Sweetest Regret

by Meredith Duran

  She frowned up through the boughs at him. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  His expression was grim. “You know very well what I mean.”

  “No, I do not!” She stepped around the tree to face him. “I have no idea what you mean! I never once—”

  “Would you like some chestnuts?” called Countess Obolenskaya.

  What a gift she had for interfering! “Not right now,” Georgie said tightly.

  “How marvelous the tree looks!” Lady von Bittner caroled. “Keep at it, Miss Trent!”

  Georgie held out her hand for another ornament. Mr. Godwin shoved it into her palm with a dangerous degree of force. “I have no more interest than you in speaking of this,” he said tightly. “It is not a memory I cherish. We can let it be.”

  And leave her with another festering mystery? “No,” she said. “I want to know. When did I . . .” Her courage nearly faltered; she swallowed hard, taking great care to pin the ornament to the tree. “When did I instruct you on any matter to do with your . . . attentions to me? We never . . . You and I never spoke of . . . such things.”

  “Come now,” he said sharply—halted, and then laughed again, a dark and awful laugh. Dragging a hand through his hair, he shook his head. “There is no need to spare my sensibilities. Your father will have told you I spoke to him.” His voice roughened. “Certainly you told him how mortifying you found my interest.”

  “What?” For a moment, she could only gape at him. “My father? You spoke to my father of me? When?”

  He gave a sharp tug of his mouth. “When I asked his permission to court you,” he said, “and thereby discovered that my attentions had become an embarrassment to you. That, Miss Trent, is no inducement to pay ‘friendly farewells,’ I think you’ll agree.”

  Glass shattered. Somebody by the fireplace called out in concern. Georgie could not answer. Speech was beyond her.

  A line appeared between Mr. Godwin’s brows. His glance dropped to the floor, where lay the shattered remnants of the Christmas bauble. As his gaze lifted again, his face seemed to loosen and sag, so that suddenly, briefly, he looked ancient.

  “Do not tell me,” he said slowly, “that you didn’t know this.”

  She tried once, twice, to say it: “I didn’t.” Never. “I . . .” Her lips felt numb. “We never even spoke of you.”

  Suddenly he was gripping her arm. His hold was so tight, his hand so hot, that the sensation seemed to ripple out over her skin, the shock of it causing her to draw a strangled breath.

  “And what of the rest?” he demanded. “That you found my suit distasteful?”

  She opened her mouth. Her voice failed her again. She shook her head violently.

  “I say,” Mr. Lipscomb called. “Is everything all right, there?”

  “That my parentage made me unfit for you,” Mr. Godwin said rapidly. “What of that?”

  “We never spoke of you,” she said again in a whisper. “Never, Lucas. Not until you . . . left.” She groped behind her for the chair; sank into it abruptly, dizzy.

  He did not let go of her arm. He followed her down, kneeling in front of her, and opened his mouth as though to speak again—then closed it and studied her face as though he had never seen her before.

  “He lied.” The ragged words came from her—such a simple truth, to have rearranged her life entirely.

  “He lied,” he agreed, in a voice like gravel.

  “Are you quite well?” Mr. Lipscomb had come to stand over them. “Miss Trent? Perhaps you require sustenance. A chestnut?”

  Chapter Seven

  Two years!

  Why, he had asked permission to court her. Their friendship had meant something more to him. She hadn’t been wrong! Georgie’s spirits soared—then plummeted as she realized the implication.

  She would have accepted his suit.

  They would have been married by now.

  She could not play hostess with this shock coursing through her. She could not lead the guests into the dining room and sit down across the table from Lucas Godwin and chatter idly about stocks and politics and fashions without leaning over and seizing his hand and spilling her heart to him. But with everyone’s interest already piqued by her “swoon,” she could not risk a private audience with him, either.

  She took the coward’s way out, pleading a headache. That Mr. Godwin did not do the same astonished her. His impassivity, as he watched her leave the drawing room, seemed more than heroic: it seemed superhuman.

