“No.” Her head felt fogged with emotion, and she couldn’t find the room or clarity to be polite or correct. “I cannot receive anyone today. I’m not…I’m not well.”
“Pull yourself together. You think simply because there is gossip––”
“I don’t care about gossip,” Natasha snapped, too frayed to be polite. Perhaps she had cared about gossip months ago, but that time had passed, and with it had come a freedom and a different sense of peace. “I care that Marcus isn’t coming home.”
“Confusing the staff won’t change that. Perhaps curtailing your behavior might. I’m surprised you even care, considering.”
“Considering what? That I flirted with a man who paid me attention? That I found a friend? That I didn’t disappear and make life easier for everyone when the truth about my past came to light?
“But I didn’t do anything, not even when Marcus gave me his permission to have an affair.” She caught Kitty’s shocked look. “Oh, you didn’t know that, did you? One of you wrote to him of it, you or Charlotte, so why are you so surprised? He didn’t run back to protect my honor and his name. No, he said, enjoy myself. Despite that, I stayed true to him. I waited. And now he isn’t coming home.”
“A fine way of showing love,” Kitty scoffed.
“What did you expect?” Natasha fled into her room and shut the door. She wanted to weep. But she couldn’t. Lord Landsdowne would be there within the hour.
Natasha was still shaken, trembling with unshed tears, when she came down to meet the earl. She was vulnerable and that was dangerous, but she went anyway, testing fate.
When she entered, he was sitting in one of the wingback chairs, his cane prominently displayed to make it clear why he didn’t rise in her presence.
“I want you to go to Woodbridge. Remain there until Marcus returns and you are seen on his arm.”
“But you’re the one who wanted me to—”
“I did not wish for you to have an affair. The heir to the earldom will be a Templeton.”
She fell silent under a sudden, forceful rush of wind through the trees. Then it ebbed once more, and in that space, she found her voice.
“Are you always pulling strings, making everyone your puppet to do your bidding? Do you have some grander plan? Or is it merely at your whim?”
“I do what is best for England. Remember that. England first. And the short-term gains are not always what will preserve England’s integrity and bolster her against foreign invaders, against invaders even from within. I look to the future because that is what must be done. When I am gone, when you are gone, England must still be here.”
“But what about us?” Natasha cried desperately. “What about Marcus and me, our lives, now? You live your life as you wish, but you make us do your bidding.”
“Have you read Thomas Hobbes? David Hume?”
Natasha shook her head. She didn’t care about these names, these men who had nothing to do with her, with Marcus.
Landsdowne didn’t seem surprised at her ignorance. He continued on, as if he had been prepared, had, in fact, expected it. “They are men who believe in free will. As do I. The only one in control of one’s actions on this earth is one’s self.”
“You made Marcus go to France.”
“I offered him the opportunity. Which he chose to take. I don’t know why. Perhaps you do?”
A stray thought, one that had at pushed at her for weeks, came to her lips.
“You asked Jane to befriend me.”
“Lady Jane has been brought up well,” the earl said, and Natasha took that for an admission.
“And the Marchmonts,” Natasha continued. “You asked them, as well, to help ease my way, and then you requested that I”—she searched for the right word, stumbled over her next—“spy on them.”
He raised an eyebrow. “That’s a very strong word, Natasha.”
“I cannot do this, Lord Landsdowne. I cannot be a part of this life. If this is what you shall make Marcus into…” She trailed off as she realized it was already what Marcus was. Everyone would manipulate, and all that was left was to be as strong as the men, to meet courage with courage, passion with passion. “Forgive me my outburst.”
He watched her, and she struggled to gather her thoughts, to ameliorate the problem.
“If you wish the heir to be his, then bring Marcus home.”
“Free will, Lady Templeton.” He intoned the title as if he were inscribing her tombstone. “It was my intention for Marcus to return to London with the rest of the diplomatic mission, until Vienna. I understand you ladies have a rather unjust view of me. Not all schemes may be laid at my feet.”
