“Because you are the only one I can send. The man I have in place now…he can only do so much on the fringes of society.”
“Now you have no one, sir,” Marcus rasped, the swirling emotion barely below the surface. He stalked to the door of the study, ignoring the squeaking sound of the wheels of the bath chair.
“You’ll think about it,” the old man called behind him.
Marcus paused, one palm flat against the doorjamb, catching his forward momentum. He turned, stared his grandfather in the eyes, in the damn watery, gray eyes that thought they knew everything, that wanted to control everyone.
“Did you know about Leona? About my daughter?”
Marcus had the pleasure of seeing his grandfather’s face pale, the thin lips working.
“The girl is yours?”
“Yes, mine. Your damn codicil isn’t worth a cent to me.”
Walking briskly through the gray haze of impending night back to the townhouse, anger and a sense of freedom warred within his breast for prominence. Marcus had been a pawn in his grandfather’s game his whole life, and that man would try to make him one even now. But the old man wasn’t omniscient and that carried considerable weight with Marcus, empowered him in a way he had never truly known before. Leona’s gift was that she had set him free.
A sudden surge of energy invigorated him. The massive buildings around him no longer felt oppressive. He had avoided London these last years because every brick, every soot-stained stone, had reminded him of his loss. And because here in London, his grandfather reigned. Now, everything shifted. Natasha was with him once again, permanently, bound by the strictest, most holy laws of society, and the chains of his father’s legacy and his grandfather’s control no longer motivated Marcus’s actions.
What did it all mean? Why the codicils if his grandfather knew? But his grandfather hadn’t known about Leona.
Marcus was a free man, and all around him London was vital, thriving. His business in town would be finished soon, but that was no reason to return quickly to Woodbridge. After all, he’d promised his cousin Charlotte a Season, and if he could rouse the love of society Natasha had once had, she would likely enjoy the whirl as well.
Natasha, who cringed at his touch and protested their love. They were still touched by the past.
Bile rose in his gut once more––rage at the impotence of the last five years, at his own foolishness in crumpling to please his grandfather, at the waste of all that time.
The need to see his daughter, to hold her close and purify his past, overwhelmed him.
Lost in his thoughts, he made his way home by rote, so often had he gone to pay obeisance to the old man. The butler informed him that his mother was sitting down to dinner. The meal had slipped his mind entirely.
“And my lady wife?”
“A plate in her room, milord. She was very tired, she said.”
His own hunger raged up suddenly in his stomach, and Marcus paused in the hall.
“Marcus? Is that you?” his mother called. Years of habit had him turning toward her voice.
As he entered the dining room, a maid was quickly setting his place, anticipating his desire.
“Roast rabbit,” his mother said. “I know it isn’t your favorite, but I did not know you would arrive today.”
“Rabbit is fine.”
The first course was soup, and he ate that in the seething shadow of his mother’s polite silence. He waited her out. The soup had been removed and the rabbit laid out before she spoke again.
“She is…very French,” his mother remarked finally.
“She was born in London, I believe,” he responded with an arched brow. “And her father is Russian.”
“Nonetheless, she is foreign, and the air of her foreignness hangs about her quite indecently.”
He was beguiled for a moment by the poetry of his mother’s speech.
“I find her charming.”
“She has lived like a commoner. For all we know, she is a commoner. She says her father was a prince in his country. Princes are like rabbits in Russia.”
Marcus’s hand stilled in the process of slicing a morsel of meat. He took a deep breath, even as he surveyed his plate.
“Nonetheless, I hope you welcome your new daughter with open arms.”
His mother looked somewhat taken aback. “Who do you think I am? Who taught you manners when you were still in long shirts? I doubt Natasha is to blame for your actions. I may not approve of her. I might even tell my son that in a moment of privacy, but society shall never know.”
Marcus laid down his fork and knife, met his mother’s disparaging gaze with his own chagrined one.
“You are right. My apologies. And I am grateful to you.” He wiped his hands in his napkin, feeling again the acuteness of that mixture of relief and fury, and an overwhelming exhaustion. “The day’s travels have finally caught up with me. Would you excuse me for the night?”
His mother nodded and he left, his plate of rabbit nearly untouched.
Pell was waiting for him in his bedroom, having as usual anticipated Marcus’s needs by drawing a bath. However, there was no sign of Natasha.
He flung open the adjoining doors and found she was settled in the room next to his. The sight of it enraged him. He yanked the bed pull, ringing for the maid.
She sat up in her bed, all that thick, lovely hair plaited into long braid, which lay over her shoulder. His fingers itched to undo it, to feel that silk against his skin.
“What are you doing?”
“We are husband and wife,” Marcus said. “We will share our bed. Share our life.”
Natasha stared at him in shock, and her defiance angered him even more.
“It was one thing when we were traveling. But this…am I to have no privacy? Are you so afraid I will run away even now?”
His rage fled then. He was not angry at her. His anger was for fate, for his grandfather, for the five intervening years of loneliness and anguish that didn’t have to happen. The rooms adjacent his existed for the very purpose of housing a gentleman’s wife, of giving her privacy but making her accessible to a man’s needs. When the maid scratched at the door and then entered, he brusquely waved her away.
