She looked away, concentrating as she carefully folded the letter and placed it with the others. “Do you think of Clara?”
The question was too personal, too intimate, but she waited, breath held, for his answer.
“Yes.”
“Often?”
He slowly shook his head. “Not as often as I used to.”
She bit her lip, closing her eyes. “Do you feel guilty when you make love to me?”
“No.” She felt him come nearer, standing near enough that the warmth from his body reached out to her. “I loved Clara deeply and I will never forget her, but she’s gone. I’ve learned, I think, in these last weeks, to set aside what I felt for her so that I can feel something else with you.”
She inhaled, her heart beating wildly, not entirely sure she wanted to hear this. “How … how can you reconcile it, though? The love you felt? It was real, wasn’t it? Strong and true?”
“Yes, it was very real.” She felt the press of his hands on her shoulders. They were warm and steadfast. “I think had you not come into my life I would’ve stayed a celibate hermit. But that didn’t happen. You did come,” he said simply, a statement of fact.
She opened her eyes, twisting to face him. “Do you regret it? Do you hate me for forcing you to give up your memories of Clara?”
A corner of his mouth tipped up. “You didn’t force me to do anything.” He looked at her, his dark eyes grave. “Do you feel you’ve betrayed Roger?”
“I don’t know,” she said, because it was the truth—her feelings for Roger were in a muddle. She saw the wince that Godric tried to hide and she felt an answering pain at having caused him hurt. But she soldiered on because he’d asked and he deserved the truth. “I want—wanted—a baby so terribly and I think he would’ve understood that. He was a joyful man and I think—I hope—he would’ve wanted me to be joyful even after he died. But I haven’t brought his murderer to justice.” She gazed up at him, trying to convey her confused emotions.
“I told you I’ll find a way to make Kershaw pay and I will,” he said, iron hard. “I promise I’ll help you lay Roger to rest.”
“I don’t want you going back into St. Giles,” she whispered, stroking one finger along his jaw. “I owe you too much already. Everything you’ve done for me. Everything you’ve given up for me.”
“There is no debt between you and me.” He smiled. “I voluntarily chose to move beyond my grief for Clara. Life is by necessity for the living.”
She stared up into his dark eyes, something kindling and glowing in her breast, and she longed in that moment to tell him. Tell him that she suspected that she was carrying his child. Carrying life itself.
But she remembered with a shock what that would mean: she’d promised him that she would leave when she became pregnant.
She didn’t want to leave Godric. Not yet. Maybe never.
His eyebrows had knit together while she’d remained silent as if he were trying to figure out what she was thinking. It made him look stern and rather solemn paired with his usual gray wig and the half-moon spectacles pushed absently to his forehead. She found the look rather irresistible, actually, and she raised herself on tiptoe to brush her lips across his.
When she pulled back, he had a bemused expression on his face, but she smiled at him and he smiled in return. “Come. If you remember, you wanted to visit Spring Gardens today.”
She ducked her head, linking hands with him as he drew her from the room. Happiness trembled near her heart, but it was held back by the knowledge she would soon have to tell him and when she did, he would ask her to leave.
And if nothing else, she needed to put Roger to rest before she left London. Somehow.
SPRING GARDENS WAS a pleasant place, Godric thought, even if he wasn’t much interested in flowers or plants. Megs was interested, and it seemed her enjoyment of the gardens made it enjoyable for him as well.
They walked along a gravel path, edged with short boxwood trimmed with surgical severity into angular shapes. The beds themselves were mostly barren and Godric privately thought they weren’t any better than his own garden at Saint House, save for the fact that they were neater.
Megs, however, found much to exclaim over.
“Oh, look at those tiny white flowers,” she said, nearly bending in half to peer closer. “Do you know what they are, Mrs. St. John?”
His stepmother, who had been walking behind, crowded close to his elbow to look. “Perhaps a type of crocus?”
