Lord of Regrets (19 page)

Chapter Twenty-Five

His grandfather had ulterior motives. The man always did. Each action had two or three purposes, and everything could shift on the merest breath of wind. Despite that, despite knowing the danger in which he would be placed, Marcus had agreed to go to France, sought out the opportunity even. He half hoped a stray bullet would find its way from the battlefield to his heart and put him out of his misery. For the first time in his life, he was happy to have orders from his grandfather, from anyone else, as there was nothing resembling clarity of thought in his head.

Yet as Marcus’s carriage made its circuitous way, avoiding all military action, the only thing he was likely to expire from was badly rutted roads, uncomfortable accommodations, and boredom.

No, not boredom. For there were thoughts that filled those spaces empty of action. Cyclically, they followed a pattern: remembering that night in the study, Natasha lowering herself above him––it had finally pushed aside the erotic memories of five years past––then thinking about her words in the carriage. Any brief hope that absence would make his wife’s heart fonder was quickly doused, and he would force all thoughts of her away to focus on this mission and his grandfather. And thoughts of his grandfather made him wonder, made him puzzle everything out, how the man had manipulated him, likely manipulated him still. How after everything, here he was doing his grandfather’s bidding when he should really be with his family. He missed Leona, that miracle who was somehow a product of him. Missed her enthusiasm, her excitement to see him each morning. And from her smiling face, his thoughts took the same circular path all over again.

After nearly a fortnight of skirting action, Marcus arrived at the border of France and Switzerland. He made his way first to Châtillon-sur-Seine, the small town where the delicate negotiations of peace were being played out. He showed his passport, obtained the necessary signatures.

It took the better part of two days to arrange an interview with Lord Castlereagh or even that man’s private secretary, both of whom seemed much in demand. When he was finally granted an interview, he delivered the letter that Lord Landsdowne had entrusted to him. The foreign secretary offered him a thin smile even as he broke open the seal of the letter, the contents of which he did not share.

“Join us tonight,” Castlereagh said, the invitation seemingly offhand. “And find my secretary. He’ll direct you. There is always need for another man.”

Another man. An extra man. Almost unnecessary, Marcus realized. That was the underlying meaning. At least the first of the two discreet tasks with which Landsdowne had charged him was done. He had only one missive left to deliver in Chatillon before he got down to the business of being unnecessary.

This position of attaché was no more important than that the apprenticeships he had undertaken in his youth, and it should have been easy to wash away with drink the thoughts he had tried to leave in London. Marcus, however, could not relax. It felt as though wherever he turned, he was being watched. While he was used to curious stares, the sense of being monitored when no one was visibly around was new to him. Yet the feeling was incessant. He was unsure of whether it was merely that he was a newcomer or if he, specifically, were being watched.

On his fourth night in Châtillon-sur-Seine, as he made his slightly inebriated way back to the inn where he was staying, the sensation of being watched itched him on the back of his neck. He turned, scanning the area, and thought he saw a man, his form barely indistinguishable from the stone wall behind him.

“You’re following me,” Marcus said before he might have thought better of it, but then he blinked and there was no one there. The sound of a horse and carriage had him swiveling around once again, and the noise of the vehicle passing filled the street.

He was sober in an instant and tempted to search the shadows for the figment of a man, a man he suspected was the one Lord Landsdowne had said would contact him. Instead, he walked the half block more to the inn, wondering at the mystery, wondering what necessitated such absolute discretion.

Pell, with fresh water and linens ready for Marcus, was still awake to help him undress. The valet seemed unperturbed by their location, as if his work were completely independent of anything outside the chamber where Marcus dressed. The man’s ease of blending in to new situations was a talent that Marcus could only admire. If and when Marcus’s business improved, he would raise the man’s salary.

Finally Pell retired to his own adjoining chamber, and Marcus lay down on the bed. For all that the mattress was lumpy, the sheets smelled of home. Home, where Natasha was. He couldn’t even pleasure himself with the memories of her anymore, for any image that came to mind was marred by the overwhelming memory of her bitter, ugly words. His hand fell from his hip and he curled up on his side. He was far from home in more ways than the literal.

It was still night, Marcus knew, as he pulled himself from his dreams––dreams he thought he might want to remember but were quickly slipping away into a multicolored, melted bog. He had awoken, but why?

The cool breeze from the open window and the scrape of a boot against wood reminded him. Danger. Human. Someone was in the room with him.

The person was getting closer.

Marcus jumped to a crouch in the bed, the sheets tangled at his feet for just the barest instant before he lunged at the dark shape coming nearer.

There was no moon, the room was ink black, and Marcus found himself dizzy, falling. Then flat on his back, a knife at his throat and a hoarse laugh at his ear. As well as the scent of another male in action, as if they had merely been boxing or fencing. Marcus had never thought twice about whether he could hold his own in a fight, but it had been years since Eton and the desperate need for self-defense.

