A LADY NEVER VISITED a gentleman’s house alone. And Margaret—arriving in a hired hack, dressed in a heavy cloak—had most definitely come alone. But given her destination, her brothers would never have accompanied her, and the maids would never have kept silent.
Still, the butler showed Margaret inside without a word, not questioning the assumed name she’d given him.
Ash’s house was beautiful. Beautiful and new— Portland stone without, honey-wood floors within, the walls painted and papered in vibrant, warm colors. The ceiling was cunningly wrought plasterwork, gilded all over. It was rich without being ostentatious.
That understated elegance reminded Margaret of Ash.
She was conducted into a parlor, where Ash sat. His fingers drummed on his desk, and he looked up at her with a smile on his face. But he betrayed nothing else to the manservant who conducted her in.
“Ah,” he said. “Miss Laurette. How good of you to come see me.”
A flick of his hand dismissed the servant. Ash waited until the door shut before he stood and strode toward her.
“Margaret.” Her skin prickled—his hands found her waist, and then he was drawing her close in a rough, possessive embrace.
“Margaret,” he repeated, his breath warming the top of her head. His hand made seductive little circles against her back, caresses that she felt all the way through the fabric of her gown. And then he was tipping her chin up, lowering his head to hers. Not asking, not waiting, just slipping into intimacy as easily as he might put on a pair of old, comfortable slippers.
“No. Wait. You need to hear me out first.”
He raised his head. His hands tightened around her waist. “What is it?”
Last evening, after they had all come home, her brother had told her what awaited them at the gathering Lord Lacy-Follett had organized. And her wants had crystallized.
She’d held a piece of meat to Richard’s blackened eye as he spoke to her. And right now, she could see the faint echo of a bruise on Ash’s jaw, a discoloration of skin under stubble. She wanted the people she loved to stop hurting one another. She’d thought of nothing but this impossible tangle all night long.
“Oh, Ash.” Her fingers ran along his face, and she wished she could make him well once more. “I do want to marry you.”
“Now that is an easy request to grant.” His lips touched her forehead. “Do you wish a large wedding or a small one? Shall we hold it soon?” He kissed her nose. “Or sooner?”
“You’re speaking with Lord Lacy-Follett tomorrow.”
He froze, pulled away from her an inch. “Yes. And you’ve realized that after that decision is made, there’s no reason to hold back any longer. Either Dalrymple will prevail or…” He drew out the pause, and she could feel his lips curve into a warm smile against her cheek. “Or,” he continued, “he won’t. Either way, it won’t matter.”
Margaret drew a deep breath for courage. “But it could matter.”
“You want to help me defeat your brothers?”
“No. I want you to step down.”
His arms remained about her, but he drew away to look her in the eyes. His jaw locked. His nostrils flared.
“You don’t need to be duke,” she continued in a rush. “You’re wealthy. More than that—when you walk in a room, people turn to look at you. You have this…this palpable presence. Even just as plain Mr. Turner, people would listen to you. Look at you.”
He didn’t move, didn’t say anything.
“But my brothers—Ash, they don’t have any of that. They’ll get a few thousand pounds. Without a family name behind them, without titles behind them, they’ll be nothing but bastards, with no place in society.”
Still he did not respond, except to lower his hands from her waist.
“Please,” she begged. “My father—when I found out that he was a bigamist, that I was a bastard, it almost undid me. You’ve told me all this time that I can accomplish things. That I mean something. Let me prove this to them.”
Ash let out a sigh. “And here I’d hoped you would ask for a new carriage. No. I know. This is hardly the time for levity. But Margaret, my dear, if this were about mere revenge, I’d give it up for you. But it isn’t. I have these…these feelings. These instincts. And I simply know that if I’m Parford, I’ll finally be able to make matters come right for my brothers. I can’t abandon them. Not again.”
“Abandon them! You’re talking about abandoning them to a life of wealth and advantage.”
He shook his head. “You’ve met them. They’re trapped. Have been in some inescapable way ever since I found them on the streets all those years ago. I can’t put it right without this.”
“You don’t know that,” Margaret began.
“But I do. I do.”
“You can’t.”
“I can.” His voice grew harsh. “I must.”
“And what if you’re wrong? What if you ruin my brothers’ future, what if you tear me in two with worrying, and you are wrong? Have you never thought of that?”
