Addicted (36 page)

She flew from the door to stand beside the bed in a whirl of blue satin. Her eyes were puffy and red-rimmed, as if she had been sobbing for hours. “I didn’t plan it this way.”

“How could you?” He reached for her wrist and brought her forward so that she could see Mina lying against him. “How could you have done this to me—to us—to our daughter? How could you not love her enough to fight for her?”

A strangled gasp whispered past Anais’s lips, and Lindsay
saw how she stared at their daughter as if she were seeing Mina for the first time. Anais’s trembling hand reached out to touch the babe, but she snatched it back as if she were afraid to touch her.

“You don’t understand, Lindsay….” Anais’s voice trailed off as Mina began to squirm against him. “I never meant for any of this to happen. You weren’t supposed to find out—”

“And that’s what hurts so damned much—that you would deliberately hide this baby from me. I have rights, Anais, but you took those away from me. You never gave me a chance.”

“My pride ruined everything,” she whispered. “Had I not allowed my vanity to rule my mind I would not have had to make this choice. But I was so angry with you and hurt. I wasn’t thinking rationally. I was thinking only with my heart, and it was broken into a thousand pieces after I found you with Rebecca. But despite that, I knew if I saw you again, I would be just as much in danger as I ever was—for I knew I loved you, despite everything that Garrett had told me, despite what I had seen. I didn’t want that, Lindsay. I didn’t want to be weak. I didn’t want you to think that you could do anything you wanted and I would always be there waiting for you, ready to take you back. I didn’t…” She choked on a sob and brushed the back of her hand across her eyes, wiping away her tears. “I feared you would think you could always placate me with a smile and an empty compliment.”

She sobbed a loud, choking sound that seemed to come from some well deep inside her. “Oh, God, I never wanted to have to make up excuses for you the way you made up excuses for your father. I didn’t want you to think that the words
I’m sorry
would be enough.”

“So you wanted to punish me.”

“In the beginning my pride was wounded. I felt betrayed and used and a part of me did want you to suffer. I know that it is childish, but God help me, it was never my intent to make you suffer like this. But that is all in the past, we cannot change the past.”

“So you allowed your pride to destroy us?” He looked up at her expectantly and she crumpled to the ground, weeping. He felt the urge to cup her face in his hand and brush her tears away with his thumbs as if he could make everything all right with a soft touch and a whispered word.

“Yes, I suppose you’re right. I allowed my pride and anger to ruin everything we had—everything we might have had. I have no justification for my actions, only that I feared that I could so easily become your mother and that you would be like your father. I didn’t want that, you see, to be someone you thought you could walk all over. I wanted to be strong, to prove to myself that I was strong.”

She rose from her knees and placed her shaking hand along her midriff. “I know you will not believe me, but it is the truth that I never meant to deny you your child.”

“I no longer know what to believe,” he mumbled. “I only know that what I have truly longed for is no longer mine.” She nodded and turned away from him. When she reached for the door, he called, “You will not run away again, Anais, not before I have the answers to all my questions. Be waiting when I come to find you.”

“I do owe you that much, do I not?” She looked over her shoulder at him and he saw her gaze slip down to Mina, who
remained contented in his arms. “Perhaps one day you will begin to see things from where I stand, Lindsay. Perhaps one day, you will understand and you will forgive me. We, both of us, have failings. I have forgiven you. Will you not forgive me?”

New Year’s Day passed very quietly at Eden Park. Lord Weatherby spent the day recovering from his drunkenness while everyone else in the house seemed to lounge about on settees, reading and napping and generally attempting to recover from the Christmas festivities. Lindsay’s whereabouts remained unknown and Anais worried for him—fearing that perhaps he was indulging in behavior that was not good for him. Herself, she had decided it prudent not to join the rest of the family below stairs, fearing an unexpected meeting with Lindsay.

For the next two days, Anais kept herself hidden inside her chamber, lest she come face-to-face with Lindsay. The truth was, she was terrified to see him. No one knew what sort of mood he would be in, and she feared she would only make his demeanor more foul if he were to set eyes on her.

