She bought duck and partridge, butter and eggs, and a pasty for Leona, who stared at each stall as if it was a new world to discover. Natasha wondered when she had last looked at the world through such innocent eyes. No, no need to wonder. She had kept that sort of innocence until the day Marcus had driven her from London with his violence.
Natasha stared at the horses, stamping and walking in their corral. She had had such dreams when she was a child. Her father had fed her stories of his homeland, of malachite and mountains, princes and tsars. Russia had seemed a far more magical world than London. Paris, too, the city of her mother’s childhood, had held its own mystique, though less magical and more sensuous. The best of everything, her mother had said. Pastries, fashion, music, art. The best taste in the world was to be found in Paris. Her papa had agreed, for he had left Moscow to study art in Paris, and that was where he had met Mama.
Then, there was the other side, their lives battered by the winds of a capricious fate. Her father had also made Russia seem barbaric. As Natasha grew older, layered in with the fairy tales were stories of massacres and assassinations: her father’s family winnowed down to one branch by a cousin, her parents pushed across the channel, seeking safety from the cruelty of the uncivilized masses who were revolting in Paris.
All around her in this market town were those people, the same sort of uncivilized masses her father had disparaged. She was now one of them, and she knew dreams were useless down in the tumult of daily life.
With the sun at its highest point in the sky, Natasha loaded the reverend’s dogcart with their purchases. Leona clambered up onto the seat and waited expectantly, clutching a twisted paper filled with sweets in her hand. How had her parents felt each time they decided to run? Like her parents, Natasha had fled and might flee again. In that case, a horse would be useful.
But despite her fear, Natasha was curious. A small, barely acknowledged part of her wanted to hear him declare his love again, to have another memory, another small triumph in the affairs of the heart. Therefore, she would not flee today.
…
When he came to call that afternoon, the maid told him she wasn’t at home. Marcus was tempted to push the young girl aside and search for himself, but he held back, thanked her, and left. Clearly, despite her words, Natasha was determined to avoid him. He was equally determined to speak with her.
He bided his time in town until hours later, with the moon bright and the frozen night howling with wind, he climbed over the wooden fence that delineated the cottage’s garden. Perhaps this had once been a groundskeeper’s house, or that of a tenant, but now it was a small enclosure amid acres of farmland.
What he was about to do was against the law. True, but a necessity. If he left the choice in Natasha’s hands, he would never get close enough to speak with her alone.
He was prepared to climb the thick ropes of ivy, but a last-minute test of the rear door found it unlocked. He would have to warn her of that.
He crept inside, followed instinct up to the first floor. The house was quiet, no sound of servants, and he wondered if the maid he had seen earlier was only part-time help. In the five months during which Natasha had been his mistress, he had showered upon her jewels he could barely afford. Foolishly, some would say. Now he was glad, for the funds had clearly cushioned her retreat. He hoped they had. He couldn’t bear to think about what she must have undergone these last five years if they had not. All the same, he needed to know the narrative of those intervening years with a desperate curiosity.
There were three doors. He tried one and, with a cursory look, found the room empty. The second, which he slowly opened, wincing at the one creak of protesting wood, hid Natasha’s bedroom.
In the glow of the still-red embers smoldering in the fireplace, he made out the large shapes in the room: an armoire, console, dressing screen. In the center, of course, was her bed, in which she slept, curled on her side.
How many nights had he let himself into their rooms in London? Joined her in the bed and woken her with kisses, with the touch of his fingers, his tongue between her thighs?
He closed the door behind him, watching her all the while.
She slept on, even when he reached her side and studied her face, the hair—hair that he knew to be silken and strong––that lay over her shoulders and pillows.
He couldn’t bear to wake her yet, so he lay down next to her, imagining that nothing had changed, that it was five years ago. Although he couldn’t convince himself of that illusion, he reveled in her closeness, in the moment of peace he knew would be broken when she awoke.
One kiss. His lips cried for one kiss before he woke her, before he needed to face reality and her wrath and to use words to convince her of his love.
He pressed his lips against hers lightly and then urged more when he felt her first sleepy response. How many times had he awakened her this way in the past? Not enough.
Her response was so sweet, so open, and he lost himself in it, in the taste of her, both familiar and strange all at once. He wanted more. He wanted to follow this kiss to its natural end, to the modulations of her body, but it wasn’t right. He needed to wake her, not take advantage of her in this way. He pulled back.
She reached for him, grasping, and he caught one hand in his own, drawing it to his mouth, murmuring around the fervent kisses he placed on the soft skin.
“Natasha, my love, wake up.”
She came awake all at once, jerking her hand back, scuttling out of the bed.
“Tasha.” He sat up, watching her, knowing if she bolted, he’d be right there to stop her.
“What are you doing here? How dare you—” She broke off, gasping, almost hysterical, and Marcus’s gut wrenched in agony. He was an ass; it should never have come to this.
Yet here they were.
“You wouldn’t talk to me, Natasha. What else was I to do?”
