Lord of Regrets Read online

  He could never let her go...

  Despite the love and sensuous addiction they shared, Lord Marcus Templeton could never marry Natasha Polinoff. Not while he remained under his grandfather’s vise-like control. But when Natasha announces her out-of-wedlock pregnancy—which would destroy his inheritance—Templeton explodes into a rage. One that sends Natasha running into the unforgiving night, never to return...

  Now five years have passed, and Lord Templeton has finally found his beloved. And this time, the viscount will have her.

  However, Natasha has finally settled into a new life with her young daughter. Lord Templeton’s arrival fills her with terrible fear... and undeniable longing. He has come to claim her. Yet even as her body still longs for his touch, her anger still burns. She is no mere possession. But Lord Templeton will do whatever it takes to bring her back into his arms and back into his bed. Even if it means resorting to blackmail to make Natasha his wife...

  Lord of Regrets

  a Scandalous Special Edition novel

  Sabrina Darby

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 by Sabrina Darby. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

  Entangled Publishing, LLC

  2614 South Timberline Road

  Suite 109

  Fort Collins, CO 80525

  Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.

  Scandalous is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.

  Edited by Gwen Hayes and Kate Fall

  Cover design by Libby Murphy

  ISBN 978-1-63375-066-1

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Edition September 2014

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Are you feeling Scandalous?

  New from Scandalous... Misadventures in Seduction

  The Lady’s Disgrace

  The Irresistible Miss Peppiwell

  The Wager

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  The Highwayman’s Bride

  Her Wicked Sin

  For Keith

  Chapter One

  London 1808

  With his eyebrows slanted down, his jaw clenched in anger, it should have been impossible for the expression in his eyes to be as immovable as it was. How could a man be so hot and so cold all at once?

  “Get rid of it.”

  Natasha flinched, her shoulders hunching, her midsection hollowing out, as if he might have pulled the living thing from her body with just those words.

  “I assure you, it is a far more inconvenient development for me than for you,” she said, wishing her voice didn’t shake, wishing she could straighten her back, that her bare shoulders didn’t feel so weak. Of all the responses she had imagined, she had not imagined this.

  “Then we are in agreement.” Marcus’s expression eased; the heightened color in his cheeks faded. For a moment, he looked more himself, more reasonable, more the dashing, charming young nobleman she loved.

  “You cannot simply wish away a child,” she said with more calm. He loved her. He would love this child, too. “We were careless. We left this in God’s hands.”

  “God,” Marcus scoffed, turning away from her. Her gaze settled on the place where the dark waves of his hair curled over the edge of his coat collar. She longed to touch him there, to lift the hair and feel his warm neck under her fingers, to do away with this horrible conversation and return to the language they knew best. “You’re a whore. I thought you women knew how to take care of these matters.”

  Her shoulders bent forward even more for the briefest moment, as if they wished to meet, to close her off from the verbal assault. Then she pulled herself up. Whore. The word was vulgar, unwanted, the same one her parents had pelted her with the night they had thrown her out of the house. In love with Marcus, she had hidden from the truth, lived only in the present, but she was, she supposed, a whore now, even if it was he who had made her one.

  And now he was asking her to do the unimaginable.

  “No, my lord. I won’t.”

  The inky-black haze of his body rushed toward her. His hands caught her arms. The heat of his fingers seared her bare skin. His face––dear Lord, that was not the man she had held in her bed, had urged inside her. This was some other Marcus, some demon-driven, heartless man. This man might kill her. In his need to destroy the life inside her, he might destroy her altogether.

  “You will. I’ll see to it. You won’t ruin what I’ve spent so long building.” She heard his voice, but his face was so close to hers that she blinked, struggling for perspective––struggling to clear her mind and focus.

  Building. He referred to the painstaking attempt to clear his family of his father’s debts and sullied reputation, to gain his grandfather’s approval. But she realized now that she knew so little of him, and his words felt sinister rather than honorable and ambitious.

  She was dizzy and melting under the heat of his anger. His eyes, the brown of which she had always found warm and comforting, now made him seem impenetrable and untouchable. All that held her up was the steel of his palms. It was not so different than giving in to the heat of his desire, only now…

  “Many men have bastards,” she whispered. “What’s one more?”

  Her eyes caught his, found them amid the dizzy wash of turbulent emotions. And there, in his gaze, something flickered. Regret? She struggled to understand, to hope—

  He pushed her.

  Or perhaps he simply let go, but she fell, her hands grasping for him. Then the bed pillowed beneath her, soft and surprising, and there was nothing of him to see. Nothing to see at all but the pink, silk-covered walls and the heavy mauve brocade of the bed’s canopy.