Much quieter, he asked, “Is it so wrong to wish to lie next to my wife?”
…
Natasha stared at him in disbelief. She hated him for his question, for his tone, for the weak pleading in his voice. She hated that it made her want to give in, to take care of him, when in truth she had no choice.
“What of my wishes, Marcus? Or am I completely sublimated to your will?”
“As if I could do such a thing.” He laughed. “As if I’d want to.”
Perhaps he was insane. One moment he was enraged, and the next he begged her for scraps. His emotions were too wild, too disparate, and she thrust away the snakelike thought that her own were no more rational. In any case, there was no purpose in talking to him.
She followed him across the threshold. Then she shrugged out of her night rail and slipped under the covers of the bed. His bed. Everything in this house was his, including her.
She waited in agonized silence as he took his bath, readied himself for bed. Just as he had the last two nights, his hair still damp, he lay down next to her. He drew her close and pulled the covers over them. She could hear his breath grow ragged, feel the growing proof of his desire for her, and yet he made no move other than the embrace.
But he would. Or she would. Because it was all too easy and too familiar. It was as if she were two people in her head, the one who felt everything and the one who could understand everything, even his point of view.
“This isn’t fair,” she whispered. She wanted space, air. The heat from his body was overpowering. She would not cry again.
“I saw my grandfather,” Marcus said quietly. The breath of his words hit her ear. His grandfather. The omnipotent patriarch, crafted into the stuff of myth. Marcus had always spoken of the old man that way, bu
t he had never told her about the codicils. No, that she’d had to discover from the ladies’ gossip during her months in Exeter. Then she had finally understood. She pursed her lips against the caustic remark––the retort that she blamed only Marcus.
“He knew about you the whole time. From when I first let the rooms on Poland Street.”
There was some significance to that, but Natasha wasn’t entirely certain what. Many men had mistresses. With a despairing ache, she realized anew that her history was hardly secret. The patina of respectability she had given herself with the pseudonym Prothe was gone.
“He did not know about Leona.”
“Why would he have?” she asked before she could bite back the words. She didn’t want to have a conversation with Marcus. He had betrayed her five years ago and then again in Little Parrington. But she would suffer through this night as she would suffer through all the nights.
“He was spying on me the way he spied on my father.”
“He was spying on me?” The thought terrified her, even more than knowing Marcus had searched for her all those years, because who else thought her important enough to track? Of whom else’s schemes was she an unwitting part?
“Yes, but not after you left London. That’s what I mean to say. His reach didn’t extend that far.”
She contemplated that and the weight Marcus seemed to give it. Her husband had thought his grandfather omnipotent and then had learned he was not. Neither was Marcus omnipotent. Her true life would be in the daytime, away from him.
…
Marcus felt her relax against him. Thoughts of his grandfather fled at the feel of her body touching his everywhere, the soft flesh of her backside, snug against where he folded around her. She would get used to him. Eventually her anger would fade and she would remember their love, give in to it. She would return the passion and love he felt for her.
Over her shoulder he could see the still-open door that connected their two bedrooms. She was right that she was due her privacy, but Marcus couldn’t stand the idea of two rooms, two beds, after all this time. He just wanted to lie next to her, hear her breathe, and know it wasn’t a dream each night. The solid feel of her body in his arms soothed him. He had time on his side; she would thaw, reawaken to their love.
Chapter Sixteen
Natasha awoke with a memory tinged by the dusky haze of sleep, of the brush of Marcus’s lips across her cheek. Buried into the warmth of the space where he had been, she was comfortable, achingly so, her limbs seemingly melted under the thick, warm bedding.
She opened her eyes almost effortlessly. After three weeks of strain and worry, the sensation of being well rested was nearly foreign to her. She turned onto her back and stretched, arching upward into a great, indulgent yawn. The rich blue damask of the canopy above seemed too real, too vibrant, its weave shining with the rich midmorning light.
Midmorning. She sat up abruptly, looking about his room, at the strange house. Where was Leona?
Natasha stumbled into the adjoining room––her room––and opened the large wardrobe in the corner. It was pitifully empty, only her few practical dresses hanging in its cavernous space. She tore her nightclothes from her body and struggled into a dress, her limbs seeming to have lost the sense of the way of dressing.
There was a pitcher by the basin on the commode filled with tepid water. All the necessities, toiletries, and whatnots, items she hadn’t even had in her possession, were laid out for her use. She washed her face, her teeth, and pulled her hair back into a knot. She still felt the grit of travel, wanted another bath as she had the night before, but it would have to wait.
Desperate to see her daughter, she climbed the stairs to Leona’s room, to the makeshift nursery that sometime in the past might have been intended for such a purpose, but clearly wore the marks of disuse. The rooms were empty, silent, and the bed neatly made. An initial panic quickly gave way to grief––she had not heard her daughter call for her, demand to see her mother, even in such a strange new place with so many new people. The growing fissure between them, too, could be laid at Marcus’s feet.
Natasha was not dressed to go downstairs but, numb on the inside, she did so regardless.
