He glanced to his left, to make certain that Gerard was still there, and he was, rolling his glass back and forth between his fingers, its bottom edge scraping against the wooden bar. Marcus looked away, down into the golden liquid.
“I received a letter today. From my cousin Charlotte.” Marcus studied his hand, which was now so bandaged he could neither flex nor fist it. “My wife is having an affair.” His lips grimaced with the effort of getting the words out. He wanted to hit something again just thinking about it. He drank instead.
“Ah.”
That was it. Nothing else, only that one sighed, knowing word. Gerard’s face was sympathetic, empathetic in fact. Perhaps that was the French, understanding matters of love more. Marcus blinked. He swirled his brandy glass a bit so he could watch the ripples. See the movement. Feel it ease through his body the way the heat did. “I never imagined she would.”
“Perhaps Lady Templeton is lonely. You left your newly wedded wife within weeks…”
The sharp sound of glass meeting wood startled him almost more than Gerard’s words. His glass was empty, his hand wet with spilled liquid. He needed to explain, to make Gerard see why it was all––
“We were in love once. She did love me. I know she did. I thought she still would.”
There was that shrug and a raised eyebrow, and Marcus found himself revealing the whole of it all. Every last embarrassing and guilt-inducing moment.
At the end of it all, he had another glass of brandy, which he choked down with his own self-hatred.
Gerard’s hollow eyes revealed nothing, until he spoke, calmly, condescendingly.
“So you threatened her life, made her run, hunted her down, blackmailed her, abandoned her, and you are surprised that she seeks love elsewhere?”
“I didn’t––”
“It sounds, my brother, like you did. In fact, you make our grandfather look near a saint.”
The blood rushed to his head with a roar. He stumbled or the room shook, wouldn’t stop moving. He brushed Gerard’s helping hand away, the edge of the bar hitting into his back dully. The café was less crowded but no less loud. And everyone was looking at him.
He licked his lips, feeling the skin dry under his tongue, which was dry, too. Parched. And then he felt his head, cotton filled, with a sharp, pounding pain that throbbed him in and out of blackness. Or maybe that was just the room and it was night. He peered around, and then he cracked open his eyes and tried it again. A thin beam of light stole through the break in the heavy draperies. Morning then. At least he was in his bed.
He buried his face against the pillow and pummeled his fist against the mattress. Four times. Five. The anguish that poured out of his heart exceeded the pain in his head, exceeded the pain in his throbbing fist.
He should never have left her. There was a whole list of “never should haves,” all of which were pointless. The past was gone, unchangeable. It would be his shroud when he finally died, but he could not live in it.
He could return to London, he could fight for her, demand his rights as a husband. Kill Carslyle. But she would never love him, and if he bullied her more…
He stretched his arms till his hands curled around the edge of the mattress, and he pushed his forehead down onto the sheets, rounding his back with a soundless cry.
He composed a letter to her in his mind, the letter he would send if he thought there was still a life for them, if he planned to return.
How I wish that time could reverse. I have done everything wrong. I live parallel to this world, wishing for… It is beyond my understanding, but here in Paris, I’ve come closer to the edge, the thin barrier to true comprehension.
I see myself now, the man I intend to be and the man that you see. There is my grandfather in my every move, in the veins of my hands. I see now that you were right. Love, the stuff of memory, is not enough to ease the path. I’ve tortured you, bullied you, blackmailed you at every turn, all in the name of it.
Love—Natasha—forgive me. See me again as the man you called honorable, handsome, as the man who charmed you. See me again as the man for whom you gave up everything, not the man who made you flee, made you fear. Made you hate.
Hate. The word still hurt, still ate at his heart, at his gut, at his mind. Still made his face twist up as Leona’s did the moment before a cry.
Marcus pushed himself away from the mattress, rolling off the side of the bed before jumping to his feet. He pulled back the curtains to let in the early light and then searched the room for his writing kit.
He took up the quill with a sickness in his soul. The ink-drawn lines on the foolscap before him swam and––
I wish you every happiness, to seek your happiness.
Chapter Thirty
It was all perfectly proper, her maid had assured her, to go for a drive in the park with a gentleman, even if he was not her husband. In an open carriage, the park was a public place, especially at the fashionable hour. Yet Natasha still felt the spark of doing something illicit. She liked that feeling.
Perhaps it was because people now expected her to do something daring. At every gathering she attended, those to which she was still invited, she often felt that people were waiting for her to make the slightest misstep so they could drag her past out and crucify her with it. She didn’t care. All the mishaps that mattered were in the past.
Still, her friendship with Carslyle was causing the gossips’ mouths to flap. Even at home, Kitty was disapproving. It was strange, however, that the bolder Natasha grew in her actions, the more Marcus haunted her dreams. Night after night, she awoke, confused and desperate, reaching for something just beyond her grasp.
But it was at the park, in Carslyle’s carriage, at the fashionable hour, that he made his most bold proposal that they begin an affair in earnest. At a seaside resort.
It was at that same hour that Natasha knew she could not let this flirtation be what he desired. If she went with him, she would be betraying every vow she had made, even if under duress, and every value she had ever held dear. She would be betraying the memory of the pure love she had once shared with Marcus, and the family that had welcomed her.
