Deleted Scene: between Ash & Mark
Q. What does Ash think about Mark’s chastity after they come to an understanding?
A. There was a scene between Mark and Ash that was eventually deleted, mostly because I’d have to stop all the forward motion on the romance to drop it into the end of the story. So here it is now.
Ash put his hands in his pockets. “But you don’t want—”
Mark waited expectantly. “I don’t want what?”
Ash didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to put it without offending his younger brother. You don’t want to live. Mark didn’t want to grab life, to see new things, to experience. He’d hidden himself inside his own protective shell, and Ash had never been able to coax him out from it.
“You don’t want to want,” Ash finished lamely.
Mark slowly pushed himself to his feet. Ash had always thought of him as so damned young—as if twenty years later, that fragile, ethereal child burning up with fever was still at the forefront of his vision. But as Mark walked over to Ash, Ash realized that at some point in the intervening years, his brother had grown up. He wasn’t fevered. He wasn’t small and sickly any longer. He was whip-cord thin, but muscled. He was blond, but not pale. In those years when he’d been gone—and even in the years thereafter, when he’d been working to make a life for his brothers—Mark had grown up. He walked toward Ash now, his stride strong and steady. His eyes burned with an intensity that in any other man, Ash might have thought lethal. But this was Mark. Innocent Mark, gentle Mark.
When Mark stood a pace away, he drew himself up and put his hands on his hips. “You think I don’t want?” His voice was a growl.
He couldn’t be angry—Mark never got angry. Ash scowled. “No. Of course not. You have…ambitions. And…and goals. And such like.” He just didn’t have regular human desires, at least not the messy complicated things that Ash felt, deep in his gut. He didn’t look at his brothers and tremble deep inside, fearing that they would never find happiness. He didn’t think of Margaret and have his hands shake, knowing she could never look at him as he looked at her. He was unspoiled by any baser emotions like revenge or lust, and Ash loved him for it. Mark was special.
But it also meant…well, it meant he didn’t want. Not in the normal human way. And so Ash had to want for him. He had to give Mark the things he didn’t know he wanted, the things his soul desired deep down, but that he’d forgotten to feel after all those years of abstemious living. Mark had been taught not to desire, to give himself up in service of others. He did it so admirably.
Mark was looking him up and down. His lips were pressed together. Another man in his position might have been angry. But Mark looked at him with…well, with pity. It was damnably unnerving.
“You think I don’t have desires?” he asked.
Ash couldn’t answer. His mouth went dry with desperation.
“You’re daft,” Mark said.
It was the most uncharitable thing that Ash had ever heard his brother say, and his mouth dropped open.
“You’re completely daft,” Mark continued. “I believe in chastity, not celibacy. And if you think that translates into a lack of want, you are an idiot. I want. I want very, very badly.”
But he spoke matter-of-factly, as if he were discussing the price of corn.
“If I let myself sink into my wanting, trust me, I would wallow as much as you do. If I let myself sink into the experience of wanting…well, I would never get my mind off the scent of a woman when I pass her on the street, or the rounding of her curves.” He flexed his hands almost unconsciously, as if he could feel those curves against the palms of his hand. “Just because I can interpose my will between my wanting and my actions doesn’t mean I feel no desire.”
“But—”
Ash had been going to say, But you can’t really understand what you’re wanting until you experience it.
But Mark shook his head. “I’m a virgin,” he said. “Not an innocent. Nor even an ignoramus. I know precisely what I’m missing, and trust me, I want it.”
“If you want so badly, why haven’t you married?”
Surely it was not for lack of choice. Women flocked to Mark—his blond hair, that air of innocence coupled with strength. With Ash’s wealth behind him, with his own fortune established, he was as eligible as ever.
“Why haven’t you married?” Mark asked. “You’re thirty-four.”
Because he’d always been able to slake his wants elsewhere. Until Margaret, when the wanting had begun to run deeper. “I am—I have—that is to say—”
“Of course not. You wouldn’t marry just anyone. Not for money. Not for convenience. Not for position or power. You’re afraid of the virtuous maidens who so kindly disclaim all their own wants and desires. You want a woman who wants, too, someone who will never, ever neglect your children. You won’t marry until you are certain that whoever you pick will be as far from our mother as you could possibly get. And I don’t blame you. Is it any surprise I’m doing the same?”
They had never talked about their mother. Mark had always been so…well, so damned good, believing in charity and chastity. Ash had wondered sometimes if his brother had even noticed how deranged their mother had become, or if he’d simply accepted her edicts as right.
“I didn’t realize you had noticed Mother was…off.” he said lamely.
“I’m a virgin,” Mark repeated. “Not an idiot.” He rubbed his palms together and looked into the distance. “Mother was a complicated woman. The damnable thing about her was, she was right. She was always right, about everything. One should succor the poor and the needy. One should do good. But…” Mark sighed. “But one should not do so at the expense of one’s loved ones. Too right can be just as bad as too wrong.”
It almost hurt to look at his brother. He seemed almost incandescent.
“And so, yes. I remain chaste. Yes, I want a wife. But I want a true helpmeet, a woman who I know will stand by my side. I want a lioness.”
Ash felt a lump in his throat. He would never have called Margaret a lioness; she was far too cultivated to be compared with any wild creature. But she defended the ones she loved with a ferocity that he yearned for. Even when he’d pressed her she had not once backed down.
“I want,” Mark said simply. “And when I find the woman I want—when I find my lioness—trust me. I wouldn’t waste my time arguing with you, if I could be out winning her.”