been scoured clean of everything except the hard truth of herself. It coiled, deep inside her, like a spiked little ball.
“Would you like a glass of barley water?” she asked calmly.
Perhaps her father took that smooth inquiry as meekness, because his lip curled. He didn’t understand. It took every ounce of strength she had not to simply turn on her heel and walk out of the room. Because Mr. Turner had been right about one thing. It had been selfishness on her father’s part—pure, utter selfishness—to lie to her mother, to pretend to marry her, to beget offspring he’d known were legally unable to inherit.
“None of that tepid stuff, now,” he warned her.
The water was room temperature against her wrist, but she had no desire to send down to the icehouse. In fact, in her current guise as lowly nurse, she might have to go herself. She poured the liquid as it was, a tiny act of defiance, proof that inside she was still Lady Anna Margaret. She wasn’t some nameless bastard servant in a great house, to be ordered about at whim.
She leaned over the Duke of Parford and held the glass to his lips.
“Pfaw,” he protested, and water dribbled down his chin.
But he drank, and she raised a handkerchief to his face and dabbed away the excess moisture.
If some unknowing artist had glanced at this tableau, he might have titled it Father and Daughter. He might have captured the fine weave of the linen she used to dab excess moisture away, the comforting touch of her hand on his shoulder. Every perfunctory detail he might see, and render on his emotional palette as a gesture of love.
It wasn’t, not anymore. Margaret had loved her father once. Perhaps she still did. But at the moment, she could not find any trace of that emotion. What was left?
Duty. Honor. Obligation. Maybe just a perverse desire to demonstrate to her father: See? This is how you go about not betraying your family. She would show him. She didn’t need to be received as nobility to be noble.
If everything else had been stolen away, that much of her, at least, remained.
ASH EXITED PARFORD’S SICKROOM only to discover a procession lying in wait for him. The housekeeper, a Mrs. Benedict, introduced herself. She was accompanied by Smith, the majordomo, and a Mr. Dunridge, who was apparently the land steward. In the finest of old traditions, he was going to be Shown About and made to appreciate what he stood to inherit.
It wasn’t hard to show suitable enthusiasm. Parford Manor was a beautifully maintained house. It seemed lived in without being ragged. Even the parquet floors had an understated beauty, the sort of luminous glow that came from years of beeswax and care.
The manor was even older than that long-ago split between the Turners and the Dalrymples, he mused as he was led outside into the formal gardens. The grass was green and springy beneath his feet. No lawn a mere decade old could ever achieve that complacent health. It seemed not just a bit of turf, but an entire organism, spread before him.
His many times great-grandfather had once been lord here. The man had perhaps once walked upon this very path. He might have turned this selfsame corner, around the long, low holly, and seen the slow roll of the river beyond.
A bit daunting, that history. When he was a boy, his father had taught him about his noble relations, as if that ancient history somehow made him special, more interesting than other mill owners’ children. But that happy accident, that divergence from nobility all those great-grandfathers ago, hadn’t done any of the Turners much good. It hadn’t fed them or clothed them. Fortunes had come, and fortunes had been given away in mindless acts of insane charity.
Now, Ash stood on the cusp of the dukedom. He’d vowed he would care for his dependents—every one of them, from Mrs. Benedict, who continually stopped to reaffix her cap with pins that kept sliding from her gray hair, down to the last maid toiling over a copper kettle in the scullery.
Parford had, of course, got the matter completely backwards.
Yes, he’d thought of revenge. But thoughts of cold vengeance had given way to stark reality. There was no use trading eyes for eyes, when he’d been able to provide for his brothers by trading rubies instead.
Ancient history, indeed. The families had split, probably around the same time that the solid row of elms had been planted along the western drive. Ash’s fore-bearer, a younger son, had married a manufacturer’s daughter for wealth. He’d taken the name of Turner in exchange for a fortune—much to the fury of the rest of the Dalrymple family, who’d viewed the act as a mercenary betrayal. Time had passed. The elms reached halfway to the heavens now. The old Turner money had dwindled and disappeared before Ash had resurrected it. And yet the remnants of that bitter dispute still festered.
No; Ash didn’t just want revenge. He also wanted to take care of his own. Until this morning, however, he’d thought only of his brothers and his business. He hadn’t comprehended precisely how many responsibilities he was inheriting.
His responsibilities were not all unpleasant, though. There was, after all, Miss Lowell.
Miss Lowell was a surprising, delectable contradiction of a woman. She was intelligent, fierce and loyal. She looked soft in all the right places, but when it came to the ones she cared for, she was hard as flint. She seemed formidable, and Ash appreciated formidable women.
She was a mystery, and Ash was going to enjoy unraveling every delicious clue, until he’d stripped every last inch of her naked. In every sense of the word.
Their group made its way back to the manor by way of a path that hugged the river. When they reached the house once more, the steward and the majordomo took their leave. Mrs. Benedict opened the outside door to the glassed-in conservatory. It was littered with buckets of rose cuttings and potted plants, awaiting permanent placement. From there, she led him down a hall and into another parlor. Windows looked out over the gray river in the distance.
“There’s one last thing,” Mrs. Benedict said, coming to a halt. “I have standards for the conditions under which my girls must work.”
“In my London townhouse, I grant my servants a half day every week and a pair of full days each month.”
She let out a puff of air. “That’s not what I meant.” She squared her shoulders fiercely and then looked up. “I insist on this, Mr. Turner, as a condition of my employment. You and your brother are young, healthy males. I’ll not have you imposing on my girls. They’re from decent families. It’s not right to put them in a position where they can’t truly say no.”
Ah. Those sorts of working conditions. Ash had a feeling he was going to like Mrs. Benedict.
“You won’t have to worry about my brother,” Ash said. Unfortunately. “As for myself, I didn’t get where I was by indulging my wants indiscriminately. Besides, I had a sister, too. I couldn’t use any woman so cavalierly without her memory intruding.”
What he had planned for Miss Lowell could hardly be considered cavalier. He considered it more along the lines of a regular campaign.
But Mrs. Benedict must not have heard that unspoken caveat. She gave him a sharp nod. “You’re not what I expected, sir.”
“I’m not what I expected, either.”
She let loose a sharp chortle and reached into the pocket of her