His eyes glittered, and his hands drew into fists. But he did not move toward her again. “If I am wrong,” he said quietly, “then I truly have nothing to offer my brothers. No intelligence. No advantage. I certainly lack their wit. If I am wrong—if my instinct is all imagination—then I am nothing but an illiterate ignoramus. Believe me. I think of that all the time.”
“You’re—you’re a great deal more, Ash.” But so much of who he was was bound up in that confidence he had, that unshakable certainty. She’d seen him uncertain and vulnerable a few times. She couldn’t imagine him that way all the time.
He passed his hand over his face. “Marry me anyway, Margaret. Marry me not for your brothers, but simply because you love me. And I love you.”
She hadn’t realized how she wanted to hear those words until he said them. For one blissful second, everything else fell away—her endless obligations, her needs, her brothers. The thrill lasted longer than it should have, an electric tingle that coursed through her. But looking into his eyes was a window to a different sort of reality.
“You don’t love me,” she said slowly. “You’ve looked at me the same way from the instant we met.”
His grip tightened on her waist. He leaned into her on a hiss. “Don’t tell me I don’t love you. Don’t you dare tell me that, Margaret. I have loved you since the moment you read my brother’s book to me. I love that you are the one woman I can trust with my weakness, that you know all the dark parts of me and do not turn away. I love the fierceness with which you protect the ones you love, even when they don’t deserve it. I love every last inch of you, and I want you for my own.” His words were hot, fiercely possessive, and yet he leaned his forehead against hers gently. “Although God knows, I don’t deserve you.”
She felt almost dizzy under this onslaught. Still, there was one truth she could not relinquish. “You love your brothers, and so you stole them a dukedom. When Mark needed you at Eton, you were there before he could even speak the words. But you are destroying my family, destroying my life, and you ask me to simply accept it.”
His hands tightened around hers, but she did not stop.
“On any other man, I could believe this casual selfishness could be equated with love. But, Ash, I know what love looks like on you. It doesn’t look like this.”
“And how should you know what love looks like?” he demanded. He slipped a finger under the chain around her neck and pulled her locket from between her breasts. “Is it Richard in here? Or Edmund? Your father? Which unworthy man do you carry next to your heart, never to be supplanted in your affections no matter how poor-spirited he proves himself to be?”
“That’s not it. It’s not about choosing my brothers over you.”
Her hand closed about the chain, but he held her locket firmly. With his other hand, he flicked open the catch. His breath stopped.
“My mother.” Margaret’s voice caught. “Gentle. Loving. Patient. Clever and funny, when my father wasn’t around. She taught me everything. And she died when you revealed she was an adulteress.”
He let go, and the heavy locket swung back to strike Margaret in the chest.
“Every time I look at you,” she said, “I see an echo of her. Looking at you is both bitter and sweet, painful and so wonderful at the same time. It was my mother’s dearest wish that her son would have her house—that her labor of love would pass on to her children. I thought that if I found a way to make her dream come true, that I might find some peace. This isn’t about choosing my brothers over you. It is about trying to find a way to look at you without feeling any of that pain any longer.”
“Oh,” he said lamely. “Margaret.”
“I didn’t come here to beg you to give up the dukedom simply because I wished to hand you an ultimatum. I came because no matter how much I love you—and I do love you, Ash—I simply could not bear knowing that I married the man who destroyed my mother’s dreams. I don’t know how I could look at myself again if I did.”
“Oh. Margaret.” He did come forward then, did take her in his arms. And he leaned forward, just enough to press his lips against her forehead one last time.
“God,” he said. “I can’t give my brothers up. I can’t.”
“I know,” she said softly. “Neither can I.”
Her words fell between them—so quiet, and yet so suffocating. There was nothing further to say, no way around this impasse. He held her. But when she gently removed his hands from her waist, he didn’t stop her. When she turned and left him, he did not follow after.
Now, with everything said, even Ash could no longer come up with a reason to pursue her.
THE AFTERNOON SEEMED ALMOST UNREAL to Ash. The pale light of a clammy autumn day cast ghosts of shadows across the carpet of Lord Lacy-Follett’s receiving room. Ash stood shoulder to shoulder with Richard Dalrymple.