  Alone in her bedchamber, she stewed and paced, and time dragged. Once, a knock came at the door, Countess Obolenskaya’s voice speaking kindly. “Miss Trent? I came to see how you’re faring.”

  Panicked, irrationally convinced that she might be caught out, she changed into a nightdress and retreated to her bed. But of course the countess did not barge in to test whether she’d lied about her health. The lady took herself back downstairs. Dinner was laid at half seven. But not until eleven o’clock did Georgie at last hear the guests returning to their suites.

  Once the house had settled into silence again, she stole out of her room, to the far wing where Mr. Godwin was lodged. But he did not answer her knock, and when she bent to peer through the keyhole, his room was dark.

  Where had he gone? How could he not long to speak with her? She made a furtive survey of the likely spots—the billiards room, the smoking room, the drawing room and library. But he had vanished.

  He could not have left!

  In her turmoil, she found herself flying through the service passage, down into the kitchen. Here, in this warm, slate-floored chamber strung with drying herbs, bright copper pans glinting from hooks, and barrels of flour and sugar stacked against the walls—this was the place she felt most at home in the world, safest and most herself. The staff had just finished cleaning after the night’s industry; the long table in the center of the room had been cleared and swept clean, and Gladys, the scullery maid, was polishing the last piece of glassware.

  Cook came out of the pantry and spotted her with an exasperated sigh. “Never say they’re up again? Fourteen bottles at dinner! They drink more than sailors on holiday.”

  “No,” Georgie said numbly. “They’re all in bed, I think. But—has anyone seen Mr. Godwin?”

  Cook glanced toward Gladys, who laid down her broom, bobbed a curtsy, and left.

  “That one went for a walk,” Cook said, with a snort that bespoke her opinion of such affairs. “Barton had to scrounge up a lantern for him, for the moon’s clouded over. Barely a star to see by tonight.”

  “Oh.” Deflated, Georgie took a seat on the bench before the great hearth. The fireplace could hold two boars spitted side by side; two or three hundred years ago, it had done, no doubt. But more recently, it had been partitioned into three separate chambers, only the center of which was used. She held out her hands to the dying flames. The labor of the ranges, earlier, had left the kitchen toasty. Why did she feel so cold?

  Perhaps she was falling sick in truth. She felt profoundly off-balance, hovering at the edge of a precipice—and the fall would pull her into a world of regret, wasted days and months and years . . .

  A gentle touch landed on her shoulder. Cook took a seat beside her, her wrinkled face pinched with concern. “What’s this?” she asked gently. “Barton says you took your supper in your rooms. What’s got you so upset?”

  Georgie pulled her hands back into her lap, fisting them. “Do you remember when my father sacked the Lyalls?”

  “Aye,” Cook said slowly. “That’s old history. What of it?”

  Sir Philip had come home early from a treaty talk in Antwerp. Nobody had expected him. Georgie’s twelfth birthday had been approaching, but he never paid attention to holidays. After Georgie’s mother had died, he’d gone off them entirely. “I was so surprised to see him,” Georgie murmured. He’d found her playing chase in the garden with Jenny and Tom Lyall, the second coachman’s children. He’d embraced her. Announced that he had a present for
her, a grand birthday excursion to London, where they would visit the zoo. How delighted she’d been!

  But on the way back from town, he’d deposited her at a girls’ school, a very refined place with four tutors for every pupil. “I had no idea you were running so wild,” he’d told her. “You are a Trent. You cannot mix with riffraff. I’ve neglected you, I fear.”

  The boarding school had not suited her. Moreover, she’d inherited her father’s stubbornness. She’d run away twice before figuring out the train schedules. When she’d finally made it back to Brisbon Hall, the Lyalls had been gone. Her father had dismissed them for the temerity of not knowing their place.

  “He thought he was protecting me,” Georgie said. “But his protection . . . it always feels like a punishment.”

  Cook’s hand slid to hers, tightened over her knuckles. “He does his best, Miss Georgie. He only ever wanted what’s right for you.”

  Georgie’s laugh felt rough. “That’s what he tells himself, no doubt.”

