Lord of Regrets

By Sabrina Darby

The daughter of immigrants, Natasha Polinoff has always been on the fringes of society. When she meets a handsome and charming young viscount, she follows her heart and embarks on a passionate affair. After her parents throw her out, she soon depends completely on her lover.

Living under the shadow of his late, profligate father, Marcus Templeton finds love and peace in the arms of his new mistress––until that love conflicts with fulfilling the obligations of his inheritance. Terrifying her with his demands, he loses Natasha into the dark of a cold, London night.

Five years later, Marcus has finally freed himself from the strictures of his inheritance by making his own fortune. But after years of independence Natasha won't risk an affair again. Determined to have her as his wife, Marcus will do whatever it takes–– even if he must resort to a little blackmail.

Each book in the Group of Eight series is STANDALONE:
* Lord of Regrets
* Lady of Intrigue

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Sep 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781633750661

Sabrina Darby

Sabrina Darby has been reading romance novels since the age of seven and learned her best vocabulary (dulcet, diaphanous, and turgid) from them. She started writing romance the day after her wedding, when she woke up with the idea for a Regency. She resides in Southern California with her husband and son.

Book preview

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.

He didn’t want to go home just yet. To sit with his mother across the table, eat soup and pheasant or whatever the meal would be that evening. Instead, he made his way to White’s, which he supposed was somewhat en route back to Grosvenor Square.

At the club, the conversation was of Napoleon, as it had been for years. He wasn’t friends with these men, though he knew them. There, at least, was Kirchfield, with whom he had gone to school and shared many a pleasant conversation. Marcus nodded and passed by the man, looking for a warm corner where he could have a drink.

He didn’t want to speak of Boney, of the constant back and forth of victories and losses. In his early youth, there had been summers abroad at his grandfather’s request, with the intent that he learn the diplomatic arts at the elbows of Britain’s finest. It had all seemed rather boring back then compared to the action on the field. In his last year at Eton, he’d enlisted as a private, attempting to pay his dues. Three months in, his grandfather had caught wind of it and hauled him back home from training.

There are many ways to serve one’s country, his grandfather had said. Marcus had learned quickly that the only ways allowed were the ones that pleased the old man. He wondered sometimes if it were the chicken or the egg: had his grandfather’s demands made Marcus’s father rebel, or had Vincent Templeton’s actions triggered the earl’s controlling nature?

Of course, the whys hardly mattered, especially now that Marcus had almost freed himself from the constraints of his grandfather’s will. Between investing his annuities and quarterly allowance and actively engaging in his own successful soap business, Marcus’s coffers were filling up. Perhaps his product wasn’t quite as popular among the ton as Andrew Pears’s clear soap, but the use of rare flowers and fragrances had made Marcus’s soaps an exotic luxury and earned his products a sizable share of the market.

He preferred the citrus blend. However, the delicate fragrance was currently overshadowed by the more potent scent of the 1795 Glenturret whisky in his hand––a luxury that he could afford with no help from his grandfather. If at the end of these six months, Marcus returned to the family fold, so to speak, he would be doing so on his terms, out of his own volition and not his grandfather’s coercion.

Mostly. He would still have to marry someone to gain access to the unentailed family coffers, the wealth he had once thought necessary to keep the estates from poverty. On that point, the earl would not be swayed.

There was Kirchfield again, and another man with him. Marcus dragged himself from his thoughts to make the obligatory conversation. A round of drinks, of course.

Marcus finally stumbled into his house late, his fingers and cheeks numb from the cold. He brushed away the footman who would take his cape, not willing yet to give up its warmth. There were three letters on the salver, forwarded from the estate. He spread them across the silver plate idly, intending to look at them in the morning. Then his fingers thudded to a stop and he pulled up one letter.

The name on the back read Dunleavy.

