knows?” he said quietly. “Maybe one of these serving girls will catch your eye. You can have any one you’d like.”
Mark favored him with an amused look. “Satan,” he said, shaking his head, “get thee behind me.”
Ash’s steed came to a stop and he dismounted slowly. The manor looked smaller than Ash remembered, the stone of its facade honey-gold, not bleak and imposing. It had shrunk from the unassailable fortress that had loomed in Ash’s head all these years. Now it was just a house. A big house, yes, but not the dark, menacing edifice he’d brooded over in his memory.
The servants stood in painful, ordered rows. Ash glanced over them.
There were probably more than a hundred retainers arrayed before him, all dressed in gray. He felt as sober as they appeared. Had there been the slightest danger of Mark accepting his cavalier offer, Ash would never have made it. These people were his dependents now—or they would be, once the current duke passed on. His duty. Their prosperity would hang on his whim, as his had once hung on Parford’s. It was a weighty responsibility.
I’m going to do better than that old bastard.
A vow, that, and one he meant every bit as much as the last promise he’d sworn, looking up at this building.
He turned to greet the majordomo, who stepped forwards. As he did so, he saw her. She stood on the last row of steps, a few inches apart from the rest of the servants. She held her head high. The wind started up again, as if the entire universe had been holding its breath up until this moment. She was looking directly at him, and Ash felt a cavernous hollow open deep in his chest.
He’d never seen the woman before in his life. He couldn’t have; he would have remembered the feel of her, the sheer rightness of it. She was pretty, even with that dark hair pulled into a severe knot and pinioned beneath a white lace cap. But it wasn’t her looks that caught his attention. Ash had seen enough beautiful women in his time. Maybe it was her eyes, narrowed and steely, fixed on him as if he were the source of all that was wrong in the world. Maybe it was the set of her chin, so unyielding, so fiercely determined, when every face around hers mirrored uncertainty. Whatever it was, something about her resonated deep within him.
It reminded him of the cacophony of an orchestra as it tuned its instruments: dissonance, suddenly resolving into harmony. It was the rumble, not of thunder, but its low, rolling precursor, trembling on the horizon. It was all of that. It was none of that. It was sheer animal instinct, and it reached up and grabbed him by the throat. Her. Her.
Ash had never ignored his instincts before—not once. He swallowed hard as the majordomo approached.
“One thing,” he whispered to his brother. “The woman in the last row—on the far right? She’s mine.”
Before his brother could do more than frown at him, before Ash himself could swallow the lingering feeling of sparks coursing through his veins, the majordomo was upon them, bowing and introducing himself. Ash took a deep breath and focused on the man.
“Mr.— I mean, my—” The man paused, uncertain how to address Ash. With the duke still alive, Ash, a mere distant cousin, held no title. And yet he had come here as heir to the dukedom, on the strictest orders from Chancery. Ash could guess at the careful calculation in the majordomo’s eyes: should he risk offending the man who might well be his next master? Or ought he adhere to the strict formalities required by etiquette?
Ash tossed his reins to the groom who crept forwards. “Plain Mr. Turner will do. There’s no need to worry about how you address me. I scarcely know what to call myself.”
The man nodded and the taut muscles in his face relaxed. “Mr. Turner, shall I arrange a tour, or would you and your brother care to take some refreshment first?”
Ash’s eyes wandered to the woman in the back row. She met his gaze, her expression implacable, and a queer shiver ran down his spine. It was not lust itself he felt, but the premonition of desire, as if the wind that whipped around his cravat were whispering in his ears. Her. Choose her.
“Good luck,” Mark muttered. “I don’t believe she likes you all that much.”
That much Ash had gleaned from the set of her jaw.
“No refreshment,” Ash said aloud. “No rest. I want to know everything, and the sooner, the better. I’ll need to speak with Parford, as well. I’d best start as I mean to go on.” He glanced at the woman one last time, and then met his brother’s eyes. “After all, I do enjoy a challenge.”
FROM HER HIGH PERCH on the cold stone steps, Anna Margaret Dalrymple could make out little in the features of the two gentlemen who approached on horseback. But what she could see did not bode well for her future.
Ash Turner was both taller and younger than she had expected. Margaret had imagined him arriving in a jewel-encrusted carriage, pulled by a team of eight horses—something both ridiculously feminine and outrageously ostentatious, to match his reputation as a wealthy nabob. The man who had taken everything from her should have been some hunched creature, prematurely bald, capable of no expression except an insolent sneer.
But this man sat his horse with all the ease and grace of an accomplished rider, and she could not make out a single massive, unsightly gem anywhere on his person.
Drat.
As Mr. Turner cantered up, the servants—it was difficult to think of them as fellow servants, when she was used to thinking of them as hers—tensed, breath held. And no wonder. This man had supplanted her brother, the rightful heir, through ruthless legal machinations. If Richard failed in his bid to have the Duke of Parford’s children legitimized by act of Parliament, Mr. Turner would be the new master. And when her father died, Margaret would find herself a homeless bastard.
He dismounted from his steed with ease and tossed the reins to the stable boy who dashed out to greet him. While he exchanged a few words with the majordomo, she could sense the unease about her, multiplying itself through the shuffling of feet and the uncertain rubbing of hands against sides. What sort of a man was he?
His gaze swept over them, harsh and severe. For one brief second, his eyes came to rest on Margaret. It was an illusion, of course—a wealthy merchant, come to investigate his patrimony, would care nothing for a servant clad in a shapeless gray frock, her hair secured under a severe mobcap. But it seemed as if he were looking directly inside her, as if he could see every day of these past painful months. It was as if he could see the empty echo of the lady she had been. Her heart thumped once, heavily.
She’d counted on being invisible to him in this guise.
Then, as if she’d been but a brief snag in the fluid silk of his life, he looked away, finishing his survey of the massed knot of servants. Beside her, the upstairs maids held their breath. Margaret wished he would just get it over with and say something dastardly, so they could all hate him.
But he smiled. It was an easy, casual expression, and it radiated a good cheer that left Margaret feeling perversely annoyed. He took off his black leather riding gloves and turned to address them.
“This place,” he said in a voice that was quiet yet carrying, “looks marvelous. I can tell that Parford Manor is in the hands of one of the finest staffs in all of England.”
Margaret could see the effect of those words travel like a wave through the servants. Backs straightened, subtly; eyes that had been narrowed relaxed. Hands unclenched. They all leaned
