Lord of Regrets (23 page)

If she couldn’t have that, then she wanted nothing, none of this. She would write him, ask him for a separation. If he truly wanted to give her freedom, he would agree. As painful and scandalous as such an event would be, it would at least reflect the truth of her life. She was broken. Broken without him.

Perhaps there was the chance that their love was greater than all this mess. There was a chance that fate had thrown them together again not to simply torture them, but to let them have love. Perhaps, faced with her demand, he would come back. She admitted to herself, with a scared thread of happiness, that that was what she wanted. She wanted him to call her bluff.

Moments later Puffin stood up, shaking the bed with her movements. Natasha peered at her, waiting to see if she needed to help the little creature down to the ground. Puffin moved closer to her arm and sat half atop Natasha before lying down as close as she could get.

With a sigh, Natasha rested her head against the dog’s warm side. At least the dog found comfort in her company. No one else did, not even Natasha herself.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Two weeks of an idle life were far more than Marcus could take. Here he was in Firenze with his brother, who even in this foreign land disappeared at odd hours of the day and night, who was as frustrating as his grandfather and yet looked every bit like his father. Who had his own code in this world that had little to do with the interests of any specific nation.

He had taken this jaunt on a whim, when he had originally intended to remain in Paris. Gerard had said, a small trip, back in one month, two at the most. It would take his mind off Natasha.

It hadn’t. All travel had moments of silence, and the moments of silence… His hand had yet to fully heal, and every throb reminded him of her adulterous actions. He was simply exiling himself instead of committing murder.

He wanted to send for his daughter, but he could hardly do so when the bargain with which he had induced her mother to marry him was allowing them to stay together. The girl would forget him soon enough, or not care about his absence. Fathers were not important in daughters’ lives.

How could he bring his daughter to Tuscany, out of the safety of her home, to a place that, despite the beauty of the River Arno in the late morning, despite the fields of lavender and the exquisite churches, was adjusting still from the rule of Napoleon? When the would-be emperor himself was so close, just off the coast, at Elba? As peaceful as the last two weeks had been, as easy as it had been to mingle amongst the Tuscan people, to drink the rich red wine, and bask in the warmth of a sun long overdue, Marcus knew that the world around him churned.

That churning added to his own internal agitation, his inability to simply let his mind bake in the lulling heat. Which sent him seeking cool shadows of stone buildings and then entering the deeper shadows of his own memory. In the slow afternoon of one bright, late June day, sitting in the open window of his bedroom, he watched a stranger arrive. As it was so often these days, he lived again in that duality of experience: the present happenings of reality overlaid with images of the unattainable past, of Natasha.

The man carried a bag. A messenger, perhaps, if not for the fine cut of his clothing, the wealth of the fabric. Marcus slipped his legs back down to the floor, crossed the room, opened the door to the hall. At the edge of the stairs, the sharp hiss of whispered voices echoing off stone stopped him.

“This is to be used.” A foreign voice, not his brother. The messenger, then. The clear sound of metal drawn out of a sheath startled Marcus. He held his breath, suddenly aware that the same trick of acoustic arrangement might carry the sound of his movement, his every inhalation, down to them.

“Stay for lunch.” Gerard’s voice now, much louder, meant to be heard.

“Some other time,” the stranger said, and Marcus heard the unmistakable Florentine dialect.

They had clearly heard something, someone, perhaps Marcus. He made his decision, started his descent down the stairs, his footsteps firm, regular, as if he weren’t hiding that he had overheard any of their conversation.

He found them in the entrance hall, the stranger just poised at the door, so that all Marcus caught was the back of his coat, his hat, the heel of his boots, and the width of his body as he cornered the door and passed from sight.

“Ah, a pity,” Gerard said with a welcoming smile. “If you had come only a moment sooner, I might have introduced you. An old friend.”

“A short visit.”

“What did you hear?” Gerard asked suddenly, his easy attitude gone, the hollow eyes back. A man of business. Dangerous. Like the dagger whose outline beneath his half brother’s coat suddenly seemed ridiculously obvious to Marcus. He didn’t need to answer the question. He had a question, many questions, of his own.

“You are here to kill someone? Is that what you do? Assassinate people?” Marcus struggled not to lose the contents of his stomach. The thought was so repulsive, so cowardly, so—“Is this what you do for our grandfather?”

Gerard’s lips thinned; his cheeks sucked in and then let out.

“Dammit, is that what our grandfather does? Order deaths which you then carry out?” And Marcus realized then how even more wrong it was––send the legitimate son to do the diplomacy, the illegitimate to do murder.

“I’m not here on our grandfather’s behalf.” That didn’t answer Marcus’s question.

“Whose then?”

Gerard chewed slowly, as if he weren’t certain he should answer. His next words confirmed that. “It’s best that you don’t know. The people here for whom I work, they have been–– It is far bigger than any little plot you can imagine.”

“Bigger than freeing Napoleon from Elba?” A wild guess, but knowing some of the schemes his grandfather played at, it seemed an appropriate one.

