Chapter Twenty-Nine
For a moment, Nathaniel was so preoccupied with figuring out how to tell Frances about Jo that he thought he had conjured her from his imagination.
Because she was there, wearing her favorite color, her long blonde hair up in a way that let curls escape to hug her shoulders.
He could still feel the softness of running his hands through those golden locks, and it nearly undid him.
Then she turned.
Margaret.
“Is everything alright?” Frances asked.
Nathaniel couldn’t tell if he’d said the name out loud.
“Of course. Why don’t you go up and rest before dinner?”
If it wasn’t entirely inappropriate, he would have asked her to wait in the carriage while he explained her to Margaret, but that would be an insult to them both.
“Of course, my lord.”
Frances was polite and obedient, but he could hear the suspicion and hurt in her voice.
Unfortunately, it was nothing compared to the look on Margaret’s face when he stepped out of the carriage, then turned back to help Frances.
She looked like he’d stabbed her through the heart and siphoned all the air from the world, which would be bad enough if it weren’t for the fact that Margaret, now sixteen, had grown into a near exact replica of her elder sister.
He wondered if Frances could hear his heart breaking as she walked into the house, purposely not looking back.
“Hanson said you came by, but Papa isn’t ready to read the letter yet. I couldn’t wait.”
“Why don’t you come inside?” Nathaniel suggested.
“It’s true, then?”
“Miss Montrose, if you would please.”
“Is that how it is now, Lord Lark?” She practically spat, with the same fire Jo had used on him countless times.
“Margaret,” he conceded. “Please come inside so we can talk.”
She looked around, not that anyone was out, then reluctantly followed him into the foyer.
“Will she mind?”
“Frances is one of the kindest people I’ve ever met, so I’m sure she won’t. She is also blameless.”
“You just couldn’t help yourself?” Margaret looked disgusted. “I knew you would find someone someday. As soon as you became earl, we knew. But I thought—I didn’t realize it would happen so quickly. That we wouldn’t be there.”
“You were away, and I didn’t think—”
“Not with your head, you didn’t.”
“Margaret Maria Montrose,” he warned.
“Apologies, you were going to explain why you suddenly forgot my sister and betrayed—” She cut herself off and sighed. “Proceed.”
To anyone else, he would lie. To anyone else, he wouldn’t want to dishonor Frances, his wife. But to Margaret—to Jo’s family—he couldn’t give anything less than the absolute truth.
“We were at a garden party. It started to rain, we realized we were alone, then I saw she was freezing, so—”
“You warmed her up?”
“Josephine was never this crude,” he reproached.
“Josephine never had to hear about you marrying another woman,” she countered.
“I gave her my jacket. I took her arm to help her through slippery grounds, back to the house. We lost our footing. But we did not go into the garden together, and I did not touch her beyond that, other than in front of at least a dozen witnesses.”
“You didn’t even kiss her?”
“Not until the wedding.”
“You expect me to— Oh.”
“We were discovered. We told them we were innocent, but I can’t afford a scandal, and I couldn’t bear to see her ruined, so I did the honorable thing. But I promised Jo I would never love anyone else, or have the family we should have, and I won’t.”
“And your—Lady Lark accepted that?”
“It was understood when we agreed to marry.”
“You told her about Jo?”
“I haven’t. Though I should.”
“You don’t tell anyone about her.” Margaret sighed, but the anger was mostly gone.
“Why break my heart all over again so someone may feel pity at my expense?”
She sighed. “I may have overreacted.”
“You were upset.”
“I’m not sure I have the right to be. Or even if she would. But your letters stopped, and then someone mentioned how in love you looked at your engagement ball and how your vow not to marry was childish and silly, how you merely needed the right person, and…”
“That made it seem like I’d forgotten her? And you?”
Margaret had written him a letter when he’d first left London to escape his grief after Jo’s death.
He was just going to respond, but then it turned into a monthly correspondence, where she told him everything that she would have told Jo, and he tried his best to give her advice and be there for her.
He hadn’t been able to reply since he’d married Frances, both from guilt and not wanting to lie to her.
“I couldn’t stand that. No one else knew her like you. Remembered the little details, or called me Maggie Moo because she can’t anymore.”
“I don’t think I can either. Even if she hadn’t—”
“I know. But it hurt.”
“I know.”
“Because it hurts you too.” Margaret looked at him like she truly understood.
“All the time. Every second of that day was…it was all wrong. The colors, the people, my bride. It felt like I was ripping my heart out and twisting a knife around my insides, because there was no one there to stop me.” It wasn’t a lie, but saying the words out loud felt like a betrayal.
Because Frances had done absolutely nothing wrong.
She was everything he might have wanted.
But she wasn’t Jo.
