Finally Gerard slowed, by––based on the faint sound of music, and the louder sound of laughter––what must have been the rear door of a public house. Marcus stopped in the shadows behind the scrap pile, where the chattering of rats sent a disgusted shiver down his spine.
Hidden by the edge of a crumbling stone wall, Marcus waited, watched, just as his brother did. At long last, the rear door opened, and a party of drunken men walked out, stumbled about, relieved themselves, and then returned inside.
More waiting. Finally the door opened again, and another man walked out. Perhaps it was the style of his clothes or the cut of his hair, but Marcus thought the man French, not unusual for these provinces. Alone, the man walked down the alley, past Gerard, who crept from his place to follow, keeping always to the shadows. Both men passed by Marcus, who in his own turn, followed.
The alley, dirty with filth and sludge, narrowed, turned, was soon out of sight of the public house, and Marcus nearly stumbled upon them by the time he realized Gerard had made his move. His brother had the other man on his knees, hands behind his back, Gerard’s hand at his dagger’s hilt.
Marcus made no effort to hide himself and, staring at his brother’s back, listened.
“I was asked to give you a message,” Gerard said. “The lady Ana regrets you did not dine with her.”
“Non, signore, I don’t know any lady by that name,” the man said, his fear evident in his every gasp and jerk.
“You cannot play with the strings of life when you don’t know where they attach.” His brother’s dispassionate voice cut into Marcus’s soul.
Before he knew exactly what he was about, Marcus stepped into Gerard’s line of sight. Into that of the other man’s as well. It was instinct that made him rage against the injustice of a man paying for a sin he didn’t even realize he had committed, simply because some greater power had decided the way things should be.
“Let him go,” Marcus urged. “What crime has this man committed?”
“Si, let me go,” the other man pleaded, wriggling, trying to free himself from Gerard’s iron grip. “You have the wrong man. I’ve done nothing.”
Marcus saw the movement out of the corner of his eye, the glint of moonlight on metal, sweeping up. He stepped forward, the step he thought necessary, the second before the explosion, before he catapulted forward, squeezing his eyes shut at ground that rose up to meet him and the sting of his cheek scraping on the street.
Gibberish, “…merde…” more gibberish, perhaps French curses of which Marcus knew few. A desperate scrambling. Marcus turned his head with difficulty, cracked open one eye, saw the man his brother had held captive running fast down the street. But where was the man with the pistol? Had he reloaded, had he remained near? Would he shoot again?
“Dammit, I knew you were following me.” Gerard cursed. “I should have—”
Marcus heard his brother’s words from a distance, as if that man were on the other side of his pounding head, another room. And his chest, well, the burning was subsiding. In fact, he could hardly feel anything. His teeth clattered against each other.
“What should you have done?” He felt the hard clash of his teeth after each word. “Killed me?”
“You think you did something heroic here? You think you saved two men’s lives?” Gerard demanded, looking furious even as he did something horrible to Marcus’s body. The whole world spun, raged into pain, and then settled into a blur.
“Stop,” Marcus said, hearing the word thin and weak. “Stop,” he said again, trying to get his tongue around it, to make it fuller and thicker. But he couldn’t make Gerard stop. Instead his brother kept jarring him, forcefully, as if ramming him into bone.
“You’ve only made my work harder.” Gerard kept speaking. It was useless to ask him to stop. The man didn’t know the meaning of the word. But there was something else. Another thought somewhere. He searched for it, out of the black fog that pushed out even the blurry color, grasped its dangling tail, bloody and thin, like the tentacles of the squid he’d had at lunch.
At last, he had it. “Where is Natasha?”
Chapter Thirty-Three
The letter arrived at breakfast, smelling of salt as if it had come in on the morning boat, and when Natasha looked closer, it seemed that was indeed the case.
“It is from Pell.” Her hands shook, and she thought she might cast up her accounts right there in the breakfast room. This was it. Marcus had sent his reply, and to show how little he cared, he’d had his valet write the letter.
She wanted to run out of the room, read the letter in private. Or burn the letter, perhaps. Hide it and pretend she’d never received it at all.
“Highly irregular,” Kitty commented, and Natasha heard the light click of her laying her fork down on her plate.
Lady Templeton could have no idea how irregular it was. And that disapproval, that doubt, would be tenfold in her eyes.
Natasha played with the note, ran her fingers along the edges, overly aware of the sensation of the paper against her flesh.
“Well, unless you’ve learned some new power of divination, you had better open that,” Kitty said. Natasha looked over at her.
Kitty looked pale, as if the irregularity of the whole event made her nervous. But Kitty couldn’t know…and Natasha realized that Kitty’s fears were very different from her own.
Trembling, Natasha slid her finger under the edge of the paper and broke the wax seal. She unfolded the sheet, took in the neat lines of ink, wondered if Pell could write legibly at all. Then she realized it was her own eyes that were flawed and she blinked twice, struggled to see the lines.
She drowned in the sentences, in the news that was so different from what she had expected and yet far more dire.
Injured gravely, fear for his life.
