Lord of Regrets

by Sabrina Darby

  She closed her eyes as she waited, but when she heard the door creaking open, the sound came from the wrong direction. She let out her breath with a deep shudder, sinking farther into the feather mattress. She didn’t need to open her eyes to know it was Marcus. She could feel him entering the room, sucking up air, taking up space. Slowly, she turned her head, her cheek resting on the pillow, and then she opened her eyes. It occurred to her too late that she was vulnerable, lying on the bed as she was. He was already next to her, sitting on the edge of the bed, one leg bent before him and the other hanging off the side.

  “Exhausted, are you?” he asked, and the tenderness in his voice, the deep warmth of it, was so seductively inviting. His brown eyes studied her in a way that made her blink and shift her head so that the canopy was more in her view than his face.

  “Somewhat.”

  “Too exhausted for a gift?” The teasing, coaxing tone urged her to open her heart and her arms to him as she had when she was young and foolish––which was just enough to keep her frozen still, confused and indecisive.

  “Are you still trying to buy my affections, Marcus?”

  Out of the corner of her eyes, she watched him pale, and then the import of her words, let out so lightly, hit her as well. Once again, she had that sharp duality of emotions, anger at him for making her feel like the whore he had once named her and guilt for hurting him with her jibe.

  She struggled up to a half sit, leaning back on her elbows.

  “Natasha.” His voice was so soft, so caressing, and he joined it with the solid warmth of his hand, cupping her cheek, his thumb stroking her skin. She had a choice: to sink into that touch or to rebuff him yet again.

  He was relentless with his pursuit. But then, why shouldn’t he be? As his wife, she was his, should be submitting to him, to his touch, his wishes––his gifts.

  There was no choice.

  “What do you have for me, Marcus?” she asked brusquely, shaking off his hand and sitting up completely. His hand seemed aimless for a moment, falling from her to rest atop his bent knee and then to reach inside his coat and draw out a slim package wrapped in paper inked with birds and flowers. The paper itself was lovely.

  She accepted it, taking off the wrapping with a sense of inevitability and déjà vu. How many times had he brought her a bauble, a trinket, or some jewelry that was rare and costly? She had staked her future on that treasure trove, had turned the majority of it into solid English currency that bore nothing of Marcus’s taste or affection.

  The velvet box opened stiffly under her hands. Within, three tightly woven strands of almost perfectly matched pearls gleamed in the afternoon light. It was an exquisite gift, one that had surely set him back a small fortune.

  “It’s lovely. Thank you.” He took it from her and, as he was dangling the choker in his hand, reaching toward her, they heard the telltale scratching at the door to the hall. Natasha called for the maid to come in, a young woman named Sara who blushed and stared at the floor once she realized that Marcus was also in the room. The girl bobbed a curtsey and fled as soon as she knew what was wanted of her.

  “A bath?” In the quiet of the maid’s wake, Marcus reached forward again, his arms snaking around Natasha’s neck, so that at the same time that she felt the cool pearls heavy against her skin, she also felt his heat, his touch, his breath. He fumbled for a moment, his fingers at the nape of her neck, his lips close to her forehead, so close that when they touched her, brushing gently against her skin, she half expected it. Then she heard the snap of the clasp closing. One of his hands settled on her jaw while the other tangled in her hair, cupping her scalp. Her world was suddenly the space between his hands, between her face and his. There was nothing more and nothing less.

  He was going to kiss her. And she was going to let him. She swallowed hard, her throat working against the pearls that stuck thickly to her skin as if a symbol of her submission to him, to his right as a husband to kiss her, to have her.

  Her eyelashes fluttered down and she waited, breath held, curious. His hands shifted, easing away from her skin, and then the space between them was greater, the air cooler. She opened her eyes again to find him studying her, his hands retreating till they no longer touched her person. No longer intruded on her.

  “I am pleased with the way they look. Are you pleased?”