Natasha flushed. For if it was not him, then it was her. And Marcus was giving her freedom in the only way he knew how.
Or Marcus now despised her.
As she climbed the stairs, Natasha found a maid chasing after Puffin. Natasha swept the puppy up in her arms and waved the woman off.
Free will. Marcus had chosen to leave her, and he was choosing not to return. Natasha accepted the knowledge with a deep, burning shame. She had pushed him away, pushed him and pushed him. Now… when she was almost willing to set the past aside, he had left her.
Free will. She could not make him return. Perhaps at the very least she could remind him of his duty, force him to return, force him to speak to her. And with him in England once again, they could sort out the mess of their lives.
Entering her bedroom, she set the puppy down. Puffin scurried off, and Natasha called after her, but she disappeared into the dark space of Marcus’s bedroom, where the maid had forgotten to close the adjoining doors after cleaning. Natasha had avoided that room since he had left.
Puffin would return eventually. There was no need to go in there. No need other than the sudden aching desire to feel closer to her husband.
Inside his room, she ran her hand over the glossy dresser, which despite Marcus’s absence was kept carefully dust-free. Everything was as he had left it, even down to the bottles of fragrance lined neatly in a row. To a bottle of fragrance that she hadn’t noticed before, which she hadn’t seen in five years but now remembered, recognized the familiar shape of the etched crystal. She unstopped the bottle, lifted it to her nose, and nearly fainted from the wash of memories and emotions the bergamot fragrance evoked. It had been her favorite, purchased for her by Marcus. She hadn’t worn that particular blend since the night she fled. She’d had others based on the essence of bergamot, but not with these additional notes.
He kept that bottle still. As he had kept searching for her. And this, this was a devotion from which she had turned away. A devotion to the Natasha she had once been.
She remembered his first letter to her––a letter so drastically different from this last. She had kept that letter through the first year of her escape, through the anger and the longing, the confusion and the despair. She had gazed on the broad, strong strokes of words, held the paper in her hands until it was wrinkled and frail. Then she had burned the last evidence of her heart’s continued folly.
But, as if that letter, the one that had seduced her out of her parents’ home and into his bed, were still before her, she knew the words. They were engraved on her soul as firmly as if his words had been truth.
I will call you Tasha, for you are dearer to me, closer to me than I ever dreamed another human would be. Could be. My soul recognized you, and this earthly body wanted you. I know nothing but that you are mine.
How utterly ridiculous. If she were to receive such a letter now, she would laugh at the sender.
She laughed at herself. Bitterly. Because she still melted at the possibility of a love so pure, so predestined.
A snuffling on the far side of the bed drew her back from the shadowed wastelands of her dreams to the shadows of Marcus’s bedchamber. Puffin had found something she wanted, and as Natasha rounded the bed, she saw that the puppy was wrestling with the long tassels of the carpet. Her teeth clamped down, her paws to either s
ide of her face and her rear wriggled about. Such a ridiculous sight that it made Natasha laugh, that it made her want to cry.
Puffin stared at her out of the corner of her eye, still wriggling, but in more erratic motions, as if the puppy waited for Natasha to make a move. Finally she did, reaching down to pick Puffin up, extricating tassel from mouth with a firm hand. She carried the dog out of the room, feeling the air open up, clear, as she entered her own bedroom. She let Puffin down on the bed and then lay down herself.
Free will. She couldn’t control Marcus, nor should she wish to. No man or woman should be controlled, manipulated. Free will. But what could she do?
She turned on to her stomach, put her head inches from the dog’s. Puffin wouldn’t look at her. Her huge black eyes flitted about, focusing everywhere but on Natasha’s face.
“Say something. Speak to me, Puffin.
Puffin stretched out her tan legs and rested her face on her paws. Her black ears, covered in silky, wavy hair just barely longer than her ears, flopped out on either side of her. The little spaniel’s breath came as grunts.