Kitty paled, placed her palms flat on the table, pushing so that Natasha thought she would rise, but then she did not. Instead she continued that strange tension between hand and table, and Natasha stared at the intersection.
“This is his grandfather’s doing,” Kitty said quietly, when she finally did speak again. “A whole family, ruined by one man’s incessant manipulations.”
But Kitty was speaking as if Marcus were already dead, as if she had expected nothing less than for him to die young, in a foreign land, of a putrid wound.
Dead without Natasha ever seeing him again, without Leona ever truly knowing her father. Without––
But he wasn’t dead. It was silly to act as though he were.
“I think I’d better go to him,” Natasha said aloud, testing the words. They hung there, unanswered, and in that silence, her determination grew.
Finally, she murmured her excuses and pushed herself back from the table.
“What did you say?” Kitty asked, just as Natasha stood, as if she hadn’t noticed anything until the sudden movement. Her mother-in-law looked as she had that day months ago in Lord Landsdowne’s sitting room. She looked frail. This was a woman who had been beat down by a life handed to her. But just as Kitty had been chained to misery by Lord Landsdowne’s influence on his son, so had the earl freed Natasha.
Free will. For all the wrongs he had done, in the name of the family and country, plots and schemes she could only begin to guess at, he had granted her the key to her own freedom.
“I must pack, Kitty,” she said, stepping away from the table. “I’m going to Marcus.”
Natasha said nothing to Leona of Marcus’s injury even as she planned for the journey to Florence. She knew, as she moved about the house, from nursery to bedroom to sitting room and back again, that both her daughter and Kitty watched her, judged her, each with her own perspective. They trailed her in her every movement, and Natasha felt the weight of those judgments.
The morning haze burned off, the sun blazed through the windows, and morning passed into early afternoon. It would be a late start for a long journey.
“You think I don’t care for him,” she said finally to
her mother-in-law, while the carriage was being brought round. “You think I am heartless and faithless and—”
“I think you are rash and immature. If you consider nothing else, it will be near impossible to reach Florence. Everyone is traveling the other direction, following the Emperor Alexander and the diplomatic circus. That whole region is still at war.”
“He is the father of my daughter. He is my husband.” Natasha stopped there, unwilling to share more, to open up her agitated emotions to Kitty. For she knew very well that the threat of losing Marcus was bringing out all her softer feelings for him, coloring every experience so that all the bitterness and pain was overshadowed by the good. Even acknowledging that to herself, she had to go to him. He would not come to her, and she could no longer live in this half-life, married but not, loved but not.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Marcus rose from the bath into the pleasant shock of slightly cooler air. Italy, he had found, was infernally hot. Water sluiced down his bare skin, splashing back into the full bath as he reached for the large towel Pell had left for him. Carefully, he stepped out of the tub, dried himself, and entered the bedroom. Even after two months, much of which had been spent bedridden, the room still looked unfamiliar. But it might very well be his home for the foreseeable future, at least for as long as he felt compelled to keep himself away from England.
His clothes had been laid out upon the bed, and he dressed slowly, still wincing from the occasional ache. It was easier now than it had been even a week earlier, when he had still relied upon Pell for many of the simplest tasks.
Finally, he stood before the mirror to tie his cravat. There, too, in the reflective glass, he found an unfamiliar view. A beaten-down wretch of a man. There were shadows under his eyes, and his skin looked as dry as he felt inside. His tousled hair needed a cut. In all, he looked––he looked like hell, but for a man who had seen the other side of death and returned, he supposed he looked lively indeed.
Although not all of him had returned. His heart and his soul remained dust. He was a hollow man, as sunken as those shadows under his eyes.
He heard Pell’s footsteps, heavy and quick on the wood floor of the hall. Then the expected scratch on the door. He turned, leaving the stiff cloth around his neck. It was just as well that he should leave the tying of it to his valet.
“My lord.” Pell appeared alarmed, as if his news would draw anger.
“What is it?”
“Lady Templeton is downstairs and I don’t think she’ll wai—”
His words were broken off by the sound of insistent footsteps on the stairs. Marcus pulled the door open and stepped into the hall just in time to see Natasha round the corner and stop abruptly, staring.
As he was staring, filled with joy, filled with wonder. He caught himself and forced his foolish, startled emotions into a slow, indolent perusal. Even though inside, he was shocked, amazed, that after all this time, all his dreams and fantasies, she was here, vivid and beautiful as ever.
It hurt him. Physically. Far more than the few injuries he still felt when he moved. And clearly he did still have some shadow of a heart, because it ached.
Tasha.
“I thought…” She stopped, as still as her body. Hesitant, not at all like a woman who had been taking the stairs two at a time. She looked like a countess now, yet she looked nothing like his wife. Her dress was exquisite and tailored perfectly to her body. She carried herself like a woman who had been out in society, with a polish and sophistication she had never before had.
At what price had she earned that polish? A sneer twisted his lips, and hated himself for even the weakness of that visible emotion. He should feel nothing for her. Everything, his heart, should be ash.