An outside observer might have thought them joined in a common purpose. Dalrymple’s jaw was set, his shoulders drawn rigidly together. If the aching clench of Ash’s own muscles was any indication, he looked about as comfortable.
But despite that apparent solidarity, the only solid feeling between them was a mutual desire to defeat each other—at any price. Even, Ash thought, the cost that he could never forget: the sight of Margaret leaving him, and he left with nothing to offer that would make it better. He’d lain awake all night, twisting and turning, trying to upend everything Margaret had said. But she seemed impossible. Distant.
The nine lords Lacy-Follett had assembled sat in high-backed chairs, arranged in a half moon. Only a thin table separated Ash from them.
“Gentlemen.” Lord Lacy-Follett spoke from his seat at the very center. “There must be some sort of amicable agreement that we can come to.”
Ash glanced over at Richard Dalrymple. With Margaret gone, all hope of amity had fled. Dalrymple’s hands were clenched around a fat sheaf of papers, which he’d rolled up. His lips were pursed; his eye had purpled. And for the first time, Ash noticed a similarity between his profile and Margaret’s—a curve of the lips, a jut of the chin. He’d tried not to think what it meant, that Dalrymple was her brother. He’d tried to separate it out. It was damned unnerving.
“My lords,” Dalrymple spoke with a palpable unease. He cast a tight look at Ash, and then snapped his gaze forward to concentrate on the nine men in front of him. “If I can convince but one of you to support my suit, I’ll have all the support I need to pass the Act of Legitimation through Parliament. And I am wagering that I can convince one of you to support me.”
Lord Lacy-Follett glanced at Ash, as if measuring the effect of his words. He conferred, behind cupped hand, with the man sitting to his right, and then looked up at Dalrymple. “That is not our current estimate of the votes,” he said.
“The votes have changed.” A tight smile crept over Dalrymple’s face—one that seemed at odds with his clutched fingers. “Lord Forsyth, and five others, have come to support my suit.”
Ash felt a muscle in his jaw twitch, but he kept silent. Forsyth had teetered on the brink of a decision for weeks, before tentatively declaring himself for Ash.
There was another exchange of glances. And then a man behind Lacy-Follett—Lord Dallington—spoke up. “I spoke with Forsyth just three days ago. Given…ah, given his financial situation, I find this news very unlikely.”
That smile expanded across Dalrymple’s face—not a pleased one; almost a grimace. “The earlier version of the Act of Legitimation, which you might have seen circulated before this? It’s changed.” He unrolled the papers he’d been gripping and spread the sheets in his hand. “This is the current act, which will be put to the vote.”
He slid the papers across the table to the men who sat in front of him. After a pause, and with some hesitation, he handed Ash a sheet, as well.
Ash took it and glanced down at the meaningless letters. In front of him, the men were silent. Reading. Ash felt a slow beat of fear inside him. He tamped it down; he’d bluffed his way through similar situations before. He could do it again.
“My God,” Lacy-Follett said. “I suppose that would take care of Forsyth. And his financial problems.”
Beside him, Lord Dallington licked his lips and set the paper down. “Mr. Turner. What think you of the proposed act?”
Ash ran a hand down the paper. “I don’t understand how this would mollify Forsyth’s concerns.”
“You do know what Forsyth’s objection was, don’t you?”
Ash did, but the more he could make Dallington explain, the less he had to pretend. “Humor me with an explanation.”
“The Duchess of Parford’s marriage settlements—or at least, sixty thousand pounds of them—had been set in trust for her lawful female issue. If the Act of Legitimation fails to pass, his sister the duchess has no lawful female issue, and the trust reverts to him.”
“I see,” Ash said slowly. Even though he didn’t.
“Now that the suit no longer names Lady Anna Margaret,” Dallington continued, “there is no danger of Forsyth losing the money.”
It was all Ash could do to keep from gasping. As it was, he felt as if he had been punched in the kidneys. He bent slightly, his hands striking the table in front of him, before raising his eyes to Dalrymple. “You—” He bit back the epithet he’d been about to hurl. “You left your own sister off. You’ll leave her illegitimate, just so you can have your dukedom back.”
Well. At least that explained why the man’s expression of triumph seemed so unvictorious. At least he had the grace not to be proud of what he was doing. Margaret had gone to Ash and begged on her brothers’ behalf. She might have had Ash. She might have been the Duchess of Parford herself. But she’d refused to abandon her brothers to illegitimacy.
