In the morning, Marcus found he was wrong. His labor was just beginning. Castlereagh’s secretary greeted him with, “There you are. Excellent. Here’s what I need you to do,” and put Marcus to work immediately copying a transcript of a private conversation to send back to London. The day passed that way, bent over a table, doing as the trained clerks did, task after task, utilizing his fluency in French and Italian in a way he had never expected. Marcus knew the weight of hard work. He had been dedicated for years, first to restoring the solvency of Woodbridge and the assets his father had left in shambles and then amassing a greater wealth to prepare for the day he would inherit title and estate but few funds from his grandfather. This was exertion of a different nature.
As he immersed in the daily tasks that took up physical and mental space, it no longer mattered that the work was for Lord Landsdowne. Marcus lived only in the present, and his life in London––Natasha, Leona––was merely a dark lump of regret somewhere in the base of his skull. He was grateful that for the first time in five years, Natasha was not foremost on his mind. She only lingered everywhere else, the memory of her scent in his every breath.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The invitation to the home of Lord and Lady Marchmont was just the beginning. Natasha marveled at how quickly her life changed. From relative solitude, she had been thrust into a full household and given a new friend who seemed determined to see her about society, despite Natasha’s past. Lady Jane’s attention kept Natasha from feeling like an interloper in her husband’s house.
Especially when Kitty and Charlotte were in a sudden fury of preparations for Charlotte’s season. Watching her newfound role as Lady Templeton’s daughter-in-law supplanted by the easy affection between Kitty and Charlotte, jealousy insidiously took hold.
“Charlotte will be presented to the Queen,” Kitty said. “I do not know how to handle your situation, Natasha. I should hate to bring attention to you only to…well, to bring up the past we don’t want brought up.”
But the past would be “brought up,” Natasha thought. It was only a matter of time, and she threw herself into her outings with Lady Jane, waiting for the guillotine’s blade to drop, for her entree into the world of polite society to be revoked. It was Lady Jane’s influence that encouraged Natasha to finally pick up the Debrett’s Kitty had left on her bedside table. It was Lady Jane’s conversation as well that re-awoke her curiosity about the world around her, and while Kitty and Charlotte spoke of procuring vouchers for Almack’s, Natasha perused the morning papers over her breakfast.
One week after Marcus’s departure, she joined Kitty and Charlotte at the home of Mrs. Schellden for a ball. Lady Jane had assured her that she, too, had received an invitation and would attend, only she would be coming with her father after a dinner across town.
The house was a generous size, taking up one third of the block. The line of carriages outside seemed to go on for ages, and it was nearly a good half an hour after their carriage had arrived that they were announced in the ballroom. Kitty greeted old acquaintances and those she had just met since moving to London in January, and Natasha and Charlotte followed along behind her almost as if they were girls right out of the schoolroom.
Natasha struggled to keep her expression in that impassive mask Kitty wore so well. However, Lord Parrington and his sister were quickly making their way toward them. She felt her heated flush, despite her best efforts, its presence a mixture of shame and anger. Shame that these people knew her most scandalous secret, and anger that Parrington had been a party to Marcus’s blackmail.
Natasha made the minimum of polite conversation necessary evem as she swept the room with her gaze, looking for an escape. But it was John Underwood she saw next, and Natasha nearly fled. Where was Marcus to protect her when she needed him, now that he’d forced her into his life, into this circle? At the very least, where was Lord Landsdowne, her new champion?
Thrown into the lion’s den once more, Natasha looked about wildly. Where was Lady Jane, who had said she would be there, whose friendship she now depended upon? For Jane knew everything and seemed to hold no poor judgment of her, no ill will, only that scholarly fascination she seemed to direct to everything.
Natasha’s gaze settled with relief upon Lord Carslyle’s approach. He greeted Kitty rather familiarly, nodding to Lord Parrington. After being introduced to Lady Alinora and Charlotte, he won Natasha’s undying gratitude by asking her to dance.
Her first dance since arriving in London. Her first dance with a man since she had last danced with Marcus five years earlier. The memory of the way each dance used to be a seduction, a promise, nearly undid her. For one moment, nothing else around her mattered but the flush that heated her body.
Lord Carslyle bowed. She curtsied. The memory was in the past, and all that was in the present was the merest residue of erotic sensation and the burgeoning fear of her secret being discovered. As the music began, she glanced about the room, looking for John Underwood, wondering if, even as she moved easily through the simple, natural steps, this London life was about to end.
There wasn’t much time to talk with Lord Carslyle, only to laugh, to share a look, to glance out of the corner of her eye when they came shoulder to shoulder, but she found herself wanting to cling to him, to do as she had done with Lady Jane and confess all.
“Are you enjoying yourself, Lady Templeton?” he asked when they went down the line. Breathlessly, she nodded and turned away.
“You seem preoccupied,” he observed the next time they met.
I am, she wanted to say, but indecision kept her mute and the steps took her away from him once more. The sense of being trapped, of being naked before this crowd, nearly overwhelmed her. Marcus had blackmailed her into marriage, forced a reconciliation with her parents, played with her life, and then abandoned her to society’s wrath. She resented him with a sickening despair.
