Audio Transcript:

For Unveiled, the biggest surprise that I had came when I wrote the where Margaret comes on Ash trying to read a book. I had originally intended that Ash would feel uneducated, un-book-learned compared to his brothers, and that that would be a wedge that stood between them. But when I got to that scene, and I had Margaret start talking to Ash, what Ash replied was not “I’ve never been educated”, but “I can’t read.” I hadn’t been planning to write that line – I wrote it down, I don’t know where it came from. I looked at it and I said “No way, no way, that can’t happen”, and I immediately crossed it off. That line bothered me for weeks. I kept going back to that scene and looking at what I had written and asking myself “Is this right?” Finally, I just said to myself “Look, I’m just going to go through the rest of the book and see how impossible it would be to make it so that Ash can’t read.” I had already written about half of it.

When I went through the scenes that I had, I found that there was one paragraph that I had to change. One. That’s it. It was like I had written the whole book with the thought that Ash couldn’t read in my mind already. Go subconscious.

Q. Margaret thinks about how prior to being named a bastard she had assumed everything in life was her due. Did she undergo a huge ideological shift or was it more that she had never thought about it before at all?

A. She had never thought about it before.

If everyone told you from birth that you were awesome and the greatest and the best, it would be hard to question it and say, “You know, maybe I am not one hundred percent awesome!”

Margaret undergoes the exact opposite experience that Ash does—transforming from a duke’s treasured offspring to a menial servant. Suddenly, all the super-judgey things that she has ever thought about people of her station (and she’d thought a lot of them) apply to her.

Being judgey about herself is not fun for her.

Q. Ash is extremely perceptive and yet seems completely out to sea with regard to his brothers. Is it only guilt causing this blind spot or something else?

A. I think sibling blindness is really, really common. You grow up with someone. You think you know them. You do know them, because you have that grounding of common experience…but that means that you can sometimes just be unaware of how they’ve changed. It’s really hard to see who your siblings have become as adults.

I know a lot of really perceptive people who fundamentally cannot figure out their brothers and sisters.

With Ash, this is a double problem, because while he’s their brother, he also basically stepped into the role of parent. He has a really hard time letting go of that role as protector. He has a hard time stepping back and being a friend and a brother—and admitting that he needs protection, too.

Q. In many romances, the Big Reveal of a deception causes feelings of betrayal between the couple, but here the conflict is mostly external even after Margaret reveals her true identity. Why did you make that choice?

A. Can you imagine Ash admitting he was wrong about Margaret?

Yeah, neither can I.

I just can’t see Ash being Ash and also getting angry with Margaret.

Q. Have Ash’s instincts ever led him truly and fully astray?

A. Of course they have. He’s not magic.

Ash probably wouldn’t admit that this has happened, though. He’s fairly invested in his view of himself, and he’s right a huge percentage of the time, but not always. Usually, when he’s wrong, it’s because he fails to notice that the world does not revolve around him.

For instance, he totally misunderstands that what is going on between Smite and Richard has almost nothing to do with the family feud, and everything to do with their personal history.

He also imagines Smite’s actions are rejections of him, but if you read Unraveled, you’ll see that the things that Smite does in this book—not spend Ash’s money, refusing to go on a walk next to a river—are things Smite would avoid independently for reasons that Ash doesn’t understand. Smite’s choices have nothing to do with Ash.

Q. Margaret is extremely forgiving of her brothers’ faults. Was there a time when you wanted her to say, “Screw them!” and leave them entirely out in the cold?

A. Not really. And I don’t think she’s that forgiving, actually.

I mean, Edmund is a jackass, but Richard isn’t and wasn’t. Richard is stuck up (but so was Margaret, and so she understands that). And they’re both afraid—really afraid—something that Margaret understands because she feels the same things. Richard’s biggest faults are that he doesn’t write to her and doesn’t remember her birthday while he’s engaged in a struggle for his future (and hers, for that matter). What kind of sister turns on her brother under those circumstances?

We see things enough from Ash’s point of view that we don’t think highly of Richard, but Richard is neither a horrible person nor even a horrible brother.

From his perspective, even at the end he thinks he’s doing what is best for Margaret (and also for himself). He thinks Ash is using her. If he’s right, when Ash wins, Margaret will have nothing but a broken heart. If Richard’s only way to win is to keep Margaret a bastard, well…at least that way, Richard will have the means to take care of her.

Richard doesn’t have the benefit of knowing that Ash is sincere.

Q. Is there some meaning to the ring and the Parford coat of arms?

A. Why, yes, there is! The Parford family coat of arms is described as having a stylized sword figuring heavily in it. This shows up in two particular places: first, in the master key that Ash is given, and second, carved into the stone on Parford’s signet ring.

You might wonder why the coat of arms is dominated by a sword, when so many coats of arms sport animals. The answer is because Unveiled (and the entire Turner series) was written as a riff off of Arthurian legend. I won’t call it a retelling—I don’t adhere closely enough to any version of the story for it to be a retelling. Also, Arthurian legend is very much a tragedy as far as romance is concerned, and I wanted to write a romantic triumph.

But this is how it basically runs in this book: Margaret is King Arthur. She was conceived under conditions that might otherwise cast doubt on her legitimacy. The two instances of the sword—the master key and the signet ring—parallel Arthurian legend. The signet ring… Well, it’s not an accident that the ring is a sword carved in a stone. It’s an actual sword. In a stone. Ash idly tries to put it on earlier in the book and fails. Richard tries to put it on and fails. The only one who passes the sword in the stone test is Margaret.

Richard Dalrymple, Margaret’s brother, parallels Sir Kay: He attempts at first to betray Arthur (Margaret), and thus take credit and the Kingdom (dukedom). But he is, at heart, a good guy, and he eventually does the right thing.

So, if Margaret is Arthur, does that make Ash Guinevere? Nope. I think the Arthur/Guinevere match sucked to start with. I do not ship them. I’ve already told you who Ash is: He’s the one who gives Margaret Excalibur. Which, depending on which legend you adopt, makes Ash the Lady of the Lake. (By the way, when you read Unclaimed, you’ll see that Mark ships Arthur/Lady of the Lake, too.)

The only book in the series that explicitly discusses Arthurian legend is Unclaimed. You might think that the chaste Sir Mark is Galahad. But there is another knight who—in some retellings of Arthurian legend—was a virgin. That knight is more famous for the manner in which he lost his virginity, and so people rarely think of him as chaste. I mean, of course, Lancelot.

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.”