She found Leona, freshly washed and dressed, in a small parlor with Lady Templeton. Natasha pinkened with embarrassment, wishing she had taken the extra time with her appearance, still feeling the sting of the woman’s words from the night before.
I must say I am surprised, with all the women his grandfather has flung at him, with his cousin Charlotte eagerly ready to become his bride and so knowledgeable about the Templeton history, about Woodbridge, about propriety, even, that he chose to marry you. From what you say, he could easily have you without benefit of marriage.”
“Hardly.”
“He hasn’t, then? Apparently my boy inherited some latent misguided sense of honor. God knows he didn’t inherit it from his father’s side of the family.”
Natasha entered the room, steeling herself for more of the woman’s brusque and biting commentary. She saw Mary sitting in the corner, looking out of place and uncomfortable.
“Good morning, Lady Templeton, Good morning, Leona.”
“Mama,” Leona cried, jumping up from her seat.
A rush of joy filled Natasha’s chest so quickly that it hurt. This was her daughter, the one she had nursed and weaned, the one who loved her and clung to her on stormy nights.
“We’ve been having tea and taking a lesson,” Lady Templeton said with a wave of her hand. “Someone must teach this child manners and deportment. Why doesn’t she have a governess?” Despite her mental girding, Natasha almost stepped back at the onslaught of words. “She clearly needs one. Look at you. You are hardly fit to be a model of deportment,” her new mother-in-law said with a sigh.
Anger swelled up, as it had the night before when the woman had interrogated her about her antecedents, about how ancient her lineage was. “Lady Templeton––”
“Oh, please.” The woman held up her hand, a pained expression crossing her face. “This will never do. Shall we go back and forth all day Lady Templetoning each other?” Natasha stared at her, just beginning to comprehend that yes, she, too, was Lady Templeton. “No, you shall call me Kitty as Charlotte does, and I shall call you Natasha.”
“Kitty?” Leona repeated.
“No, young lady. You shall call me Grandmama.”
“Yes, Grandmama.” Leona didn’t seem upset at all. She was smiling in fact.
“Girl”––Natasha realized that she meant Mary––“take my granddaughter back to the nursery.”
Leona stood up immediately, but looked to Natasha for confirmation. She nodded. “I’ll come visit you in a bit. After I’ve had a chance to chat with Lady…with Kitty.”
Leona tripped from the room, and Natasha sat where her daughter had been.
“I have been thinking on what you told me last night. I am pleased your family is of some consequence, or at least was. It wouldn’t be quite so bad if you hadn’t let my son seduce you. What were your parents thinking? I suppose I shall find out when they come to dinner.”
“Dinner?” Natasha finally heard something in her mother-in-law’s monologue that mattered. “They’ll hardly come to dinner. I haven’t seen them in five years.”
“Five years? What sort of girl are you?”
Natasha took a slow, deep breath, surprised to feel any pain at all over her parents. “They…disowned me.”
Finally Kitty stopped speaking. One brow arched up high and then both swept down into a frown.
“Hmmph.” A few moments later, she followed it with, “Well.”
“So you see, they were thinking their daughter made a very poor choice.”
Kitty snorted. “Now you’re a viscountess. Not the most noble rise to that position, but…here you are.”
The chime of the great clock in the hall rung mutedly in the room and seemed to stir Lady Templeton––the elder Lady Templeton––Kitty.
&n
bsp; “I have Mrs. Burgh arriving in the hour, Natasha, to make you look like a viscountess.”
“What?”
“Don’t stare at me with that fishlike expression. Mrs. Burgh is doing me a favor coming on such short notice. As a dressmaker, she is highly in demand. I’ve asked her to create a new wardrobe for the little girl, too.”
It was an abrupt switch, from discussing her parents to discussing her clothing, and even though she was sitting and it was merely her emotions that were roiling, Natasha gripped the edge of the chair to steady herself. Five years ago, the thought of a new wardrobe, one that clearly would be leaps and bounds above what she was used to in quality, would have thrilled her. Now she was anxious, a cautious excitement simmering in her blood.
“Well, go on with you. Do what you must before the dressmaker arrives. I’ll send Angie, my maid, to you, although I won’t want to share her. Marcus shall have to hire a lady’s maid for you.”
Bemused and overwhelmed, Natasha climbed the stairs to the second floor where the nursery was. In the sitting room of the small suite of rooms, Leona read to Mary, who did not herself know how to read. It was not one of the few books Natasha owned, and so she thought it must be from the library.
“What do you have there?” she asked her daughter, coming to sit next to her.
“Amatory,” Leona said, though that was not the title of the book. “I asked Mary what amatory means but she doesn’t know.” Mary blushed at that. “Do you know?”
Natasha laughed. “Yes, I suppose that isn’t something I ever thought about explaining before. It has to do with love, with–– Perhaps this one’s a bit difficult. Aren’t there any other books in the library?”
“There are thousands of books,” Leona exclaimed, dropping the one she held so she could hold her arms out wide. Reflexively, Natasha leaned forward to pick up the forgotten “amatory” novel and laid it down on the sofa. “More than even Mr. Duncan owns. But Papa said I’d like this one. And those.” She pointed to a stack of books on the side table.
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