When the dance ended, Lord Carslyle and the weight of stares, of chattering curiosity, escorted her back to Kitty’s side. She heard the hushed gasps and titters, noticed how women subtly swept out of her way. How the men assessed her far more boldly than before. Surely this wasn’t her imagination. They knew.
She looked straight ahead, afraid of seeing these faces, of acknowledging anything with an accidental glance. And then she saw Lady Jane and Lord Langley bearing down on Kitty, their pace such that they all would meet there just as Natasha and Lord Carslyle arrived.
“Yes, yes, they all know,” Jane whispered a moment later as she leaned close, her confirmation tightening the knot in Natasha’s chest. “Now embrace this reputation and let us go for a stroll about the room.” Embrace this reputation. It should have been Marcus standing by her in this moment, not Lord Carslyle and Lady Jane.
“Why?” Natasha couldn’t stop herself from asking. “Why help me?”
“What a silly question, Lady Templeton,” Jane said, even though they had been Natasha and Jane for the greater part of the last week. “The fact is that I am.”
The room seemed overly crowded, overly hot, blindingly filled with light and yet equally dark with shadows. In the middle of those shadows, Charlotte’s pale face caught her gaze. Despite her smile, the girl looked shaken.
Natasha looked away quickly. It was not her fault. There was only Marcus to blame. Marcus, who had left all of them to deal with this mess. What did matter was that Jane was introducing her to someone, and Natasha had better pay attention and smile, or all her new friend’s efforts would be for naught.
…
In the wake of the scandal breaking, Natasha found some modicum of the freedom she so desperately craved. There was no one else left to disappoint. After several invitations were revoked, Charlotte went to live with Kitty’s cousins to salvage what was left of the Season, as they had so kindly offered to shelter her from the storm.
Through it all, Jane stood by Natasha’s side as if, unlike Charlotte, the lady didn’t have a care in the world for her name. Lord Carslyle as we
ll had made himself something of her champion. And when Lady Marchmont invited her to join her party in their box at the opera, Natasha began to suspect the hands of Lord Landsdowne were behind the offering. Without being presented to the Queen, Natasha didn’t receive entree to the innermost circle of events, but where she did attend, she was never cut or treated with anything more disdainful than polite distance.
She grew used to the stares, the gossip, and the bold questions. The vaunted politeness and discretion of the upper class seemed utterly absent where Natasha was concerned. She took Jane’s advice and embraced her reputation, so that when caught in the middle of a gaggle of ladies, she merely offered an amused, knowing smile.
The men were as bad as the ladies, as if Marcus’s absence gave them all free rein to expect their flirtation would lead to something more. She found she didn’t mind, could put their desires in their place and enjoy the admiration. London became everything and more than she had imagined it would be at eighteen: endless dances, endless champagne, ridiculous love letters from near strangers, and artists who wanted to capture her likeness in marble and paint.
Marcus was absent. Natasha was young. And she reveled in her new life.
There was a place for her in London. When the new Viscountess Templeton held her first soiree, Kitty’s friends looked askance and Charlotte didn’t attend, but the drawing room was crushed full with Natasha’s new acquaintances. So what if she had a scandalous past? The champagne flowed and laughter bubbled up with it. She found the role of hostess effortless, enjoyable even. And the house that had felt like Kitty’s for the first time belonged to her.
Gone was Mrs. Prothe who attended church every Sunday and lived only to protect her daughter. Here she was Lady Templeton, the one-time mistress. The only constant was the dark, closed-off space of her heart, the refusal to give in to her soul’s yearnings, to the aching part of her that still longed for Marcus. Here in London, even as she outwardly flitted her way through society, she was as susceptible to despair as she had been since that night she fled London.
On the balcony, Lord Carslyle murmured something about the night air as he lifted her arm to kiss the back of her gloved hand. Over the last few days, her awareness of him as a man who had interest in her had grown. The foreign sensation frightened her.
Was this then a way to break Marcus’s hold on her? Her husband––a man bound to her by meaningless, coerced vows that even God surely considered null and void.
“We shouldn’t,” she said quietly.
He withdrew his hand. “You would stay loyal to a man who has caused you such misery?”
“Why do you say that?”
“That he causes you misery?” Lord Carslyle laughed. “It is so very obvious, my dear. You wouldn’t be here with me so soon after your wedding if he brought you joy. But let’s not speak of him, Natasha.” He spoke her given name caressingly, shocking her with the intimacy of it. “We are here now, you and I, and there is nothing to this life but the present.”
He had said similar words before, about living only for the very instant in which they existed, as if the past were too painful and the future too uncertain, and that idea cut to the quick of Natasha’s aching soul.
“Why? What happened to you?”
“You have the right of it,” he whispered, moving closer, as close as they could respectably be in public. “I was in love once, just like you. I understand completely.”
The sigh Natasha released was for them both. Carslyle wasn’t going to tell her more about the woman he had loved, what had become of her, why he seemed not only sad, but bitter and empty. But she didn’t really need to know, because she would never tell him all that had passed between her and Marcus. And Carslyle was right, too. For them, all that mattered were these moments, the ability to give each other solace, whether through simple friendship or whether––She shook her head.
