chapter Eighteen
“Poor, poor souls!” Faith cried, and a single tear fell from her eye.
Her unhappiness so enchanted Loss that he forgot himself, letting go of the horse and clapping his tiny red hands. Swifter than the blink of an eye, Faith pushed the imp from the horse. He fell with a shriek and was trampled beneath the big black horse’s hooves.
The Hellequin chuckled under his breath. “Those demon imps have been my sole companions for an eternity, yet you’ve rid me of them in one day.”…
—From The Legend of the Hellequin
Late the next morning, Megs stared down at her figures and did the calculation again. For the third time. Both because she always got a bit muddled when it came to numbers and because, well, they couldn’t be correct.
Yet the result was the same: She’d missed one of her courses and was late for the second. How was that possible? She tried to scowl at the numbers on the scrap of paper, but a gleeful grin kept taking over instead. She was trying very hard to be practical, to ignore the rising tide of elation within her breast. It was much too soon, she chided herself. If she got her hopes up, she’d be terribly disappointed to find brown stains on her linen tomorrow.
But what if she didn’t? Have her courses again, that is. What if she were really, truly with child?
She giggled aloud.
The thought had her jumping up, too restless with possibility to sit still. She crossed into Godric’s room almost without thought—and then was disappointed to see he was not there.
Megs wrinkled her nose, looking around. She tiptoed to his dressing room and peeked in.
Her Grace lay on a man’s shirt—Megs truly hoped it was a castoff of Godric’s—nursing her puppies. The dog raised her head and looked inquiringly at Megs.
“It’s quite all right,” Megs whispered. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
She watched for a minute more because the puppies were making quite adorable snuffling sounds, and the chocolate one kept trying to push his paw in his sibling’s face. After a while she turned back to Godric’s room, meaning to return to her own. Something about his dresser caught her eye, though. The top drawer was pulled out, the key still inserted in the lock.
She went to look—it was a quite irresistible urge.
The key was a small one on a silver chain, and she realized, looking at it, that it was the same key that Godric wore around his neck. She touched it with one finger, making the silver chain swing gently.
Then she looked in the drawer.
At the front was a messy pile of letters. Behind it was a much neater, thin stack of letters bound in black, and in the corner of the drawer was a pretty blue and white enameled box. She picked it up and opened the hinged lid. Inside were two locks of fine hair, one brown and the other the same shade of brown but with gray mingled in the threads as well. They must’ve been Clara’s, and it struck her how long he’d known his first wife—long enough for her hair to start to gray. The thought made her melancholy. He’d had years of living and loving Clara while she—
But that didn’t matter, did it? She hadn’t come to London for Godric’s love.
She frowned and slowly replaced the enameled box.
Megs looked closer at the two stacks of letters. The one bound in black was obviously from Clara, but the loose pile …
Her heart began beating faster.
She recognized her own sprawling writing on the top. She riffled through the letters and found that they were all from her. She stared. Godric had saved every letter she’d written him. The thought made her back prickle. All those missives hastily scrawled off without any forethought, all those ramblings about Laurelwood and Upper Hornsfield and her daily life and … and kittens. Why had he ever bothered to save them?
She picked up one randomly from the pile and opened it, reading.
10 January 1740
Dear Godric,
What do you think? We have piles of snow here! I don’t know where it came from. Battlefield has been mooning about all day muttering about how he’s never seen such snow hereabouts in his lifetime, which, as you know, is extensive—some would say overly extensive—and Cook has had three revelations of the Second Coming already today and we haven’t even had Luncheon yet. Despite the possible Apocalypse, I do hope the snow stays, for it is quite lovely and ices every little tree branch and window ledge. If it snowed every winter I might come to quite like the dark season.
I’ve watched a wee robin all morning, hopping along the branches of the hawthorn tree outside my bedroom window and pausing now and again to pick out some startled insect from beneath the bark and gobble it up. Some of the stable lads and the younger footmen spent the morning in a snowball skirmish that only ended when Battlefield was accidentally hit in the back of the neck (!) and a forcible peace was enacted.
Bother! I haven’t yet asked you the question I meant to with this letter and now I’m nearly out of paper, so here it is. Sarah mentioned this morning how much you enjoyed Laurelwood when you were younger, and it gave me a nasty start. Has my presence kept you from visiting? I do hope not! Please, please, please do come visit if you have a mind to—and despite the descriptions above, which, really, would put any sane person off. Cook might be mad, but she does make the most divine lemon tarts, and Battlefield is Battlefield so we must all put up with him, and I am scatterbrained, but I will make every attempt to appear solemn and serious and … well, I do wish you would visit.
Yours,
M.
The last bit was written in a very cramped hand because she had run out of paper after all that. Megs smoothed the letter, remembering that day in winter and how happy everyone was and how she seemed to miss something. She’d already known she’d wanted a babe by that point, but there was something more that she’d needed when she’d written this letter.
The door to Godric’s room opened.
She looked up, not bothering to hide the letter in her hands.
Godric paused on the threshold, arching his eyebrows mildly at finding her in his room going through his personal possessions. “Good morning.”
“You kept them all,” she blurted out.
“Your letters? Yes.” He strolled in and closed the door to the room. He didn’t seem put out by her riffling through his secrets.
Which made her feel guiltier, of course. She hadn’t kept all of his letters—just the most recent ones, and those she’d tossed in a drawer at Laurelwood. “Why did you keep them?”
“I liked rereading them.” His voice was deep, and she shivered as if it were rasping over her spine.
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 murmured, 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.