Stranger in My Arms(81)

She left on shaking legs. She felt so very odd, and it was an incredible relief to walk on the arm of her own footman, and escape into the familiar interior of her carriage. Sensing that something was terribly wrong, the footman asked if she was all right. “Take me home,” Lara wheezed, staring blindly ahead.

Chapter 18

LARA SAT IN the carriage as stiffly as a wax doll, while thoughts and voices chattered in her head.

The unpleasant truth is…

Keep me with you, Lara.

... he has taken the place of your husband.

I don’t want to leave you.

Do you love me?

Yes, yes…

The cruelty of it was stunning. She had finally learned to trust a man, given her heart and soul into his keeping… and it had all been an illusion.

A chameleon, the captain had said. A man with no conscience and no capacity for remorse. A cold blooded murderer.

He had come to her, manipulated, seduced, and impregnated her. He had stolen Hunter’s name and money and property and even his wife. What contempt he must have for the people he had deceived.

Any other woman would have recognized her own husband, Lara thought numbly. But she had accepted his lies, because in her heart she had wanted to believe.

Remembering Janet Crossland’s hateful accusations-How eager you are to climb between the sheets with an absolute stranger!-Lara wanted to die of shame. It had been the truth. From the very beginning she had wanted him, instinctively, impetuously.

Everything inside her had been drawn to him. And so she had let it all happen.

Humiliation and fury and anguish rippled through her. The pain was too great to contemplate. She shivered and held still, like a terrified child, and wondered why she wasn’t crying.

Nearly everything that mattered had just been ripped away from her. A blaze of feelings was trapped inside her, but nothing broke through the shroud of ice.

Feebly she tried to gather her sanity. She had to make a plan. But rational thoughts kept eluding her, like slippery fish darting through her fingers. She wanted the carriage to keep going, the wheels rolling, the horses to pull its weight until they reached the edge of the earth and toppled over. She couldn’t go home. She needed help.

But the one person she wanted to turn to had betrayed her.

“Hunter,” she whispered in wild grief. But the real Hunter was dead, and the man she had come to think of as her husband… She didn’t even know his name.

A hysterical laugh bubbled in her throat, but she suppressed it, afraid that if she started to laugh, she might never stop, and end up in some lunatic asylum. Which didn’t sound all that unappealing, actually.

She could appreciate a place where one could scream and laugh and hit the walls with one’s head as much as one liked.

By sheer force of will she kept silent, calm, waiting with unnatural patience for the carriage to reach Hawksworth Hall. She had no sense of time-it could have been minutes or hours until the vehicle stopped and the door opened to reveal the footman’s concerned face.

“Milady.” He escorted her carefully into the house.

Lara knew there must have been something strange about her expression.

It was obvious from the way the servants treated her, with the deference they might have shown to a sickly old woman.

“Milady,” Mrs. Gorst asked carefully, “is there ought I can do? You seem rather-” “I’m only a little tired,” Lara said. “I want to rest in my room. Please see that I’m not disturbed.”

She made her way up the stairs, gripping the balustrade to pull herself along.

Catching a glimpse of herself in the upstairs hall mirror, Lara realized the source of the servants’ concern. She looked feverish, her eyes bright and stricken. Her face gleamed with the burnished color she might have gotten from a sunburn. But the hot red blush was caused by the shame and fury inside, not from any external source.

Slightly short of breath, Lara headed toward her room but found herself at Rachel’s door instead. She tapped gently and looked inside, and saw that her sister was seated by the window.

“Larissa,” Rachel said, a smile crossing her face.

“Do come in and tell me about your visit with the Tylers.” As she stared at Lara, her forehead creased with lines of perplexity. “What is it? What is wrong?”

Lara shook her head, unable to express the enormity of what she had discovered. Her throat seemed to be filled with sand. She swallowed several times, struggling to speak. “Rachel,” she managed sheepishly, “I wanted to bring you here so I could take care of you, but… I’m very much afraid… you’ll have to take care of me instead.”

Rachel’s gentle hands lifted in entreaty. It was a reversal of their usual roles, with the younger sister offering comfort to the elder, but Lara went to her without hesitation.

She sank to the floor and laid her head in Rachel’s lap. “I’m such a fool,” she gasped. The story began to spill out in broken phrases, many of them incomprehensible, but somehow Rachel seemed to understand.

Lara confessed everything, every humiliating, soul-wrenching detail, while Rachel’s slim fingers smoothed over her hair repeatedly. Finally she was able to cry, with sobs so ugly and rending that she shook from the force of them, but her sister was steady amidst the storm. “It’s all right,” Rachel murmured over and over. “It’s all right.”