Unclaimed (28 page)

“What was her name?” he heard himself ask. He already knew.
Jessica.

“Nobody knows,” she replied. “But surely
you
can tell
me.
”

Mark could remember his last words to her with almost cold clarity.
Print that you brought me to my knees.
Fine words, then. Now…

Did all of London know of his courtship, his disappointment? Had everyone truly been looking at him with pity? How was he ever supposed to forget her under those circumstances?

“Who printed it? What was it called?”

“It’s—it was called—” She gulped and then glanced across the room. Mark couldn’t see what she was looking at—probably her friends, waving her on, urging her to find out more of the sordid tale. What on earth had Jessica said? His dancing companion had a faint blush across her cheeks, and she whispered all in one breath, “It was called ‘The Seduction of Sir Mark.’”

“Seduced, was I?” That much, at least, was true—in mind and soul, if he’d managed to barely restrain himself from the final physical act.

“Oh, no, sir!” she said innocently. “That is to say—it was the most romantical tale. I wept
buckets
at the last installment. Can you tell me, is there any truth to it? We all want to know,” she explained earnestly, gesturing toward the side of the room. Indeed, there were five ladies sitting there, watching them intently—they raised fans to cover their faces as he turned in their direction.

“I can’t know if it’s true. I haven’t read it. What is it that I have purportedly done?”

“Why… You encountered a woman, not knowing that she’d been hired by your dastardly enemies to ruin your name. And you—you treated her kindly, in the most Christian manner, and made her decide to change her ways.”

Mark looked at her. “That’s the entirety of it? I treated her
kindly?
”

She nodded.

No mention of kisses? No mention of that moment when she’d curled her fingers around his?
Kindly
did not begin to cover the truth. He could almost feel the humiliation creep over him. Still, she might have mentioned his own feelings. He’d told her about his
mother.
He’d told her about Smite—or at least, some portion of that. Had he mentioned
Ash’s
secret? That would be more devastating.

No. No. He didn’t think he had. That much, at least, was safe. Still.

No wonder everyone was casting such pitying looks at him. They all knew that he’d been stupid enough to fall in love with a liar.

“Sir Mark,” his companion said earnestly, “I think I speak for every lady here when I tell you that I could have fallen in love with you myself, except I so want you to love her.”

From across the room, he caught Ash’s eye. His brother’s expression was grim, and he jerked his head.
Get over here quickly.

The waltz was winding to a close.

“Do you love her, Sir Mark?”

He’d thought his emotion had begun to burn down, to sputter and fade. But this news had fanned it to life, had made his every wound feel raw once more.

“Love her?” Mark said, his voice low. “When I find her, I’m going to
kill
her.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THEY GATHERED
in Ash’s study, the three brothers.

A report was there, on Ash’s desk. “‘Urgent,’” Mark read aloud. “‘Read immediately upon arrival.’”
Immediately
was underlined three times. There was a scrawl on the bottom, too, a note to Ash from Jeffreys, telling him that
this
time, as he’d been eccentric enough to have disappeared entirely, he’d have to settle for a written report.

Ash looked over at Mark. “I—I didn’t see it.” He glanced over at his other brother. “Truly. I had no idea. I don’t know why—”

Mark reached over and pushed his brother’s shoulder. “I know precisely what you mean, Ash. Nobody could hold it against you.”

Mark shuffled through the first pages of summary to find the newspaper clippings that had been so carefully collated. The paper seemed too flimsy to contain anything of so much weight. For the first time in days, his brothers’ presence annoyed him. He’d managed to barely talk about the matter at all. To have someone else talk to his brothers about it…it seemed even more horrible than having all of London know.

Read it when I’m done,
he wanted to say. But then he looked up into Ash’s eyes. Ash was looking at that report with something like regret in his eyes. Mark’s brothers had stood by him all these past days. They didn’t deserve to be pushed away now.

“There’s just the one copy,” he said instead. “I suppose…I suppose it’ll go fastest if I read it aloud, yes?”

“If…if you could.” Ash didn’t meet his eyes.

Mark sank into a seat on a settee. His brothers settled to either side of him as he flipped through the sheaf of papers. Jeffreys had included not only the original serializations, but the commentaries thereon. Mark didn’t care what anyone else said. He just wanted to know about…well, about Jessica.

There. This flimsy newsprint was the start of it.

“‘When I first met Sir Mark,’” Mark read, “‘he said he spoke with the tongues of angels.’” Mark had forgotten that. He didn’t glance to either side. He didn’t want to know what his brothers thought of that introduction.

“‘But it took me a week to understand that he spoke not as a saint, nor as an ascetic, but as a man. He was just a very, very good one.’”

If he’d had any doubts that Jessica had written this account, they vanished with those words. He could almost hear her speak them. What he hadn’t imagined was the swell of emotion he felt in response. Not anger. Not betrayal. Just a sensation of recognition—as if he’d jumped into deep, cold water. It felt as if she were telling him something he didn’t want to hear but had known all along.

He read on. “‘I must admit that at first, I wanted to hurt him…’”

It was disconcerting to see himself through someone else’s eyes. For the past days, he had thought she’d been laughing at him. She’d watched him fall in love with an illusion. He had supposed that she had somehow intuited what he most wanted in a woman and had presented it to him. He’d felt trapped and angry, furious that even knowing all that, he still desperately longed for her.

But as he read, her version of the story corresponded with the woman he’d believed she was. Even though she did not voice them, he could hear her doubts. Even though she did not speak of it, he could sense her falling under his spell as surely as he’d fallen under hers. He felt as if he was rediscovering her in those pages. She was still the woman he’d come to know. There was that familiar prickly integrity.