  The scrape of metal against wood played out a sharp tune above the rhythmic thud of his booted steps. The doorknob turned.

  She struggled, pushing herself up to rest on her palms just as the door slammed shut.

  When she heard the unmistakable sound of a key turning in the lock, Natasha’s confusion ebbed. He had locked her in—locked her into her own bedroom. When she heard his muted shouts for his man, she knew she would be forced.

  She couldn’t stay there, couldn’t let him do this. She might have given him her body, her virtue,
her reputation, and even her love, but this—this was unconscionable. Natasha stood, scanning the room. Fear clarified her mind.

  Her jewelry box––it overflowed with tokens of his generosity. Her wardrobe––she could never carry so much. The window––she stumbled to it––overlooked the garden, and there was a slight ledge. She could––

  She could kill herself and the child was what she could do with such a scheme.

  She’d think about that later. The valises and trunks were stored in another room, and her maid had fled at the first sign of unrest, so Natasha put her jewelry into a hatbox and tossed in the few personal effects she did not wish to leave behind. She tucked inside, as well, the letter from Marcus she had once considered a love letter, a mark of his devotion––the letter that had encouraged her to part her legs and bear the stinging pain of a man’s first entry.

  She stumbled, catching her reflection in the vanity, and for a moment stood, caught by the image of herself, of her eyes, wide and scared—tear-darkened lashes rimmed green circles in a pale face framed so fashionably with honey-shaded ringlets. Who had she become? A muted shout from downstairs jolted her back to practical matters.

  But she was wearing an impractical dress, the silk thin and the bodice low, and there was no time to change. The physician or the back-alley butcher would be there any moment. She pulled a warm cloak over her shoulder, took the hatbox in her arms, and went back to the window.

  The ledge was narrow and, with the box, she would never be able to maintain her balance. She laid the box on a chair and threw the lid aside. Diamonds and sapphires, rubies and opals, she stuffed into her pockets and down into the hollowed space of her stays. Her fingers glittered with jeweled rings, unsafe to wear at any time in London’s streets. Her loosest gloves, pulled on quickly, clung to the stones like leather mountains. She left the other trinkets and baubles, but the letter she kept.

  She was weighted down by the jewelry, by its heaviness and by the heaviness its import left in her heart. She wore her most costly earrings—a whore’s earnings. And her child’s safety.

  She pushed the window open. The October wind stung her cheeks and made the draperies balloon with air before they settled back. Natasha took a deep breath, whispered a prayer to the god of whom she so rarely thought, and then crawled out onto the ledge.

  …

  Marcus braced himself for her anger. He deserved it, he knew. He had been a complete ass, scared out of his mind with the thought of losing everything––his inheritance, his position. Natasha knew nothing of any of that and he had terrified her, treated her abominably. He’d called her a whore.

  What sort of man did that to the woman he loved?

  A scared, cowardly man, a characterization to which Marcus had never aspired. In the stretches of his mind, flickers of understanding teased him—his words, his threatened actions against…

  Twenty minutes spent pacing in the vestibule of her apartment, the apartment he paid for, lived in more than his own bachelor rooms across town, cooled his temper and cleared his mind.

  When the surgeon stood before him, his black bag of instruments starkly dangerous in his grip, Marcus understood that there were other solutions. Solutions equally drastic but less appalling. At least, less appalling to him, and there were no codicils in his grandfather’s will against that option.

  Natasha might be his mistress, but a man could marry a mistress. Then his child would be legitimate. If Marcus’s child were legitimate, he would be fulfilling all his obligations at once, never mind that Natasha would hardly be his family’s first choice for his wife.

  So simple, so clear, and so much more the natural resolution to their dilemma. To his dilemma.

  Marcus sent the surgeon away with a coin for the man’s time. Fear had retreated and in its wake was a nascent excitement. He had to face Natasha, face her well-justified wrath, but she’d forgive him, surely she would. She’d understand once he explained. She knew he loved her, and she’d whispered the words in return countless times. He clung to the sound of her voice in his mind. Love would help; she’d understand how money warped a man’s mind. And she’d want to be a viscountess, a countess when his grandfather died. What woman wouldn’t? But would that be enough?

  He unlocked the door and pushed it in cautiously, half expecting a chair or a comb or any other object to come hurtling at his head. Not that she’d ever behaved so intemperately before, but these were extenuating circumstances, and he wouldn’t blame her well-deserved fury.

  There was no attack, no sound other than the sweet breath of wind whipping at the curtains and bed hangings. He entered the room, searching, seeking.

  Empty. The room was empty.

  Then he noticed chill air and the window, open, and the hatbox, dripping with baubles. No.