“If I wanted to sneak up on you, you would never know I had been here,” the man said quietly in clipped, precise English, the English of a man who had learned it as a second language, as an actor would.

The man was dressed in dark colors, clearly the better to blend into the shadows. He was brawny yet agile, and his threat had been the truth. Galling as it was, here Marcus lay in his own room, his neck exposed to the man’s blade.

“Who are you?”

“You won’t do anything foolish again? Nothing that might make your man come asking why you are making a ruckus in the middle of the night?” The clipped tones were lost in a gruff whisper, but there was the hint of an accent Marcus could not quite place. “I was told someone would be sent. I never imagined it would be you.”

The man retreated in one swift, elegant move. Breathing deeply, Marcus sat up, reached for the bedpost. As he rubbed his neck, his eyes finally focused in the dark and he saw the stranger offering a deep, elegant––the man seemed to do everything elegantly––bow.

“Gerard Badeau at your service.”

“Am I supposed to know who you are?

“I know who you are and have my whole life. The legitimate brother.”

Marcus stilled. He had met none of his half siblings. Until now.

“Gerard Badeau, you say? That was your mother’s name?”

“
Non
, my stepfather’s,” Gerard said with so much ease that Marcus almost believed him. “I took it. I believe you have something for me, from our
grandpere
?” His voice edged smoothly into a flawless French accent.

“How do I know you are who you say you are?”

Gerard let out a huff of air, and Marcus could just make out the smirk on his lips. This was his older brother, the bastard who had existed before his father married. Marcus understood now, in a way he would never have five years ago, how much fate played in the gaining of that damning label.

“Our grandfather plays his cards close, does he not? You were commissioned to bring me a bag of coins. To bring a letter to Lord Castlereagh.” But as if Gerard knew that restating Marcus’s mission was hardly enough to prove an identity, he pressed a ring into Marcus’s hand.

In the dim light, he peered at the heavy gold, ran his finger over the flat of it, felt the imprint he had known as long as he had known he was a Templeton. Yet it felt wrong as well. Marcus strode to the side table where flint and candle would offer illumination. The flame brought with it both the acrid smell of first strike and a view of the ring. Marcus focused on the insignia, which was like, yet so unlike, changed in a way that had clearly been at his grandfather’s behest.

“My advice to you, brother—you don’t mind me calling you that, do you?”

He turned to face Gerard. There was something hollow in his half brother’s eyes. He was dangerous in a way Marcus would never be.

Embarrassing, that was what it was, to be faced with this half brother, this man whom to Marcus had only been a number, one of seven prior to this day. And clearly this man, who was at most a year or two older than Marcus, had had experiences Marcus would never have. He knew their grandfather in a way Marcus never would, in a way he did not wish to know the old man. He should never have taken this assignment. It was pointless, useless. There were other ways to run away from his life, and running away was exactly what he had done.

He was running from Natasha. The air shifted. The earth moved. Everything was clear and blurry all at once. Marcus felt sick to his stomach at the realization that, after all the time she had spent running away and he had spent chasing her, he was now running from her. How utterly ridiculous.

Gerard stared at him, and Marcus tried to bite back the laughter, waving his hand. The gold ring caught the candlelight, the family crest not visible but there all the same. He returned it to its owner.

“Your advice?” He finally felt at ease, as if the imbalance of power had shifted to equality.

“Later,” Gerard whispered, suddenly still, attentive. For a moment, Marcus saw his grandfather in those hollow eyes, and saw his father in the shape of his half brother’s face. By the light, there was little doubt he came from Templeton stock. “I’ll take the package now, if you please.”

“Yes. Of course.” Marcus moved with alacrity to where his overcoat hung, to the inside pocket, the one place he would keep anything of import. The purse jingled slightly as he retrieved it, the coins jangling against each other within their confinement.

Gerard reached for it, pinning Marcus with his disturbing stare, and he wondered what this man––a stranger but for the blood they shared––had been through to have a gaze so unfathomable. Their fingers brushed as the leather pouch passed from one man to the other.

Then Marcus heard the noises in the hallway as well. This brother of his seemed to have a preternatural ability to hear, to sense others’ presence. The scratching at the door would be Pell, wondering at the commotion in his room, at the glow of light under the door. Wondering if he could be of any service. It was only the barest sound at the window that made him turn, made him catch his last sight of Gerard.

With a sense that he had lost something, he opened the door slightly. There, in his nightshirt and hastily pulled-on pantaloons, was his valet. Marcus had never seen the man look quite so disheveled.

“Is everything all right, my lord?” Pell asked, the words only what Marcus had expected.

“Quite, I simply couldn’t sleep,” Marcus said, pressing his hand hard against the edge of the open door. “But you’d best get your own.” Much quieter, after Pell had left and closed the door, Marcus added, “Our work in Chatillon is done.”

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 well 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?”