Lord of Darkness (Maiden Lane #5)(33)
Author: Elizabeth Hoyt

If she wished not to speak of their earlier argument, it was fine with him. “You’ve already apologized, and besides, there’s no need. It wasn’t your fault. I suppose you thought I was attacking you.”

She looked away and he felt a sinking sensation. Had his kiss been that repulsive, then?

There was a short and, for him at least, very awkward silence.

Finally he gestured to the puppy in her arms. “Doesn’t the mother want her offspring back?”

“Oh, yes,” Megs murmured, and to Godric’s astonishment she turned and lay on her belly to place the puppy under her bed.

A squeak and rustle came from the shadows there.

Megs straightened and turned.

Godric raised his brows.

“Her Grace is under there with her puppies—three of them,” Megs answered his silent question. “We think she whelped sometime last evening, but I didn’t notice until late this morning when I heard the puppies crying.”

“Strange,” Godric murmured as he watched her rise from the floor, “that the dog chose your room to give birth.”

Megs shrugged, shaking out her skirts. “I’m just glad we found her. Great-Aunt Elvina was so worried when she realized Her Grace was missing from her room this morning.”

He nodded absently. How was he to keep her safe? How was he to save her from her own gallant heart?

She inhaled as if bracing herself. “Godric?”

He watched her warily. “Yes?”

“Can you tell me how”—she waved her hands in a fluttering gesture between them—“how this happened? How you came to be the Ghost of St. Giles?”

He nodded. “Yes, of course.”

PREHAPS IF SHE could understand why he did this dreadful thing, then she could somehow dissuade him, Megs thought.

Godric was still pale. Megs examined her husband while trying to hide her concern, but his gaze was steady, his body solid and strong in the chair. She took a moment to marvel again that at one time she’d thought this man almost infirm. She realized now that he might not be as tall or as bulky as some men, but he was solid, as if he were made of some durable, indestructible material. Granite, maybe. Or iron that would never rust. Something strong and muscular and … and masculine.

Megs glanced down at her hands in confusion at the thought of her husband’s body and nearly missed his next words.

“Have you ever heard of Sir Stanley Gilpin?”

She looked up again. “No, I don’t think so.”

He nodded as if her reply was expected. “He was a distant relation of my father’s, dead now for several years. A third cousin or some such. He was a wealthy man of business in the city, but he also had other interests.”

“Such as?”

“Theater. He owned a theater at one time and even wrote some plays.”

“Really?” She couldn’t see what this had to do with the Ghost of St. Giles, but she forced herself to sink into a chair at right angles to his, laying her hands decorously one atop the other. Fidgeting was, sadly, a particular failing of hers. “What are their titles? Perhaps I’ve seen one.”

“I very much doubt it.” His look was wry. “I loved Sir Stanley like a father, but his playwriting skills were terrible. I’m not sure any of his plays saw a stage beyond the first one, The Romance of the Porpoise and the Hedgehog.”

Megs felt her eyebrows lift, interested despite herself. “The … porpoise?”

He nodded. “And the hedgehog. As I said, simply terrible, but I’ve gotten off track.” He leaned forward, wincing a little, and set his elbows on his knees, staring at his hands clasped in front of him. “I don’t know if you know this, but my mother died when I was ten.”

She’d known his mother must be dead since Sarah’s mother was his stepmother, but she hadn’t realized how young he’d been when his mother died. Ten was such a delicate age. “I’m sorry.”

He didn’t look up. “I was close to her and took her death rather hard. Then, three years later, my father remarried. I did not react well.”

His tone was dry, unemotional, but somehow she knew that he hadn’t been nearly so stoic as a young boy. He must’ve suffered horrible inner turmoil. “What happened?”

“My father sent me away to school,” he said, “and then at the vacation, Sir Stanley Gilpin offered to let me stay with him.”

Her brows knit. “You didn’t go home to see your family?”

“No.” His lips pursed very slightly, drawing her eye. The rest of him might be hard, but his mouth, particularly the lower lip, looked soft.

Was soft. She remembered suddenly his mouth on her breast, the tug of his teeth, the brush of his lips. His lips had been gentle on her breast, but those same soft lips had been unyielding on her mouth.

Megs swallowed, beating down the image. What was happening to her? She plucked at a thread on her skirts. “That … that must’ve been hard, to be separated from your father.”

“It was for the best,” he said. “We fought often and it was my fault. I was unreasonable, blaming him for my mother’s death, for his remarriage. I behaved atrociously to my stepmother.”

“You were only thirteen,” she said softly, her heart contracting. “I’m sure she understood your grief, your confusion.”

He frowned and shook his head, and she knew somehow that he didn’t believe her. “In any case, that became the pattern for the next several years. When I wasn’t at school, I lived with Sir Stanley. And while I lived with Sir Stanley, he taught me.”

She frowned, inadvertently tugging hard on the thread. “Taught you what?”

“How to be the Ghost of St. Giles, I suppose.” He spread his hands. “Although at the time I merely thought it was exercise. He had a kind of practice room set aside with sawdust dummies, targets, and the like. There he taught me tumbling, swordsmanship, and hand fighting.”

“Tumbling? Like an acrobat at a traveling fair?” She leaned forward in delight, imagining Godric turning somersaults.

“Yes, like a comic actor.” He glanced up at her, his eyes crinkled at the corners. “It sounds absurd, I know, but the movements are actually difficult to master, and for a boy with too much anger within himself …”

She bit her lip, thinking of that lost boy, cut off from his family, angry and alone. She had a sudden warm gratitude toward the late Sir Stanley Gilpin. He might’ve been an eccentric, but he also obviously knew much about young men and their needs.