Marcus had hired men to search for Natasha, had paid them well to scour the countryside––discreetly of course. He had only one man searching for her now; he’d called off the rest two years ago. Robert Dunleavy, however, still sent in his thin, weekly reports, and Marcus suspected that he was really paying for the man to drink his way around the country.

Dunleavy had sent his monthly report only the week before, and this additional letter was unusual. Marcus shrugged out of his cape, its weight suddenly unbearable, and handed it to the waiting footman. Then, his fingers tingling with pain as they thawed, he tore at the missive, striding to wall where the sconce shone a brighter light.

Lord Templeton,

I don’t wish to give you false hope, but I have found a woman who matches most of the particulars. Whose likeness is close to that of the miniature, whose accent is that of a woman who learned English at the feet of a foreigner, and who has a child of the age—a daughter.

A daughter! Finally, the amorphous idea of a child began to take on a shape. He, she––a thousand times he had wondered even though he had known it to be foolishness. The first stirrings of––something––made him swallow hard.

This woman, who goes by the name Prothe, is known as a war widow, her husband dead in Salamanca. She came to live here in Little Parrington, a fishing village, three years ago. I was told she followed the drum before her husband’s death. They seem to live frugally, though well.

There is no sign of the fortune in jewels to which you referred. I await your direction.

Prothe. There was nothing in the description to prove that this woman was Natasha. But surety thrummed through his veins and the iron box he had fastened around his heart sprang open. She lived.

Clutching the letter in his hand, Marcus took the stairs two at a time. He swallowed the length of the hallway with his stride.

In his bedchamber, he yanked open the drawer of his dresser and pulled out one of the two final remnants of her existence in his life: a small, white square of lace-edged muslin, embroidered in white thread with an elaborate N.

The smoky glass bottle that had once graced her bedroom table he had kept tightly stopped so none of the precious scent would evaporate into the air. Evaporate into the ether as she had. He picked it up. Rested his fingers on the stopper for one long, hesitant moment before he pulled it open. A drop of perfume hovered in the air and then fell to cloth. He raised his hands to his face––letter, handkerchief, and all––breathing in the bergamot fragrance she had preferred, and wept.

Chapter Three

Marcus eyed the tiny town that hugged the gently sloping hillside. Old Parrington lay like a cluster of well-organized barnacles on the coast of Norfolk. It was surrounded by farmlands, in the shadow of the Earl of Parrington’s country seat, and far from London. Impatient after three days of traveling across a frozen England, Marcus burned with the wonder of possibility.

Was Natasha really here?

His carriage rumbled across the winter-rutted road. The air, even with the glass of the windows closed, smelled pungent with the sea. As they came closer, the edifices grew larger and started to take shape. The wood rectangle that swung in the wind before the first building bore the sign of the Red Lion. Just as he thought to rap upon the side of the carriage and alert his man, the horses began to slow.

He forced himself away from the window and sat back against the seat. Shameful enough that his valet, Pell, bore witness to his agitation. The world, however, did not have to view such a display.

Marcus stepped out of the carriage and, holding his cape close against the wind, walked the ten steps to the inn door. It was an odd sort of building, more Dutch than English with its gables and tiled roof. Marcus had only a brief second to take in the carving of the wooden door before his groom, Phineas, was there opening

Reviews for Lord of Regrets

[amdrane2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

2.5 StarsHonestly, I was a little bored reading this book. I almost gave up on it, but after seeing all the high ratings I figured it had to get better. I just didn't find anything to like about Natasha except for the love she had for her daughter and even then she thought about giving her up cause it would be easier for her. Over half of the book the two main characters are separated and spend the time whining about it. After awhile it got kinda drawn out. I think Marcus was just as distasteful. He called her names, blackmailed her, and then ran away to sulk. There were also a large amount of characters that were introduced that I thought would be important, but we're mainly just filler. And unfortunately, towards the end I started skimming cause I just didn't care about the politics that took Marcus away from London. I felt no real sparks between the two main characters and their few love scenes were boring and short. Probably won't be reading more by this author.Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.