  Swallowing hard again, Natasha bestirred herself from the bed, slid to the ground, found it unsteady. But she pushed herself forward to stand before the glass and clutched at the lip of the rosewood console for support. She stared at her reflection, pale skin, dressing gown, necklace––

  It was an exquisite necklace with its gleam of ivory, one that seemed made to accentuate the elegance of a woman’s throat. It was the necklace a lady would choose to wear when she sat for a portrait.

  “I am pleased,” she said softly, even though she wasn’t entirely certain she was. She didn’t know how she felt other than that there was a maelstrom within her.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the clanging sounds of footsteps and buckets against walls, and then the sloshing of water into the bath. Behind her, there was the whisper of cloth against cloth, and in the mirror she saw Marcus slide from the bed, brushing down his coat.

  “Good then, wife,” he said with a satisfied smile that ate at her heart. “I shall see you at dinner.”

  There were moments like these, so intimate and unsettling, that made Natasha feel like a sculpture being hewn from ice. A sculpture that would then melt under Marcus’s heat. Could she forgive? Forget?

  Drawing on the violence of swirling emotions within her, Natasha reached up to unclasp the pearls. This was her life, but she did not yet know how to live it.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The evening passed peacefully. After dinner, Leona was brought back down from the nursery. While she giggled through game after game of chess with her father, Natasha listened to Kitty’s recitation on the history and genealogy of the Templetons. Some, Natasha had known or learned over the years, her ear always open to news of Marcus. Some she had not known. Such as the fact that the Earldom of Landsdowne, and subsequent minor titles such as the viscountcy, had been won only a hundred years prior, when the current Lord Landsdowne’s own grandfather’s Tory leanings garnered him a higher title at the hands of Queen Anne. Or that the Templeton name had become the backbone of the family when the son of a knight married Lady Mary Evenleigh back in 1362. Details, Kitty assured Natasha, that she would have known if she had been brought up as a proper English girl, rather than within the Russian and French expatriate community. Yet having learned that family could be left behind and discarded, Natasha rather thought merit was a far greater indicator of honor.

  They retired early, somewhere between country hours and town hours, and Natasha didn’t protest when Marcus waited by the open adjoining doors. She lay next to him in the dark, listening to his even breaths, feeling the solid, warm weight of his hand on her thigh as he curled around her in the night. Sometimes his hand was a shackle, and sometimes she simply enjoyed the pleasure of the touch. She might have no privacy, but she also was not alone.

  It wasn’t until luncheon the next day when a footman brought a letter to table that Natasha remembered acutely why she had fought against this marriage, why she hated her husband.

  “Tonight.” Natasha stared at Marcus incredulously. “My parents are coming here? For dinner?”

  “They couldn’t have given us earlier notice?” Kitty asked, frowning but not looking in the least surprised.

  “I told you, ma’am,” Natasha said a bit desperately, “that my parents have disowned me.”

  “Ah, but they have agreed to come, so perhaps that shall soon no longer be the case.”

  She stared at her mother-in-law, in part because she couldn’t bear to look at Marcus, knowing that his actions were precipitating her panic. The older woman was waving her hand and directing the cook to be brought up immediately.

  “What do you think
, Natasha? Would your parents prefer roast pork or goose?”

  It was too much. Anger and hurt warring for prominence within her, Natasha stood abruptly from the table, mumbling her excuses, and quit the room as fast as she could.

  She knew Marcus was coming, heard him, and then he grabbed her, stopping her on the landing. She turned and hit him with her fists. It was a useless assault, for he was too close for real damage.

  “How could you?” she bit out. “You claim day in and day out to love me, but you do nothing but hurt me.”

  “They are your parents, Natasha,” he said, sounding cruelly logical.

  “They were my parents.” She pushed at him harder. Broke away from his grip. She felt herself closing up again, when she hadn’t even realized the iron cage of her heart had opened. “I left them for you. How stupid I was.”

