“Puffin is being bad,” Leona said, running up to her. She said it in a serious tone, which seemed to ape the one Natasha used to admonish her.
“She is being a puppy,” Natasha said. “You need to be patient and continue to train her.”
“She doesn’t know she’s not supposed walk in the flower bed,” Leona said solemnly. “If we were home, she could go wherever she wanted.”
“Oh, come here.” Natasha reached for her, overwhelmed by how similar her daughter’s words were to her own thoughts. For all the distance between them, it was always this way with her daughter. Leona crawled into her lap, almost reluctantly. “Do you miss Little Parrington?”
“I miss Mr. Duncan. I miss Mary.” She paused. “I miss Mary the most.”
Natasha couldn’t say she missed those people, but she missed what they represented: a life of her own choosing, at her own liberty. A life with a safe identity, not weighted down by all her poor choices, by her family, by Marcus.
“And I miss Papa,” Leona whispered, “and Puffin misses him.”
I miss him, too. The thought had hardly crossed Natasha’s mind when she squashed it down. There was nothing to miss.
“All right, Miss Leona,” she said with forced cheer, pushing her daughter off her and standing up. “It’s time for you to get back to your lessons.”
Natasha spent the rest of the morning in a haze of anxiety. She had heard nothing more of the chance meeting with John Underwood, and Kitty assured Natasha that if there were gossip, they would surely hear of it. Yet even as she sat with Kitty, in a relatively companionable silence, she worried about the afternoon’s outing. As she had revealed nearly all to Lady Jane the day before, she expected no more embarrassment on that front. Still, there was the sense of stepping into the greater unknown, vulnerable and unprotected.
A tumult of noise––horses, carriage, voices both male and female––pierced the silence. A breeze swept into the room, bringing with it the scent of late winter, of a coming thaw. Bringing with it Marcus’s cousin, Charlotte Hardwicke, and her maid.
“Charlotte! I have missed you, dearest.” Lady Templeton stood up to embrace Charlotte, more animated than Natasha had ever seen her. It was clear immediately that the relationship between these two was closer even than Kitty had seemed to Marcus.
“I’ve missed you as well.” Charlotte released Kitty and turned to Natasha. “And you must be Lady Templeton.” She said it sweetly but there was an undertone to her words. “Where’s Marcus?”
For a moment, she envied the affection that Kitty clearly bore for Charlotte. Natasha’s embarrassment eased into jealousy. By the time Lady Jane arrived, sweeping in with her usual cool breeze, Natasha was grateful.
“You act as though I’ve saved you from a fate worse than death,” Lady Jane said with a laugh once they were outside and out of earshot.
Natasha laughed as well, covering her embarrassment and her surprise at a clear example of Lady Jane’s self-professed powers of observation.
“I hardly know them,” she admitted, feeling guilty at smearing anyone’s name.
“Don’t worry, Lady Templeton. I shan’t hold it against them.”
They passed by the gas lamps on Pall Mall.
“I heard Westminster Bridge is lighted as well now,” Natasha commented, feeling that this was a topic that would surely interest the other woman.
Jane jumped into the conversation with a knowledge that was quickly becoming expected by Natasha. This was a woman who knew much of everything, who found the world around her fascinating. “Amazing is it not, the advancements we have made. Marchmont engages in experiments regularly. Lately, however, his interest is specific to the human body. Ah, but he wasn’t there, the other night. He is one of the Eight.”
Natasha raised an eyebrow. “The Eight?”
“Have you heard of them? Has not Marcus said anything? The other night a good half of that group were present.”
“His grandfather’s friends, yes. But they have no official capacity.”
Jane laughed. “How terribly bourgeois you are for one with noble roots. I don’t see why it should be up to me to educate you. Apparently, however, you must be made into a wife fit for a rising diplomat.”
“Marcus?” Natasha said incredulously.
