When a Stranger Loves Me

by Julianne MacLean

  “Surely you were not on horseback the entire time,” her mother said.

  “No, we had lunch and we talked and he sketched, and…” She swallowed again. “I wrote in my notebook, and then…we had a nap.”

  “You had a nap? Good God, child. And still, he did not have you?”

  “Mother, must you speak of it this way? It’s private.”

  “It most certainly is not. You have offered this family an heir, and it is a matter of great importance. When did you last have your courses?” she asked again.

  Chelsea thought about it. “I finished a few weeks ago, just before he arrived.”

  Her mother’s eyes darkened, then she took hold of Chelsea’s wrist again and pulled her off the sofa.

  “What are you doing?” She fought to pry her mother’s bony fingers off her arm as she was dragged brutally out of the room.

  “This is your most fertile time, Chelsea, and since he did not have you today, he must have you tonight. At least once. Twice if you can manage it.”

  Chelsea was near to breaking into sobs of fury. She did not want to go to him tonight. She couldn’t bear it anymore. It was killing her. She needed time to think about what she was doing. “Mother!”

  But her mother ignored her pleas and dragged her roughly and ruthlessly out of the drawing room toward the stairs.

  Jack looked up when he heard a commotion in the hall. Rising from his chair, he crossed quietly to the door just as Chelsea and her mother scuffled by.

  “You are going to his bed now,” Lady Neufeld insisted, “whether you like it or not.”

  What the bloody hell…?

  He stepped into the doorway and watched them.

  “Please, Mother, not tonight.” Chelsea was practically sobbing, thrashing about and struggling against her mother’s grip on her arm. “I don’t want to! I can’t!”

  “You don’t have a choice. He must have you when you are most fertile.”

  They started up the stairs, fighting maliciously against each other. Lady Neufeld stopped halfway. “You impudent child! You have a duty to this family and you are going up there. I’ll drag you by the hair if I have to.”

  Jack took a step forward to intervene, but something held him back.

  Chelsea broke free and pushed her mother against the wall. “No! I am not going to his bed tonight, and you cannot make me! I am not your pawn! And if you try to drag me anywhere like that one more time, Mother, I swear to God I will leave here forever and you will never see me again. You can forget about your precious Neufeld heir and rot on this island forever, for all I care.”

  She picked up her skirts, turned and dashed up the rest of the stairs.

  Jack took a step back into the shadows, while he peered around the doorjamb at Lady Neufeld, who stood with her back to the wall, her cheeks flushed with fury as she stared after her daughter.

  A moment or two later she recovered her composure and started up the stairs as well, stomping hard, her eyes narrowed with frustration. Jack remained inside the library until he heard her heels click down the corridor, then fade to silence as she entered her own bedchamber.

  For a long time he stood with his back up against the wall, looking down at his brandy, swirling it around in the glass, contemplating what he had just seen.

  He must have you when you are most fertile…

  You can forget about your precious Neufeld heir…

  His stomach began to churn. He felt like he was going to be sick.

  He set his glass down on a table.

  Slowly, with dark and sober resolve, he left the library. He started up the stairs, taking one step at a time, deciding that he was going to have a very frank word or two with his bed partner, who he now knew was not the defiant rebel he thought. In fact, she was the exact opposite.

  With each step his animosity grew. He remembered being locked in that room when he first arrived and banging on the door to get out. He also remembered the laudanum, and Chelsea staying home from church that first day, when everyone else had left the house.

  And how convenient that her mother had been turning a blind eye to all their lovemaking. When he’d asked Chelsea about it, she changed the subject.

  She had been lying to him and using him from the beginning. He had been their prisoner here, and that lying, false-hearted viper had been using him for one thing and one thing only.

  She had wanted him for seed.

  Chapter 14

  Chelsea ran into her room, slammed the door behind her, marched straight to her bedpost and shook it. She was imagining that she was strangling her mother.

  She was so angry she wanted to scream!

  Pacing around the room, she bit back a number of oaths and debated what she was going to do. This whole situation had spiraled out of control—not just the state of her emotions, but her mother’s ideas as well. The woman was determined to be the grandmother of the next Earl Neufeld, no matter what the cost. Now, it seemed that she was doing her mother’s bidding instead of her own, and would not have the freedom to change her mind.

  Well, she would if she wanted to. Damn right, she would.

  Just then she heard her doorknob turn.

  God help her. If her mother was walking in here again without knocking, she didn’t trust herself not to strangle the woman for real.

  But it was not her mother. It was Jack.

  He entered the room and slammed the door shut behind him—just as she had a few seconds ago—and with fists clenched, glared at her like a devil wolf.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, her heart suddenly pounding with fear. This was not the Jack she knew. This was a wild creature. “I thought you’d gone to bed.”

  A muscle flicked at his jaw. “Hoped, you mean.”

  She said nothing, for she seemed to have lost her voice. He took a few steps closer, and she backed up until she bumped into her chest of drawers.

  Immediately she put two and two together. “Did you see what just happened between my mother and me?”

  “I did.”

