“You have it, Tasha, your freedom, your divorce. Now leave me, go. Go!”
…
Natasha watched him leave. The air, the world, her life, left with him. She didn’t understand him. What made him leave her then, just as she had been ready to melt under his touch, to give in to his desire, to revel in it as she had never before?
She’d had weeks to think about Marcus, to try not to think about Marcus. Marcus was her entire world. She bore his name; she lived in his home. She’d had his child.
Tell me what you want from me, he had demanded. She had said nothing. What did she want from him?
When the letter had come with news of his injury, the decision had been easy––go to the man, this man she had once loved, who was the father of her child, for whose return she even then awaited. Go to him because he might not survive and, at the very least, he should know that she had––
He had asked her what she wanted of him. And she knew. She wanted all of him, without the agony of saying no. They were married already. She had no doubt of his faithfulness and never had. No lingering reason existed not to leap into this life with him.
She wanted a life with him.
She took her shoes off, laid them on the floor by the foot of the bed. Then she climbed atop the mattress and lay down, enjoying its softness and the freedom of stretching out her stockinged feet. It had been a long journey from London––two weeks in which she hadn’t let herself think about what if. What if in the nearly six weeks between Marcus’s injury and her arrival, he hadn’t made it? What if he had made it but didn’t want to see her ever again?
But now she was in Italy, and he was whole, that much was clear. And he was not indifferent. Angry, yes, but not indifferent.
For once, his anger did not scare her. She understood it now, had compassion for him. She had seen his grandfather in action, had imagined what it would be like to be the heir of such a man, burdened down by a wastrel father’s legacy. It didn’t excuse Marcus’s actions toward her, or his continuing manipulations, but it explained them.
She was still lying on the bed when he returned. Natasha sat up immediately, drawing her legs under the folds of her dress. He didn’t come to her. He kept his distance, watching her warily from the doorway. Finally, he shut it behind him. Still he avoided her eyes, but took a seat in the chair.
“Why Carslyle?” Of all the things he would say, she hadn’t expected that. Though she should have expected it.
He might accept nothing irrevocable had happened, but he would still seethe at the flirtation, at the idea of another man thinking she was willing and eager to trade Marcus’s bed for his. Marcus was not just this great immovable beast, this villain who forced her, badgered her, manipulated her to his will. He was also––he was also a man, a person. With emotions and wants and needs. Like her. Like Leona.
Jealousy was one thing, but pride was another. His had been woefully injured.
“Why him?” Marcus leaned forward in the chair, as if he were barely keeping himself under control, and it was perverse, she knew, but the tension that made his body taut and his eyes tortured thrilled her.
Because it meant he did care. Still. Even if he had walked away.
“Because,” her own voice was strained as she forced the words out on a ragged edge of trust, “he wasn’t you.” The last push, the last exhalation of air fell, and with it her chest collapsed and her breath caught. “He didn’t threaten me. I didn’t fear him. I didn’t need to worry that I would be hurt again.”
She was frightened, yes, to entrust him willingly with her heart and her life. But he needed to understand that that was exactly what she was willing to do. At last.
And it couldn’t be too late. Because…if there was no going back in life, if there was only the future, they needed to make that future. Together.
He said nothing, his expression shifting again and again, the muscles of his face working. Her heart ached. Ached for him, ached for causing him pain.
“Don’t you understand, Marcus? He wasn’t you.” Words wouldn’t make him understand, but maybe if she touched him, kissed him, wrapped him in her embrace, maybe then he would feel what she couldn’t perfectly say. Maybe he would then understand. Reciprocate.
She slid off the bed, reached out to touch his clasped hands.
He jerked away so that only air met her fingers. Then he was standing, pacing the room. His emotions raged so loud she could feel them like screams pounding her body. But still he was silent. Her anxiety rose. She couldn’t touch him. She couldn’t reach him. She needed to know he wasn’t going to walk away.
“Say something.”
“Say what?” He turned on her, his anger making the words more a grunted hiss. “That I feel better knowing you had an affair with a man because he wasn’t me? Of course he wouldn’t be me. If you wanted me, you wouldn’t have turned to him.”
“I––”
“No. You’ve had your chance to speak. Do you know what it is like for a man? To be a laughingstock, to know that in that man’s eyes, I couldn’t keep you. In all of society’s eyes.”
“You left me.”
“You left me first.” Natasha fell silent, shaken. He was right, of course, in the narrowest meaning of the words, if he meant that day she fled London. Yet, in that case, his threat to her had been a sort of leaving. But if he meant emotionally, the lack of forgiveness, then he was right again.
If she wanted this, she would have to forgive him. This reunion was up to her. She would need to find the right thing to say, but what she felt was frustration that he would go to such lengths to get her only to let her go so fast. So easily.
“You tracked me down. You hunted me for years. You followed me to Norfolk. You made me marry you. Now you would throw that all away? Because of a man who doesn’t matter? Who only existed in my life because he wasn’t you. But what I want is you. You.”