Gerard laughed. “I am certain there is more than one plan to do just that hatching. But this isn’t about Napoleon. It’s far bigger.”

Bigger than a man who through the sheer force of his will had nearly made all of Europe his?

Marcus had always known that his grandfather was engaged in political manipulations, but it was different to be a part of them, to be embroiled in that world and then realize that his thread of intrigue was only one of many, and that the world of politics and diplomacy was an interwoven web, a tapestry of deception and obsessive desires, where everyone was a pawn, even knights, rooks, and bishops. Even kings and queens, all at the hand of the chess player, some secretive puppeteer, or collection of puppeteers.

As if Gerard could read his thoughts, he said, “I should tell you none of this. I believe you would have been happier left in Paris, gone back to London, even with the news of your wife. You aren’t a man for intrigue. You accept what you do not know. It hardly bothers you to be one of many.”

Marcus bristled at the words. If he wasn’t a man for intrigue, then what was he? A pawn? He had nothing to go home to. Nothing he couldn’t manage well enough for now from where he was.

“What are you then?” Marcus demanded, studying his brother, seeing him as the stranger he had been only months earlier.

Gerard stared at him impassively, but Marcus would not believe that this question had not crossed the other man’s mind on previous occasions. His half brother had the stigma of an inferior birth, yet the benefit of education and his grandfather’s beneficence. Somehow, he had entangled himself in some conspiracies and schemes that he believed were important. Certainly these secret agents paid Gerard well––Marcus saw that the man wanted for little.

Little, perhaps, but a settled life, a home, a wife, a legacy.

“Why are you here in Florence?”

Gerard’s impassiveness slipped, edged into anger, and a fierce satisfaction surged through Marcus.

Then the calm returned. His brother smiled.

“You had it right. I’m here to rescue Bonaparte.”

Gerard refused to answer honestly, but Marcus was tired of machinations and lies. By taunting him, his brother had thrown a gauntlet down on the stone floor between them. Thus, in his simplest, darkest clothes, the way his brother had appeared that long ago night in Dijon, Marcus followed him.

He trailed him down the first alley, down another narrow street, through the courtyard of a church, until Marcus suspected Gerard knew he was being followed and was trying to lose him. But why not simply stop, confront him? Marcus was not some enemy who would try and kill Gerard. Or were they enemies? Despite their shared blood, did they truly have opposing allegiances?

Finally Gerard slowed, by––based on the faint sound of music, and the louder sound of laughter––what must have been the rear door of a public house. Marcus stopped in the shadows behind the scrap pile, where the chattering of rats sent a disgusted shiver down his spine.

Hidden by the edge of a crumbling stone wall, Marcus waited, watched, just as his brother did. At long last, the rear door opened, and a party of drunken men walked out, stumbled about, relieved themselves, and then returned inside.

More waiting. Finally the door opened again, and another man walked out. Perhaps it was the style of his clothes or the cut of his hair, but Marcus thought the man French, not unusual for these provinces. Alone, the man walked down the alley, past Gerard, who crept from his place to follow, keeping always to the shadows. Both men passed by Marcus, who in his own turn, followed.

The alley, dirty with filth and sludge, narrowed, turned, was soon out of sight of the public house, and Marcus nearly stumbled upon them by the time he realized Gerard had made his move. His brother had the other man on his knees, hands behind his back, Gerard’s hand at his dagger’s hilt.

Marcus made no effort to hide himself and, staring at his brother’s back, listened.

“I was asked to give you a message,” Gerard said. “The lady Ana regrets you did not dine with her.”

“
Non
, signore, I don’t know any lady by that name,” the man said, his fear evident in his every gasp and jerk.

“You cannot play with the strings of life when you don’t know where they attach.” His brother’s dispassionate voice cut into Marcus’s soul.

Before he knew exactly what he was about, Marcus stepped into Gerard’s line of sight. Into that of the other man’s as well. It was instinct that made him rage against the injustice of a man paying for a sin he didn’t even realize he had committed, simply because some greater power had decided the way things should be.

“Let him go,” Marcus urged. “What crime has this man committed?”

“Si, let me go,” the other man pleaded, wriggling, trying to free himself from Gerard’s iron grip. “You have the wrong man. I’ve done nothing.”

Marcus saw the movement out of the corner of his eye, the glint of moonlight on metal, sweeping up. He stepped forward, the step he thought necessary, the second before the explosion, before he catapulted forward, squeezing his eyes shut at ground that rose up to meet him and the sting of his cheek scraping on the street.

Gibberish, “…merde…” more gibberish, perhaps French curses of which Marcus knew few. A desperate scrambling. Marcus turned his head with difficulty, cracked open one eye, saw the man his brother had held captive running fast down the street. But where was the man with the pistol? Had he reloaded, had he remained near? Would he shoot again?

“Dammit, I knew you were following me.” Gerard cursed. “I should have—”

Marcus heard his brother’s words from a distance, as if that man were on the other side of his pounding head, another room. And his chest, well, the burning was subsiding. In fact, he could hardly feel anything. His teeth clattered against each other.