“He will be,” Jane said confidently, “I assure you. Lord Landsdowne is most persuasive. Ah look, there is Lord Carslyle.”
Natasha remembered Carslyle vaguely. He had been invited to Lord Landsdowne’s dinner the night before; he was of the inner circle.
In the brighter light of day, Natasha saw that he was of an age with Marcus and handsome in a brooding sort of way. Compelling really, with deep-set eyes that seemed to observe everything. He approached the carriage, rested his hand on the side of the conveyance as he looked up at them.
“Good afternoon, Lady Jane, Lady Templeton.”
“Lord Carslyle, what brings you to Pall Mall?” Jane asked with the easy familiarity of an old acquaintance.
“A purchase,” he returned. His smile, which did not quite meet his eyes, included Natasha as well. He didn’t elaborate, and Natasha glanced down the street wondering what his purchase was.
“This meeting is most fortuitous,” Jane said. “For it has become my obligation to see that Lady Templeton takes to our society.”
Her obligation. The words struck Natasha as odd, and for the first time since being grateful to escape from the house where Kitty and Charlotte had reunited, she grew wary.
He helped them down from the carriage, even though the groom was standing to the side awaiting that task. The ease of his polite regard startled her with its simple pleasure. Even in their youth, nothing had been polite between her and Marcus. Every moment had been impulsive passion and foolishness. Even at the end.
Even when he found her again.
It was hard to pretend she did not want him still. Did not miss the feel of a man now that her body had been reawakened to his touch.
The way Lord Carslyle was still touching her. She wondered what it would be like to be married to a man like him, to have those careful, smooth hands on her bare skin. The cold sense of wrongness struck her in her throat.
She shook her head at her thoughts as they crossed the short distance to the shop. Her companions’ conversation had turned to a soirée both Lady Jane and Carslyle were attending the following night.
“I’ll make certain you are invited,” Lady Jane insisted to Natasha. “After all, it is Marchmont’s wife who is the hostess.”
Carslyle nodded with the slightest hint of a smile. “Till tomorrow night then, Lady Templeton.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
His grandfather had ulterior motives. The man always did. Each action had two or three purposes, and everything could shift on the merest breath of wind. Despite that, despite knowing the danger in which he would be placed, Marcus had agreed to go to France, sought out the opportunity even. He half hoped a stray bullet would find its way from the battlefield to his heart and put him out of his misery. For the first time in his life, he was happy to have orders from his grandfather, from anyone else, as there was nothing resembling clarity of thought in his head.
Yet as Marcus’s carriage made its circuitous way, avoiding all military action, the only thing he was likely to expire from was badly rutted roads, uncomfortable accommodations, and boredom.
No, not boredom. For there were thoughts that filled those spaces empty of action. Cyclically, they followed a pattern: remembering that night in the study, Natasha lowering herself above him––it had finally pushed aside the erotic memories of five years past––then thinking about her words in the carriage. Any brief hope that absence would make his wife’s heart fonder was quickly doused, and he would force all thoughts of her away to focus on this mission and his grandfather. And thoughts of his grandfather made him wonder, made him puzzle everything out, how the man had manipulated him, likely manipulated him still. How after everything, here he was doi
ng his grandfather’s bidding when he should really be with his family. He missed Leona, that miracle who was somehow a product of him. Missed her enthusiasm, her excitement to see him each morning. And from her smiling face, his thoughts took the same circular path all over again.
After nearly a fortnight of skirting action, Marcus arrived at the border of France and Switzerland. He made his way first to Châtillon-sur-Seine, the small town where the delicate negotiations of peace were being played out. He showed his passport, obtained the necessary signatures.
It took the better part of two days to arrange an interview with Lord Castlereagh or even that man’s private secretary, both of whom seemed much in demand. When he was finally granted an interview, he delivered the letter that Lord Landsdowne had entrusted to him. The foreign secretary offered him a thin smile even as he broke open the seal of the letter, the contents of which he did not share.
