamber—and then stayed.
So they were to have a chaperone. It seemed rather late for that.
Margaret sat at a table in her parlor, writing a letter. She was dressed in dark silk—not quite black, but a gray sufficiently dark to pass as storm clouds. A two-inch fall of dark lace touched her elbows. Her hair was no longer pinned up in a serviceable knot; instead, it had been braided and curled and arranged in an intricate pattern.
She wore the same gold necklace. He still wondered about that locket.
When he cleared his throat, she looked up at him. She held her pen, her eyes wary. She looked different—tidy and coiffed and sleek. But her eyes were still the same.
“My God, Margaret,” he said.
“It is a bit much to comprehend, I am sure.” Her voice seemed smooth and unruffled. It had taken him weeks to understand that this was just her way of hiding deep emotion. “This is the first time you’ve seen me as Lady Anna Margaret. Well.” She shrugged, and spread her arms. She’d looped a knit shawl over her shoulders, and it slipped as she did so. “Here I am.”
Lady Margaret’s gown fit rather better than those loose gray frocks. The fringe of her shawl shaped itself to her bodice, outlining curves he’d held early this morning.
“There are a great many things I don’t understand,” he said.
“I suppose you should like to know why I lied to you.”
He just looked at her. Now that he knew who she was, that secret sadness she always carried with her made sense. She’d told him in the very first hour why she disliked him. She’d never given him lies. Just truths that he hadn’t truly heard.
“If you must know,” she began, “and given what has transpired between us, I suppose you deserve the full story, the plan started weeks ago, when—”
“Hang the plan, Margaret. I don’t care about any of that. I want to know—she was your mother. Not the duchess. Not your employer. Your mother died. And you…you blame me. For good reason.”
Her mouth stopped, midword. Her lips worked, but no sound came out. Finally she set her pen down and put her fingers to her temples. “That night I threw dirt at you—the conservatory was he
r favorite place. I had wanted to feel close to her. And then you came along and disrupted everything.”
“You are in mourning.”
Margaret glanced at her dark silk. “I’ve worn gray the entire time I’ve known you, Ash.”
“I’m not referring to your clothing, Margaret. I’m referring to your spirit.”
She let out a tired sigh. “Ash, you’ve understood a great many things. But really—what would you know about mourning a mother?”
He glanced behind them to make sure that the arm of the sofa would hide the extent of what he was about to do from the maid’s watchful eyes. Then, he sat next to her and placed his hand on her knee. The gesture was casual, friendly—and yet intimate in a way that transcended mere physicality.
He leaned in and spoke in a near whisper. “My mother was complicated. Painful. At the end of it all, she was quite, quite mad. But I remember gentle moments, before she started to change. I remember when she was my safe haven. That’s what made her descent into madness so frightening. Not the beatings, nor even the illness. I could remember what she had once been, and I kept waiting for her to return. Instead, she slipped further away, every time I saw her.”
Margaret’s eyes rounded.
“Maybe,” he said, “that is part of what drove me in those early days of business. I kept thinking that if I accomplished more, maybe this time she would be proud of me. If I recovered the family fortune, she would value me. If my brothers went to Eton, she would honor what I had done. I kept waiting for her maternal instincts to overcome her madness.”
Margaret reached out and took his hand.
“But no,” he said. “It never worked.”
“I am certain,” Margaret told him, “that somewhere, somehow, she was aware of what you had accomplished. And that even if she couldn’t acknowledge it in her lifetime, she was—is—proud of you.”
Her fingers constricted around his hand.
“When she passed away, I cried. Don’t tell my brothers—I shouldn’t like to admit to weakness. But I remember what animated her, before. And I mourned the fact that everything I loved about her had died long before. I always wanted to believe that my mother—my real mother—was hidden somewhere in that shell of a body. But if she was, I never saw it. I had years to mourn her loss, before she was taken away for good. I still wake up nights, feeling as if something is gone. You…you’ve scarcely had time to believe it’s happened.”
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