Feeling stifled and confined after two days of solitude, Anais reached for the shawl that was draped over her window bench and left her chamber. It was late, nearly midnight, and the house had long settled down for the night. The lure of a quiet walk through the halls called to her if for nothing other than a change of view, and perhaps a clearing of her increasingly anxious thoughts.

Anais padded down the stairs and headed to the ballroom where she intended to slip through the French doors and out onto the balcony to look at the stars in the cold night air. She wanted to clear her head, to formulate a plan or at least some
semblance of an explanation of her actions for when Lindsay came to call upon her.

He had left her stewing in her juices, making her contemplate and worry over when he would come for his answers. But he had not come, and it had left her feeling befuddled. She had even sought him out in his private den, fully prepared to discover him smoking opium. But he had not been there.

Striding to the terrace doors, Anais felt a gust of frigid air swirl beneath her gown. It was then that she noticed the doors were already partially opened. Wrapping her paisley shawl about her shoulders, Anais reached for the latch and peered up at the full moon and the smoky clouds. Another gust of wind rose up, causing snow to swirl in circles along the terrace floor.

Shivering, Anais let her gaze drop from the sky as she gathered the woolen shawl tighter around her. As she reached to swing the door closed, she saw Lindsay standing alone at the balustrade with his back to her, his ungloved hands gripping the icy stone.

How lonely and bereft he looked standing alone with his head bent. How her heart ached to see him this way, to know that she, and she alone, was the cause of his misery.

The wind howled and the air billowed in, lifting her shawl from her shoulders and carrying it outside on the breeze. The wool tangled between Lindsay’s legs and he bent down to retrieve it. He looked back, and before she could escape his notice, he pinned her with his gaze. He said nothing, but held the shawl out to her. Stepping quietly onto the terrace, she reached for it, whispering her thanks as she flung it around her shoulders.

“You should go back inside,” he muttered, turning from her. “It’s cold tonight.”

She stood behind him, watching his shoulders tense further beneath his black evening jacket. How she wished she could reach out and touch him, to run her hand along his back. She once would have thought nothing of doing such a thing. And now things were so very different between them.

“I’ve been looking for you.”

“Oh?”

“Your valet says you have not been home these past two days.”

“I did not wish to be found.”

“I was worried.”

“You needn’t have bothered.”

“The opium—”

“Is no longer your concern. I know your feelings about it. And you know mine.”

Which meant he was still using it. In all likelihood he was probably under its influence even now. She wanted to beg him to stop, but what right had she to ask anything of him, especially now?

“We have received word from my aunt,” she said awkwardly as she twined her fingers around the fringe of her shawl. “She is sending us a carriage. It should arrive within a sennight to take us back to London.”

“Make certain your father is ready for travel. There is no need to leave before his health permits it.”

Silence stretched on and Anais struggled to find the words to tell him what he wanted to know. Why wouldn’t he ask her?

Unable to find the words needed to start the conversation, she took a step back, her boot heel sliding against the stone. His shoulders tensed at the sound, and he looked back at her, his face etched with fatigue.

“I can go no longer not knowing. What were your thoughts when you first discovered you were carrying my child?” he asked quietly.

Anais gripped the wool shawl tighter, as if it were a shield. How she dreaded this conversation, despite the fact she wished for nothing more than getting it over and done with. What a coward she was.

“Did you weep when you realized you were with child?”

“Yes.” He would know if she lied. He had always expected the truth from her and she had failed him miserably these past weeks. She could not fail him now.

“What was it like, having a part of me inside you?”

The pain in his voice whipped at her flesh, stinging her. These were not the questions she had expected from him. She found she could not answer them. She could not bear to think of when she was pregnant, let alone talk of it. The memory of carrying Lindsay’s child alone was enough to bear without having to feel those emotions all over again.

“Did you hate the babe, Anais? Did you wish to rid yourself of your shameful secret?”