She returned home filled with a strange sort of nostalgic hope.
Until faced with Kitty, standing in the foyer, disapproval etched on her countenance.
“You have a letter from Marcus,” Kitty commented, indicating the letter as if she hoped its mere presence would bring some sense into Natasha’s head.
Natasha picked up the note from the salver calmly, dangling it between her thumb and forefinger, unwilling to show Kitty how much she wanted to break the seal and read her husband’s words.
They stood there in silence. Kitty’s lips thinned and worked. Finally, just as Natasha started to move, she spoke.
“You may not be the daughter-in-law I would have chosen, but once you were here, were one of us, I welcomed you into our house.”
“Kitty, please.” Natasha lifted one hand, trying to forestall the speech. She didn’t want to hear this, to face this. Not when she had just made her decision to put the flirtation aside. To make an attempt at reconciliation with Marcus.
“You are shaming us, Natasha. I cannot fault you for your past. The blame lies at Marcus’s feet as well. Most especially for forcing this marriage upon us all. Thus, I cannot blame you for Charlotte needing to flee her own home in order to protect her prospects in her first and likely only London Season. But I can and will blame you for this.”
“You know nothing, Kitty. You will look a fool for your assumptions.”
“You are playing your husband and this family for fools!” Kitty’s composure cracked.
“Please say no more,” Natasha begged, not wanting to hear any more hatred coming from her mother in law’s lips. “I, too, did not get to choose. But I…” Suddenly words were too much. She swept by Kitty, ignoring any sounds behind her, and hurried up the stairs. She wanted, needed, to be alone.
It was only when she’d rea
ched the room’s relative safety, threw her gloves and reticule upon the bed, that Natasha remembered the letter, now scrunched between her two crumpled gloves. She plucked it out, smoothed out its creases, ran the pad of her thumb over the pressed seal. His letters to her were as frequent as those to Leona or to his mother, but they were never long, usually only a few short lines that she found herself studying for some deeper meaning.
There was never any deeper meaning to be had.
Finally she broke the hard wax, unfolded the missive, stared at his bold, even scrawl.
Please, on my account, do not curtail your enjoyments of the Season. I wish you every happiness, to seek your happiness, and if that comes from some other man, I do not wish to stand in the way. I have some work here still, which needs attending.
Natasha read the words over and over until the ink seemed to bleed into the page, run into the other few lines, disappear the way her world was disappearing, tilting, falling into the sea, the way the medieval town of Parrington had been eaten up by the water till nothing of it existed but a memory. Marcus had heard about Carslyle, about the flirtation that had amounted to nothing, but he believed.
I wish you every happiness, to seek your happiness.
Marcus would not be returning. At least not soon, not this month, not this summer, perhaps not this year. All he offered her was four short lines.
He was throwing her away. When she was finally willing to try.
Natasha crumpled up the letter and leaned against the bedpost, grasping the carved wood to steady herself when the dizzying rush of tears blurred her sight. She was stupid, stupid, stupid.
Why not have an affair? Why not do exactly what Kitty and Marcus believed her to be doing in any event? Her own husband had given his blessing. It was utterly ridiculous for Natasha now to stick to virginal qualms. She’d given up decency years ago. Everyone in London already knew that.
Or why not take it further? Why not now seek a legal separation, a divorce even? It would put her beyond the pale socially, but that would be nothing new. If she did have an affair, it would be grounds for divorce, but only if Marcus cared enough, if he was willing to not only give her freedom in that, but also to truly let her go, to break the false marriage within which he had chained her. How could she ever be free of him, wearing his ring, using his name?
For a moment, it seemed like a dream, like a gapingly open, free possibility. Never mind the tight knot of despair beneath.
…
The assembly room was an uncomfortable crush. Hot, oppressive, with too many scents, and noisy with the chatter that broke over the orchestra’s music.
Just as so many others had, she and Carslyle took refuge in the much-cooler garden, where there was a group dancing to the fainter strains of the song. She had looked at him, said she was overheated, lowered her lashes. He had understood immediately. Ushered her toward a shadowed corner, where the configuration of trees and topiary allowed a relative privacy.
Her heart ached. It had been one thing to flirt, to accept male admiration as balm for the pain of abandonment, but this was different.
She felt Carslyle’s breath on the nape of her neck. His lips were close and soon they’d touch her skin. She could do this. And if she did, she would truly be breaking Marcus’s hold on her, stepping past that point of no return.
Yet it was wrong. Dizzy and nauseated, Natasha slipped away from his hold. From the safety of several feet, she faced him.
“I can’t.”
His full, sensuous lips twisted and, with the spell broken, Natasha found them only skin. Freedom would not be found in his touch.
“Come, Natasha, we’re both adults. We’re both lonely.” In the deep shadows of the night, his eyes seemed to reflect the moon. Juliet’s inconstant moon. “Why shouldn’t we grasp some happiness where we may?” he pressed on, stepping forward.
Stunned, reeling, she stumbled back against a tree. Grasp happiness. The happiness Marcus had bid her to seek, had let her go to seek. Marcus had let her go.