In any event, the dog should be in the nursery. It was Leona’s. Bought for her by Marcus. Perhaps that was the problem.
Natasha laughed at herself and flopped on her back. She was calmer now. The tears had left a certain clarity behind. She could not live in this halfway land forever. She wanted Marcus home. She wanted another chance. She wanted the love she had been promised five years earlier. The obsessive love with which he had shown up at her door in Little Parrington. She wanted, needed, it all.
If she couldn’t have that, then she wanted nothing, none of this. She would write him, ask him for a separation. If he truly wanted to give her freedom, he would agree. As painful and scandalous as such an event would be, it would at least reflect the truth of her life. She was broken. Broken without him.
Perhaps there was the chance that their love was greater than all this mess. There was a chance that fate had thrown them together again not to simply torture them, but to let them have love. Perhaps, faced with her demand, he would come back. She admitted to herself, with a scared thread of happiness, that that was what she wanted. She wanted him to call her bluff.
Moments later Puffin stood up, shaking the bed with her movements. Natasha peered at her, waiting to see if she needed to help the little creature down to the ground. Puffin moved closer to her arm and sat half atop Natasha before lying down as close as she could get.
With a sigh, Natasha rested her head against the dog’s warm side. At least the dog found comfort in her company. No one else did, not even Natasha herself.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Two weeks of an idle life were far more than Marcus could take. Here he was in Firenze with his brother, who even in this foreign land disappeared at odd hours of the day and night, who was as frustrating as his grandfather and yet looked every bit like his father. Who had his own code in this world that had little to do with the interests of any specific nation.
He had taken this jaunt on a whim, when he had originally intended to remain in Paris. Gerard had said, a small trip, back in one month, two at the most. It would take his mind off Natasha.
It hadn’t. All travel had moments of silence, and the moments of silence… His hand had yet to fully heal, and every throb reminded him of her adulterous actions. He was simply exiling himself instead of committing murder.
He wanted to send for his daughter, but he could hardly do so when the bargain with which he had induced her mother to marry him was allowing them to stay together. The girl would forget him soon enough, or not care about his absence. Fathers were not important in daughters’ lives.
How could he bring his daughter to Tuscany, out of the safety of her home, to a place that, despite the beauty of the River Arno in the late morning, despite the fields of lavender and the exquisite churches, was adjusting still from the rule of Napoleon? When the would-be emperor himself was so close, just off the coast, at Elba? As peaceful as the last two weeks had been, as easy as it had been to mingle amongst the Tuscan people, to drink the rich red wine, and bask in the warmth of a sun long overdue, Marcus knew that the world around him churned.
That churning added to his own internal agitation, his inability to simply let his mind bake in the lulling heat. Which sent him seeking cool shadows of stone buildings and then entering the deeper shadows of his own memory. In the slow afternoon of one bright, late June day, sitting in the open window of his bedroom, he watched a stranger arrive. As it was so often these days, he lived again in that duality of experience: the present happenings of reality overlaid with images of the unattainable past, of Natasha.
The man carried a bag. A messenger, perhaps, if not for the fine cut of his clothing, the wealth of the fabric. Marcus slipped his legs back down to the floor, crossed the room, opened the door to the hall. At the edge of the stairs, the sharp hiss of whispered voices echoing off stone stopped him.
“This is to be used.” A foreign voice, not his brother. The messenger, then. The clear sound of metal drawn out of a sheath startled Marcus. He held his breath, suddenly aware that the same trick of acoustic arrangement might carry the sound of his movement, his every inhalation, down to them.
“Stay for lunch.” Gerard’s voice now, much louder, meant to be heard.
“Some other time,” the stranger said, and Marcus heard the unmistakable Florentine dialect.
They had clearly heard something, someone, perhaps Marcus. He made his decision, started his descent down the stairs, his footsteps firm, regular, as if he weren’t hiding that he had overheard any of their conversation.
