Helen Dickson Read Online Free Page B

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 up. ‘Why, my poor little wife, what is it? Are you telling me that you missed me after all?’
    To her consternation and fury, Laura felt her cheeks grow hot. Angrily she slapped his hand away. ‘I am not telling you anything of the sort. At least have the decency to explain to me where you have been for the past two years—and why you are cavorting about the county as a highwayman, robbing unsuspecting travellers of their valuables. How ridiculous that is! And what was the reason for that charade a moment ago? Tell me!’
    ‘Trust me. I know exactly what I am doing, and why I am doing it.’
    ‘Then let us dispense with this conversation and go and tell Edward who you are, before that accomplice of yours shoots him.’
    Lucas’s fingers closed cruelly on her upper arm as she swung round and began to walk away. He spun her round to face him. ‘Do not,’ her husband said in a terrible voice, ‘even consider doing that. Defy me on this, and in my present unreasonable mood nothing would give me greater satisfaction than to make you regret it. You will yearn for the kindness I showed you before I made you my wife. When Carlyle leaves you tonight you will send him packing and not receive him again under my roof under any circumstances—ever.’
    ‘I can’t do that,’ Laura argued stubbornly. ‘It would not do. I must explain to him—’
    ‘You will do as I say.’ Lucas’s silken voice promised dire consequences should she choose to disobey him. ‘You will not tell him who I am. For the time being my identity must remain a secret. No one must know that I am alive and here in Cornwall. Do you understand me, Laura?’
    The threat of violence lessened her courage and made her feel helpless as she looked into his wrath-filled face. There was an undeniable aura of restrained power and forcefulness about him—gathering force, no doubt to be unleashed on her later, she thought bitterly. Tears of frustration stung her eyes and she nodded, swallowing a hard lump that had risen in her throat. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.
    Satisfied that she was adequately chastened, Lucas softened and he released his hold on her arm. He stood gazing down at the tempestuous face upturned to his, seeing the blur of tears in her large eyes, so deep a blue as to be almost purple. His breath caught in his throat, for even to the most reluctant eye Laura’s beauty could not be ignored.
    Lucas was unable to believe that this provocatively lovely, regal, glamorous and bewitching young woman was his wife, whose sweetness he had kept fresh and alive during his incarceration in his vermin-infested cell. Her skin shone with a healthy lustre, and the angles of girlhood had been replaced by a supple slenderness. Her once underdeveloped breasts were now swollen to two glorious globes that strained the bodice of her gown. In his mind time rolled back, and this lovely creature with glossy black curls spilling over her bare shoulders blended into an enchanting, frightened and bewildered girl, who would never have dared stand up to him like a proudly enraged goddess as she was doing now.
    Reluctant admiration swelled in his heart, but unfortunately it only made him angrier because that shy, innocent girl he had married had grown into a spirited, forthright, beautiful young woman in his absence, and had turned to his enemy for comfort. For the first time in his life he experienced an acute feeling of irrepressible jealousy which twisted his gut and caught him completely off guard. It was a feeling he found decidedly unpleasant.
    Reminding himself that while he had been rotting in a French prison Laura had been growing into a ravishing beauty and setting Cornwall by its ear with the likes of Edward Carlyle, he hardened his jaw and coldly rejected the memory of how she had last