Chapter Fifteen

Shifting on the hard settee, Talia pulled her shoulders as far back as she could strain them. She had feared her anxiety would flare on the carriage ride to Aunt Penelope's home, but now, sitting inside her warm drawing room, Talia felt at ease for the first time in a social situation since her father had died.

"Tell me, dear, what has prompted this unexpected call?" Ensconced in a wingback chair that hugged her perfectly, Aunt Penelope donned a short silver turban that matched her silver day dress. The color brought sparkle to her grey eyes. Shrewd eyes that settled on Talia.

An exquisitely translucent Spode teacup and saucer had been thrust into Talia's hands by a maid immediately upon seating, and it afforded her an elongated moment of silence as she carefully took a sip and then set down the cup and saucer onto the low table in front of her. Her hands folded on her lap as she met Aunt Penelope's look, attempting to keep the creep of humiliation from flushing her neck. Talia had hoped for a few minutes of inane chatter, but she should have known not to expect it from Fletch's aunt.

"Do you know where Fletch went to—currently is?"

"I do, dear." Aunt Penelope didn't flinch with the question, but her head tilted slightly to the side. "Why is it that you need to ask me?"

"He left. Left me."

"Why?"

Talia's bottom lip drew inward, at a loss. Why did he leave her? She wanted to bear his child? She wanted him? She wanted the exact thing a wife would want from a husband?

"He finally told you of the curse?" Aunt Penelope asked, her eyebrows rising into her wrinkled forehead.

"He did."

"You did not react well?"

"I do not know how I reacted." Talia shrugged. "It was not right, whatever I did. I thought…I want him, Aunt Penelope. I told him as much. I do not believe in this curse, but even if it is true…I want him."

"I told that fool boy he needed to tell you before you were married." Her cane hit hard on the floor, the area in front of her chair a battered mess of bruised and torn wood. "Selfish of him, but I let it slide. He deserves happiness—at least for the next months."

Talia's breath caught. "So you believe he will die as well?"

"I have witnessed the death of every male in my family by the age of thirty-three, my dear." Her fingers tightened over the gilded pigeon on the top of her cane. "So yes. I have no choice but to believe in the curse."

Talia nodded, trying not to let Aunt Penelope's obvious acceptance of Fletch's upcoming death dishearten her own hope.

"I can see the hope in your eyes, child. Hope is dangerous. Hope will destroy everything." She waved her cane in the air at Talia. "For that fact alone, I will not tell you where he is. If Fletcher desires to be alone, I must respect that. He left you for a reason, dear."

"No." Talia scooted to the edge of the settee, leaning forward. "Please, you must tell me. I am denying every shred of pride I have just to come to you, Aunt Penelope. Please."

"Pride is a tricky thing, dear. It too easily manipulates one's objectives. Yet pride does not deliver results."

A chuckle burst past Talia's lips.

"Dear?"

Talia's fingers flew in front of her mouth. "I apologize. My mother said very much the same thing not but two hours ago."

"She did?" The cane tapped lightly on the floor. "I shall have to reacquaint myself with your mother."

Talia nodded, attempting to keep the dryness from her voice. "I am positive my mother will make that happen very soon."

"Good."

"But what of Fletch, Aunt Penelope? Please tell me where he is. For whatever I did, I know I asked too much of him, and I need to make it right."

Aunt Penelope leaned forward, her hands clasping on the top of her cane. Her eyes went to slits, burrowing into Talia. "I have one question for you, dear."

"Whatever it is, I will tell you."

"How do you love someone that you know will die at any moment?"

Talia's gaze met the steel in her grey eyes. Unflinching, her answer was immediate, her words shaking with vehemence. "As hard as I possibly can. Within every single second, enough for a lifetime. That is how."

Aunt Penelope stared at Talia for long seconds, weighing her words. With a pleased grunt, she sat back, letting the chair wrap her once more as she nodded. "Good, girl. He is in Surrey, staying with his friend, the Duke of Wellfork, at Wellfork Castle two hours south of London."

A pent-up exhale whistled past Talia's teeth, her chest tightening. "Thank you."

"But you cannot travel alone, dear. I will ask Lord Reggard, Rachel's widower, to accompany you. He is family, and he still does my bidding. Rachel made a wise choice with that one."

Talia nodded, her mind already planning.

She would get to Fletch. And she would make him listen to her. Make him see that, curse or not, he belonged in only one place. With her.

***

Her back so ramrod straight it ached, Talia had forgotten how much maintaining the proper posture at all times could hurt. Her face angled to the carriage window, her eyes slipped to the left to steal another glance at Lord Reggard.

He was a titan of a man with the surly disposition to fit. His large frame swallowed the bench across from her in the carriage—he was not only tall, but wide. Talia could tell by the lines of his finely tailored jacket dropping inward toward his waist, that his girth came from muscle instead of fat.

He had said little more than five words to Talia since he had picked her up from her townhouse, the line of his mouth never veering from the bottom lip that insistently pushed upward, forcing a constant frown. True to Aunt Penelope's declaration, he still did her bidding, but that didn't mean he enjoyed being called upon.