The earth moved again, tumbling her world. This wasn’t the happiness Natasha wanted. She looked back on her life––the running, hiding, frozen coffin of a life. It wasn’t divorce she wanted; that wasn’t the freedom she needed. She didn’t want him to let her go.
Inside, she was gasping, breaking down into tears, but she couldn’t do that in front of Carslyle. Whatever flirtation and friendship they had shared had been with the unspoken agreement to do so only on the surface of their lives.
She swallowed hard, turning away.
“I won’t push you, Natasha,” he said. The warmth of his hand settled on her arm. “I don’t wish to cause you distress. I thought––”
Her breath settled. Carslyle wasn’t a part of this. She shrugged off his hand.
No matter what Marcus had written, he would return, and when he did–– When he did, they would talk. Whatever she chose, whether she left Marcus or stayed, Carslyle was not the answer.
“Thank you,” she whispered, meeting those moonlit eyes. Then she fled inside, to the crowded ballroom and the raging noise of celebration.
Chapter Thirty-One
There was a certain sameness to Natasha’s days, a lulling repetition that filled up the hours of waiting, waiting for Marcus to return. She yearned to write him, to ask him when he would come back, to tell him she wished to start over, try again. But he hadn’t sent her a letter since the one she’d received in June. If she wrote him now, she would be giving him everything of her and would lose even the small independence gained these last weeks. No. Marcus would have to return to her.
She struggled to find a sense of normality with her daughter, to remember the calm, regular days of Norfolk, the closeness before there was a nanny and a governess, a mother-in-law and cousins, and an absent husband. Some days were normal. Leona, with her usual curiosity, would follow her about, the puppy trailing behind.
But it wasn’t easy. Even Puffin came between her and her daughter.
“Did your papa write you?” Natasha asked, taking a seat in the nursery where Leona was hard at work on her lessons with her governess. Puffin bounded across the floor to her and licked at her ankles, then reared up, trying to leap into her lap. She lifted the dog up, leaning away from the lavish licking as the dog neared her face.
“Yes.”
“May I see?” It was humiliating to have to hear of her husband through his letters to her daughter.
“Yes.” Leona kept drawing, however, and it was the governess who retrieved the letter from a wooden box.
“She was sad, my lady, because his lordship will be going to Tuscany and sent no word of when he will return. She asks him in every letter. In fact, she even wrote to him to make certain not to die.”
Natasha watched her daughter draw. Leona would be five in another week, and she had grown so much in the past months.
Then Miss Sanders’s words sank in. Tuscany?
Natasha found Kitty in her dressing room, her maid doing her hair. Her mother-in-law looked at her with arched, questioning eyebrows.
“Is it true?”
“Is what true, my dear?” Lady Templeton asked.
“That Marcus is going to the Italian Peninsula now?”
“That is what he wrote. Did he not write to you?” There was amusement in Kitty’s face.
Natasha looked around the dressing room. It was cluttered with items, the walls patchworked with paintings, portraits, more than one of Marcus as a child, of his father, Vincent.
She was intruding. This was Kitty’s private space, her realm. The woman shouldn’t be forced to entertain the daughter-in-law she hated there.
“Excuse me,” Natasha whispered, leaving the room. She made her way blindly through the house till she found herself entering the breakfast room almost by rote. The room was bare, the sideboard empty. It was still far earlier than any of the household other than Leona took their first meal.
She went back into the hallway, where she came face-to-
face with the butler.
“Shall I inform the cook that you are ready for your breakfast?” Logan asked.
“No, thank you. I’m not hungry yet.”
The man faded into the background, into the wall or some other room, disappearing discreetly the way the servants in this house did.
Not breakfast, but she did want torta. She hadn’t made any in months and she had a sudden craving for the dessert.
…
“What are you doing?”
Natasha looked up from the mound of dough she had been rolling out on the wooden table and saw Kitty staring at her. The kitchen staff was staring at her as well, and likely they had been ever since she had stormed in an hour earlier, even while they continued their morning work. Mrs. Clark, the cook, looked near tears.
“Making torta,” Natasha whispered, realizing suddenly how she looked, how this looked, that she’d intruded on the lives of so many others without a thought.
“Torta.” Kitty said the word as if it were not only utterly foreign but vulgar as well. “Well, Natasha dearest, I have immediate need of you. Do you believe your torta might wait? Or perhaps Mrs. Clark might help finish it.”
“Of course,” Natasha murmured, looking down at the roll of dough that was nowhere near what it should eventually become. The mere thought of explaining how to make the dessert overwhelmed her. “Perhaps you might find some use for this, Mrs. Clark, and we may discuss the recipe at some later point.”
The cook agreed quickly, gesturing to one of her apprentices, who hurried forward to take the rolling pin.
Natasha followed Kitty out.
“Let’s retire to your room, dear, so you may change into something fresher,” Kitty said, waving her fingers at the dusting of flour that covered Natasha’s dress. “You will want to look your best, of course, because Lord Landsdowne has sent word he intends to call on you within the hour.”
Lord of Regrets Page 22