  He ran to the casement, fear hollowing out his chest. The bedroom was three stories up. There was no balcony; there was no way down.

  The wood was rough and cold beneath his fingers. The garden below, blindingly bright in the crisp light of day, was empty. Marcus collapsed back against the wall in relief, his sight momentarily black from the contrast.

  She had not fallen. She had not died.

  Relief transformed to purpose. He pushed himself up and raced downstairs to the street. In twenty minutes, how far could she have gone?

  Chapter Two

  Five years later

  Marcus stared at the gate to Templeton House. The wrought iron dated back to the seventeenth century. It was all that had remained of the house after the Great Fire, and had been moved to Golden Square when that land was developed and the current house built. Marcus nodded to the footman in gray serge who opened the gate for him, and then he walked up the carriage lane to the house. As he climbed the three shallow stone steps, another precisely dressed footman opened one of the great arched wooden doors.

  Marcus was expected, but as usual, he was still made to wait a good ten minutes in the cold, dimly lit entryway, staring at the life-size portrait of his great-great-grandfather Templeton and seven spaniels.

  His cousin Charlotte had once called Marcus’s house in Grosvenor Square a mausoleum. To Marcus, the house in which his grandfather lived contained far more the stuff of death. With only Lord Landsdowne in residence, the house mostly was a cold museum, right down to the yellow salon, which had become a shrine to Marcus’s late grandmother.

  It was the library, however, to which the footman led Marcus. Two stories of leather-bound tomes and three tall, narrow swaths of draperies made the cavernous room appear even larger. Two fireplaces worked to heat the space.

  In the middle of the room, in his Bath chair and wrapped in blankets, sat his formidable grandfather.

  “Marcus.” One pale hand lifted into the air. The ring on his grandfather’s third finger winked in the firelight.

  “You look well, my lord.”

  His grandfather grimaced. “Well? How well am I to be when my bones are frozen?”

  Marcus shrugged with a wry smile. He widened his stance, clasped his hands behind his back, bracing himself for the conversation.

  “And you’ve dragged your mother and little Charlotte up here to London with you, in January, when no one, not a single heiress, has left her cozy holiday abode.”

  “I haven’t come to London to pursue a wife, my lord. I’m here on business.”

  His grandfather sneered. “You’d do better the other way. Think you can escape marrying, or worse, marry your cousin? You cannot take care of all my estates on that pittance you call earnings.”

  “It’s hardly a pittance, Grandfather, but I do appreciate your concern for my well-being and happiness.”

  “Thirty is coming soon.”

  Marcus looked away, swallowing down the sudden nausea. Ironic that he had come up against the second codicil of his grandfather’s will: that he marry before his thirtieth birthday. While the man’s death was hardly imminent, his grandfather showed no signs of amending the ridiculous document, and thus Marcus
had six short months to find a bride. Marcus had spent five years trying to find the one he wanted, and if he couldn’t get over her, he might lose the very fortune for which he had thrown Natasha away. Of course, fulfilling codicil two could hardly matter when he’d already gone against codicil one, had a child out of wedlock. This will was a farce. Would be proven a farce when Marcus inherited even after having broken its commandments.

  His grandfather may have wanted to ensure that Marcus didn’t die an early death like his father. Only then, he’d have to contract syphilis, and that damned disease and his father’s promiscuity was the very reason the codicils in his grandfather’s will existed in the first place. He had brothers and sisters aplenty if one counted all the bastards with which his father had littered England. Seven that Marcus knew of.

  And he, too, might have added to that lineage.

  If the child lived.

  “The market isn’t safe. It is no different than gambling. You’re little better than your father.”

  Marcus clenched his jaw, his patience gone. The manipulative old man managed to look frail and familiar.

  “I don’t think you mean that,” Marcus said, biting back the stronger words he wished to say. He hated these interviews and hated more the thread of family loyalty that made him return even in the face of his grandfather’s disapproval. But Marcus also had come to view these meetings as miniature battles, as marks of his independence. The greater his grandfather’s ire, the greater Marcus’s success.

  His grandfather jerked his chair, waving his hand toward the door forcefully.

  “Go on and get out of here.” There was the ire. Marcus smiled, bowed, pivoted on his heel. As he walked to the door, he heard the thud of a cane on the carpet, the unmistakable efforts of his grandfather to stand. Despite himself, he turned, wondering if he should summon a servant. But instead he found the old man steady, pointing at him. “On Thursday, I expect you for dinner. I’m inviting Lord Langley and his daughter.”

  Steady as an arrow that knows its course.

  “I thought none of the heiresses were in London,” Marcus remarked dryly, taking care to shut the door behind him immediately after delivering the line.