Stranger in My Arms(82)

“No,” Lara choked, drowning in despair. “Nothing will ever be all right again. I think I’m going to have his baby. His baby, do you understand?”

Rachel’s fingers trembled in Lara’s hair. “Oh, my darling,” she whispered, and fell silent while Lara continued her wretched confession.

“Captain Tyler may be mistaken,” Rachel said at one point. “How can anyone know for certain who Lord Hawksworth is?”

Lara let out a shuddering sigh and shook her head.

“The real Hunter is dead,” she said dully. “It’s no good to pretend otherwise. This man is not my husband. I think I’ve known it all along, but I didn’t want to face the truth. I let it happen because I wanted him. What does that make me, Rachel?” “You are not to blame,” her sister said resolutely.

“You were lonely. You had never been in love before-” “There is no excuse for what I’ve done. Oh God, I’m so ashamed! Because the truth is that I still love him. I still don’t want to let him go.”

“Then why must you?”

The sheer audacity of the question, coming from a principled soul like Rachel, took Lara’s breath away.

She stared at her sister in wonder before replying shakily. “A thousand reasons… but none of them matter as much as the fact that everything he has said and done has been a lie. I’m nothing to him except as a means to an end.”

“He has behaved as though he truly cares for you.”

“Only because it’s been convenient for him to do so.” Suddenly Lara’s entire body was immersed in a scarlet glow. “Oh, when I think of what an easy conquest I was…

the poor love-starved widow…” She buried her face against Rachel’s knees and began to sob again. “I never understood until now how sheltered I’ve been.

Even Hunter’s death didn’t affect me as it should have. He was as much a stranger to me two years after we married as he had been before.

But this man came to me like something from a dream, and insinuated himself into every part of my life… and I loved him. Every moment with him.

And when he leaves, he’ll take my heart with him.

He’s ruined me for anyone else.”

She talked and wept without interruption until exhaustion overcame her.

Her head dropped in her sister’s lap, and she actually dozed for a few minutes.

when she awoke, still sitting on the floor, her spine and neck were unbearably stiff. It seemed for a moment that she had been lost in a nightmare, and for a moment her heart thudded with hope. But one look at Rachel’s face revealed that the nightmare was true.

“what will you do?” Rachel asked softly.

Lara rubbed her bleary eyes. “I must send for Lord and Lady Arthur,” she said. “The title must be restored to them.

It is rightfully theirs. I owe them whatever assistance I am able to provide. As for Hunter-” She stopped, nearly choking on the name.

“He’ll return from London tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll advise him to flee to avoid prosecution. Otherwise I’ve no doubt he’ll be hanged, not only for what he’s done to me, but for the fraud he’s committed in my husband’s name. Contracts, investments, loans…

Oh, Lord, not one of them is valid.”

“What about the baby?” came her sister’s soft question.

“No one must know,” Lara said instantly. “Especially not him. It has nothing to do with him now.

The baby is mine, and only mine.”

“Will you keep it?”

“Oh, yes.” Lara covered her stomach with her hand, and fought to suppress a fresh flow of tears.

“Is that wrong, to want this child in spite of everything?”

Rachel stroked her disheveled head. “No, dearest.”

After a night of broken sleep, Lara awoke to face the next day with weary resolution. She felt the need to put on mourning, as if someone had died, but instead she dressed in a circumspect blue gown adorned with silk braiding at the bodice and hem. The house seemed wreathed in gloom. She knew she would have to explain something to the servants, to friends and acquaintances in Market Hill… and to Johnny.

How could she make a child understand what had happened, when she didn’t understand it herself?

The thought of all that lay ahead filled her with indescribable weariness.

When all of this was over, she promised herself, when Hunter was banished from her life and the Hawksworth title was restored to Arthur and Janet, she would leave this place for good. Perhaps she would make a new life in Italy or France. Somehow she might even convince Rachel to go with her. But the notion of starting anew only made her want to cry again.

She counted the time since “Hunter”-she didn’t know how else to think of him-had come to her.

Three months. The most fulfilling time of her life, when she had tasted the kind of joy that few people ever knew. She had blossomed under the spell of his gentle, passionate, loving presence. Were the pain not so great, she might have considered it worth the price.

Groping for words, Lara tried to prepare some sort of speech for when Hunter returned from London.

Something dignified, calm, circumventing distasteful arguments and accusations. But all she could come up with were questions. With her emotions writhing beneath a blanket of ice, she went into the garden in search of solitude. She sat on a bench and hugged her knees, and stared at a smalL splashing cherub fountain. A mild breeze rustled through the neatly trimmed yews and stirred flowers potted in great stone urns. She breathed in the hot, sweet smell of the grass, and rubbed her temples in an effort to ease the throbbing ache in her head.