He found them in the entrance hall, the stranger just poised at the door, so that all Marcus caught was the back of his coat, his hat, the heel of his boots, and the width of his body as he cornered the door and passed from sight.
“Ah, a pity,” Gerard said with a welcoming smile. “If you had come only a moment sooner, I might have introduced you. An old friend.”
“A short visit.”
“What did you hear?” Gerard asked suddenly, his easy attitude gone, the hollow eyes back. A man of business. Dangerous. Like the dagger whose outline beneath his half brother’s coat suddenly seemed ridiculously obvious to Marcus. He didn’t need to answer the question. He had a question, many questions, of his own.
“You are here to kill someone? Is that what you do? Assassinate people?” Marcus struggled not to lose the contents of his stomach. The thought was so repulsive, so cowardly, so—“Is this what you do for our grandfather?”
Gerard’s lips thinned; his cheeks sucked in and then let out.
“Dammit, is that what our grandfather does? Order deaths which you then carry out?” And Marcus realized then how even more wrong it was––send the legitimate son to do the diplomacy, the illegitimate to do murder.
“I’m not here on our grandfather’s behalf.” That didn’t answer Marcus’s question.
“Whose then?”
Gerard chewed slowly, as if he weren’t certain he should answer. His next words confirmed that. “It’s best that you don’t know. The people here for whom I work, they have been–– It is far bigger than any little plot you can imagine.”
“Bigger than freeing Napoleon from Elba?” A wild guess, but knowing some of the schemes his grandfather played at, it seemed an appropriate one.
Gerard laughed. “I am certain there is more than one plan to do just that hatching. But this isn’t about Napoleon. It’s far bigger.”
Bigger than a man who through the sheer force of his will had nearly made all of Europe his?
Marcus had always known that his grandfather was engaged in political manipulations, but it was different to be a part of them, to be embroiled in that world and then realize that his thread of intrigue was only one of many, and that the world of politics and diplomacy was an interwoven web, a tapestry of deception and obsessive desires, where everyone was a pawn, even knights, rooks, and bishops. Even kings and queens,
all at the hand of the chess player, some secretive puppeteer, or collection of puppeteers.
As if Gerard could read his thoughts, he said, “I should tell you none of this. I believe you would have been happier left in Paris, gone back to London, even with the news of your wife. You aren’t a man for intrigue. You accept what you do not know. It hardly bothers you to be one of many.”
Marcus bristled at the words. If he wasn’t a man for intrigue, then what was he? A pawn? He had nothing to go home to. Nothing he couldn’t manage well enough for now from where he was.
“What are you then?” Marcus demanded, studying his brother, seeing him as the stranger he had been only months earlier.
Gerard stared at him impassively, but Marcus would not believe that this question had not crossed the other man’s mind on previous occasions. His half brother had the stigma of an inferior birth, yet the benefit of education and his grandfather’s beneficence. Somehow, he had entangled himself in some conspiracies and schemes that he believed were important. Certainly these secret agents paid Gerard well––Marcus saw that the man wanted for little.
Little, perhaps, but a settled life, a home, a wife, a legacy.
“Why are you here in Florence?”
Gerard’s impassiveness slipped, edged into anger, and a fierce satisfaction surged through Marcus.
Then the calm returned. His brother smiled.
“You had it right. I’m here to rescue Bonaparte.”
Gerard refused to answer honestly, but Marcus was tired of machinations and lies. By taunting him, his brother had thrown a gauntlet down on the stone floor between them. Thus, in his simplest, darkest clothes, the way his brother had appeared that long ago night in Dijon, Marcus followed him.
He trailed him down the first alley, down another narrow street, through the courtyard of a church, until Marcus suspected Gerard knew he was being followed and was trying to lose him. But why not simply stop, confront him? Marcus was not some enemy who would try and kill Gerard. Or were they enemies? Despite their shared blood, did they truly have opposing allegiances?
Lord of Regrets Page 23