Lindsay laughed. The sound made the hair on her arms rise. “Your father is no more moral than your mother—in fact he is no better than my father—the man you take delight in looking down your nose at. You want honesty, Anais? Well, you shall have it—your father’s sickbed confession to me that afternoon you found us talking. I didn’t want to tell you. I didn’t want to destroy your faith in your father—or me. But what a damned fool I was. You were no green girl. In fact, you are just as cunning as Rebecca.”
“Get on with it,” she cried, hating the mockery in his voice.
His eyes narrowed and his lips parted in a dark, empty smile. “Your father, that good honest man you put on a pedestal, has been tupping Rebecca behind your back. He’s her rich protector. Yes, Anais,” he said, pushing on, despite the fact she was fumbling on weak knees.
“No, it’s not possible—”
“Oh, anything is possible, angel, I’ve learned that, and in the most painful way possible. What stealthy little connivers women are.”
“Rebecca and my father,” she gasped, unable to credit the thought.
“She was after money and security. She couldn’t get it with me, so she turned to someone much more willing to part with his pocketbook.”
Anais had to sit before she fell down from sheer shock. She could hardly breathe, couldn’t think, but Lindsay ruthlessly carried on, refusing to aid her in the slightest.
“That’s right, Anais. And your father couldn’t stand it, couldn’t bear the shame and the pressure that Rebecca was putting upon him, so he took the coward’s way out and decided to put a bullet in his head and leave you with the mess. But he botched that up, didn’t he? He managed to bugger up his suicide and instead set the whole bloody house on fire. Your father couldn’t wait to confide in me. He wanted to be absolved of his crimes and I told him I would never tell you. I told him I would protect you from the ugly truth. And you thought me weak?” he growled. “I have never met a more spineless man than I did the day I stood looking down upon your father. All I could think about as I gave him my word was at least my father admits to his debauches. He does not hide behind the Bible and a deceitful cloak of piety and goodness—he admits to them and invites the scathing contempt of people—you, your contempt and ridicule. And I am just like him. I admitted it. I am weak. You have shunned me for it. You have made me feel dirty and vile because I could not resist the lure. All the time you acted superior I thought I deserved it because it was coming from you—you who were always good. You who would never lie. You who knew right from wrong.”
Anais didn’t say anything, she just stared at him. She was afraid—afraid of looking too deep and what she might find lurking beneath his skin. What would she find there? She feared the question even though she knew the answer.
“I have not fallen far from my father’s loins, Anais. What of you? How far have you fallen from the antics of both your mother and father?”
Silence stretched on until a soft knock echoed through the room “Miss.” Louisa called, rapping on the door. “Miss?”
“Go away, Louisa,” Lindsay demanded. “If you want to retain your post in this house you will go below stairs and not breathe a word of what you have heard in this chamber.”
“Lord Raeburn?” the maid asked and Anais heard the astonishment in Louisa’s timid voice.
“Go, now.”
“Aye, your lordship,” Louisa replied obediently. The sound of the maid’s half boots beating a hasty retreat down the stairs echoed in the hall.
“How far have you fallen, Anais?”
“I have no idea what you are going on about—”
He took a step toward her then stopped. “You should not leave your things laying about Anais. You never know who will come across them.”
Her gaze flew to the bed. A million thoughts ran rampant in her mind and she gripped the mahogany table to support her.
“Don’t you want to know what I found?”
He could have found many things. So many things she couldn’t explain—things she was afraid to tell him.
“I found a cottage, and it was done up in the most decadent of styles. Not at all in keeping with a gatekeeper’s requirements. No, I would say more in line with a mistress. Perhaps even the sort of abode your father keeps Rebecca in. It was very feminine, very refined in elegance. The colors were soft. Sage-greens and golds and crèmes.” He turned and glared at her. “Your type of colors, Anais. Your type of elegance.”
She made to shake her head to deny him, but he narrowed his eyes.
“Don’t.”
His voice resembled the sound of a cracking whip and she flinched at the coldness of it. Never in all the years she had known him had Lindsay been this angry.
“It smelled of you, Anais. Inside I could smell country flowers and woman—your scent.” She shrunk back from his blistering gaze, unable to do anything else but part her lips on a whispered denial she knew was futile. “Inside were two people—a man I used to call friend, and a woman whom I call lover. I also found a book.”
Her knees buckled and she sank onto the chair. What had he found? Which of her lies had he uncovered?
“Right and wrong, good and evil,” he whispered, reaching into the pocket of his jacket and dragging a brown leather volume out from the black fabric. “No shades of gray. No faults. No weaknesses. Just a perfect angel.”
“That is not possible for anyone—”
“But you did your damndest didn’t you? You did everything to make me believe—make me want that perfect soul. I believed you were an angel. I believed in your goodness.” He laughed, a bitter sound that slithered along her skin. “It was the only thing I believed in. I bared my soul to you. I cataloged my weakness before you, laying my fears before your feet and begging you for your forgiveness and understanding. It disgusts me now, because you ate it up. You allowed it—encouraged it—you,” he murmured as he wheeled upon her, “you stood before me and acted like an angel of mercy when you were really betraying me with my friend.”
