‘I am glad to see you are not so enamoured of Edward Carlyle that you have forgotten your husband altogether, Laura.’ His voice was soft, but his eyes were knowingly chiding.
Without the handkerchief covering his mouth, there was no denying the familiarity of that deep voice, and Laura’s dazed mind finally accepted that her husband was really and truly alive. ‘But—but I thought you were dead,’ she whispered.
‘Clearly,’ he bit back with biting sarcasm.
‘But—Edward and I are to marry shortly. We are officially betrothed.’
‘Not any longer. You are married to me,’ Lucas reminded her harshly, ‘and nothing can change that.’ His jaw hardened and his anger increased as he suddenly realised she might have feelings for Carlyle. The mere notion that this might be so, that his grieving wife had been consorting with a man he despised while he had been in chains, forced to endure two mortal years of frozen limbs, the stink of the grave clinging to him day and night, of crawling vermin and rotten scraps of food his jailers supplied him with, made him livid.
‘Are you not happy to see me?’ he asked.
For what seemed an eternity, Laura stared up at the incredibly handsome, virile man who had imposed himself in her life again. His face was leaner than she remembered, though still proud and arrogant and stamped with ruthlessness, and there was an implacable authority in the strong jawline, and cold determination in the thrust of his chin. There was a time when she had thought his eyes as gentle as a summer breeze, but now she could see they were cold and unyielding, and as uninviting as south Atlantic ice floes, eyes without softness, without kindness or understanding. How did she feel about him? She didn’t know.
His gaze was narrow and assessing. Laura’s hand crept to her throat. The low cut of her bodice embarrassed her, despite the previous intimacies that had passed between them. ‘For-forgive me,’ she stammered. ‘I am shocked—justifiably so. My feelings are so confused.’
‘I can see your sorrow for my alleged demise has not prevented you from enjoying yourself,’ Lucas remarked with scathing sarcasm. ‘You look anything but a grieving widow. Since you can hardly convincingly throw yourself into my arms and weep tears of joy for my resurrection from the dead while wearing another man’s ring—a man I would cheerfully consign to rot in hell—you will have to think of something else to appease my anger towards you and win my forgiveness.’
Unable to control her mounting anguish and anger, Laura looked at him as if he were the devil. ‘Win your forgiveness?’ she burst out furiously. ‘I have no intention of trying to win anything from you. I have lived alone too long—two years—just in case you need reminding, and I do not do anything on anyone’s instruction. Whatever I do I do on my own initiative.’
‘Not any more,’ he ground out, looming over her, his gaze a frigid blast. He was caught somewhere between fury, amazement and admiration for her defiant courage. Short of murdering her, which would solve nothing, he was at a loss as to how to deal with her, and, although strangling her held a certain appeal at that moment, it was out of the question.
‘Henceforth things will be different,’ he went on coldly. ‘A husband has every right to govern his wife’s activities. You will do as I say. You will bend to my will, or I will break you to it. Do you understand me? I don’t give a damn how you choose to have it. I consider your antics to have overstepped the bounds of respectability, when I find you gallivanting about the countryside with a blackguard and unchaperoned at the dead of night. It infuriates me to find you on the most intimate terms of friendship with a man I have every reason to despise. Just how long did it take for Carlyle to step in—to steal my estate, my money…and my wife?’
Two years ago Laura would have quaked in her shoes and been reduced to tears on being spoken to so harshly, but now, infuriated by her errant husband’s imperious tone, full-bodied, fortifying rage brought her a step closer to him. She couldn’t recall ever being so furious.
‘Edward has not stolen anything, and my behaviour has never been anything other than proper. You have no excuse for accusing me of light conduct, and a chaperon was unnecessary since Edward and I are affianced. If you desire any further information as to my dealings with Edward—or anyone else, for that matter—I shall be happy to supply it. Your insults are absolutely unprovoked. How dare you? Of all the detestable, hypocritical, arrogant things I have been accused of, that is the worst.’ With blazing eyes she paused briefly to draw an infuriated breath.
‘How could you? How could you do that—to let me believe you were dead? Don’t you know what you did to me? After that one letter you wrote to me, telling me you were coming home, there was not a sound, sight or communication from you,’ she said, with such feeling that Lucas looked mildly stunned at her. ‘I was told you were dead. I was told that your ship had been captured by pirates and everyone on board killed—everyone, that is, but one man, who survived and made it to England and reported what had happened. I believed that.’
Laura had received a letter Lucas had sent from France two months after his departure, telling her he was to sail from Le Havre to Portsmouth on a fishing vessel called the Pelican. He had asked her to meet him in Portsmouth. From there they were to travel to London, and after spending time with friends and family they would return to Cornwall. Laura had done as he requested.
It was almost two weeks before news had reached her that the wreckage of the Pelican had been washed up on the French coast. Only one man had survived. He had been on board the Pelican when she had been attacked by an unknown source—pirates, he said. Suspecting what was about to happen, he had thrown himself into the sea and witnessed with his own eyes how everyone on board was killed and thrown into the water, before the pirates had removed the cargo and scuppered the boat. He had been picked up by a passing vessel and had returned to England to tell the tale.
‘Can you imagine what it has been like for me,’ she went on irately, ‘or did I rank so low in your esteem that you couldn’t even be bothered to think of me at all, let alone write to let me know you were still alive?’
‘That is not so.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ she flared. In her anger the image of a beautiful woman with pale blonde hair and laughing dark eyes intruded upon her mind, and she was in no doubt that it would have been this particular lady who would have occupied his thoughts. The thought that he might have dreamed of possessing her as he had possessed Laura on their wedding night, perhaps murmuring words of love he had never addressed to her… Jealousy combined with the rage already searing her heart tormented her with the flames of hell and was almost too painful to bear.
‘Obviously you considered me an unimportant matter,’ she went on. ‘I seem to recall I was something of a nuisance—an irritating encumbrance, a responsibility you acquired when my father insisted upon you marrying me when you compromised me so disgracefully. Did you find me so excruciatingly pitiful and naïve, and despise me so much, that you decided to disappear to escape that pathetic creature you would never have looked at twice—had your brain not been so fogged with liquor that you made the mistake of abducting me instead of the lady you so obviously desired? But whatever the reasons were for your silence, Lucas, I was still your wife, whom you promised to love and honour, and I deserved better.’
The gaze that fell on Laura was blank and then Lucas frowned slightly, as if puzzled by what she had said. ‘Contrary to what you believe, Laura, I desired no other woman—not then, not now. There are some things about those weeks before our marriage you cannot possibly understand, although in time I will explain everything.’ At the tragic look in her eyes, cynical humour softened his features, and his firm, sensual lips quirked in a derisive smile. Gently he tipped her chin