  Cook sighed. “It’s hard, in his shoes. To be a father, and a grand man like him, besides. What’s got you thinking on all this?”

  Georgie looked up, letting Cook see her fight not to weep. “Because I’ve just discovered that he ‘protected’ me once again. And this time, I don’t think I can forgive him for it.”

  Cook blew out a breath. “That gent that went walking?”

  Georgie nodded.

  “Well.” Cook studied her with rheumy eyes. “You’re a grown girl,” she said gruffly. “Seems to me that your father doesn’t realize how grown you are. Perhaps you should tell him so.”

  “I mean to,” Georgie said.

  Cook opened her arms, and Georgie threw herself into them. Gone were the days when Cook’s great belly had made such embraces smothering; the decades had shrunk and wizened her. But she still smelled of bread and cinnamon and soap, and Georgie breathed deeply, taking comfort, as she always did, from the care of one who knew her truly.

  Cook cleared her throat and eased away. “Visitor,” she said briefly, and rose.

  Georgie twisted on the bench. Mr. Godwin stood in the arched doorway that led to the kitchen garden, a curious expression on his face. He lowered his lamp to the floor. “I thought to return this,” he said quietly.

  “Leave it there for the night,” Cook said. As she untied her apron, she fixed Georgie with a solemn look. “Don’t be up too late now,” she said, and then turned and took herself out.

  Georgie felt curiously frozen. As Mr. Godwin approached, he glanced over her figure, and a slight, rueful smile curved his mouth.

  As simply as that, her heart bolted into a gallop. She was wearing a nightdress, shapeless and heavy, tied beneath her chin. Nothing flattering. But she could not mistake the appreciation on his face.

  He had wanted to court her. To marry her.

  “I like seeing you so,” he said as he came to stand by the bench. “Curled up like a cat. Thoroughly at your ease. I had . . . imagined you sitting thus. Many times. But I’ve never seen it till now.”

  She felt a flush rise, but she did not look away from him. “One can’t sit so, in a corset.”

  He lifted a dark brow. Bold of her, naturally, to acknowledge her dishabille—that she sat before him stripped of her layers and lacings, the complicated armor by which a woman’s body was trussed up and locked away from touch.

  But she held his gaze as he settled onto the bench beside her, until it was he who looked away, toward the fire. “I wonder,” he said, “that you will trust me with such intimacies. What would Sir Augustus say?”

  She flushed to her roots. “There is no Augustus Brumkin,” she said haltingly. “As I think—I think you guessed.”

  He exhaled. “Ah. I had taken a look today through the Debrett’s in your father’s library. The Brumkins were not in evidence, but I feared . . .”

  “I can’t believe I made up such a ridiculous name,” she whispered.

  He offered her a sideways smile. “And I am rather grateful for it.”

  She felt herself relax. He made it so easy to have this conversation. “Anyway,” she said, “I could never mistrust you in that way.”

  “Don’t be so certain of that. You make quite a temptation, in the firelight. And . . .” He loosed a slow breath. “A man does not spend five hundred nights dreaming of a woman and find himself unmoved by the reality.” He shook his head once. “Unmoved: a very pale word for it.”

  As simply as that, she felt acutely aware of her own body: how, within the voluminous folds of her wool nightdress, her breasts hung loose and heavy; her legs sprawled freely; her toes curled.

  They had kissed only chastely, in Munich. Kisses on the cheek, in the continental style. But in her dreams, she had tasted his tongue. She had felt the hard planes of his belly, the brawn of his thighs. He had lain with her in dreams countless times by now—but never vividly enough to satisfy her. She had always woken aching and unsatisfied, jolted abruptly into recrimination. How could you still hunger for a man who never wanted you at all?

  But he had wanted her. He still did. His steady, heated gaze told her so now.

  “Two years,” she whispered. So much time wasted.

  “Your father,” he growled—and then fell silent, his mouth twisting. He clawed a hand through his night-dark hair, shaking his head. His fingers trembled.

  Lucas Godwin, trembling for her. Two years. Two years, and these lies, and if not for them, then . . .