“What should you have done?” He felt the hard clash of his teeth after each word. “Killed me?”

“You think you did something heroic here? You think you saved two men’s lives?” Gerard demanded, looking furious even as he did something horrible to Marcus’s body. The whole world spun, raged into pain, and then settled into a blur.

“Stop,” Marcus said, hearing the word thin and weak. “Stop,” he said again, trying to get his tongue around it, to make it fuller and thicker. But he couldn’t make Gerard stop. Instead his brother kept jarring him, forcefully, as if ramming him into bone.

“You’ve only made my work harder.” Gerard kept speaking. It was useless to ask him to stop. The man didn’t know the meaning of the word. But there was something else. Another thought somewhere. He searched for it, out of the black fog that pushed out even the blurry color, grasped its dangling tail, bloody and thin, like the tentacles of the squid he’d had at lunch.

At last, he had it. “Where is Natasha?”

Chapter Thirty-Three

The letter arrived at breakfast, smelling of salt as if it had come in on the morning boat, and when Natasha looked closer, it seemed that was indeed the case.

“It is from Pell.” Her hands shook, and she thought she might cast up her accounts right there in the breakfast room. This was it. Marcus had sent his reply, and to show how little he cared, he’d had his valet write the letter.

She wanted to run out of the room, read the letter in private. Or burn the letter, perhaps. Hide it and pretend she’d never received it at all.

“Highly irregular,” Kitty commented, and Natasha heard the light
click
of her laying her fork down on her plate.

Lady Templeton could have no idea
how
irregular it was. And that disapproval, that doubt, would be tenfold in her eyes.

Natasha played with the note, ran her fingers along the edges, overly aware of the sensation of the paper against her flesh.

“Well, unless you’ve learned some new power of divination, you had better open that,” Kitty said. Natasha looked over at her.

Kitty looked pale, as if the irregularity of the whole event made her nervous. But Kitty couldn’t know…and Natasha realized that Kitty’s fears were very different from her own.

Trembling, Natasha slid her finger under the edge of the paper and broke the wax seal. She unfolded the sheet, took in the neat lines of ink, wondered if Pell could write legibly at all. Then she realized it was her own eyes that were flawed and she blinked twice, struggled to see the lines.

She drowned in the sentences, in the news that was so different from what she had expected and yet far more dire.

Injured gravely, fear for his life.

Kitty paled, placed her palms flat on the table, pushing so that Natasha thought she would rise, but then she did not. Instead she continued that strange tension between hand and table, and Natasha stared at the intersection.

“This is his grandfather’s doing,” Kitty said quietly, when she finally did speak again. “A whole family, ruined by one man’s incessant manipulations.”

But Kitty was speaking as if Marcus were already dead, as if she had expected nothing less than for him to die young, in a foreign land, of a putrid wound.

Dead without Natasha ever seeing him again, without Leona ever truly knowing her father. Without––

But he wasn’t dead. It was silly to act as though he were.

“I think I’d better go to him,” Natasha said aloud, testing the words. They hung there, unanswered, and in that silence, her determination grew.

Finally, she murmured her excuses and pushed herself back from the table.

“What did you say?” Kitty asked, just as Natasha stood, as if she hadn’t noticed anything until the sudden movement. Her mother-in-law looked as she had that day months ago in Lord Landsdowne’s sitting room. She looked frail. This was a woman who had been beat down by a life handed to her. But just as Kitty had been chained to misery by Lord Landsdowne’s influence on his son, so had the earl freed Natasha.

Free will. For all the wrongs he had done, in the name of the family and country, plots and schemes she could only begin to guess at, he had granted her the key to her own freedom.

“I must pack, Kitty,” she said, stepping away from the table. “I’m going to Marcus.”

Natasha said nothing to Leona of Marcus’s injury even as she planned for the journey to Florence. She knew, as she moved about the house, from nursery to bedroom to sitting room and back again, that both her daughter and Kitty watched her, judged her, each with her own perspective. They trailed her in her every movement, and Natasha felt the weight of those judgments.

The morning haze burned off, the sun blazed through the windows, and morning passed into early afternoon. It would be a late start for a long journey.

“You think I don’t care for him,” she said finally to her mother-in-law, while the carriage was being brought round. “You think I am heartless and faithless and—”

“I think you are rash and immature. If you consider nothing else, it will be near impossible to reach Florence. Everyone is traveling the other direction, following the Emperor Alexander and the diplomatic circus. That whole region is still at war.”

“He is the father of my daughter. He is my husband.” Natasha stopped there, unwilling to share more, to open up her agitated emotions to Kitty. For she knew very well that the threat of losing Marcus was bringing out all her softer feelings for him, coloring every experience so that all the bitterness and pain was overshadowed by the good. Even acknowledging that to herself, she had to go to him. He would not come to her, and she could no longer live in this half-life, married but not, loved but not.