Her head snapped back as if he had slapped her. “That’s right, Anais,” he said holding the book up in the light so that the gilt edges of the paper glimmered in the golden light. “I’ve read it. All of it.”
“You had no right!” Her words were cut short when he wheeled the book into the hearth. The flames hungrily devoured the paper, sending black smoke up the flue along with her confessions.
He watched the flames as he spoke. “I don’t know why I am so surprised by what you have written. You tried often this past week to tell me that it was over. Even as you were lying with me in bed you tried to tell me, but like a blind fool I could not see past my desire, my love—a love that has never, ever wavered in its constancy. A love I believed could never die. I didn’t want to see the truth. I know that now.”
She tried to speak, but her jumbled thoughts prevented her from making a sound. Her mind was jumping, searching, trying to decipher which of her lies Lindsay had discovered.
“Had I not betrayed your trust, had I not used opium when I had planned on coming to you, we would not be here now. I all but pushed you into Broughton’s arms, didn’t I? I can hardly blame you for that. As much as I want to, as angry as I want to be with you for turning to another, I cannot fault you. I will accept the blame for that, Anais. Opium came between us. That is my shame. I admit it. Now it is time to admit to yours.”
She watched him walk toward her with steely determination in his eyes. He reached for her wrist and pulled her up from the chair.
“What are you doing?” she whispered, meeting his gaze.
“How much longer did you expect me to play the fool?”
“Lindsay, don’t—please.” But he was beyond listening and instead turned her around so that her hands and face were pressed to the wall and his fingers, fierce and quick, began to unlace her corset. With one tug, he pulled the lacings from the silver eyes and tossed the cord to the ground. Then his hands came around her waist and searched for the t
ies of her pantalets before roughly shoving them down her hips and along her thighs.
“Please,” she whimpered when he reached for the hem of her chemise and raised it along her body. He stopped, pressed his face into her neck and breathed unsteadily against her. He was shaking, as if he just realized what he was doing.
“I am crazed, Anais. I can’t think. I can only see you in his arms, loving him. Please, end this. I deserve to know, don’t you think?”
She felt the harsh brush of his breath against her neck and then he turned her to face him. He looked as though he was ready to weep. There was desolation, despair in his eyes, and it destroyed her to know she was the cause of it.
“Do I not deserve to know your secrets, Anais?”
She shook her head, tears clouding her vision. No, she could not. He would know, but then his fingers touched the edge of her chemise to where the angry red marks on her breasts were illuminated by the lights. She knew then it was too late. He already knew.
“This is what you’ve been trying to hide from me. This is why you never allowed me to see you by lamplight—why you intentionally made it dark in our bed last night.”
She allowed him to lift the hem of her chemise and pull it over her head. He did deserve to know, however much it pained her to admit to her failings. Lindsay deserved the truth.
She stood naked in front of him, allowed his hands to reach up and cup her swollen breasts, his fingers tracing the red slash-like marks at the side of her bosom. He tested their weight in his palms before using his fingertip to trace the vein that disappeared beneath her rose-colored areola.
“You didn’t want me to see this—see you.”
She knew he required no answer. He knew what she would say. She had wanted to hide her body from him—every scrap of evidence, far away from his knowing eyes.
He fell to his knees as his fingers sought her rounded belly. He traced the shape of it, running his mouth along her stretched skin which bore angry red marks. “Oh, God, you have murdered what remains of my soul.”
Anais closed her eyes, hating the pain she heard in his voice. Tears cascaded down her cheeks as she let her head rest against the wall. She wept, fearing his questions, fearing her answers. She was weak. So damn weak.
“You’ve had a child,” he whispered, but it was more a choked sob and she fought back her own cry. It would be so easy to lie. Lies had never tripped so easily from her tongue than they had since Lindsay had returned to her life. But she was sick of the lies. She was tired of fearing his discovery and his reaction and subsequent repulsion. She was heartsick of being weak.
“Tell me, Anais,” he begged, his eyes were scouring every inch of her body. She could not hide from the truth any longer.
“Damn you!” he cried. “You gave Broughton a child!”
Anais smothered her own cry. Self-preservation, the fallen angel inside her screamed. Lie, deny. By rights she should be furious with him, he had left her alone after taking her innocence. He had betrayed her. Forgotten her. He deserved to suffer, to know that his actions and choices that night had set this moment into motion.
He thought her Broughton’s lover, and the accusation stung. But what other choice had she given him? Her lies had led him to the only logical conclusion that was left.
He was looking at her with his green eyes—eyes that reflected tears and pain and betrayal. And from somewhere deep inside her, the woman she had once been, the honest, upright woman, resurfaced. She reached for his face and cupping it in her hands, she ran her thumbs along his cheeks. “No, Lindsay,” she whispered, her voice broken and quiet. “I gave you a child.”
21
Dazed, Lindsay looked up into Anais’s face and thanked God he was on his knees. The room began to spin, and he felt himself sway as shock and disbelief flooded his body.
