The Forgotten Room(108)

His voice sounded so grim. Lucy froze, her hands on his chest. “A complication?”

“It doesn’t change how I feel about you,” John said quickly. “Or that I want us to be together. Married. Eventually.”

“Eventually?” Lucy took a step back to see him better, but his dark face gave nothing away, nothing but a grim resignation that set alarm coursing through her. “Is it your mother? Your sister?”

John gave a brief, unhappy laugh. “I wish it were. No—it’s my wife.”

“Your wife.” Lucy felt like she was falling, tumbling down, down, down. She reached out a hand to steady herself, the corner of the Chinese chest digging into her palm. “Your wife? You’re . . . you’re married?”

Please, please, let her have misheard, have misunderstood . . .

But John Ravenel was hanging his dark head, his expression somewhere between misery and shame. “Just before the war. Annabelle was one of my sister’s friends. We’d gone out a time or two, nothing serious. But when the war came—I was so terrified at the thought of marching off into the unknown that—well, we seized the day, as they say. When Annabelle realized she was expecting, there was only one thing to be done.”

The ruby pendant was cold and heavy between Lucy’s bare breasts. The flesh on her arms prickled. She felt suddenly cold, cold and very bare.

“You have a child?” Lucy wrapped her arms around herself, feeling as though she were caught in a nightmare, one of those nightmares where you find yourself naked in a public place, hearing horrible and impossible things.

Slowly, John nodded. “A son. Cooper. He’s just turned two.” Beneath the sheepishness, there was no mistaking the pride in his voice. “He’s a bright boy. Smart as a whip. But Annabelle and I—you have to understand, there’s nothing there. Just Cooper. We lead separate lives.”

Lucy just stared at him, horror freezing her tongue. He was a married man. And he had never told her. He had let her go on believing he was free.

John was still speaking. “It will take a bit to get a divorce, but—”

“You wanted me to be your mistress. You were going to make me your mistress.”

As her mother had been Harry Pratt’s. From the floor, her mother’s youthful face gazed up at her in silent reproach.

“Not my mistress,” said John rapidly, reached for her. Lucy yanked away. “My wife. Just as soon as Annabelle agrees—”

“To a divorce.” The word was ugly on Lucy’s tongue. She was shaking, shaking uncontrollably. One thing to go knowingly into an affair, but it was quite another to be tricked into it, to be made the other woman against one’s will. If she had known—Lucy shied away from the thought. She hadn’t. John hadn’t told her. “Do you really think I would take your son’s mother away from him?”

John looked slightly sheepish. “It’s not as though you’d be taking her away from him. And Annabelle—Annabelle has a flame of her own. She’s been discreet about it, but I don’t think she’d be pining over me.”

Lucy just shook her head, feeling as though she’d been bludgeoned. “So two wrongs make it right?”

“No.” His voice was so warm, so sincere, that Lucy could feel herself weakening, could feel herself leaning toward him, yearning for the comfort of his arms, the press of his lips against the top of her head. For a brief, treacherous moment, she allowed herself the indulgence of letting his hands close around her elbows, sliding up her arms, let herself sway toward him as he said, in his low, deep drawl, “We’re right, Lucy. You know that as well as I.”

Wordlessly, Lucy shook her head, morality warring with desire. She wanted to believe him, wanted him, more than she had wanted anything. “And what if your Annabelle doesn’t want a divorce?”

There was a horrible silence. But Annabelle does; she told me; that was all he needed to say.

Her grandmother would disown her; her family would never see her; nice people wouldn’t know them, but Lucy didn’t care. She would have John and that was all that mattered. And she would do her very best to be the best stepmother to Cooper that anyone could possibly be. She could picture him, a little boy with John’s eyes, as smart as a whip.

But John didn’t say that. And what she saw in his face frightened her.

“She doesn’t, does she?” Lucy whispered. “Your Annabelle—she doesn’t want a divorce.”

“We’ll work something out,” said John curtly.

“Work out what?” With jerky fingers, Lucy scooped up her blouse from the floor. “A miserable court battle? Your little boy torn to bits? I won’t, John. I won’t be party to that. You made your choice.” Lucy choked on something between a laugh and a sob. “Till death do you part.”

“But that was before I knew you.” John reached for her, desperation in every line of his body.

Lucy dodged his hands, her eyes so blurred with tears she could hardly see. “You don’t get a do-over.” She yanked her blouse up over her shoulders, buttoning it with shaking fingers. “Go back to Charleston, John. Go back to your wife.”

“Lucy.” She heard his voice from behind her, through a fog. “Lucy, I can’t live without you.”

Lucy pressed a hand to her lips. Oh, God, what a time to discover each other.