“I have been invited to sit for the great Monsieur Aleceur,” she revealed. Catching Carslyle’s outraged expression, she continued on before he could interrupt. “He paints only courtesans, I realize, and his asking me was an insult, of course, but I rather think I shall say yes.”
“The man is a lecher.”
Natasha looked away.
“Why would you do that? What will that gain you but the enmity of more people?”
There was no pretense between Carslyle and herself, and thus she wouldn’t insult him by speaking in hints and subtleties. She pinned him with her gaze, with all her anger and frustration. All her fear that perhaps she would let him kiss her hand again and perhaps her wrist and further. Perhaps she’d do that for the same reason she intended to let Monsieur Aleceur paint her.
“What would an affair with you gain me but that as well?”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Ten days had passed since the Russian Emperor had led his victorious procession into Paris. Napoleon had abdicated, but amidst talk about when and where the new peace talks would resume was the continued question of whether Bonaparte or Bourbon for the French throne. Now Marcus was entering Paris as well. However, all he truly cared about was talk of return to London.
At last he had had correspondence. The letters of his mother and cousin contained minutiae of everything that had occurred since his departure. And now that the end was in sight, the desire to leave, to sweep Natasha out of his grandfather’s decaying reach, nearly overwhelmed him. Who knew what damage had been done in a few short months? One more failure he now had to lay at his own feet. Marcus had promised to protect Natasha, and instead he had abandoned her. As time had passed, the painful edge of their last argument had dulled. Now it was only the echo of her cry, “you, you, you,” that kept him from begging her forgiveness again.
He pulled himself out of his thoughts, refocused his gaze just as they passed through the gates into Paris. Deafening. Even through the closed windows of his carriage. He had been curious about Paris, but this first view was nothing he had ever imagined. He would have missed the scents, the overwhelming smells that seeped into his carriage––dirt and dust and horse and masses of humanity. And death. The stench of decomposing bodies––human and horse––
“Strange, isn’t it, Pell?”
“Sir?” Pell looked at him quizzically.
“To be here at long last. Those summers I was sent abroad, to study diplomacy,” Marcus said with a laugh. Those journeys that were more filled with boyish exploration than any real academic education. “In all that time, I never went to France.”
“Yes, my lord,” Pell agreed. “It is strange at that.”
As eager as he was to return to England, as infuriated as he was by the knowledge that his grandfather had once again manipulated his life to his use, Marcus knew that this brief appointment had educated him in a way that Cambridge never had.
Diplomacy was as much about select inaction and restraint as it was about bold, obvious moves. He had learned the power of strategic science as a youth and discovered it anew in practice, but there were things that one knew and then things of which one needed to be reminded at intervals. Marcus had champed at the bit to leave Dijon and the Austrian Headquarters, and had at first thought it ridiculous that Castlereagh pleaded the easily proven false excuse of bad roads to delay the journey to Paris. But then they received word from Sir Charles Stewart, Lord Castlereagh’s half brother. By holding back, the foreign secretary was laying good groundwork with the Austrians for negotiations regarding Italy. He was also using the opportunity to see which way the wind blew before agreeing to whatever tentative terms had been hatched in Paris.
Those decisions were apparently to be made immediately as the carriage containing Lord Castlereagh and Prince Metternich stopped in front a large, imposing house at the corner of rue de Rivoli and rue St. Florentin, which was, Marcus was told, the home of Monsieur Talleyrand, where the Tsar was apparently residing. Leaving Pell to organize their own lodgings, Marcus followed the men inside. He settled in an antechamber while the other men were closeted
away in discussion and careful negotiations. Marcus waited, presumably, for orders that might take him on any number of errands. There was something about the room in which he sat, some way sound echoed, or dust settled, which sent his thoughts barreling to memories that were more like a sense, a taste of a time before with Natasha. For those brief moments, it was as if he could live there, soar into that other life. Then the moment was gone, and he was left shuddering, wanting.
There was no going back. All that existed was the way forward, and though he had acted rashly, reacted to Natasha’s rage with an impulsive hopelessness, he knew there was hope. The lessons of diplomacy could be utilized at home as well as abroad.
After the first shock, he lingered over thoughts of Natasha, dragging up full memories that fed his fantasies. Under the shadow of a large hanging tapestry, he imagined Natasha’s bare skin, the slope of her shoulder, the greediness of her passion.
Hours later, in the darkness before the dawn, Marcus finally made his way to the rooms his valet had secured. They were a rather mean set of rooms, shared with another British attaché and that man’s servant, but Pell had been told by the belligerent landlord to be grateful to have secured any rooms at all as half of Europe’s soldiers had infested Paris. From what Marcus could tell, the man was correct. The armies of a half dozen countries peopled the streets, congregating in cafés and public houses, drinking, stacked ten to a room at night. Though the first two days were spent playing courier, taking letters back and forth across Paris, the next were nearly empty of duties as they were waiting until the soon-to-be king of France arrived in Paris. With few specific duties, himself negligible in the chain of power, and swallowed up by edifices so much grander than his imagination had ever been, Marcus found that every day he spent in Paris, he felt more lost.
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