She threw herself at him, at his stiff body, his arms flat against his sides. She flung her arms around him and buried her head into the hollow at his neck, pressed her chest to his, her heart to his. She bawled, wept, shook against him. Till he was holding her, too. His arms wrapped around her made her weep even more. Her whole body was one long, racking cry.
“You can’t––” His words were shaky, his voice porous, and through them she thought she could feel his own tears. Hers began to dry under the ache of his pain. She stayed where she was, listening to his pulse, to the working of his throat. Pressing her chest firmer to his, imagining she was opening herself up to him, her love up to him, enveloping him with it so that he would know, so that he could trust her, too. “You can’t blame me anymore. It…” He stopped again, as if he were choked up with whatever he wanted, needed, to say.
She slowly separated herself from him, didn’t move more than a few inches away, just so she could see his face, could look into his eyes, could open her soul to him in that way. Let him see the woman he knew, the one he had called soul mate so many years ago.
“It will need to end.”
It will. She said it with her eyes, with her heart. She wanted to let go of it all. If she could.
“I will apologize now, Tasha.” The old nickname caressed the back of her neck, her cheek, the most tender parts of her, as if memory were the soft pad of a finger, the whisper of a feather. “Because I was wrong to force you. I thought I didn’t have time, that you would run away again. But in forcing you, I lost you.”
“You didn’t lose me.”
He laughed, and for a moment it felt as if everything were perfect. “You’re being contrary. You know I did. Let me apologize because I was wrong, and then we can put this in the past where it belongs. Much as my grandfather manipulated people, manipulated me—”
“Manipulated me,” Natasha murmured.
“I manipulated you,” he continued, almost on the same breath.
She nodded slowly, wet her lips with her tongue, took a step back, and felt the edge of the bed behind her.
“Yes. Yes, Marcus, you did.” She almost cried again, the tears heavy and hot against her lower lids, but she kept it back. Because the time for those tears, for self-pitying tears, was over.
“You would have run away.”
“I would have run away,” she repeated.
“So therefore, I want to apologize again for five years ago. For terrifying you. For being a coward. I swear to you, Natasha, that I came to my senses quickly. I would not have gone through with it. You would have seen had you stayed a quarter hour more. But…your actions were understandable, whereas mine were not.”
“You were just a boy,” Natasha whispered.
“I was a man.”
“Under your grandfather’s wing. You hadn’t grown up yet. I was in love with the promise of the man you’d be, and now you are that man.”
“Drivel,” he said with a disparaging laugh, but he also seemed more at ease. As if she had helped him release some of his tension. Which made her feel better, more hopeful.
His words offered hope as well. He was talking about the future as if it would be. Not as if everything was over between them.
“Your grandfather is a persuasive man,” she admitted. “I still don’t know what he wanted of me, but he ensured I was welcome in society, and then…” She trailed off. She had been about to say that when he thought she had made herself too welcome, he had tried to hide her away. But that would remind Marcus of Carslyle, and the wound was too fresh. Yet again, she couldn’t begin their new life by not sharing her thoughts. “When he thought I was having an affair, he tried to persuade me to leave London. He had been most gracious and charming to me before then.”
“Why do you say you love me now?” Marcus asked abruptly. “For months we’ve fought. Then we’ve been apart. Do we even know each other anymore?”
His words stilled her, scared her. But she didn’t want them to be true. She wanted the sweet thread of her love for him to be what vanquished all doubt, and so she opened her eyes to him again, bared her soul. You know me.
And he was looking at her like he could read her, like he did understand. Suddenly shy, she swept her lashes down, studied her hands.
“I love you because of the boy you were and the man you have become. Because you won’t stop being a father to Leona even though you are apart, even though it would be so easy to walk away. I’ve seen your letters; I’ve read them with her. You didn’t write to me, other than…well, but to her…and I love you because you are a man who cares about his family, first and foremost. And I am your family, and you always saw me that way, even when I did not.
“I am your family, Marcus. I am. I want to be. I am your wife. You do have possession of me.” She looked up, watched his eyes darken, felt him take that step forward. “And I,” she added, stepping forward into their love, “I have possession of you.”
“I am yours, Tasha. I always have been, from the first moment we met, and when you put yourself into my hands, it was my heart I put in yours.” His voice hitched.
She nodded, and then he was around her. His body shaking, his body drawing what he needed from her.
“You can’t leave me again, Tasha, not if this is going to work. You cannot. I need you. You are my family. Leona is my family. No one else matters. But you cannot leave me again. And, God help me, if you so much as look at another man—”
“Marcus, it is only you I want, that I ever wanted. I love you.”
He buried his head against her shoulder, his body hunched over, his face pressed against her neck as she had done to him. His tears wet her throat. His hands grasped at her back, at her body, as if he could possess her, devour her that way.
“Say it again,” he growled against her.
“I love you.”
“Again,” he demanded, this time, his mouth open and hot against her skin.
“I love you.”
“Again.” She felt his teeth scrape, his tongue scorch, his lips tease, and she laughed with the insistence of his repeated demand and the pleasure of his embrace.
