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