He was breathing hard, as if he’d been running. He couldn’t think, could only say over and over in his mind that he could not have heard her correctly. He was simply overwrought.
It was Broughton’s child she had bore. Hadn’t she taken up with Broughton after she had witnessed him with Rebecca? Of course it was Broughton’s…
But the questioning voice in his head reasoned differently. It could have been his.
His mind drifted and he saw the vision of Anais lying beneath him on top of the haystack. He knew it was more than possible he might have given her his child that night—that beautiful, magical night in the stable…
As if she could read his mind, she reached for him. “I carried your child,” she whispered tremulously, taking his unsteady hand and moving it along her belly. A belly that still carried the marks of being stretched with life.
“No,” he mumbled—confused, mute, impotent of forming any cohesive thoughts or questions. Numbness was quickly replaced with a cold anger that spread out to his limbs. “No!” he growled, louder, as if by yelling he could denounce her words, could erase the sound of her voice ringing in his head.
Her lashes lowered, shielding the emotion in her eyes. Only then did he see a glistening tear shimmer on the golden tips, then it dropped, only to splash and then trickle down the pale curve of her cheek. “Yes, Lindsay.”
His hands shook and he pushed away from her as if she were anathema. No, she could not have done such a thing. She was lying. Anais would never be so deceitful, would never do some thing so heartless as to conceal such a thing from him. But as he looked up at her, at her stricken expression, at the way she could not hold his gaze, he knew he was only fooling himself.
She had betrayed him in the cruelest of ways and his mind began to race as thought after thought, denial after denial, tripped through his mind until he couldn’t stand to consider the possibilities anymore.
He stood up, wavering—reeling—with rage and shock. Disillusioned and hurt by the woman he thought incapable of duplicity.
He stared at her, disbelieving everything he had heard, everything he was seeing. His hands flew to his hair and he gripped the sides of his head, fisting his fingers tighter and tighter into his hair in an attempt to think, to push the sound of her words from his head with the pain of his hands. No, no, no, this could not be happening.
“Lindsay, say something.”
“All this time,” he murmured, bewildered. “I’ve imagined every sort of hell, you with Broughton, loving him, giving him your body…but you didn’t. It wasn’t—” He stopped, the horror of it all suddenly registering in his brain. “You hid this from me. Why?”
“You left me!”
“No!” he roared. “I searched for you. I went to your house. To London. I was turned away without seeing you. I tried, Anais, I tried to find you. I tried to apologize. When you went to France, I followed you. I searched for weeks.”
Her face paled. “You left the country?”
“To find you!”
Her fingers flew to her mouth where they trembled against her lips. “I…I didn’t know, didn’t think you would follow.” She looked at him with horror. “I thought you left the country because you were done with me.”
“Why wouldn’t I have followed you? Christ, Anais, I loved you. I wanted to marry you. I told you that, the night in the stable.”
“I didn’t plan…” She stopped and reached out with her hand to steady herself on the edge of the dressing table. “I lost my faith in you, Lindsay. After finding you with Rebecca…I…I couldn’t see you again. Don’t you see? It…it could never be. Oh, God, it might have been all different.”
The stricken sob that came from her cut him to the quick and suddenly he stopped and faced her, clarity at last beginning to chase the chaos in his head away.
Incredulity was swiftly replaced with dawning horror. “Where is the child?”
He had yelled that, unable to control his emotions and the frenzied anger that began to erupt like a volcano within him. She flinched and pressed her naked body against the wall, her head lowering, her gaze unable to meet his. What had she done with his child?
Fill
ed with utter terror, he stalked to her and took her about the shoulders. “Damn you, Anais, what have you done? Where is it?”
“She is safe.”
He fell back a step. A daughter…a father… He looked about the room, stunned, shocked. Anais giving birth to his child—his daughter.
Anais slid along the wall until she was within reach of the pile of underthings he had carelessly discarded into a heap. He watched as she bent at the knees and retrieved her chemise, immediately covering her lush breasts and fertile belly.
“What have you done with our daughter?” he asked on a strangled whisper. Damn her, he had a child—a child she had hidden from him. He had the right to know. He had the right to be a father, to claim this babe, a babe he had known nothing about.
“You needn’t worry. She is safe and loved.”
A terrifying fear began to grip him. “What do you mean?” he thundered.
“I have seen to her safekeeping—I…” She looked away and sniffed back her tears. “Surely you understand that I…I couldn’t keep her.”
With a cry of horror he released her, shoving her away. “What have you done?” he asked, the whispered sound filled with horror.
“The only thing I could have done as an unmarried woman who found herself with child.”
“I wanted to marry you—” he ground out “—I wanted you. I wanted that child. I did not leave you, Anais. You hid from me when I was trying so desperately to find you.”
She covered her face with her hands and sobbed. “I didn’t know.”
“Where is my child?” he roared, beginning to lose control of the anger and pain that was slashing like a knife through his chest.
“You don’t understand…I had no choice…I had to make a decision, it is too late to change what has already been done.”
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