  He continued to glare at her until she could barely breathe. “It’s not what you think.”

  “No? How do you know what I think?”

  “I can see it in your eyes,” she said. “You think I’ve been coming to your bed because she has been forcing me to.”

  “Isn’t that’s what’s been going on? I heard what she said. She told you that you had a duty to perform for your family.”

  “Yes, but—”

  He glanced up at the ceiling. “I remember you saying something like that to me once. You said, ‘If I am going to be forced to be miserable while I do my duty for this family…’”

  He paced back and forth in front of her like a lion in a cage.

  “What a fool I was,” he ground out. “I didn’t realize that I was the miserable duty. Does your cousin, Lord Jerome, even exist? Or was that part of your plot to get me to do what you wanted? You really are a very good writer, Chelsea, a grand weaver of lies. You have a most promising future ahead of you, contriving elaborate fictions. Or perhaps you would do better on the stage, for clearly you are a gifted actress as well. You could write your own productions.”

  “It wasn’t a story,” she insisted. “I was being forced to marry my cousin. I still am. I would show you the letter he wrote, but…”

  “But what?”

  “I threw it into the sea.”

  His voice deepened. “How very convenient.”

  She sucked in a breath. “Please, Jack.”

  “Please what? Forgive you? Or lift your skirts one more time?” He gestured behind him. “Up against the door? Would that be sufficient? Or would you prefer to be on your back? I suppose it’s all the same to you, as long as you can get me to take my pleasure on the inside.”

  Feeling a sharp, piercing stab of panic, she stepped forward. “Let me explain.”

  “I am not a character in one of your stories,” he said. “My life is not a fiction. I may have washed up onto
your beach like a fish and remember nothing about my life, but damn you, Chelsea, I am a man, and I am real. I exist!”

  She comprehended the anxiety in his voice and the rage burning in his eyes.

  “I know that,” she tried to tell him. “You are a real man who has been through a terrible ordeal, and I have not been completely honest with you.”

  She had lied to him from the beginning and used him.

  But she’d also fallen in love with him.

  There was a hard rap on her door and she jumped.

  God, was it her mother? Please, not now…

  “Who is it?” she shouted irritably.

  “It’s Sebastian.”

  Jack turned and glared at the door, then his fierce gaze shot back to her face. “Does he know what’s been going on here?” he asked. “Does he know that you’ve been screwing your invalid guest, who has no identity and nowhere to go? That you’ve been trying to provide this house with an heir, because he cannot fulfill that duty?”

  “Yes,” she replied plainly.

  He stared at her long and hard, then turned around and strode to the door. He opened it, took one look at Sebastian, then swung back and punched him in the jaw.

  “What are you doing!” Chelsea shouted, dashing across the room. She pushed past Jack to tend to her brother, who had been knocked clear across the hall, where he sank down to the floor.

  Chelsea dropped to her knees beside him. “Are you all right?”

  She was acutely aware of Jack standing over them with both fists still clenched, as if waiting for Sebastian to get up so he could hit him again.

  She looked up at him. “You caught him completely off guard.”

  Sebastian pressed the back of his hand to his split lip, which was already swelling like a grape, then inspected the blood on his knuckle.

  “I take it our guest knows what we’ve been up to,” he said.

  She sat back on her heels. “Yes, but there was no call for that.” She stood up and faced Jack. “It was my idea, not his.”

  Jack looked down at Sebastian, who was rising slowly to his feet.

  “But your brother agreed to it,” Jack said. “Honestly, man,” he said with disgust. “Your own sister.”

  “I deserved that,” Sebastian replied, straightening at last. “This was an idiotic plan, and I should never have agreed to it. I should have put a stop to it.”

  “No, Sebastian,” she said. “I wanted to be with him. You know I did. And Lord knows, I deserved, for once, to do what I wanted.” Chelsea met Jack’s eyes and spoke with bite. “You told me that was what you liked best about me—that I was a rebel.”

  “It doesn’t change the fact that what I now like least about you is your self-seeking interest, your ability to use and deceive an injured man who has no means of escape from your venomous attentions.”

  “I seem to recall,” she said, striding back into her room while Jack followed, “that you quite enjoyed those attentions, sir, especially when you knew there would be no consequences. I told you I was promised to another man, yet you went ahead and took your pleasure with me regardless. You could have said no. And all along there has existed the distinct possibility that you are already married or in love with someone else. So I will not hear your self-righteous babble about my self-seeking intentions. You were acting selfishly, too, using me because you felt alone and needed to prove your existence and value in the world. You cannot deny that.”

  Sebastian walked into the room and raised a hand, as if he were a referee in the middle of a boxing ring.

  “Stop,” he said. “There is a reason I am here, and it’s not to break up your quarrel.”

  They both looked at him with impatience.

  “What is it?” Chelsea asked.

  He wiped his lip again. “We have visitors downstairs,” he said. “They arrived a few minutes ago, after a rough journey across the Channel. I think you both might want to go downstairs and speak to them.”

  Chelsea shook her head. “Who would be arriving at this hour?”

