Megs blinked, confused. “What is?”
“That.” Mrs. St. John waved a hand toward Godric’s bedroom. “I knew he was alone after Clara died, knew he was hurting, but I let his stoicism keep me away.” She grimaced. “He’s always been so very self-sufficient, so cold when I made any overtures, that it’s hard to remember he’s a man like any other. That he needs the comfort of family as much as any other.”
“I don’t see how that’s your fault,” Megs said. “You did try, and if he rejected your attempts, then surely the fault lies with him, not you.”
“No.” Her mother-in-law shook her head. “I love him as surely as if I’d carried him within my own body. A mother never abandons her child, even when he seems to want it. It was—is—my duty to break through the barriers he surrounds himself with. I should have kept trying until he gave in.” Her look softened as she watched Megs. “I thank God that you decided to seek him out, to make your marriage a true one. He needs you, Megs. You’re the one who can save him.”
Megs looked away, feeling ashamed. Mrs. St. John praised her falsely: She’d come to London, made their marriage “true” for purely selfish reasons. But she couldn’t explain that to her mother-in-law.
Instead she focused on the last part of what Mrs. St. John said, uncertainty a tight band around her chest. “Can one save a man who seeks willful self-destruction?”
The older woman’s brows arched. “You think that’s why he goes into St. Giles?”
Megs looked at her with sorrow. “Why else?”
Mrs. St. John sighed. “You have to understand that it took years for Clara to die—years in which Godric could do no more than stand idle and watch. Perhaps his dressing as the Ghost is his way of doing something good after so long being unable to do anything at all.”
“He does do good in St. Giles.” Megs frowned as she fingered the tassel on one of the settee cushions. “But, ma’am, whatever good he does others must be balanced by the evil he does himself.”
“What do you mean?”
“He may help people in St. Giles, but I think he does it at the expense of himself.” She yanked overhard on the tassel and the thing came off in her hand. She stared at it, her lips trembling. “It can’t be good for a man such as Godric—a sensitive, moral man—to deal in violence so often. It’s as if he’s chipping away at his own soul.”
“Then you must find a way to stop him,” Mrs. St. John said quietly.
Megs nodded, though she had no idea how to do that. She’d made a pact with him—a pact that forced him to wear the Ghost’s disguise. How could she have everything she wanted and save Godric as well?
The door to Godric’s room opened behind her.
“We are done, my lady.” The doctor was an odd, bent fellow with an Italian—or maybe French?—name. Isabel Makepeace had said that he was a refugee of some type and could be trusted not to talk about Godric’s injury.
Megs stood. “Will his arm heal cleanly?”
“I have done all that I can. The rest is in the good Lord’s hands.” The doctor made a very foreign-looking moue and shrugged elaborately. “Mr. St. John will need bed rest for at least a week, preferably more. A simple diet of fish or chicken, fine, soft bread, clear broth, and wine will suffice, I think. A few vegetables such as turnips or carrots and the like. No onions or garlic, naturally, nor any overspiced foods.”
“Of course.” Megs nodded before looking up anxiously. “May I see him?”
“If you wish, my lady, but please make your visit a short—”
She was already past the doctor, not waiting for him to finish his sentence. Godric lay in the big bed, his left arm atop the covers. Two flat wooden boards had been strapped on either side of his forearm so that he could not move his hand independently of his arm.
She tiptoed to his bed and stared down at him. His face still shone with sweat, his short hair plastered to his head. He’d not shaved and his beard was dark against the pallor of his face.
“Megs.” He didn’t open his eyes, but his right hand moved, reaching for hers.
“Oh, Godric,” she murmured, tears filling her eyes as she placed her hand in his.
He tugged on her hand. “Come lay beside me for a while.”
She resisted even as he pulled her closer. “The doctor said you mustn’t be disturbed.”
“Damn that French quack.” A corner of his mouth twitched wearily. “You don’t disturb me, Meggie mine. Besides, I’ll rest easier with you beside me.”
Carefully she crept onto the bed, fully clothed, and lay beside him. He shifted until her head was on his right shoulder, his arm wrapped securely around her, and then he sighed.
In a few minutes he was asleep.
And in a minute more so was she.
TWO WEEKS LATER, Godric peered bemusedly over his half-moon spectacles as Her Grace trotted into his bedroom with a curled puppy hanging from her mouth. The pug glanced at him warily but seemed to dismiss him—rather insultingly—as no threat before she disappeared into the open door of his dressing room. After a pause of five minutes or so, she trotted out again, sans offspring.
Godric raised a brow as the pug bustled out of his room again. This didn’t bode well.
He shrugged and went back to the political and philosophical pamphlets that Moulder had brought him. A week of enforced bed rest followed by a week more when all the females of his household seemed to have conspired to keep him homebound was making him damnably bored. True, each of his sisters, stepmother, and wife in turn had made a point of spending time with him, reading aloud or simply chatting. Even Great-Aunt Elvina had deigned to sit with him and had only disparaged him—halfheartedly—twice. He’d tempted Megs with a walk in Spring Gardens—one of the many public gardens in London. But not even the promise of gravel walks and exotic blooms had made her waver in her determination to keep him inside.
He hadn’t fulfilled either of his parts of the bargain with Megs in those two weeks either. At first the pain from his broken wrist had been too debilitating for any physical exercise. Now he was nearly well enough to resume his Ghostly duties, he thought, and certainly able to bed her tonight—purely as his matrimonial duty, of course.
Godric frowned down at the political pamphlet that he’d read twice now without remembering a word. A gentleman should not let self-delusion control him. He wanted to bed his wife, true, but it wasn’t entirely because of duty.