She reached out a trembling hand to him, but dropped it and looked away from his set shoulders. No, she had never wished anything to happen to the child. She had loved their babe and it had nearly killed her to let their daughter go to another. But he could not see beyond his own pain to understand her turmoil. And she suspected that he would not be able to for a long while.

“What was it like?” he asked again when she didn’t answer him. “Could you feel her growing, moving inside you?”

Anais’s eyes welled with hot tears as her lips trembled with barely controlled sobs. “Yes.”

He lowered his head and exhaled. “Did you ever think I might have wanted to do the same?”

The wind rose up again and Anais’s eyes blurred and stung in the cold. The blustery air stung her cheeks as the crystal drops trickled from her eyes, freezing the tears onto her skin.

“I would have given my soul to watch you grow round with my babe. I would have been awed and humbled by the life we had created and the changes in your body. I would have whispered to her that I loved her, that I wanted her.”

She was biting her lips now, trying to stem the flow of tears and the flood of pain. The full realization of what she had done hit her full force. How would she ever make amends for what she had done to him? How would this horrible pain, this hurtful betrayal, ever subside for him? What kind of a selfish, prideful creature had she become?

“Did you know that I was looking for you, here and in London?”

“Yes.” There was no point in lying now. Her secrets were out.

“But you purposely hid from me. Why?”

“I did not want to hear your excuses. I was heartbroken that you chose the opium over me, that you could so easily mistake another woman for me, especially after what we had shared in the stable. You destroyed my belief in you, Lindsay.”

He nodded. “I know I did, and I am sorry, Anais.”

“My pride was pricked. My heart broken. I sought to lash out in the only way I knew how, and that was to hide from you. I was afraid that if I saw you again, I would weaken. I…I’ve never
had the strength to deny you, Lindsay, and I knew that if you asked for forgiveness I would grant it.”

“And France? Please tell me that was not a lie. Tell me that you did go there. That I was not a fool…”

“I did not think you cared enough to follow. I…just wanted a reprieve from you, from hearing your voice in my father’s study.”

“You sent me on a wild-goose chase,” he said, shaking his head. “You were never even there.”

“I didn’t think you would follow—”

“Why? Because I didn’t want you? Because you thought I had gotten what I wanted out of you and couldn’t be bothered to find you? What did you think my visits were about, Anais—all those demands to find you? What did you think when I looked you in the eye after I had made you mine and told you that we were going to be man and wife?”

“I thought them lies, just opium-induced dreams that I couldn’t allow myself to believe in.”

“So, you said you were going to France hoping to gain what?”

“A few weeks to think. Some time away from you. I knew that if you thought I had left, you wouldn’t come by. I would be free of you, at least until I had figured out what to do. I truly believed that once you discovered that I had left for France, that you would leave for London.”

“You thought to punish me.”

Anais looked down at the swirling snow on the stones. “Yes,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

“You said you didn’t know you were with child, was that the truth?”

“When I came up with the idea to say I had gone abroad, I
did not know about the babe. I discovered the truth later, but by then it was too late. You had already left, and no one knew where you were, or when you would return.”

“I cannot believe you didn’t think I would follow you to France. The minute I learned you had left for the continent, I went to find you—I
had
to find you.”

She felt sick at the thought of Lindsay searching through Paris for her. What a fool she had been. What a prideful, vain idiot she was.

“You must know, Lindsay, that I loved the baby,” she said through trembling lips. “From the moment I discovered I was carrying your child, I loved it. I wept for it, knowing that its life would be filled with shame and scandal.”

“It didn’t have to be.”

Anais looked away, ashamed, her heart breaking and crumbling the longer she looked at him.

“Tell me about the day our daughter was born,” he asked, his voice cracking with emotion. “The details of that event have plagued me for days.”

She wanted to tell him, to reach out and enfold him in her arms. She wanted to take in his warmth through her cold limbs, but she stayed where she was and allowed the words to fall softly from her lips.