Helen Dickson Read Online Free Page A

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 therage 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