“That I am on my deathbed?” He laughed, the sound harsh, guttural. She started toward him with slow, measured steps. He took a step back himself and leaned against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest. “As you can see I’m recovering, if not quite up to snuff, so there was no need to travel.”
“I’m relieved,” she said stiffly.
She kept approaching, and he couldn’t stop the anger that rose up within him as she neared. It was hard to continue to affect such a dispassionate display toward her, especially when she was only an arm’s length away and he could see her expression more clearly.
Those dark eyes, those lush pink lips. Lips that had kissed another man, eyes which had bathed another man with passion.
As he had given her permission to do. As if that action could make the infidelity hurt less.
“I won’t give you your divorce. And here I am still alive. So my apologies, you won’t quite have your entire freedom yet.”
“That’s not why I came.”
As if he didn’t know how desperately she wanted to be free of him.
Why was she there? Guilt, perhaps. Some dormant sense of compassion. It hurt to look at her, and he’d have to leave Florence now, find somewhere else, where there was no memory of her.
“Why did you come?”
They stood there silently.
Finally, Marcus spoke. “Travel is still not safe. I should feel flattered that you braved the danger to tend to me.” Indeed, he was flattered, hopeful even. He squashed the feeling down cruelly. “Though, I suppose not finding me convalescent and unable to weep by my prone form, you are at a loss.”
“I’m glad you’re well.” She stared at him, forcing him to acknowledge her, and he met her gaze. The shocking awareness of her eyes terrified him, made him feel bare and vulnerable. Anger, resentment, none of that mattered. He’d never be able to forget her. She could tear his heart out and feed it to him for breakfast and still he’d dream of her. “Marcus.”
He broke the thick, invisible bond between them, pushing off away from the wall and letting his arms fall to the side.
“As we have ascertained that I am well, and that you are not eager for my death, then… I thank you for your concern. Pell!” His valet stepped into the hallway, exhibiting an impressively blank expression.
“My wife will need a room. Please see––”
“No,” Tasha interrupted him. “That won’t be necessary.”
Marcus looked back at her, raised his eyebrow in question. What did she want from him?
Natasha seemed to shrink back into herself, and that physical reaction made him loathe himself even more. “I mean, that is if it isn’t inconvenient for you.” She flushed, and he suddenly understood the import of her words.
“Not for that reason,” Marcus said with a sneer, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice. “I’ve kept my vows.”
Their gazes locked again for a moment, this time in challenge. He closed himself off. He wouldn’t let her catch him off guard again. He studied her, her luminous skin, the dark fringe of her lashes, the pink lips that––the room shuddered and he sighed, knowing, relieved yet exhausted––that no other man had tasted. He might have been able to convince himself of her perfidy with thousands of miles between them, but not now.
“Pell, my wife is correct. See to everything.”
His valet left, inching by them, as if he wanted to hear how the rest of this reunion played out. Marcus watched the heels of his valet’s shoes recede. Then the hallway was silent. Thick with it.
“I kept my vows as well,” she said softly.
He sighed again at the words that teased at him, made him yearn for something impossible. The door to his bedroom stood open and he looked through. The bright Italian afternoon light illuminated the room in oranges and yellows.
“How is Leona?”
He felt her move closer, her heat, her scent drawing near, and then she was next to him, looking as he was looking, at the play of light over the room.
“She’s well. This last month she’s grown so much. But she misses you. She doesn’t understand.”
Anger burned through Marcus, a fierce need that had him moving before he even realized it. His breath came hard and rasping as he looked down at
her, between his outstretched arms, trapped between him and the door.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “You hate me. You, you, you, as you said.” Her voice, those words, pushing at him, were still imprinted in his mind, in his heart. He could see the image, hear her voice, so vividly. “It was perfectly clear, Tasha. Why torment me like this?”
“I…” She hesitated and licked her lips, and he groaned at the sight, his hips pressing forward before he caught the involuntary action. “I waited and waited for you to return. Then when you left Paris, I realized you didn’t intend to come back.”
Marcus broke away, stalking into the bedroom, his hands grasping at his hair.
“I did hate you,” she admitted, and he knew she followed him. “You––”
“Stop,” he cried, whirling around again, and seeing her so close, he grabbed her hand. “I am who I am. I’ve come to terms with that, and I don’t expect you to love me.”
Through the fury of his need, he watched her swallow, watched the softness of her neck work through her own emotions. He hoped––a wild, desperate sort of hope––and he exchanged her hand for the silken lines of her jaw, as if he could help the words out of her.
“I’m only a man. Tell me what you want from me.”
His fingers were lost in the upswept hair at the back of her neck, and his thumbs played along her neck, her cheek. He searched inside her eyes for her soul, for the answer he wanted. And when he saw what he wanted, he hardly noticed that her lips had started to move. He bent down, drew her close, and took––she tasted of pleasure and hope and future and all the things he had denied himself these past months––hungrily. Just as he had always taken.
It didn’t matter what she wanted, what she was offering. It didn’t matter that she had been faithful at the end, for he was still the same, and eventually her hatred for him would win out over whatever softer emotions she now felt.
He pushed himself away from her, his breath ragged, his heart torn.
Lord of Regrets Page 24