“I didn’t hit you nearly hard enough the other night,” Ash growled. “Is that what you Dalrymple men do? You abandon your women to bear the brunt of society’s hurt, just so that you can have an easy life?”
“You think this was an easy decision?” Dalrymple demanded.
Ash took a step closer—swiftly enough that Dalrymple flinched from him.
“Gentlemen!” Lacy-Follett said. “The point of this meeting is to avoid further violence, not to foment it.”
Hitting Dalrymple had done little good so far. Violence would only convince more men to support the man’s suit. Dalrymple’s faithless, ugly suit.
Ash turned away, his hands fisting at his sides. What was it going to do to Margaret when she discovered that her brother had betrayed her into illegitimacy, as her father had? What would she say? How would she feel?
He could imagine her pain with a startling intensity.
And for just one second, Ash could see how to use this. Dalrymple still needed one of these men for his suit to go forward. Instinct clamored inside him. A man who would betray a sister was no candidate for the dukedom. He could make the case. He could win all these men over to his side, settle the dispute once and for all.
But…but what if he did?
He had always thought of the suit in Parliament as pertaining to her brothers. Ever since Ash had met her, he’d been assiduously courting votes in Parliament to defeat the act that Dalrymple proposed. But until this afternoon, that act had included all the duke’s children. Including Margaret.
That little detail had seemed unimportant—so unimportant, in fact, that he’d never considered it, and she had never mentioned it. But if Ash won, he would be the one to betray her. He would make her a bastard, twice over. He’d been trying to keep her a bastard all this time.
He had not only destroyed her life unwittingly, before he’d met her; he had continued to destroy it, even after he knew who she was. Even after he loved her.
Ash opened his eyes and glanced at his foe. The man stood, his shoulders drawn together. For all of Dalrymple’s flinching cowardice, Ash felt a shameful sense of kinship with him. They’d both been too foolish to realize what they were doing to Margaret—or, perhaps, too selfish to care.
The other lords were looking at Dalrymple in barely concealed distaste.
“I do love my sister, you know,” Dalrymple said defensively. “It was either this, or have nothing.”
Ash’s stomach burned. Inside him, irrepressible instinct clamored out.
Fight. Win. He could still have the dukedom. He could have his vengeance. He could raise his brothers high—give them every last thing they’d ever dared to want. He would never fear again that he had nothing to offer. And all he would have to do was to betray the woman he loved. Ash swallowed, but his throat remained dry. He could look back over his shoulder and finally understand the devastation he’d wrought. So. This was how it felt to be a conquering hero.
There was no way to repair the damage, no way to heal what he’d done to her.
“Let me see if I understand this,” Ash said to the lords in front of him. “If the lot of you support Dalrymple, he won’t need Forsyth and the votes he carries any longer.”
“That is correct.”
When it came down to it, he had no choice at all.
Ash strode over to Dalrymple and yanked the last paper from his hand. “You sicken me,” he said. He ripped it into quarters and threw the pieces to the ground.
“My lords,” he said. “Here is your amicable solution. You vote for Dalrymple’s bill. But only—and I do mean only—on condition that he rewrite it to include his sister.”
Dalrymple’s jaw went slack.
Lord Lacy-Follett stared at Ash. “So there is some truth to those rumors after all. Mr. Turner, if you want a different solution, something else might be arranged.” He cast a glance at Richard, and sniffed. “I, for one, am not best pleased with the first scenario that was proffered to us. There are some things gentlemen ought not do, and sacrificing women for personal gain stands high on my list.”
Dalrymple flinched. But Ash simply shook his head, too weary to fight any longer. Not now. Not when he’d finally understood what he was doing to her.
Lord Lacy-Follett tapped his lips. “We shall be here all afternoon discussing the matter. But gentlemen, unless you have anything further to add, you are excused.”
Dalrymple took one shaky step toward the doors. As he did so, Ash grabbed his lapels. Not hard, not violently, but Ash twisted them just enough to let the man know that, had he wished, he could have sent him flying across the room. He leaned in. And then, as Dalrymple’s eyes widened in terror, Ash whispered, “If you don’t take care of her, I shall truly hunt you down. You won’t be duke long enough to enjoy it.”