“I love you, Marcus. I love you, I love you, I love you.” She wrestled with him, till it was her face pressed to his neck, her tongue against his skin, bare above his cravat, her touch convincing him of her need, her desire for him. “I love you. I have loved you forever. And I will love you forever.”
He grabbed her by the shoulders, dragged her away, his gaze dark, intense, doubting upon her.
“But you said you hated me, just as passionately.”
“In those moments, I did. But I didn’t stop loving you.”
He let go of her.
In that instant of separation, the three inches of heated air that thickened and pulsed between them, she understood what they were doing.
“When we married, Marcus, I was angry. I was scared. I didn’t make my commitment to you before God. I will make that to you now. I will never leave you, just as you will never leave me.” She hoped as she said the words that they would be the truth. “I am your wife now, and I love you.”
She lifted her hand to his cheek. When he didn’t flinch away, she caressed him, her thumb along his jaw, his cheek, her fingers at the soft, sensitive, thin flesh behind his ear.
He lifted his arm, covered her hand with his own.
“And I, too, make my commitment to you now, before God: I will never leave you, just as you will never leave me. I am your husband now, and I love you.”
Simply her words said back to her, but Natasha felt them unlock a part of her she hadn’t known was caged.
She stepped forward, rose up on her toes, pressed her lips to his.
She had never felt an embrace so full of joy or known a joy quite like this––a joy birthed of sorrow and pain, and through that agonizing journey, all the sweeter, all the deeper.
His hand slid up her arm, and even as she shivered at the touch, she tugged on his cravat, pulled it loose from its simple knot.
She needed him inside her, to seal their vows.
She moved faster, pushing his coat from his shoulders, tugging on the sleeves. When that garment was on the floor, she stopped only to let him work on the buttons at her back before she returned to his waistcoat, to his shirt, to his pantaloons.
“Tasha,” he murmured, his mouth against her hair, “I want you naked.”
Which she wanted, too. She helped him, stepping out of her dress as it pooled on the floor, unfastening her petticoats as he worked on unfastening her stays.
His hand brushed over her nipple, and even through the barrier of her chemise, she felt the sharp pain of desire, at once so familiar and so strange, and between her legs was where the heat pooled, the need centered, even though it was just his palm against her breast.
“It’s been so long.” Her words were unnecessary but they fit the sudden shyness, the realization that this time, this time there was no going back.
“Five months,” Marcus said with a laugh, and she knew he remembered exactly the last time. She flushed, remembering as well.
His lips touched hers again, and she focused on the feel of his lips, firm, giving, spicy too, though she knew the spiciness was that sharp desire.
“Stop thinking, Natasha, shall we both?” Under the suggestion of his words, everything turned to liquid and color, dark ruby warm pleasure, blue strands, ribbons of sensation, chocolaty, warm pads, which if thought interfered, was where his hands touched.
The bed was behind her, fragrant with all the male scents of him, his soaps, the fresh linen, even the down that stuffed the pillows. She could smell herself, too, womanly, richer, ready for him.
His hands on the curves of her hips made her voluptuous, outside and inside, and she arched her back, lifting her breasts toward him, offering herself.
Then his bare chest pressed against hers, breast to best, belly to belly, naked and vulnerable. He was vulnerable, too.
She shuddered, stunned with that knowledge and with his touch, and she pulled him closer to her, wrapped her arms around him, lifted her nec
k, and pressed her lips to his skin.
Here, on this bed, in this foreign country, she was powerful.
She wanted to weep with the understanding, but instead she gave into it, gave into his love, her love, their love. She gave into it with as much power as she had tried earlier to convince him she had and he should.
When they joined, all the sharp sensation was inside her, more than she remembered it being, as he stretched her, as she grasped him with her limbs, lifted to bring him deeper.
He stilled, and she opened her eyes, found him looking back down at her. His lips parted. She waited, wondering.
His voice was soft and deep, and the sound vibrated through her.
“We’re almost home.”
Epilogue
Leona hated London, hated everything about London. Her father had tricked her, brought her here and left her, and then her mother had left, too. It didn’t matter if he wrote to her every week or had sent her a present for her birthday. He was far away, in Paris, when she knew very well––she had heard her grandmother say so––that he had no reason to be there.
Unless it was because of her. Maybe they had left because of her.
Grandmother had said that they would be back soon, that everything was fine, the same as it had always been. However, nothing was the same as it had always been. Leona didn’t even know what “always” was. Even Cousin Charlotte, who had sat still in the sitting room as if she were a painting just barely come to life, had left. She said she was going to stay with friends for the Season, but Leona knew better.
A sharp, high-pitched bark urged her to her feet and, sharing one knowing glance with her nanny, she set down the stairs at a run. Puffin had grown increasingly protective lately. If Leona didn’t stop her barking soon, Grandmother Kitty would stop letting the puppy have the run of the house. Or worse, would threaten to give her away, which Leona couldn’t bear.
She could hear a commotion in the front hall, and even as she flew down the stairs, she practiced her excuses and pleas.
Then she stopped because Puffin wasn’t barking any more. Instead she was slurping away happily, licking Leona’s mother’s face. Her mother’s happy face.
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