  She didn’t wait to see his reaction, to see how her words had hurt him. She knew they did, and she didn’t care. She didn’t want to care. The sense of betrayal was too strong. She whirled around and headed for her bedroom, relieved that he didn’t follow.

  Inside, she shut the door behind her and leaned against it, cheek to cool wood, hand fisted beside her face. Slowly, she sank down till the ground held her up and she clutched her knees to her chest.

  Her parents. The great, swallowing chasm of shame would never leave her. She could hide from it. She could change her name, twice over in fact, and could marry respectably. Nothing she did mattered for she would always feel this––this inadequacy and shame. She had been so quick to give up her thin morality, her chastity, the sliver of virginity that made her body anything precious and useful to her parents.

  But it wasn’t anger that had her balled up on the floor; it was fear. Away from Marcus, with the space to think, she acknowledged that much. He must have thought he was doing something kind, trying to repair her life. Marry her, reunite her with her parents. But he could kill her with such kindness.

  When she entered the hall several hours later, Marcus awaited her, dizzyingly handsome and elegant. He looked like a leaner, more-mature version of the man she had fallen for. And the gaze that flowed over her body, scorching her, was intense.

  “Mrs. Burgh is to be commended,” he said softly.

  She smoothed her hands down over fine mint-green muslin, the evening dress one of the two that the seamstress––working quickly on promise of a bonus––had delivered earlier that afternoon. It was one of the simpler items in the extensive wardrobe Kitty had insisted she order, spare of ornamentation other than the trim of lace at the neck and sleeves, as well as the lace on the petticoat beneath, which peeked out with each step.

  “Yes,” she said, and that agreement felt like a concession.

  He held out his arm, courteous, elegant, but every small action, every little decision, felt momentous and meaningful to her. If she took his arm now, what was she accepting? What was she surrendering?

  She walked past him as if she hadn’t noticed his movement. She imagined him standing there in his obtuse single-mindedness, lowering his outstretched arm, not realizing that she had made a stand. A small stand, but one nonetheless.

  She had reached the wood banister, the pads of her fingers just touching the tiny carved roses that lined the underside, when he gained her side.

  “The sitting room, love,” he said, taking her elbow. “We’ll await them there.”

  Flushing, she allowed him to guide her back to the open door she had passed. Embarrassment bloomed. She might have been brought up in less genteel surroundings, and recently lived a life near poverty, but she was not ignorant. If only the man wouldn’t fog her mind with his overwhelming presence.

  “You mustn’t be afraid of them, Tasha,” he counseled her, as if everything were peaceful between them, as if he had her best interests at heart and not just his own selfish motives. “This is your home, and they are guests. If they say the slightest word untoward, you may have them thrown out.”

  She ignored his speech and entered the room, which was empty but for a maid who was finishing a last dusting of the mantelpiece.

  “I’m not afraid of––” She stopped, turning from him, watching the maid scurry out.

  Watched Kitty sweep in.

  “Ah,” she exclaimed, clapping her hands together and staring at Natasha. Or rather, staring at Natasha in her new dress, which Kitty had commissioned. “I knew that color would look lovely on you. You don’t have a bit of green in your skin.”

  Despite the tension that kept her body tightly wound, Natasha exhaled a surprised laugh.

  “Well, perhaps a tinge,” Kitty admitted with a smirk, “but nothing that clashes with mint.”

  “Yes, very well done, mother,” Marcus said in a dry, bemused tone that made Natasha’s smile widen.

  The butler entered, announcing her parents, who were just a step behind.

  “Prince and Princess Polinoff.”

  Just their names, said the English way, made her cold and hot all at once. Next came their faces, her father’s round and bearded, her mother’s small and piquant. Both wrinkled, both grayer and older than she remembered.

  “Tasha,” her mother said, her arms rising slightly as if she wanted to hold them out, open. “Mon cherie.” The accent, the sound of home, of her childhood, nearly knocked Natasha down at the knees. But Marcus was there, his hand at her elbow still.