“Not break into my home. Not frighten me half to death. For that matter, not be here at all!”
“Natasha,” he pleaded.
“Leave me alone,” she cried, wrapping her arms around herself, glancing toward the door.
He stood quickly. She backed up, and he followed her.
“It was a mistake, Natasha.” He needed to get the words out, the hard, rough words that cut his throat with his stupidity. “I came to my senses by the time the physician came. But you were gone.” She was shaking her head, trembling from either the cold or fear. “It was a mistake, Tasha.”
She met his gaze, and there was something in her expression that made his heart ache. She retreated again. And again, he followed.
“I’ve missed you so much.” He backed her up against the wall, held her in the hard cage of his arms even as he rained kisses on her hair, her cheeks, her neck. He felt her arms flutter uselessly at her sides and knew he had only a few moments to urge her, to use the knowledge he had of her body, her responses, before she found a way to push him back and break away.
…
His words still ricocheted in her head––in her stupid, stupid heart––even as his touch, his lips, teased her, melted her. She was so weak. From that first moment that she had seen him, vivid and dark in the apothecary, she understood that the years of dormant desire were no more. He had stolen in, found her at her most vulnerable, and she still craved his touch as if nothing had ever happened. As if he hadn’t threatened her sweet Leona’s life. Even as anger burst within her, his lips trailed across her neck. She surged within herself, trapped and torn apart by her conflicting desires.
She wanted this.
She was born to want this.
Five long years of just her own meager pleasure, no man inside her, filling her, completing her. And here Marcus was, touching her, like in one of her countless dreams––the dreams she had tamped down, denied, forced into hibernation. Here he was making her come to life again, as if she were that eighteen-year-old girl first discovering the feel of a man’s hand against her inner thigh and his lips on he
r breast. First understanding that lovemaking was one place where a woman could find true equality, true power.
She wanted this.
She could have it. Take only the physical and keep her heart sheltered. Use him the way she had been used by him. She could have this moment and then leave.
The realization swelled up within her, beguiling and liberating. She pushed his cheek with hers until he lifted his head, met her eyes with his own. His tight grip loosened, and she took his face in her hands, filled her own yawning need with a kiss.
Fire licked at her skin, scorched down into her belly, swept away the moment of decision. She fumbled at his clothes until he fell on the bed shirtless. And then she stared at him for one hot moment in the cool gleam of moonlight, at the lean length of his chest above his pantaloons. She had forgotten how beautiful he was, how she had hungered for just the taste of his skin, for the feel of him straining under her hands. She knew she could torture him and pleasure him all at once.
She unbuttoned the falls of his pantaloons and grasped the length of him, which nearly made her bend over with heartbreaking need. So much of her love for him had been bound up in this, in his touch, his body, the way they moved together. Echoes of that love surged up within her, painfully sweet and desperate. She pushed any emotion other than the physical away and clenched him between her thighs.
She rode him, used him, reveling in the sensation of him hard and thick within her, finding her pleasure, taking it greedily. And when she collapsed over him, gasping and trembling, his large, warm hands clasped her hips. He turned her, upended her world, till her head fell back upon the pillows and he sank back into her, hard and demanding, drawing out her climax as he sought his own. She knew the sounds he made; their familiarity stung at her eyes and built the swirl of sensation up into a large, gaping, desperate, despairing cry, which melded with the guttural moan of his release.
Chapter Six
Marcus burrowed into the mattress, listening to the creaking of the house settling around him, his hands searching for covers, his feet…
His numb feet were still trapped in his boots.
He came awake suddenly, memory flooding back, and peered in the darkness for Natasha. Her scent was strong in the air, but the room felt empty. He fought down his panic and rolled out of bed, fastening up the falls of his wrinkled clothing.
Where would she be?
He lit the candle on the chest of drawers. As he neared the bedroom door, he recognized the creaks and the rushes of noise as the sound of movement across wooden floors, and he relaxed. He opened the door. The sounds stopped.
He opened the door across the hall, and two faces turned to him, illuminated by the thin light of a candle.
“Mama?” The little girl sounded scared and confused. Natasha’s stilled hands were resting atop an open valise, half stuffed with the child’s clothes.
“No.” Marcus wanted to say more, but it was the only word that worked, the only word that mattered. She could not leave him again. “No.” The word came out deeper, darker, and even he was shocked at the emotion in it.
“Mama?”
“Either you leave or we leave,” Natasha said as she began to carefully fold a small garment.
“We need to talk.”
“Mama?” The plaintive voice was louder this time. He glanced at the girl––his daughter.
“Hush, Leona.”
“Why is Lord Templeton here?”
“Because I made a mistake,” he said, the admission for Natasha even though it was his daughter’s question that he answered.
“A mistake!” Natasha stood, arms akimbo, fury emanating from her, and Marcus felt himself sink inside. “A mistake is forgetting someone’s birthday. What you did, Marcus, there are words for that I can’t say in front of Leona.”
