her, as his long elegant fingers rested on the dish’s edge. “I loved Clara very much. Our estates adjoined in Cheshire, you know. Her people are the Hamiltons. Her brother and his family live on the Hamilton estate now, I believe.”
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