“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.
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—”