“Join us tonight,” Castlereagh said, the invitation seemingly offhand. “And find my secretary. He’ll direct you. There is always need for another man.”
Another man. An extra man. Almost unnecessary, Marcus realized. That was the underlying meaning. At least the first of the two discreet tasks with which Landsdowne had charged him was done. He had only one missive left to deliver in Chatillon before he got down to the business of being unnecessary.
This position of attaché was no more important than that the apprenticeships he had undertaken in his youth, and it should have been easy to wash away with drink the thoughts he had tried to leave in London. Marcus, however, could not relax. It felt as though wherever he turned, he was being watched. While he was used to curious stares, the sense of being monitored when no one was visibly around was new to him. Yet the feeling was incessant. He was unsure of whether it was merely that he was a newcomer or if he, specifically, were being watched.
On his fourth night in Châtillon-sur-Seine, as he made his slightly inebriated way back to the inn where he was staying, the sensation of being watched itched him on the back of his neck. He turned, scanning the area, and thought he saw a man, his form barely indistinguishable from the stone wall behind him.
“You’re following me,” Marcus said before he might have thought better of it, but then he blinked and there was no one there. The sound of a horse and carriage had him swiveling around once again, and the noise of the vehicle passing filled the street.
He was sober in an instant and tempted to search the shadows for the figment of a man, a man he suspected was the one Lord Landsdowne had said would contact him. Instead, he walked the half block more to the inn, wondering at the mystery, wondering what necessitated such absolute discretion.
Pell, with fresh water and linens ready for Marcus, was still awake to help him undress. The valet seemed unperturbed by their location, as if his work were completely independent of anything outside the chamber where Marcus dressed. The man’s ease of blending in to new situations was a talent that Marcus could only admire. If and when Marcus’s business improved, he would raise the man’s salary.
Finally Pell retired to his own adjoining chamber, and Marcus lay down on the bed. For all that the mattress was lumpy, the sheets smelled of home. Home, where Natasha was. He couldn’t even pleasure himself with the memories of her anymore, for any image that came to mind was marred by the overwhelming memory of her bitter, ugly words. His hand fell from his hip and he curled up on his side. He was far from home in more ways than the literal.
It was still night, Marcus knew, as he pulled himself from his dreams––dreams he thought he might want to remember but were quickly slipping away into a multicolored, melted bog. He had awoken, but why?
The cool breeze from the open window and the scrape of a boot against wood reminded him. Danger. Human. Someone was in the room with him.
The person was getting closer.
Marcus jumped to a crouch in the bed, the sheets tangled at his feet for just the barest instant before he lunged at the dark shape coming nearer.
There was no moon, the room was ink black, and Marcus found himself dizzy, falling. Then flat on his back, a knife at his throat and a hoarse laugh at his ear. As well as the scent of another male in action, as if they had merely been boxing or fencing. Marcus had never thought twice about whether he could hold his own in a fight, but it had been years since Eton and the desperate need for self-defense.
“If I wanted to sneak up on you, you would never know I had been here,” the man said quietly in clipped, precise English, the English of a man who had learned it as a second language, as an actor would.
The man was dressed in dark colors, clearly the better to blend into the shadows. He was brawny yet agile, and his threat had been the truth. Galling as it was, here Marcus lay in his own room, his neck exposed to the man’s blade.
“Who are you?”
“You won’t do anything foolish again? Nothing that might make your man come asking why you are making a ruckus in the middle of the night?” The clipped tones were lost in a gruff whisper, but there was the hint of an accent Marcus could not quite place. “I was told someone would be sent. I never imagined it would be you.”
The man retreated in one swift, elegant move. Breathing deeply, Marcus sat up, reached for the bedpost. As he rubbed his neck, his eyes finally focused in the dark and he saw the stranger offering a deep, elegant––the man seemed to do everything elegantly––bow.
“Gerard Badeau at your service.”
“Am I supposed to know who you are?
