Lord of Regrets (22 page)

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.”

“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 side 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.