“But they’re on stems,” Megs said, straightening and frowning down at the flower, which looked quite pedestrian to Godric. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a crocus on a stem.”
“Or with green bits,” Sarah said.
“Eh?” Great-Aunt Elvina cupped one hand around her ear.
“Green. Bits,” Sarah repeated, loudly and clearly.
“I see no green bits,” Great-Aunt Elvina pronounced.
“They’re right there,” Jane said, pointing, while at the same time Charlotte murmured that she saw no trace of green either.
There followed a lively discussion on whether or not the flower sported “green bits” and if crocuses ever could be found with long stems. Godric watched in amusement.
“I’ve never seen her so happy,” his stepmother said in his ear. He turned his head to find that while he’d been watching the others, she’d been watching him. “Or you.”
He blinked, looking away, unnerved.
“Godric,” she said, taking his elbow and walking down the path a bit. “You are happy, aren’t you?”
“Can one ever really say one is happy?” he asked wryly.
“I believe so,” she replied, her round face grave. “I was very happy with your father.”
“You made him happy as well,” he murmured.
She nodded as if this wasn’t news to her. “The only thing I regret about my marriage to your father is that it made you so very unhappy.”
He felt heat rising in his face, the old shame of how he’d treated her coming to the surface. He inhaled and stopped to stare fixedly at a strange, drooping tree. “I was unhappy before you ever married Father. Your arrival only gave me a focus for my ire. I’m sorry. I treated you very badly.”
“You were still a boy, Godric,” she said softly. “I’ve forgiven you for it long ago. I only wish you could forgive yourself. Your sisters and I miss you.”
He swallowed and at last looked at her. Her eyes were crinkled with worry for him. Love for him. He didn’t understand it. She should by rights hate him. He’d been truly cruel to her for years. But if she could put the past behind them, the very least he could do for her was try to do the same.
He placed his hand over hers, lying soft and warm on his arm, and squeezed gently, hoping she’d understand what he couldn’t say.
“Oh, Godric.” Tears glittered in her eyes, but he thought they were glad tears. “It’s so good to have you back.”
He bent to kiss her on the cheek, murmuring, “Thank you for waiting.”
Behind them he could hear the rest of his family coming to meet him, still apparently arguing about green bits and stemmed crocuses. He turned and saw Jane and Charlotte, arm in arm, despite their passionate discussion. Behind them was Great-Aunt Elvina, making an overloud point to Sarah, who was attentive but had a small smile on her face. And bringing up the rear was his dear wife. Megs looked up just then, catching his eye, and he saw that her cheeks were a deep pink from the wind and the excitement. She grinned at him and something broke free in his chest, lightening, glowing, warming him internally.
He made a mental note: he’d have to bring Megs to the gardens at least once a week while she was in London, for she was truly in her element here and he found it rather a wonderful place himself.
He waited until the others had passed him and Mrs. St. John, and then offered his wife his left arm. She looked at it cautiously as if afraid to injure it again.
“Come on this side of Godric,” his stepmother mur
mured, and she exchanged a glance with Megs, one of those mysterious feminine ones that seemed to relate all the news of the world. “I want to stroll a bit with Sarah.”
Megs took his right arm, which had healed nicely, the bandage already off, and glanced up at him as Mrs. St. John walked ahead to catch up with the others. “I’m so glad you talked to your stepmother.”
She smiled brilliantly and he wondered—not for the first time—how women managed to know these things without speaking.
He pushed the matter from his mind, though, and smiled down at his wife, for it really was a lovely day. They strolled slowly, the others drawing farther ahead until it seemed they walked in a garden all their own, Godric thought whimsically.
But every garden has its serpent.
They were approaching an intersection with another path, the corner screened by several trees just beginning to leaf. Godric could see another couple coming closer, but it wasn’t until he and Megs were at the junction that he saw who it was: the Earl and Countess of Kershaw.