“I know who you are and have my whole life. The legitimate brother.”
Marcus stilled. He had met none of his half siblings. Until now.
“Gerard Badeau, you say? That was your mother’s name?”
“Non, my stepfather’s,” Gerard said with so much ease that Marcus almost believed him. “I took it. I believe you have something for me, from our grandpere?” His voice edged smoothly into a flawless French accent.
“How do I know you are who you say you are?”
Gerard let out a huff of air, and Marcus could just make out the smirk on his lips. This was his older brother, the bastard who had existed before his father married. Marcus understood now, in a way he would never have five years ago, how much fate played in the gaining of that damning label.
“Our grandfather plays his cards close, does he not? You were commissioned to bring me a bag of coins. To bring a letter to Lord Castlereagh.” But as if Gerard knew that restating Marcus’s mission was hardly enough to prove an identity, he pressed a ring into Marcus’s hand.
In the dim light, he peered at the heavy gold, ran his finger over the flat of it, felt the imprint he had known as long as he had known he was a Templeton. Yet it felt wrong as well. Marcus strode to the side table where flint and candle would offer illumination. The flame brought with it both the acrid smell of first strike and a view of the ring. Marcus focused on the insignia, which was like, yet so unlike, changed in a way that had clearly been at his grandfather’s behest.
“My advice to you, brother—you don’t mind me calling you that, do you?”
He turned to face Gerard. There was something hollow in his half brother’s eyes. He was dangerous in a way Marcus would never be.
Embarrassing, that was what it was, to be faced with this half brother, this man whom to Marcus had only been a number, one of seven prior to this day. And clearly this man, who was at most a year or two older than Marcus, had had experiences Marcus would never have. He knew their grandfather in a way Marcus never would, in a way he did not wish to know the old man. He should never have taken this assignment. It was pointless, useless. There were other ways to run away from his life, and running away was exactly what he had done.
He was running from Natasha. The air shifted. The earth moved. Everything was clear and blurry all at once. Marcus felt sick to his stomach at the realization that, after all the time she had spent running away and he had spent chasing her, he was now running from her. How utterly ridiculous.
/> Gerard stared at him, and Marcus tried to bite back the laughter, waving his hand. The gold ring caught the candlelight, the family crest not visible but there all the same. He returned it to its owner.
“Your advice?” He finally felt at ease, as if the imbalance of power had shifted to equality.
“Later,” Gerard whispered, suddenly still, attentive. For a moment, Marcus saw his grandfather in those hollow eyes, and saw his father in the shape of his half brother’s face. By the light, there was little doubt he came from Templeton stock. “I’ll take the package now, if you please.”
“Yes. Of course.” Marcus moved with alacrity to where his overcoat hung, to the inside pocket, the one place he would keep anything of import. The purse jingled slightly as he retrieved it, the coins jangling against each other within their confinement.
Gerard reached for it, pinning Marcus with his disturbing stare, and he wondered what this man––a stranger but for the blood they shared––had been through to have a gaze so unfathomable. Their fingers brushed as the leather pouch passed from one man to the other.
Then Marcus heard the noises in the hallway as well. This brother of his seemed to have a preternatural ability to hear, to sense others’ presence. The scratching at the door would be Pell, wondering at the commotion in his room, at the glow of light under the door. Wondering if he could be of any service. It was only the barest sound at the window that made him turn, made him catch his last sight of Gerard.
With a sense that he had lost something, he opened the door slightly. There, in his nightshirt and hastily pulled-on pantaloons, was his valet. Marcus had never seen the man look quite so disheveled.
“Is everything all right, my lord?” Pell asked, the words only what Marcus had expected.
“Quite, I simply couldn’t sleep,” Marcus said, pressing his hand hard against the edge of the open door. “But you’d best get your own.” Much quieter, after Pell had left and closed the door, Marcus added, “Our work in Chatillon is done.”
Lord of Regrets Page 19