“Are we leaving because of him?”
“I know.” Marcus held his hands out, palms up, pleading. “If I could change the past, I would. I’ve missed out on so much, on our daughter, on our life together.”
“No.” Natasha stalked toward him, her hands fisted by her sides.
“Mama,” Leona wailed, standing up on the bed.
Natasha stopped. Her eyes closed and her fists slowly unclenched.
“You need to go, Marcus.” The words were cold and final. He could not accept them.
“Who is he?”
He seized on the girl’s question, on the small, living being who tied him to Natasha irrevocably.
“I’m your father.” His words filled the air like a cannon, smoke and ash raining down in the momentary silence.
Natasha pinned him with a shocked, furious glare.
“No, you’re not,” the child denied. Marcus tore his gaze from Natasha to watch Leona shake her head vigorously. “I don’t have a father. And if I did, it wouldn’t be you.”
“Why not?” Marcus asked, offended and then bemused by his own emotions, by the conversation they were having by the light of one candle, in the middle of the night.
“Because my mother loved my father and she doesn’t love you.” The statement was made with all the assured logic of youth, and while Marcus couldn’t deny that Natasha hated him now, he thought it odd that she would tell their daughter she had loved Marcus. He wanted to ask her why she had loved him, but he bit back the words, thinking them weak.
“Tell her, Natasha.”
“My father is dead,” Leona said, her lower lip trembling. But she didn’t run to her mother.
“He’s right, darling.” Natasha’s voice broke.
“No,” the girl wailed. “No, no, no. I hate you!” She threw herself at Marcus, small fists hitting. “You’re making us leave, and I hate you.”
He didn’t know what to do with the small person assaulting him. He was afraid to grab her arms, to push her away. He was afraid that he would break her.
Natasha pulled the girl away, hauling her roughly. “That’s enough.”
Leona’s fists found her mother’s chest, her face scrunched up in dismay.
“If I must have a father,” Leona cried, “why can’t it be Reverend Duncan?”
The words hurt, but Marcus forced down his anger, his resentment of another man taking such a prominent role in his daughter’s life. She was just a child, and when she and Natasha came to live with him, everything would change.
“You said!” The girl pushed away, her tearstained face uncrumpling and settling into a mask of confusion. “You lied.”
The words seemed to hit Natasha with more force than Leona’s fists. That sinking nausea in his stomach started again, and Marcus wondered when the ripples would cease, when he would finally right this horrible nightmare.
“When you’re older, you’ll understand,” Natasha said, her words measured, but he heard the pain behind them.
“You told me not to lie. Reverend Duncan said lying is a sin.” Leona backed away on the bed. “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.”
Marcus grabbed her as she stumbled off the mattress. She kicked and screamed in his arms, but he held her tight, wondering that her little limbs could hold such powerful fury.
“She was trying to protect you,” he said against her ear, all too aware that Natasha was watching, that his lack of fathering ability was on show. “I should have been there to protect you, but instead your mother had to do the best she could.”
“She lied! She lied, and you want to make us leave!”
Leona ripped herself out of Marcus arms and threw herself onto the bed, bawling into the coverlet.
Natasha pushed Marcus out of Leona’s room, shutting the door behind them and leaning heavily on it.
The hallway smelled of dust, of wood, and of Natasha. He wanted to wrap her in his arms and apologize again, whisper the words of admiration and praise that would never express how he truly saw her.
“How could you?” she accused, low and despairing.
“She’s my daughter. I won’t lose you again, Natasha. Neither of you.”
He fli
nched at the expression in her eyes: lost, doubting.
“Please, give me a chance to make it right.”
“What do you want of me?”
“I want you to marry me.”
She was silent for a long time. He fought the urge to babble, cry out his love. If she said no, he would speak again.
“What good will it do you, Marcus? Leona is illegitimate and always will be.”
“I don’t care about the codicils.” He had cared years ago, but he’d worked hard to ensure that never again would he be trapped and bound by somebody else’s rules. He had his own life to lead; Natasha, and now Leona, were central to that life.
She opened her mouth and he waited, desperate for her next words. Her lips worked. She shook her head and looked toward the ceiling. Whatever decision she was making did not please her. Would it please him?
“At least now, even if it is a lie, people think her legitimate. No one turns from her or speaks of her unkindly.”
“It is not the ideal situation, but I will protect you both with my name as best I can. Even without an honorific, she is the daughter of a viscount, the granddaughter of an earl. She will want for nothing.”
“I’ll think about it,” she said finally. Her expression was shuttered.
“You won’t run away. I’ll follow you again.”
She met his gaze, and he steeled his heart against that lost look. “I won’t run away. Please, just go now.”
He nodded, holding himself tight against the surge of elation. She was giving him time. He would make everything right.
Natasha would be his.
…
Natasha knew she should follow him to the door, lock it after him, but no one else had ever stolen into her home. Not here in Little Parrington, where life was quiet and slow.
Lord of Regrets Page 4