Chapter Nineteen
Faith yawned. “I’m so sleepy. Can we not rest for a bit?” The Hellequin dismounted the big black horse readily enough and lifted Faith off. She lay down in the dust of the Plain of Madness and wrapped the Hellequin’s cloak about her. Yet still she shivered. Holding out a hand, she said to the Hellequin, “Will you not lie with me?” So he lay beside her and curved his big body around hers and as she drifted into slumber, she heard him say, “I have not slept the sleep of men for a millennium.” …
—From The Legend of the Hellequin
Megs froze. Lord Kershaw had been laughing at something, his round face thrown back to the sun’s rays, his mouth wide, his eyes squinting with laughter. It felt like a knife wound to the soul. Roger had once laughed so uninhibitedly.
Had once walked in the sunlight.
“How dare you,” she said low, without any forethought, but she wouldn’t have been able to remain silent and still breathe. “How dare you?”
“Megs,” Godric said beside her. His entire body had tightened as if preparing for battle, but his voice was soft, almost sad.
She couldn’t look at him, not now. All she could see was Lord Kershaw’s dying laugh, the way his eyes narrowed with calculation, the stare he pinned on her.
“You killed him,” she said, the words righteous on her tongue. “You killed Roger Fraser-Burnsby. He was your friend and you murdered him.”
Had he denied her accusation, had he blustered and flushed, backed away, shouted that she was insane, done any of those normal, conventional things, she might’ve rethought her taunt. Might’ve come to her senses and pleaded sun poisoning or too much drink or merely the stupidity of her feminine sex.
But he didn’t.
Instead, Lord Kershaw leaned forward, his thick lips curving into a sweet smile, and said, “Prove it.”
She went wild, she knew it in retrospect, but all she felt in the moment was the hot burn of grief flooding her veins, like acid in the blood. She surged at him, arms outstretched, fingers scrabbling, and only Godric’s hard hands saved her from disgrace. He picked her up physically, carrying her even as she bucked and sobbed. Her family was around her now and she saw Sarah’s wide eyes, the muted horror on Mrs. St. John’s face, and she knew she should feel shame, but all she felt was sorrow.
Drowning, overwhelming sorrow.
She spent the carriage ride home burrowed into Godric’s shoulder, trying to inhale his familiar scent, trying to remember all that she had rather than all she had lost.
When they reached Saint House, Godric climbed out of the carriage and then turned around and helped her down, as solicitous as if she were an invalid. She murmured a protest, but he didn’t reply, simply tightening his arms about her as he led her in.
Megs heard Mrs. Crumb ask something as they passed her in the hallway and was glad when Sarah stopped to murmur to her. Godric hadn’t even hesitated. He mounted the stairs, keeping his right arm around her shoulders, and it was only when they made the upper floor that she remembered his wrist.
She looked anxiously up at him. “Dear Lord, Godric, I must’ve hurt your wrist when we were in the garden—”
“No,” he murmured as he led her into his bedroom. “Hush. It’s nothing.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I never wanted to hurt you.”
A hot flush rose in her chest, sweeping over her neck and face, and then she was weeping, the tears scalding. There was no relief in these tears, though, no relief while Lord Kershaw lived.
She must’ve said something as she sobbed—or perhaps Godric knew instinctively what she felt.
He wrapped her in his arms as he gently let down her hair, and it wasn’t until her heaving breaths began to quiet that she heard what he was saying.
“He won’t get away, Meggie mine, I won’t let him. I promise on my soul that I’ll take him down. I promise, Meggie, I promise.”
His repetition soothed her hurt a little. Megs laid her cheek against his shoulder, limply letting him do as he wanted. He was drawing off her dress, unlacing her stays, freeing her from her clothing. When she was in only her chemise, he laid her gently on his bed and crossed to his dresser. She heard the splash of water and then he was back by her, a cool cloth pressed to her swollen cheeks.
It felt like a benediction, the touch of unconditional forgiveness, and she whispered without thinking. “I loved him.”
“I know,” he murmured in reply. “I know.”