  Sebastian straightened his posture. “We have the honor of receiving Devon Sinclair, Marquess of Hawthorne, and heir to the Duke of Pembroke, and his wife, Lady Hawthorne, who happens to be a peeress in her own right. She is also the Countess of Creighton.”

  “Why are they here?” Chelsea asked as a shiver of apprehension moved up her spine.

  Sebastian looked intently at Jack. “For good reason, it seems. The Duke of Pembroke’s heir has come to collect his brother.”

  Chapter 15

  Jack did not go rushing downstairs right away. Instead, he sank onto the upholstered bench at the foot of Chelsea’s bed. “I have a brother.”

  No one said anything for a moment. They simply stood in Chelsea’s room while the rain slammed into the windows and the wind howled across the rooftop.

  “I won’t know him,” Jack said. “I don’t even recognize any of those names. They are not the least bit familiar.”

  He became keenly aware of Chelsea approaching and placing her hand on his shoulder. “Maybe you will remember when you see him. It might all come flooding back the minute you do.”

  The compassion in her voice did not diminish his hostility or the sense of betrayal he felt over what had just occurred. He was still angry with her. This was not going to make him forget it.

  And God, he felt like such a fool. He’d been vulnerable to this family’s schemes. For a while, in the mad distortion of his reality, it felt as if Chelsea was the only woman in the world, the only person who cared for him, and he had therefore exposed himself to unwise intimacies with her. He had let himself fall in love with her, while she was holding him captive and using him for her own corrupt purposes the entire time.

  Now at least he knew he had a family of his own and a place in the world, even though he was finding it difficult to gain any comfort from the knowledge. The people downstairs would be strangers to him. He was certain of it.

  And what if this alleged brother was an imposter? What if it was not true? After what just happened, he did not feel he could trust anyone. He still felt completely alone, now more than ever, after this unthinkable deception.

  “Jack…” Chelsea was still standing before him. He lifted his eyes to look up at her—the woman who had taken advantage of his pathetic situation. He felt a deep and bitter loathing toward her, and an unspeakable disappointment.

  “Don’t call me that. It is not my name.” He glared at Sebastian. “What is my name?”

  “You are Lord Blake Sinclair,” he said.

  “The watch…” Chelsea said. “It is yours. The initials were B.H.S.”

  “You are third in line to your father’s title of duke,” Sebastian continued. “Besides Lord Hawthorne, you have two other brothers—one is Vincent, the other Garrett. You live at Pembroke Palace in England.”

  Blake digested all of this, then stood. “Where are they?”

  “In the drawing room.”

  Chelsea said nothing as he shouldered his way past her, but he was very aware of her following close behind.

  The timing of this could not have been worse, Chelsea thought wretchedly as she followed Blake down the stairs. She had not had time to explain herself to him, or convince him that she hadn’t been completely mercenary in her actions over the past few weeks.

  The truth was, she’d enjoyed every precious minute they spent together, both in bed and out. Even in the beginning, part of what inspired her to concoct the idea was her wild attraction to him. She’d wanted to share a bed with him, and probably would have done so even without the guise of duty.

  Of course, if she had known it would turn out like this, she never would have suggested the idea to her brother in the first place. She would have simply gone to Blake’s room in secret and given herself to him for no other purpose but pleasure and friendship.

  Now, she did not care if she was fulfilling her duty. She owed nothing to her mother. There was only Melissa and Sebastian to think of, and
her beloved sister-in-law’s disappointment over losing all hope for a child of her own, now that Blake knew the truth.

  They arrived at the drawing room, and Blake entered first. He did not even look over his shoulder to see if she was still behind him.

  It was clear to her at that moment that he had sliced her from his heart completely. That is…if she’d ever occupied a real place there to begin with. After what just occurred, she might never know, and she certainly could not blame him if he hated her forever. What she had done was unthinkable.

  With her stomach tying up in knots, Chelsea followed Blake and Sebastian into the room, where they stopped to greet the handsome couple standing in front of the fire.

  Blake took one look at the man who had come to claim him as kin and knew instantly that they were brothers. Not because he recognized him or remembered anything whatsoever about his life, but because Lord Hawthorne was practically his mirror image. He was tall and dark with blue eyes and similar facial features—the same nose, same chin, same eyes. They could have been twins, born on the same day, mere minutes apart.

  “Blake!” Lady Hawthorne said. Her face lit up with joy as she strode across the room toward him, her arms outstretched.

  His eyes darted to the stunning red-haired woman with eyes as green as a lush summer forest. He was not prepared for such an emotional greeting—these people were strangers to him—and it was all he could do to manage her loving embrace without demanding to know why she was hugging him. He did not know her.

  But he did, of course. She was his brother’s wife.

  As they drew apart, he was vaguely aware of his brother moving across the room slowly, studying him with great scrutiny.

  Blake met the marquess’s eyes, and despite the fact that in his broken mind they were strangers, he felt a connection. He believed this man recognized and understood not just his discomfort, but most of what he was feeling under these bizarre circumstances. Clearly, Lord Hawthorne was someone of exceptional intelligence and intuition.