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Megs nodded and looked thoughtful as she half listened. The day was sunny and a bit brisk, and really, meandering around a tumbledown garden was a wonderful way to spend a morning. She’d suffered a setback with her baby plans last night, it was true, but that didn’t mean she was finished by a long shot. Somehow she’d find a way to work around Godric’s reluctance or—
Well, she could have an affair, she supposed. That was what some women in her position—assuming there was anyone else in a position like hers—would do.
But as soon as the notion entered her mind, she rejected it out of hand. No matter her great urge to have a child, she simply couldn’t do that to Godric. It was one thing to marry because of an unwed pregnancy; it was quite another to deliberately cuckold a man she’d pledged herself to in front of friends and family. Even if that man was being quite pigheaded.
Megs’s shoulders slumped. She was being unfair to Godric, she knew. The hard thing was that she understood. She, too, had loved someone desperately, had felt half dead when he’d died. For a moment, the thought brought her up short: Was she betraying Roger by wanting to create life without him? By wanting to do that with another man?
Except it was the baby she wanted, not the bedsport. If she could have one without the other, she would. Besides, she didn’t expect to actually enjoy the physical act with Godric—how could she, after all? She’d loved Roger, not her dry older husband. In any case it didn’t matter—the drive to have a child was simply too overwhelming to ignore.
But thoughts of Roger reminded her that she’d neglected what she’d owed him too long. She’d come to London not only to consummate her marriage, but also to find the Ghost of St. Giles and make him pay for his crime. If she’d been stymied at one goal, well then she could just pursue the other with more vigor. And as she watched Higgins uncover a yellow crocus and grunt with satisfaction, a thought occurred. Her first confrontation with the Ghost had not been exactly successful. Perhaps she should do a bit of information gathering before she tried again.
To that end, after she’d taken leave of her morose gardener, Megs went in search of Sarah.
“There you are,” she exclaimed rather unoriginally when she tracked down her sister-in-law in a room nearly at the top of the house.
“Here I am,” Sarah agreed, and then sneezed violently. With the help of two of the four girls from the home, she’d been taking down the curtains from the windows.
Mary Evening, a child of eleven or so with a freckled face and mouse-brown hair, giggled. Mary Little, the other girl, was rather more solemn with fine, flaxen hair.
Mary Little shot Mary Evening a chiding look before saying, “Bless you, miss.”
“Thank you, Mary Little,” Sarah gasped, then winked at Mary Evening. “Why don’t you girls finish pulling down the curtains while I chat with Lady Margaret.”
“Yes, miss!” The girls scampered over to the windows, apparently unperturbed by the quantity of dust.
“What is this room?” Megs asked, glancing around. It looked like a bedroom, but not one for a servant.
“I’m not entirely sure.” Sarah hesitated, then said, “But in any case, it needs a good cleaning.”
“That it does.” Megs watched as one of the curtains fell to the floor in a billow of dust.
“You seemed to want to talk to me when you came up,” Sarah prompted.
“Oh, yes.” Megs remembered the matter that had sent her in search of her sister-in-law in the first place. “Didn’t you say last night at dinner that we’d had a quantity of invitations?”
“Well, most of them were Godric’s,” Sarah said. “You wouldn’t credit it, but I found a great stack going back at least a year piled on his desk. I really ought to get my brother a secretary.”
“No doubt.”
“But some were indeed for you and me and your aunt,” Sarah continued, “and we’ve only been here two days! I’m not used to how fast word travels in London, I suppose.”
“Mmm. Was there one from the Earl of Kershaw?”
Sarah’s brows knit as she rubbed at a smudge of dust on the apron she’d pinned to her dress. “I believe so, but it was one of the invitations addressed to Godric. It was for a ball the earl and his countess are holding tonight.”
“Perfect!” Megs beamed. Kershaw had been a friend of Roger’s, and she’d heard in the awful months after Roger’s death that the earl had searched for the Ghost in St. Giles. She’d go tonight and see if she could quiz the earl about the Ghost. “We can take one carriage, I think. I’d better go see if Great-Aunt Elvina would like to join us. She does like a ball, you know, and even if Her Grace is close to whelping, I think—”
“But …” Sarah’s mouth had dropped open.
“What the hell are you doing?”
They both started and turned toward the quietly ominous voice.
Godric stood in the doorway, his face still—so still, in fact, that it took Megs a moment to realize he was white with rage. “I did not give you leave to enter this room.”
Oh, dear.
One of the Marys dropped the curtain she was holding with a squeak.
