Page 62 of Secrets of the Heart

Rachel turned her back on him and began folding another nightgown and putting it into the bag.

“I have no lover!” he snapped and strode farther into the room. “What are you doing?”

“I should think it’s obvious.”

“You’re packing?” There was a faint note of panic in his voice. “Where are you going?”

“That is scarcely any of your concern,” Rachel retorted, continuing with her job, not looking at him.

“Dammit! It is very much my concern!” he shot back. “I am your husband!”

“Oh, are you?” Rachel asked with heavy sarcasm, not turning to look at him. “And here I thought you were James Hobson, investigator extraordinaire and illegitimate brother of Michael, Lord Westhampton.”

“Rachel…let me explain.”

“Explain?” She whirled around, fairly vibrating with barely contained fury. “You want to explain? Yes, I rather wish you would! Explain why my husband saw fit to deceive and ridicule me! Did everyone in London know about you and your mistress? Everyone except me, of course! Did you tell all your friends how I was even so horrendously naive and foolish that I actually believed you when you handed me that cock-and-bull story that you were your own bastard brother? Or was that juicy little item something you kept between you and Lilith, so that you could laugh at me and all my foolish—”

She broke off, tears choking her voice, and whipped back around. She refused to let him see that he had brought her to tears. She picked up another bunch of clothes and stuffed them into the bag.

“No! Rachel, my God! I never laughed at you! I never wanted to hurt or ridicule you.”

“Well, you succeeded well enough anyway. Congratulations!”

“Rachel, listen to me….” Michael grasped her shoulders and turned her around, but Rachel jerked away from him, her eyes blazing.

“Don’t touch me! Don’t you dare touch me again. Why did you pretend to—” She broke off again as her treacherous voice thickened. “No. I understand why you lied to me. It was the easiest way to get out of it when I confronted you and…her. And, of course, I was so gullible, such an idiot, that I believed it! But why did you pretend to—to like me? Why did she act as if she were my friend? Do you hate me that much? Are you that cruel?”

“No!” Michael paled as if she had struck him. “God in heaven, no! Rachel, I would never try to hurt you. Lilith is not my mistress!”

“How foolish do you think I am!” Rachel cried.

“You are going to make up some other story now, and you think that I will swallow it, too?”

“I am not making anything up. I swear it! Lilith is my sister. My illegitimate half sister. There is no other sibling, or at least, none that I know of. There is no James Hobson. But Lilith truly is my father’s daughter, born to the daughter of a farmer near one of his friend’s hunting lodge. I did not know of her existence until a few years ago. Rob told me about her. He met her first. He was in love with her, and she told him her story, and he knew that I—There! That’s it! You have seen Sir Robert there. You know he is Lilith’s lover. You cannot believe that he would stand by and let her have another man, as well. Right there, beneath the roof that he paid for?”

Rachel looked at him. His words made sense, she had to admit. She did not know Sir Robert, but he had not struck her as a man who would be inclined to share.

Michael saw her thinking over his words, and he pressed his advantage. “I never intended to tell you that story. Lilith made it up on the spur of the moment, and I—I didn’t know what to do.”

“So you continued to act out the lie?” Rachel asked scornfully.

“Well…yes. All right, obviously it was an idiotic thing to do. She should never have made it up, but she was only trying to help me, to keep you from being angry with me. And I did not deny it. I didn’t know what to do, and once she had said that, it would have seemed even more idiotic if I had denied her words. I took the coward’s way out. I said nothing. I thought it would not matter, that I would never see you again.”

“And what about when you did?” Rachel asked, crossing her arms over her chest and raising her brows at him. “What stopped you then?”

“I—oh, bloody hell!” He swung away, smashing his hand into the wall. “I was a bloody fool! There! I have no other explanation! I…wanted to be with you.”

“You are my husband! You could have been with me at any time,” Rachel pointed out.

“Not in the same way.”

“No, clearly not. Then you would not have had the fun of deceiving me, of wooing me—of making me sick with guilt and remorse, thinking that I was breaking my marriage vows, when all the time…ohhh!” She ground out the last word, swinging around and stalking away. “When I think of the things I did. The things I said. And all the time you were laughing up your sleeve at me!”

“I never laughed at you! My God, do you think I enjoyed deceiving you?”

“It certainly appears so,” Rachel retorted. “You obviously thrive on deception. You have deceived me from the moment we got married. You have had an entire life that I knew absolutely nothing about. You had a sister whom you kept secret from me. You had all these investigations, which you also kept secret from me. Even when that man stopped my carriage to warn you about the danger you were in, you lied to me. You pretended that you did not know who he was or what he was talking about. I was your wife, yet clearly that highwayman knew you better than I did!”

Michael let out a groan, plunging his hands into his hair and tugging at it. “I did not mean any wrong! I never intended to hurt you. I didn’t set out to deceive you. I—it seemed foolish. I would have felt like a braggart, a crowing, swaggering cock o’ the walk trying to impress a girl.”