Stranger in My Arms(89)

Soon all was quiet, and a dark-haired woman left the room. She was flushed and pretty, a smile on her lips as she rustled the crisp silk skirts of her pomegranate-colored gown into place and adjusted her br**sts in the scooped bodice. Satisfied with her appearance, she hurried away without noticing the man in the shadowed corner.

He entered the room quietly and saw a tall, broad shouldered man facing away from him, jerking his trousers closed. The man’s head turned to reveal a distinctive profile, long nose, well-defined chin, forehead partially obscured with a thick swipe of dark hair. It was Hawksworth.

Hawksworth went to a pedestal desk topped with green leather and picked up a glass filled with amber liquid. Seeming to sense that he was not alone, he turned and looked directly at the intruder. “Damnation!” he exclaimed in startlement. “who are you to come sneaking up behind me like that? Explain yourself!”

“I’m sorry,” he replied, finding it difficult to speak.

He pulled off his robe and stood facing Hawksworth, riveted by the face that was eerily simllar to his own.

The resemblance was not lost on Hawksworth.

“Sweet Christ,” he muttered, setting aside his drink and coming closer to him. Two pairs of dark brown eyes gazed at each other in fascination.

They were not identical… Hawksworth was darker, beefier, and he had the expensive, well-tended look of a Thoroughbred. But anyone seeing the two of them together would have known instantly that they were related.

“who the hell are you?” Hawksworth snapped.

“I’m your half brother,” he replied quietly, and watched the complex play of emotions on Hawksworth’s face.

“My God,” Hawksworth muttered, and snatched up the drink once more. He downed it rapidly and coughed, and regarded the stranger with a reddened face. “My father’s by-blow,” he said hoarsely. “He once told me about you, though he wouldn’t say what had become of you.”

“I was brought up by missionaries in Nandagow-” “I don’t give a damn about your life,” Hawksworth interrupted, bristling with angry suspicion. “I can guess why you’ve come to me. Believe me, I have enough bloody hangers-on tugging at my coat. Is it money you want?”

He bent and fumbled in the desk drawer, and unearthed a cash box.

Thrusting his hand inside the unlocked box, he withdrew a fist full of coins, and scattered them before the stranger.

“Take it and leave. I assure you, it’s all you’ll get from me.”

“I don’t want money.” Humiliated and angry, he stood frozen amid the glittering coins.

“Then what is it?” Hawksworth demanded.

He couldn’t answer, just stood there like a miserable fool while all the questions he’d had about his father and his past died inside him.

Hawksworth seemed to read his thoughts. “What did you think would happen if you came here?” he asked with biting contempt. “Should I throw my arms around you and welcome the long-lost sheep into the fold?

You’re not wanted or needed. You have no place in the family. I should think that needs no explanation after the way my parents shipped you out of England. You were a mistake that needed getting rid of.”

As he listened to the jeering words, he couldn’t keep from silently questioning the unfairness of fate.

Why should this self-important jackass have been born as lord of the manor? Hawksworth had been given a family, land, title, fortune, a lovely young wife, and he valued it all so little that he had left England for frivolous reasons. Whereas he, born a bastard, had nothing.

He understood Hawksworth’s hostility all too well.

Hawksworth had been brought up to consider himself the Crosslands’ only son, legitimate or otherwise.

The family had no use for a bastard offspring who would only cause them embarrassment. “I didn’t come to make a claim on you,” he murmured, interrupting Hawksworth’s tirade. “I only wanted to meet you.

The words did nothing to mollify the irate man.

“Now you’ve achieved your objective. I advise you to leave my home, or there’ll be the devil to pay!”

He had left Hawksworth’s manor without touching a single coin on the floor, and felt a certain satisfaction in knowing that he still possessed the miniature of Lady Hawksworth. He would keep that one small piece of his brother’s life for his own.

..... I continued my service under Captain Tyler’s command for a time, until I learned that Hawksworth’s ship had wrecked.” he said tonelessly~ “He was gone, and I knew that everything he had-everything I wanted-was here waiting for me. I resolved to do whatever was necessary to have you, if only for a little while.”

“So you took his place in order to prove yourself the better man,” she said.

“No, I…” He paused, forcing himself to be truthful. “That was part of it at first,” he admitted. “But I fell in love with you… and soon you became the only thing that mattered.”

“You gave no thought to the consequences of what you were doing,” Lara said, anger pouring through her. “You’ve destroyed any possibility of my trusting anyone ever again. You stole another man’s life, and hurt me unforgivably, and now you’ll likely hang.

Was it worth all of this?”

He gave her a look that seemed to scorch her very soul, his eyes black with yearning and fierce love.