Stranger in My Arms(87)

Sophie rearranged her skirts with undue care. “I’ve tried for thirty years to forget about what I had done, but he’s remained in the back of my mind every day… haunting me, you could say.”

Lara set aside her wine, staring at her mother-in-law without blinking.

“what was his name?”

Sophie shrugged. “I wouldn’t allow his father to choose a name.

I’ve no idea what his surrogate parents called him.”

“Did your real son know that he had a brother?”

“No.1 saw no reason to tell him. I never intended for Harry’s bastard to interfere in our lives.” The feathery wrinkles at the corners of Sophie’s mouth stretched in a wry smile. “The irony of this is priceless, is it not?”

Being in no mood to appreciate irony, Lara did not return the dowager’s smile. She felt victimized by a chain of events that had started long before her own birth. Harry’s womanizing, the ambassador’s wife’s callous rejection of her own child, Sophie’s repudiation of the bastard infant, Hunter’s selfish irresponsibility… and finally, the stranger who had invaded Lara’s life and seduced her with his lies.

Lara had no influence over any of this, and yet she was the one who had ultimately been punished for their collective actions. She would have to deal with the lifelong consequences… an illegitimate child of her own. By keeping it, she would place herself outside of good society for the rest of her life. Although Lara was tempted to tell Sophie about her pregnancy, some burgeoning maternal instinct kept her silent.

The only way to protect her child’s interests was to keep him a secret.

“what are we to do now?” she asked in a low voice.

Sophie sent her an assessing glance. “That’s for you to decide, Larissa.”

Lara shook her head in protest. “I’m in no state of mind to think sensibly.”

“I suggest that you go to the downstairs guest suite where your lover is being held, and talk to him directly. After that, I suspect you’ll know how you wish to proceed.”

Your lover… It seemed inappropriate to call him that. Even now he seemed to be very much her husband, despite their relationship having been exposed for the illicit liaison it was. “I don’t know if I can face him,” Lara murmured.

“Oh, come now,” Sophie chided gently. “If I could summon the nerve to face him after thirty years, surely you can.

Lara changed from her traveling clothes, donning a simple muslin gown printed with tiny pink flowers and pale green leaves. She brushed her hair and pinned it in a tight coil atop her head, and checked her appearance in a mirror. She looked pale and frightened… but it wasn’t Hunter she was afraid of, it was herself.

Squaring her shoulders, she vowed silently that no matter what transpired between them, she would not give in to tears or anger. She would preserve her dignity at all cost.

She went to a door that was flanked by two guards, and quietly asked permission to visit the prisoner. To her relief, they were respectful and courteous, one of them bidding her to call out if she wanted assistance.

Her blood raced with alarm and excitement as she walked through the door, and she knew her cheeks were stippled with bright color.

And there he was.

He stood in the center of the windowless room, his hair the same antiqued gold and brown as the heavy gilded picture frames that covered the walls. The guest suite was small but luxurious, the walls covered with rich olive and gold damask, the plaster painted soft gray. A pair of folding glass sash doors separated the receiving room from the bedchamber.

He seemed perfectly at home in his elegant surroundings, an English gentleman in every regard. One would never guess who he was, or where he had come from. A chameleon indeed.

“How are you?” he asked, his gaze arrowing to her face.

The question sparked a flare of anger. How dare he affect concern for her after what he had done? But part of Lara couldn’t help responding.

She wanted to go to him and feel his arms close around her, and lay her head on his hard shoulder.

“Not well,” she admitted.

The ease and intimacy that had existed between them was still there.

She was suddenly filled with the dizzYing pleasure of being near him, and worse, the feeling of completeness that she would never experience with anyone else.

“How did you find out?” he asked gruffly.

“I spoke with Captain Tyler.”

He nodded slightly, showing no trace of surprise or anger. He had never expected it to last, Lara realized. He had always known that the charade as Lord Hawksworth was temporary at best. why do it, then?

why risk throwing his life away for a few months of pretending to be Hawksworth?

“Please,” she said, hearing her own voice as if she were speaking from a dream, “help me to understand why you’ve done this to me.”

He didn’t reply for a moment, watching her with the concentration of a man solving a mathematical problem. Then he turned partially away from her, his profile hard, his thick lashes lowering.

“The people who raised me” He wouldn’t call them parents. They had been caretakers at best, and damned negligent ones at that. “They never made a secret of who I really was. I grew up wondering about the father that didn’t want me, and the half brother who most likely didn’t know I existed. When I realized that Hawksworth had come to India and taken a house in Calcutta, I wanted to find out more about him. For a while I watched him from a distance. Then one evening I slipped into his house while he was away.”