They had left early in the morning and were now already outside of the last sprawl of London, fields lining the road.

Talia turned toward him, a smile forced onto her face. "I do apologize, Lord Reggard, that I have taken you away from your…" Her voice trailed off. She had no idea what this man did to fill his days.

"It is no bother. When Aunt Penelope barks, I jump. I always have. Rachel always enjoyed watching me squirm under her aunt's unnerving eye."

Talia expelled a nervous giggle, her body relaxing slightly. "I am not the only one, then? I do imagine she has half of London jumping at the slightest twitch of her pinky."

Half of his mouth curled up, close to erasing the surly lines along his eyes. Several stubborn lines of discontent lingered, but Talia was happy with the slight progress.

"I do not doubt it," he said. "I only hope when I am her age, I will wield my cane just as splendidly. She does not even need that thing for walking."

"She doesn't?" Talia's head cocked to the side. "I wondered at that. She can be unusually spry when she desires to be so."

"I heard she was rather quick to follow you and Lockston into the Vauxhall Gardens."

"You heard that? She is a canny one." A flush tickled Talia's neck. She didn't want to have to revisit the embarrassment of her and Fletch getting caught in the gardens. She forced her voice light. "But still, you must have much better things to do than to accompany me in a chase after my wayward husband."

He brushed an invisible spec from his black trousers. "I wondered if you would admit to that."

"The wayward husband part?"

"Yes."

"I have already swallowed my pride on the matter, so I will not attempt to cover my reason for this trip to Wellfork Castle," Talia said. "I do not intend to make Fletch's escape from me easy."

His eyes narrowed at her. "It is three months until his thirty-third birthday. Aunt Penelope told me you are aware of what that means?"

Talia's eyes went to the ceiling of the carriage, a cold inhale taking hold of her chest. "That fool curse Fletch believes in? Yes, he told me. It is why I am after him."

"To try to convince him he will live?"

"To convince him that a curse—whether or not it is real—should have no bearing on the present."

Lord Reggard nodded, the blue in his eyes darkening as he looked at her. The center of his bottom lip lifted, returning his mouth to a frown. "Can I tell you a story?"

Talia felt her own mouth go to a grim line, reflecting the somberness in Lord Reggard's eyes. She nodded.

He looked out the window, pausing as he gathered his words. "When I was five, I had the grandest dog that ever lived. A Spaniel, the best hunter in the shire, Goldie." A soft smile touched his lips and he looked at Talia. "I loved that dog more than anything, and I still don't think I loved her more than she loved me. Goldie slept at the foot of my bed every night. Would jump up the second I arose, licking my leg. Until I was nine. I woke one day, stepping out of bed, and there were no licks. Goldie was not there."

Talia's heart sank, her breath held.

"At first I thought she had snuck down to the kitchens. Or that a new housemaid had shooed her out of my room. I looked everywhere. But she was gone from the castle—nowhere to be found. I was frantic. My father knew what was happening, but he went out into the countryside with me anyway, searching for her."

Reggard's hand went to the back of his neck, scuffing the short hairs as his gaze went back out the window. "I found her under a bush, not too far into the woods. She was wheezing, hacking. Fighting for every breath. I reached for her, but she would not have it. She nipped at me. Me. She was my shadow for four years. I was her world. I tried again to grab her. She bit me. Bit me hard. And then she took her last breath."

Talia couldn't help the instant tears welling in her eyes.

His head shook. "I couldn't believe she had left my side in order to die alone—she knew I was the one that loved her the most in the world, but she did not want to die with me. Alone. She wanted alone. My father said it was innate—Goldie knew she was dying and left because she didn't want to weaken the pack."

He took a deep breath, his wide chest expanding, taking up even more of the bench he already nearly filled. His gaze meandered back to Talia, lazy, but when it landed on her, Talia could see the heartbreak, still, in his eyes. "But I never believed my father—I believe Goldie did it as a kindness to me, so that I would not see her suffer. Would not have to witness her last breaths. To the end, she tried to force me away, tried to protect me from it."

The hairs on the back of her neck spiking, Talia shook her head. She knew exactly what he was insinuating, and she would not have it. "But that is not dignity—dying alone under some random bush. That is selfish and insulting to all that loved it."

Lord Reggard pursed his lips, nodding. "Possibly. I think it depends on one's perspective."

Her eyes narrowed. "So you are defending Fletch's actions? Defending his abandonment of me?"

"I cannot defend something I know nothing of." His hand lifted, palm outward to Talia to calm. "I do not know what has happened between the two of you. But I know that you are willing to go after him, and I also know the curse he has lived with his whole life. How it has shaped his perspective. So between what I can imagine, and what Aunt Penelope has said to me, I can see there is a bond between the two of you that Lockston does not know how to handle. I doubt he knows what to do with himself in his current married state."

Talia sighed, calming her pounding heart. Lord Reggard was not her adversary. Nor was she sure he was her ally. "You have known Fletch for some time?"

"I have known Lockston for a very long time. Lockston, and I, and the Earl of Newdale were inseparable for many years—since childhood."

