Stranger in My Arms(86)

“When…? How ?”

“I arrived only this afternoon,” came the dowager’s voice from the top of the stairs. “After one of the letters you had sent all over Europe finally reached me, I came to London straightaway. My plan was to travel to the estate tomorrow and sort through this strange muddle myself. Instead I discovered my purported son under guard here.

Obviously I came not a moment too soon.”

Lara had started up the stairs before her mother-in-law had finished speaking. As always, Sophie, the Dowager Countess of Hawksworth, was slim and attractive, with a regal pile of silver curls atop her head and her signature ropes of pearls cascading down her front. An intelligent, practical woman who refrained from showing emotion in even the direst circumstances, Sophie was difficult to love, but very easy to like.

“Mother!” Lara exclaimed, embracing her at once.

Sophie tolerated rather than returned the affectionate gesture, and gave Lara a fond smile. “Well, Lara…... it seems you would have been better off accepting my invitation to share my travels. You’ve had a difficult time of it, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” Lara said, returning the smile with a wobbly one of her own, and her eyes stung.

“There, there,” Sophie said, her face softening.

“We’ll sort through this, you and I, and make some sense of it. A bottle of wine and a good long talk…

that’s what the situation needs.”

After giving a few crisp instructions to the servants, Sophie took Lara’s arm, and they went to the lavender room, a parlor Sophie had decorated herself. The sole exception in an otherwise masculine home, the room was exclusively frilly and feminine.

It was filled with shades of mauve and lavender, with plum-colored accents and small gold-finished tables, and painted glass windows featuring violets.

The scent of violets clung to Sophie’s hair and wrists, having been her preferred fragrance for decades.

Lara wondered which room Hunter was imprisoned in, and what he might be thinking, and if he knew she was there. “Have you seen him?” she asked Sophie nervously.

The dowager took her time about replying, seating herself with care in a plush velvet wing chair. “Yes, I’ve seen him. We spoke at some length.”

“He looks a great deal like Hunter, doesn’t he?”

“Naturally. I would be surprised if he didn’t.”

Startled, Lara sat in her own chair and stared at her mother-in-law.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.

Their gazes locked for a frozen moment. Lara had never seen Sophie look quite so perturbed. “I see,” the dowager finally murmured. “You haven’t been told, then.”

“Told what?” Frustration bubbled up inside Lara.

“Good Lord, I’m weary of being surrounded with secrets.” Lara exclaimed. “Please, what can you reveal about the man who is under guard downstairs?”

“To begin with,” the dowager replied acerbically, “he and my son Hunter were half brothers.”

Chapter 19

UNFAZED BY LARA’S stricken stare, Sophie waited patiently as a footman arrived with a bottle of red wine and a pair of glasses with diamond-shaped cuts incised in the stems. Another servant attended to the ceremony of opening the bottle. Lara bit her lip to keep silent, watching the servants proceed with maddening slowness.

Lara gripped the stem of her wineglass until the diamond pattern made red marks on her fingers. She waited until the servants had left before speaking.

“Please tell me,” she said softly.

“My husband, Harry, had a weakness for attracfive women,” Sophie said.

“I tolerated it because he was discreet, and because he always came back to me. No man is perfect, Larissa. They each have some unpleasant feature or habit that must be tolerated. I loved Harry in spite of his infidelities, and they never posed a great problem for me… until one of his relationships resulted in his paramour’s unwanted pregnancy.”

“who was she?” Lara asked. She took a sip of wine, the acrid flavor filling her mouth.

“An ambassador’s wife. She had been pursued by nearly every man in London. Harry thought her quite a prize, I’m certain. Their affair lasted for nearly a year. when she conceived, she informed Harry that she would not keep the child. It would be his to do with as he wished.”

“But he didn’t want it?”

“Oh, Harry wanted the babe very much. He intended for it to abide with us, or at least to be raised in a place where he could visit it from time to time.

However, I wouldn’t hear of it. As you know, we hadn’t much luck in bearing healthy children. Our first three did not survive infancy.

Then we had finally been blessed with Hunter. I suppose I feared that my husband’s interest in a bastard son might lessen his devotion to his legitimate child. I was quite protective of Hunter’s interests.

Therefore, I insisted that the bastard be given to a missionary couple who would take him so far away that we would never see him again.”

“India,” Lara said. Each word fell on her ear like the soft clicks of puzzle pieces snapping into place.

“Yes. I knew it would undoubtedly result in a hard life for the child, with no means or social position, and no proximity to his father. My husband was quite reluctant to send the baby away, but I was insistent.”