Her two brothers would lay claim to whatever scraps remained.
She could feel all her hopes for the future dissolving in the wake of his damnable likeableness.
Mrs. Benedict spread her hands, continuing a conversation Margaret had ceased to follow. “There’s always been land disputes, sir.”
“I’ll talk to them, then.” Mr. Turner spoke as if any problems would simply be concluded with a bit of plain speaking. Likely, Margaret thought bitterly, with him, they would be. Life seemed to rain gifts on this man. Wealth. Station. Legitimacy.
Margaret didn’t think she would have dared to dislike him, had he not taken so much from her. She looked away, feeling petty.
“Miss Lowell. You have my apologies. We’re boring you.”
Her eyes cut back to him. “No. Of course not.”
“Yes, we are. It’s either that or we’re upsetting you. I won’t stand for either. Come now. What is it?”
“It’s just…” She searched for an answer that would satisfy him. But as she looked into his face, all thoughts of lies disappeared. “You are the most cheerfully ruthless individual I have ever met.”
A big grin spread over his face, and he gave a guffaw. “Cheerfully ruthless! I like that. Should I adopt it as my motto? Would it look well on my coat of arms? Mark, how do you say ‘cheerfully ruthless’ in Latin?”
“Nequam quidem sumus,” his brother intoned. It was the first he’d spoken all evening, and he said the words dreamily. Up until that point, she’d thought he was the fine young scholar that he appeared—a little distracted, and wiry-thin. But Margaret had spent time around her brothers when they came home from Eton—enough to recognize a few words of impolite Latin. She choked.
Mark looked across the table at her, all blond good looks, and dropped her a wink. Margaret revised her estimate of him from “painfully serious scholar” to “mischievous schoolboy.”
“Alas,” the elder Mr. Turner said, “that lacks a certain panache.”
“Don’t you know Latin?” Margaret asked in surprise.
“Never went to school.” He leaned back in his chair. “Never had the time for it. I went to India with a hundred and fifty pounds in my pocket, determined at fourteen to make my fortune. But Mark’s the scholar now.” He turned to his brother, and it was obvious from every line on his face, from the fierce smile that overtook him, that this was no idle boast. No matter what his brother might have said in Latin. “Did you know that he’s writing a book?”
“Ash,” Mark said, with all the unease of a younger brother being praised.
“His essays have been published in the Quarterly Review; did you know that? Three of them, now.”
“Ash.”
“The queen herself quoted from one not two months prior. I had that from a friend.”
“Ash.” The younger Mr. Turner ducked his head and put his hand in front of his face. “Don’t listen to him. It was frippery. Pretty language, but nothing original. Nothing to be really pleased about. Besides, she didn’t even remember my name.”
“She will.” There was a glow in Mr. Turner’s eyes. “When you’re the brother of a duke? She’ll know your name, your birth date and the number of teeth you had pulled at eleven years of age.”
Mr. Turner leaned forwards, as if speaking a vow.
And, she realized, he was.
Margaret felt the bottom fall out of her stomach. This was what he wanted—not her father’s estate, nor his title, nor even the revenge he’d spoken about. This was where all that ruthless intensity concentrated: on his brother.
And Mark, for all his teasing, accepted this as his due. He simply took, as a matter of course, that his brother loved him, that he might tease him in Latin and receive this…this powerful endorsement. Mr. Turner would never call his brother useless. Of all the things that the Turners had and Margaret lacked, this camaraderie seemed the most unfair.
“Yes,” he said, catching her look. “More of my cheerful ruthlessness, I’m afraid. And now you know my greatest weakness: my brothers. I want to give them everything. I want everyone in the world to realize how perfect they are. They are smarter than me, better than me. And I’ll do anything—cross anyone, steal anything, destroy whatever I must—to give them what they deserve.”
Margaret dropped her eyes from that fervor. She felt strangely small and intensely jealous.
She had never felt that sort of ardor about anything—or anyone—in her life. The table seemed even tinier in that large room, a tiny craft adrift on a wide sea of parquet. Behind her, the stares of her painted ancestors bored into her back.
She drew in a deep breath and turned to his younger brother. He looked a little embarrassed at that out-burst—but not surprised or uncomfortable. Just as if his brother had ruffled his hair.
“So, Mr. Mark Turner. What is this book you’re writing?”
He leaned back in his chair. “Just Mark will do. It’ll be confusing enough if you have to call us both Turner.”
Both the Turners were rather too casual. But as a servant, Margaret could hardly object. She inclined her head in acknowledgment.
“I’m writing about chastity.”
She waited for him to guffaw. Or even to give her that mischievous grin again, signaling this was another of his schoolboy pranks.
He didn’t.
“Chastity?” she repeated weakly.
“Chastity.”
He hadn’t said it as one would expect to hear the word—with serious overtones, in a humble, reverent voice. He said it with a sparkle in his eye and a lift to his mouth, as if chastity were the best thing in the world. Margaret had met a great many of her brother’s friends. This was not an attitude that was common among young gentlemen. Quite the opposite.
“You see,” he continued, “the focus in all the works on chastity to date has often been so philosophical that it fails to engage the general populace on a moral level. My goal is to start with a practical approach, and…” He trailed off, with the air of someone realizing that his enthusiasm for a subject was not matched by those around him. “It’s enormously exciting.”
“I can see that.”
Mr. Mark Turner was the same age as Edmund, a few years younger than Richard. She couldn’t imagine her brothers—or any of their friends—writing a philosophical defense of chastity. They likely couldn’t even speak the word without laughing.
Her lip curled in memory.
“Chastity,” said the elder Mr. Turner in a dry voice, “is not one of the things I’d planned for my younger brother to embrace.”
An uncomfortable silence settled over the table. The two men exchanged level glances. What was encoded in those looks, Margaret