All the hurt he’d nursed this past week…it was beginning to feel a little childishly resentful. Because if she had told the truth, she’d been seduced. She’d been thrown out of her home. She’d lost her dearest friend, had no family to speak of. He glanced at his brothers to either side of him.

In truth, she’d had no wealth at all. Not of any kind.

He read on and on, unable to stop. He didn’t stop hurting; the pain just began to alter. She left off all accounts of their physical intimacy—the touches, the kisses, everything except the moments when he’d looked in her eyes and found himself unable to look away—but still he could sense their echo. She kept his secrets through every installment. The narrative went through to his ill-fated proposal.

And then Mark scanned the last words she’d written and set the page down before he read them aloud. He felt as if he’d had the breath knocked out of him.

He couldn’t say those words. Next to him, Smite leaned against him, offering unspoken comfort. Ash’s hand touched his shoulder.

If
she
could write these words, all alone, he could surely speak them aloud to the people who loved him best. Mark picked up the account again. “‘I left. What else could I do? I hated him for the same reason I loved him: because I could not break him, and because no matter how hard I tried, a woman like me could never have a man like him.’”

I hated him. I loved him.
His heart raced. He could almost reach out and touch the loneliness in her words.

I loved him.
After the spare, quiet words of her narration, those three words echoed. It might have been a lie. It might have been a dramatization.

It felt like the truth.

He’d held to the notion that she’d lied to him because he’d not wanted to contemplate an alternate possibility. He had imagined her laughing at him. He’d imagined her meeting with George Weston and mocking his tentative adoration. He’d believed all that, because the alternative was that he’d promised her she wasn’t alone, and he’d lied.

I loved him.
He felt drunk and uncertain, as if he’d been assailed by a vertigo of the soul.

I loved him.
But she’d lied to him. He grasped for the fading shreds of his righteous indignation, but it fled. She’d
hurt
him. Wasn’t that worth something?

I loved him, but a woman like me could never have a man like him.

He’d been blind. And stupid. And wrong. So focused on his own hurt that he’d not stopped to question. She’d practically begged him not to like her. She’d told him she was ruined and outcast. How was she surviving? If she’d stooped to seducing him, how badly had she needed the money? And what was she doing now?

Mark was wealthy beyond imagining. He’d had letters and love and companionship all his life.

But where was she? Whom was she with?

How was he to find her?

He stared into the darkness, questions dancing about him. He stared until the night seemed to take on colors of its own before his unblinking eyes. He stayed there for minutes longer, listening to his brothers’ silence, until finally Ash punched him lightly on the shoulder and then, as if deciding against it, converted the motion into a gentle pat. The fire snapped behind them.

“How much of that was a factual account?” Ash asked eventually.

Mark shook his head. “She omitted the portions that don’t reflect well on me. I told her about Mother—if she’d wanted to embarrass us, she could easily have done so.”

“Hmm.” That was Smite.

“Do you want me to have the paper print a retraction?” Ash asked. “I could…buy the building in which it resides. Make life difficult for the owner.”

“It’s all true. She actually painted me in a…a fairly flattering light. She didn’t even mention the times I kissed her.”

Mark felt his brothers turn next to him, as if exchanging careful glances.

“
You
kissed
her?
” Ash asked.

“Times?” Smite echoed. “Plural?”

“There’s no need to sound so surprised. I’m chaste, not dead. Although it was close on more than one occasion.
Really
close.” He hunched into the cushion and shut his eyes.

“Oh, well done,” Smite said. “Well
done.
”

“It wasn’t done at all,” Mark mumbled. “Well or poorly.”

“Honestly,” Ash said, “what is it you want, Mark? Do you want this stopped? I’ll stop it. Do you want her found and silenced? I’ll pay her whatever you want. You have only to ask and it is yours.”

What did he want? He felt as if he were on the edge of a precipice, posed to fall. He reached for the shreds of his balance, sought out calmness, peace, quiet…

But no. She thought that a woman like her could never have a man like him. He’d excoriated the MCB as a bunch of hypocrites.
Women are the point of chastity, not the enemy of it,
he’d said.

Fine words. But what was the point of holding one’s own balance on the cliffside only to see the woman you cared for topple over the side?

“Yes,” Mark said. “Ash, I
do
want your help. Let me explain what I need…”

THE RAIN SLASHED against Jessica’s cloak as she fumbled in her pocket for the key to her London flat. The few rooms she had were in White chapel, and the streets were dingy. She’d taken them late in the spring as a temporary place to store her things while she went to Shepton Mallet, and so that she would have someplace to retreat to once she’d finished with Sir Mark. The rooms didn’t feel like home, but until Parret delivered the final payment, she needed somewhere to stay.

The dark clouds had come on quickly that night. She ducked her head in front of the door, her fingers chilled and clumsy. Iron rattled in the keyhole. It had been a few days since the last serial had been published. It should have made her feel queasy, knowing her words were out there for anyone to see. She’d heard that Mark was in town—that he’d arrived last night.

She didn’t want to think of him. Of what she’d done to him. She had done what she always did: she had survived, and never mind the cost. The key finally turned in the lock, and she wiped the water that trickled down the side of her face. In the doorway, she turned to wring the wet wool of her cloak into the street.

A single street lamp burned on the corner, scarcely cutting through the dark night storm. The gaslight didn’t seem to illuminate. It cast only shadows—long, dark slashes of cold dreariness.

One of those shadows moved. A form, hidden at first by an alley, started forward across the street. Jessica’s heart quickened as the form—the
man
—moved closer, stride by stride. She took one step into her flat, her hands going to the handle of the door.