“What is she like?”
“You can’t compare them.” It was a warning, not a judgment.
“I just want to make sure she deserves my sister’s happiness.”
“I don’t deserve her,” he said honestly. “She is caring and smart. She loves flowers. She hates confrontation, so people take advantage of her, and she just allows it. It kills me. She treats the staff like family and even convinced Stevens to open the windows and make the house less haunted.”
“Thank God.” Margaret sighed. “Our house is constantly dead and gloomy, like the world ended with her. I tell them Jo wouldn’t have wanted that, but…I hate the idea that your house was as depressing as ours.”
“Bachelor lodgings are supposed to be.”
“Derelict and depressing are not the same thing,” she argued.
“I’m not sure I like you critical.”
“You love me in all shapes and forms.” She gave him a sad smile.
“I’ve missed you, Maggie.”
“My father looks at me like that too. When you first saw me. Like I tricked you into believing Jo came back.”
“Your eyes are different. And your smile is crooked. There’s an extra dimple on this side.”
“But otherwise, we’re twins?”
He shook his head. “No. Not when you really look. But when it’s been so long since I’ve seen her face, yours is eerily close.”
“If you could not tell my parents I came? My father will probably visit once he reads your letter, but I don’t think he’s ready to hear that you’ve moved on. As long as you hadn’t, it was like time was frozen.”
“Now it’s moving on without her.” He understood.
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too.” He sighed. “The girls are at Wiltshire Manor. I’m sure they’d love to see you while you’re in town.”
“It’s Rebecca’s first season, isn’t it?”
“I hate every man who dances with her. None of them are good enough.”
“If it’s any consolation, Papa wasn’t overly fond of you either. Sometimes it has nothing to do with the boy, or even how much he loves the girl.”
“When did you become so wise?”
“I grew up fast.”
“In the last five minutes?” he teased, then stood and held out his hand. “I’ll see you home.”
“Won’t your wife—”
“She would insist,” he assured her.
“I hope she’s as perfect as you think she is.”
“I didn’t say she was perfect.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Frances waited for Nathaniel to finish his conversation with ‘Margaret’, the woman he was clearly in love with.
The one he’d wanted to marry and have children with, she assumed from the way they carried on.
Perhaps Margaret had turned him down and broke his heart, but now she was back because she’d changed her mind.
Would Nathaniel cast her aside for his true love?
Wouldn’t Frances want him to?
She tried to busy herself, but couldn’t even muster sufficient interest to explore the rooms they’d been working on. Instead, she sat in the library, with a random book in her hand so she could appear casual once Nathaniel finally came in to explain.
Only he didn’t.
Frances couldn’t hear their conversation, but the woman definitely called him Nathaniel, and the one time Frances built up the courage to press her ear to the door, she’d heard him call her Maggie, a diminutive of her Christian name, the kind used for one’s beloved, not simply an old acquaintance.
Frances was fine until they left. Not just his study, but Sutton House.
Together. She told herself it didn’t hurt, that theirs wasn’t that kind of marriage, but he’d promised her.
Not in his regular vows in front of everyone where he promised many things she would never hold him to, but when he’d proposed to her, he’d specifically promised faithfulness.
And that he wouldn’t hurt her. Or perhaps that last part was implied.
Now that he was off with his whore and Frances was alone in their empty house, that would never have children because Nathaniel was too busy pouring his seed into someone else…
She regretted the thought the moment she had it, but there was no one there to reproach her for it, or to discuss what was currently transpiring.
She no longer felt tempted by dinner with a man who was fresh from his paramour’s, so Frances made her way to the kitchen for a bite that would have to last until she broke her fast in the morning.
“Margaret Montrose? On her own?”
“They’ve always had a special relationship. I don’t see why they should stop, just because—”
Frances’ heart, or what remained of it, shattered when those words came from Sarah, the woman she’d come to think of as a friend. Her new Mrs. Brown that she could confide in. But of course, Sarah was Nathaniel’s family first; she would never choose Frances.
“He’s married now,” Mrs. Mulberry said sternly, possibly more for propriety than her emotional state, but Frances would take what she could get.
“Yes, but he was going to marry Miss Montrose and have a house full of children with her. That’s an entire lifetime ripped away in an instant, and those feelings, those bonds don’t go away.”
“All for a walk in the garden.” Mrs. Mulberry sighed.
Frances couldn’t take anymore. She made her way up to her chamber with her heart beating as if she’d been running after her niece and nephews.
It hurt, but not like a stitch from exertion, more like her heart was actively breaking with every breath she took, every memory.
She considered ringing the bell for help with her dress, but she couldn’t face Sarah, so she did what she could and then climbed into bed, throwing the covers right over her head.