Megs nodded. She’d met Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton briefly at one of the ubiquitous country dinners, though she hadn’t made the connection before now. The Hamiltons were solid country gentry.
“I knew her all her life,” Godric said, and the thread of pain in his voice was all the more terrible for being so carefully repressed, “though I didn’t really notice her until I returned from university. I attended a soiree and she was there with her friends, wearing a pale blue dress that made her hair shine. I took one look at her and knew—knew absolutely—that she was the woman I was meant to spend the rest of my life with.”
He paused and the fire crackled in the silence, for of course he hadn’t spent the rest of his life with poor Clara.
She knew about loss, knew about true love shattered. “Godric—”
His fingers let go of the dish and curled into a fist on the dresser. “Just … let me finish.”
She nodded, though he couldn’t see the small acknowledgment of his pain.
She saw his shoulders rise and fall as he took a deep breath. “When she became ill, I prayed to God—begged him. I offered hideous bargains. Anything, just so she wouldn’t feel the pain. Had the Devil stood before me, I would’ve gladly sold my soul to exchange my body and life for hers.”
She made a low sound of protest and he turned his head, almost but not quite looking at her.
Dear God. His face was etched, as if the agony of his wife’s loss had touched him with acid.
He grimaced horribly. A single tear escaped from beneath his lashes, trailing down one lean cheek.
Then his countenance was still once more.
“I agreed to Griffin’s mad plan,” he rasped, his voice like gravel, “only because it was more than obvious that you would never have any interest in me or a real marriage.”
“But—” she said, realizing suddenly how this was going to end. She took a step forward, her hands reaching for him, fruitlessly clutching empty air in front of her.
“No.” The word was grimly final. “I haven’t lain with another woman since I married Clara, and I never intend to do so. I had my love. Anything else would be a parody of intimacy. So, no, Margaret, I am sorry, but I will not lie with you to make a baby.”
GODRIC WATCHED THE door between his and Margaret’s room close behind her. He shot the bolt, just to make sure, though no doubt it was rubbing salt in her wounds.
He ran both hands over his head, feeling his shorn hair beneath his palms. Dear Lord! How could he have guessed what she’d come to London for? He winced as he remembered again the hurt in her face as he’d rejected her.
“Damnation,” he muttered under his breath, and crossed to the small table to pour himself a glass of wine.
He gulped a mouthful of the tart liquid and sighed. Why had she made these demands now? He’d thought her settled and provided for. He’d thought her happy.
His gaze strayed to the dresser. He tossed down the rest of the glass of wine and went to it. The key to unlock the top drawer hung on a silver chain about his neck—he’d trust Moulder with his life, but not with the things inside that drawer. The wood creaked as he opened it. Godric inhaled and looked inside. Clara’s letters were wrapped neatly in a black ribbon. They’d seldom been parted once married, so the stack was sadly thin. Beside it was a small enameled box. Inside, he knew, were two locks of her hair. The first, taken when they’d been courting, was a lustrous dark brown, shot with gold. The second was a funerary memento, the hair thin, brittle, and streaked with gray.
Well.
He touched the hair at his temple. He was gray now, too, unlike his too-young second wife. They were supposed to age together, he and Clara, step in step, man and wife, a lifetime of love and friendship.
Instead, she was in the ground and he was left with half a life at best.
A life that was now permanently entangled with Margaret’s.
At the front of the drawer, directly beneath his fingers, was an untidy pile of letters. He hesitated, then picked one up, unfolding it. Scrawled inside—both horizontally and vertically—was a large, exuberant hand, as if Margaret had hardly been able to write fast enough to keep up with the flow of words from her brain. He tilted the sheet of paper and read.
18 September 1739
Dear Godric,
You will not credit it, but the population of stable cats has simply grown out of all proportions here at Laurelwood Manor! Both the gray tabby and the black-, orange-, and white-spotted were delivered of kittens this spring, and then the calico—that sly jade—fell pregnant again. Now whenever I go to visit Minerva (you remember the little bay mare I earlier wrote you I acquired of Squire Thompson?), I’m followed by a parade of cats. Black ones, gray tabbies, an abundance of spotted ones (invariably female, I’m assured by Toby, the lame stable boy), and even a single entirely orange miss, follow me about with inquiring, raised tails. Toby says I must quit feeding them the fatty bits left over from last night’s joint, but I ask you, is that kind? After all, they’ve come to expect their little snack and—
He had to turn the paper to continue reading.
—if I quit now, I think they’ll take an awful dislike to me and perhaps seek me out in the house!
Sarah is over her head cold, by the way, and has quit speaking in such a low, stuffy voice, which I find a pity (the voice, not the recovery!) because she did sound so very amusing when she spoke—rather like an aged intemperate uncle, if I had an uncle, which I do not.
Do you remember the leaky ceiling in the washroom? Last sennight it rained cats and dogs, and what do you think? The ceiling fell entirely in. Quite frightened Cook, I’m told (by Daniels) because it fell in the middle of the night and apparently Cook mistook the crash for the Second Coming. (A religious sort is Cook, everyone says so.) Anyway, Cook spent the rest of the night in prayer, which is why we had cold biscuits for breakfast that morning. Cook says it wasn’t her fault. She’d been expecting the dead to rise, but only old Battlefield the butler greeted her at dawn. (Though I did hear Sarah mutter that Battlefield could easily be mistaken for the dead.)