She closed her eyes, her fingers pressing against her stomach, flattened because she was lying down. There was no sign, no manifestation of the baby, but she believed on faith alone.
“I can’t begin again,” she whispered, “not when he hasn’t been avenged. I can’t have this baby with this undone, and I can’t leave London.”
She opened her eyes to see that his eyes had widened and were fixed upon her hands where they lay kneading her stomach. Slowly, his gaze rose to hers, and it burned, but she couldn’t read the expression in his eyes.
She hadn’t meant to tell him like this, but she couldn’t order her brain.
“I can’t leave London now,” she repeated.
“No,” he agreed. “Not now. Not yet.”
He got up and went to the dresser and she closed her eyes, drifting.
She felt the dip of the bed when he returned. The cloth was placed on her forehead and she murmured with pleasure. It felt so good, so right.
“Sleep now,” he said, and she could tell by his voice that he meant to leave her.
Her eyes popped open. “Stay with me.”
He looked away, his mouth tense. “I have business to attend to.”
What business? she wondered, but only said aloud, “Please.”
He didn’t answer, simply toed off his shoes and removed his coat. He took off his wig and laid it on his dresser, and then he lay down beside her and drew her into his arms.
She lay there, drifting, listening to his deep breaths. He’d not berated her for her outburst in the garden. Anyone else would’ve been ashamed of her—certainly disapproving. Yet Godric had treated her tenderly even when she’d fought him to get to the Earl of Kershaw. She didn’t deserve a man so patient, so good. She turned on her side, watching his profile as he lay on his back next to her. His eyes were closed, but she knew he wasn’t asleep. What was he thinking? What did he plan to do? Perhaps it didn’t matter right now. He’d agreed that she didn’t have to leave London right away, and for that she was grateful. She wanted to stay for Roger—but more importantly she wanted to stay for Godric.
Godric.
His nose was straight in profile and rather elegant, which was a funny thing to think about a man’s nose, but it was. The nostrils were slim and well defined, the bridge of his nose shadowed on either side. His mouth, too, had always been beautiful, his lips lighter than the surrounding skin, almost soft-looking. She raised a hand and touched. Lightly, tracing, feeling the slight scrape of his beard on one s
ide, the smooth softness on the other.
His lips parted. “Megs.”
His voice, too, had always enthralled her. So gruff and low, sounding as if he’d spent the day shouting angrily at someone.
Except he wasn’t an angry man, not really, and certainly not with her.
He rolled toward her so that they were face-to-face. “You should sleep, Meggie mine.”
“But I’m not sleepy.”
He watched her, his gray eyes weary, saying nothing, simply waiting to see what she wished. It grieved her, what this strong, good man would do for her, and it made her uneasy too.
She fit her lips to his and whispered, “Make love to me, please.”
And he complied as he had with every other thing she’d asked of him.
He ran his long, graceful fingers into her hair and grasped the back of her head, holding her, embracing her, making her feel cherished.
His tongue licked into her mouth, gently probing, gently tracing her teeth and the roof of her mouth. She caught his tongue and suckled, pressing her palm against his chest so she could feel his heat, the steadfast beat of his heart. His mouth opened against hers, slanting, nibbling at the corner of her lips. He slid over her cheek to her temple, kissing her tenderly there.
“Godric,” she whispered, her voice catching.
There was something he intended to do, something involving Lord Kershaw, and she thought she should find out what it was, make him confess his secrets.
But then he caught the skirts of her chemise and flung it up over her hip and she forgot. He kissed her on the mouth and drew back, watching her as he took her upper leg and drew it over his own, opening her. His hand dropped again, and she felt as he delved between her thighs, gently stroking.
Her eyelids drooped, and her hand rose to his jaw, bringing him closer so she could kiss him again as his knuckle brushed against her clitoris. He pressed there, and she arched her hips into his hand, wanting more, until he withdrew his hand. She moaned in protest, hearing his breathless hush in reply, and then she felt his bare cock against her thigh.