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He gestured to one of the chairs before the fireplace. “Please. Sit down.”
She sank into the chair, feeling a bit like she had the time her governess had caught her hoarding sugared almonds.
He leaned against the mantel and raised an eyebrow. “Well?”
“We’ve been married two years,” she began, crossing her arms, then immediately uncrossing them. Best to try not to look like a schoolboy being called on the carpet by a particularly dreary schoolmaster.
“You seemed happy enough at Laurelwood Manor.”
“I was. I am. …” She held her hands flat out and shook her head. “No.” She wasn’t making any sense, but the time had come to stop prevaricating. “No. I’ve been content enough, but not entirely happy.”
His dark brows drew together as he stared at her. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
She leaned forward urgently. “I’m not blaming you by any means. Laurelwood is a wonderful place to live. I love the gardens, Upper Hornsfield, the people, and your family.”
One eyebrow arched. “But?”
“But it—I’m—missing something.” She jumped to her feet, pacing restlessly around the chair, trying to think how to make him understand. At the last moment, she realized her direction was taking her to the bed. She stopped short and whirled, blurting, “I want—I desperately need—a child, Godric.”
For a moment he simply stared at her as if stunned speechless. Then his gaze dropped to the fire. The light behind him silhouetted his profile, outlining a long brow and straight nose, and Megs thought rather irreverently that his lips from this angle looked so soft, almost feminine.
But not quite. “I see.”
She shook her head, pacing again. “Do you?” Not toward the bed. “I was pregnant when we entered into this marriage. I know it was wrong of me, but I wanted that child—Roger’s child. Even in the grief of his passing, it was something to hold on to—something of my very own.” She stopped before his dresser, severely ordered, severely plain, only a washing basin, a pitcher, and a small dish on its surface all equidistant from each other. She reached out and picked up the dish. “A child. A baby. My baby.”
“The urge toward motherhood is natural.”
His voice had grown remote. She was losing him and she didn’t even know why.
She faced him, her hands outstretched toward him, the little dish still in her hand. “Yes, it is. I want a baby, Godric. I know it’s not part of our original bargain.” She stopped, laughing bitterly. “Actually, I’m not sure what the original bargain you made with Griffin was.”
He looked up at that, his face closed and detached. “Don’t you? Didn’t Griffin tell you?”
She glanced away, feeling too exposed. She’d been so shamed, so embarrassed, and so grief-stricken that she’d not even been able to look Griffin in the face when he’d told her. Asking any questions had been quite beyond her. And since then …
She realized now that she’d been avoiding her beloved older brother for years. She closed her eyes. “No.”
His voice rasped low. “Consummating—or not consummating—the marriage wasn’t mentioned.”
Megs’s eyes snapped open as she stared at him, this stranger who was her husband. It hadn’t been mentioned? Belatedly—very belatedly—and for the first time, she wondered why, exactly, Godric had agreed to marry her. At the time she’d been near mad with grief and terrified of being pregnant out of wedlock. She’d only had the strength to follow Griffin’s firm management. Now, though, she wondered … why? Had her baby survived, the child would’ve become Godric’s heir. Hadn’t he cared that he would’ve sheltered a cuckoo in his ancient familial nest? Money was the obvious answer—the Readings had enough to bribe a man to overlook the provenience of his heir. But Megs knew that Godric must not’ve been swayed by wealth. He had enough of it himself. Besides Laurelwood Manor—and its extensive property—he had land in both Oxfordshire and Essex, and although Saint House hadn’t been in the best shape on her arrival, he hadn’t blinked when she’d cited the sum needed to hire the new staff and redecorate. If anything, he’d seemed bored by the conversation.
Her eyes dropped to her hands, absently turning the little dish over and over. He certainly hadn’t agreed to marry her because of friendship for her brother—before the night Griffin had informed her of his arrangement, he’d never mentioned the name Godric St. John.
If Godric hadn’t married her for money or friendship, then why?
“Margaret.”
She glanced up from her puzzled musing to find him watching her.
He held her gaze as he came toward her and gently took the dish out of her hands. “You know, don’t you, that I was married before?”
She swallowed. The tale of Clara St. John, both her devastating disease and her husband’s unflinching fidelity, were well known in London society. “Yes.”
He inclined his head and turned away, crossing to the dresser. He placed the dish back in its place—neither too far nor too close to the pitcher, and remained there, his back to 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.”