"The three of you are friends?"

"The most loyal of friends once." Lord Reggard's eyes dropped, darkening with the words.

"But not now?"

"No."

"Why not?"

He looked at her. "I fell in love with Lockston's sister. Rachel was the end of our friendship."

"But I would think Fletch would have been happy—relieved at the very least—to have his sister marry one of his best friends."

"She died in childbirth."

"Fletch told me that. I am so sorry for your loss." The pit of her stomach hardened, and Talia was glad she hadn't had a chance to eat before they had left. Food in her flipping stomach would do her no good. "But Fletch was there for you as a friend to see you through, I imagine?"

Lord Reggard stiffened. "No. You do not know?"

"Know what?"

"Lockston blamed me."

Talia's eyebrows drew together. "Fletch blamed you for her death? What could possibly have made him do so?"

"The babe was too big for her body. Rachel was slight. My babe was not."

A lump formed in Talia's throat at the tone of pain in just those few words from Lord Reggard. The air thickened in the coach. Lord Reggard had obviously loved Fletch's sister deeply, and was still wounded by her death.

She scratched for some flimsy hope in the story. "But you still count the Earl of Newdale as your friend?"

Lord Reggard shrugged. "I have avoided him as well since Rachel's death."

"Surely he did not blame you as Fletch did?"

"No, he did not." Lord Reggard looked out the window of the carriage, his face going blank, resigned. "But I blame me. Lockston warned me, fought me on it until we were married, but I did not listen. He knew what would happen to Rachel. But I…I never expected it. Never imagined—refused to imagine."

Talia inhaled, dragging air deep into her lungs, the pain of her own father's death slicing unexpectedly across her chest. Lord Reggard had had everything—the world—and then lost it. That, Talia understood.

"Lord Reggard, I know how a sudden death can tear a life apart. In a thousand unexpected ways. How one can be so happy one day, and then the next…everything is ripped away in seconds. How one is left searching—wondering what it was they did wrong to deserve such a fate. I have been that way since my father died."

His gaze on the passing fields, Lord Reggard did not look to her, but the flicker in his eyes told Talia he knew exactly what she was talking about.

Her hands clasped in front of her belly, pressing into the plum fabric of her carriage dress to hold against the churning in her gut. "Frankly, it has left me slightly insane."

He looked at her, eyebrows raised. "How so?"

"I cannot be in social situations very well—I panic."

His fingers flicked toward her. "You appear fine at the moment."

"Kind, but you are family to Fletch and Aunt Penelope—and it is just you. Larger gatherings resemble too closely the happiness of the past for me, before my father died, and then I can only fear the loss. It closes in upon me and I lose all sense of speech and moving and even breathing properly."

"Overwhelming?"

She nodded. "Yes, and I am aware that it is not at all proper for a marchioness. Fletch must have been a little mad himself to have chosen me to marry."

"Why do you think Fletch was drawn to you in the first, Lady Lockston?"

Talia's cheeks flamed. Fletch wanted her body—while he had always been a gentleman, he had never made any secret of that fact. But she wasn't about to discuss their guttural attraction with Lord Reggard.

"Can I make a guess?" he asked.

She nodded.

"You are a survivor, Lady Lockston. You did not let death defeat you when your father died. Aunt Penelope has told me of the poverty you experienced after his passing. My guess is that Fletch knows you can survive him. Make sure a part of him lives beyond his death."

Her forehead crinkled. "You think he chose me as a legacy?"

"I think he chose you for your spirit."

"My spirit?"

Lord Reggard shifted on his seat, his long leg bumping into her calf as he worked to find space to stretch. Talia wondered how he rode anywhere in a coach for any length of time with his size.

He leaned forward, his forearms balancing on his thighs as he looked at her. "Tell me, with your father, would it have been worse to know his death was approaching—to have had time to prepare?"

Talia pondered the question for a long moment, only to find herself without an answer she could stand behind. She met Lord Reggard's look. "I honestly do not know."

"Now imagine not even having that choice. Fletch was handed a death sentence thirty-two years ago."

Talia's lips drew inward, her heart constricting.

"Fletch has always known it—death is coming for him. The year he would not live beyond. Can you imagine how that has shaped every single day of his life? How that would make most things pointless?"

"I can."

"So I think he chose you for your spirit—for your grit—to make his last days mean something, to not be pointless."

"Did he ever not believe he was cursed?"

Lord Reggard's lips drew in sharply. It took long seconds for him to exhale. "I think he did. Before Rachel died. He adored her." He shook his head, his eyes landing squarely on Talia. "Lockston would have fought to live for Rachel. She would have made him. She was so delicate, soft—but with him, she was nothing but steel. Iron that would not bend."

"So I make him fight?"

"That is what his sister would have done." He sighed, sitting back against the cushions. "And, quite frankly, why I am delivering you to him. He is still my friend, will never be anything less, whether he wants it or not."

Talia nodded, her heart heavy. Lord Reggard didn't speak it, but Talia could see it wasn't just friendship in his eyes that drove his actions, it was atonement as well.