  He took a deep breath, lowered his hand, and said, “What did he tell you? That I had abandoned you?”

  “My father said very little about you.” She pushed these words from her dry mouth, though the syllables barely captured what she felt. She felt native to no tongue that could translate that. “He said . . . you’d been offered a promotion. A better post. That I mustn’t be surprised you hadn’t made time to write me. He said that was your way—to charm ladies, without intending anything by it.”

  But . . . God above, Lucas had intended something by it. And her father had told a lie to destroy them.

  Pain lanced through her—sudden and breathtaking. “And what he told you. That I found you distasteful. How could you believe him?”

  For he had let her go so easily. A few words, and he had abandoned her to rush toward new possibilities—Paris, his career. Meanwhile, what had remained to her? Her father’s disappointment. Munich’s titillated whispers at her heartbreak.

  “Georgie.” He made her nickname sound like a melody, low and sweet. “Your father was very convincing. And . . . God save me, but I never thought to doubt him. My superior—my mentor. The man who had championed my rise through the service—saying you found me repellent! Forgive me, Georgie—forgive me; it never occurred to me that he might lie.”

  As she weighed those words, she felt her mouth twist. “Then you don’t know him.” Her father had made a career of meddling. He had manipulated kings, designed the downfall of nations. Beside that, his daughter’s hopes were no challenge at all.

  His hand closed on her arm. He stared into her eyes, his voice hushed and fierce: “Listen to me. Leaving was the greatest mistake of my life.”

  She closed her eyes to trap her tears. His forehead came to rest against hers. The smell of him—clean, male, the spice of bergamot rising from his clothing—snared her, held her immobile, so close to him that she could feel his breath against her mouth, his warmth all around her, this man she had adored . . .

  “I would have fought for you,” she said raggedly as she pulled back to wipe her nose. “Had it been me—I would have demanded to hear it from your lips.”

  The sight of her tears made him flinch. He leaned forward as though to touch her again—but she made a noise, and after a stubborn moment, he heeded the warning. Fisting his hands, he sat back, but his eyes remained fastened on hers.

  To break the hushed tension, she reached over and plucked a leaf off the holly mounded by the hearth. She cast the leaf into the fire, where it popped loudly,
then sputtered and hissed into ashes.

  His laugh sounded raw. “My mother always loathed that sound,” he said. “I drove her half mad at Yuletide, setting holly on fire.”

  The affection in his voice struck her. He had never shared any tales of his childhood with her. Why was that? In Munich, she had imagined she knew him better than anyone in the world—but all at once, her own ignorance was made plain to her.

  They had been friends in Munich. He’d asked so many questions, listened with such rapt interest, as she’d told him about growing up at Brisbon Hall. But perhaps she’d not been so fine a friend in return. The heady thrill of his attention had made her selfish. She’d never thought to ask after his childhood.

  All at once, their history looked different to her—full of gaps, mysteries yet to be bridged. There had been so much more left to learn when they’d been parted.

  “What was your mother like?” she asked. “You never spoke much of her.”

  “Didn’t I?” He hesitated, a shadow coming into his face. Then, with a curiously formal air, he faced her. “I didn’t,” he said evenly—an agreement, solemn. “My restraint was deliberate, if I’m to be honest.”

  She frowned. “But why? You sound so fond of her.” She envied that fondness. Her own mother had died before her seventh birthday; what memories she retained were more impressions than facts: a soft touch; the fragrance of roses; the feeling of being safe, cherished.

  “She was a wonderful woman,” he said steadily. “I miss her still, every day. Tonight, while I was walking, I thought . . .” His lips moved, not quite a smile. “I thought that had she lived, this whole debacle would never have happened. She would have counseled me to put aside my pride and go to you; to ask for an accounting and apologize for any wrong I might have done you. Pride, she always warned me, was as much a weakness as a strength. Pride is nothing compared to happiness, she said.”

  “That sounds very wise.” Georgie spoke softly, over the ache in her throat. What a might-have-been! Lucas coming to her in those early days, when the fresh wound had not yet festered. It would have gone differently indeed.