  She wanted to hide. Then she wanted to hit something, hit someone, although she had never really hit anyone in her life. Well, perhaps she had hit Marcus, but he had hardly been affected by her weak little blows. If she punched something now, she would do damage.

  She was angry that her parents would come to accept her now that she had been saved from the life of a fallen woman, even if that saving had come from the very man who had ruined her. When her parents had disowned her, when she became Marcus’s mistress rather than simply his lover, she had resented them greatly. Her father’s Russian pride, which stopped him from finding employment and having the means to support his family as he should, had left her craving what she couldn’t have, the life she had heard of in stories of the homeland. Sometimes Natasha wondered if she had sold herself for those little luxuries Marcus had been able to give her––if her love for him had merely been a love of fripperies and attention. Of his touch, which she could feel even now.

  It had been easier to think during those long, cold years that it had merely been greed and not love that had been lost.

  The gold band on her finger felt heavy and his hand at her elbow, a conduit for the turmoil inside her. She felt herself trembling.

  “Natashka.” Her father’s voice saying her name was almost a deep sigh, a scolding, taking her to task for her years away.

  Natashka. The prodigal daughter.

  Only, she hadn’t returned. She had been forced into this. Tricked into this.

  “Papa, Maman,” she said, forcing the greetings out through stiff lips. Before she could say another word, Marcus let go of her arm––cold air rushing in to replace his hand––and stepped forward.

  “Prince Polinoff, Princess Polinoff, it is a great pleasure to have you in our home.” He was everything polite, but her father’s eyes were narrowed and her mother’s lips looked pinched. The first small tremor of relief flooded Natasha. They weren’t just accepting, happy with this new arrangement. “Allow me to introduce you to my mother, Lady Templeton.”

  “Such a pleasure,” Kitty said brightly, coming forward to take Natasha’s mother’s hands as if this were a social call with long-lost friends rather than the awkward interview it was. “Natasha has told me so much about you. Here in London all these years, I’m quite surprised we have never once crossed paths.”

  “I believe it is easy to miss making acquaintances in such a dense town as London.” Natasha knew her mother’s words were for her.

  “I wasn’t in London, Mother.” Her father made a noise, small and quickly choked, and peeking at him, again she wanted to hide.

  �
�May I offer any refreshments before dinner?” Marcus asked. With a gesture, he shepherded them all deeper into the sitting room, inviting them to sit.

  Kitty lowered herself elegantly on the settee, and her mother took a seat opposite on the long sofa. After the briefest hesitation, Natasha sat herself on the long sofa as well, a safe foot away. Marcus, as he walked past her, rested his hand briefly upon her shoulder. The gesture was meant as a comforting one, she knew, but she also knew her mother watched the interchange with hawkish eyes. And when she looked up, Natasha found her father, settled in one of the two large chairs, watching as well.

  “This has been a brutally cold winter, don’t you agree, Princess Polinoff?” Kitty asked. Natasha’s gaze flew to her mother-in-law in near disbelief that she could enter into conversation upon a topic so trivial, so unimportant under the circumstances.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you attend the frost fair?” Marcus asked, directing his words toward her father. “I was not in town, but I did hear it was the most extravagant of recent years.”

  Her father shook his head.

  “Lady Templeton, do forgive me,” her mother said, “but I have not seen my daughter, nor known she was even alive for five years.” Natasha’s father made that choking sound again. “And now she is returned in the most extraordinary of circumstances.”

  “Ah,” Kitty exclaimed on a short laugh. “I do suppose it must have come as quite a shock to you both to suddenly have your daughter and granddaughter reunited with you.”

  The twin looks of confusion, giving way to other emotions, were hardly inscrutable. The choked cough now came from Marcus.

  “Ah,” Kitty said again.

  “I would have thought Marcus had written of Leona as well,” Natasha said lightly. “It is the reason I left him, you know. Because of the codicils.”