Addicted (35 page)

“Regardless, you still betrayed me.”

“It was about protecting Anais and the babe. It was never about you.”

“Where is the child?”

“Safe.”

“Where is she?” Lindsay roared.

“If you think you can stride in here and destroy everything I
have worked hard to make right, then you are utterly mad. I will not let you simply take the babe from my brother and his wife. I will not let you harm that babe’s reputation, nor Anais’s. You’re too late, Raeburn, to claim your paternal rights. You should have done that months ago. You should have been enough of a man to offer marriage after you took her virginity in a goddamned stable. If you had, then none of this would be happening now.”

Lindsay shoved aside the niggling of guilt that pierced through his considerable anger. He did not need to explain himself to Broughton. He knew he had not intended to leave Anais with child. It had always been his plan to wed her—he’d never have spilled his seed in her if he had only been out to slake his lust. No, he was guilty of many things, but never of defiling Anais and leaving her to suffer alone.

“I will ask only once more, where is the child?”

“I am expecting company this evening. I’m afraid I will have to ask you to leave, Raeburn.”

“The hell you will dismiss me like I’m a bloody servant. You think this is a little matter you can sweep under the carpet? Well, I assure you, I won’t be going away.”

“What the devil is going on?”

Lindsay swung around and saw Robert Middleton standing in the doorway of the study. Middleton looked between Broughton and Lindsay. The ashen color of Middleton’s cheeks made Lindsay realize that Robert knew exactly what was going on between Broughton and him.

“I have come for my daughter,” Lindsay said in an utterly cold and demanding voice. A feminine sob sliced the taut quiet and Lindsay’s gaze narrowed as he saw Margaret Middleton cling to
her husband’s arm. “Tell me where she is before I tear this house apart.”

“I’m not sure what you think—”

“I know you have taken my daughter from me,” Lindsay thundered. “I know you have given her your name. I also know that she will not spend another night in this house. Now, get out of my way.”

Shouldering past Middleton and his sobbing wife, Lindsay stalked across the hall and reached for the banister. Taking the stairs two at a time, he climbed the steps in pursuit of the nursery, heedless of the sounds of Broughton’s threats and Robert Middleton’s wife’s cries of despair.

“You cannot come into my home and threaten me, Raeburn,” Broughton called from the hall. “Furthermore, you cannot just search my home on a whim.”

“Watch me,” Lindsay grunted.

“He’s going to take her away, isn’t he?” Margaret Middleton sobbed into her lace handkerchief. “He’s going to take my baby.”

“Hush now, Margaret,” Robert whispered. “Hush now.”

“Get down here this second, Raeburn!”

He heard the pounding of Garrett’s boots on the stairs behind him, and he curled his fingers into fists at his sides. “Sod you.”

“Send the servants below stairs,” Robert ordered Broughton, “the less they hear the better. Margaret, compose yourself. Raeburn, a minute, if you please.”

Lindsay ignored Robert’s demand and instead headed down the hall, counting the doors, knowing the nursery was coming closer with every hurried step. In the end he needn’t have bothered to count, for the nursery door opened and an anxious-looking maid peeked out at him. She tried to close the door in
his face, but he reached for the latch at the same time Robert Middleton clasped his wrist, stilling him from entering.

“A moment if you please, Raeburn.”

Unable to look at the man who was fathering his daughter, Lindsay instead made a grunt deep in his throat as he looked at the toe of his boot.

“The child is innocent. I hope you have not come up here in anger.”

“I have not come to hurt the child. Have you come up here to prevent me from seeing her?”

Robert released his hold and stepped back. “No, I have not. You have every right to see the babe. I trust, however, for the babe’s sake that we can keep our voices down and prevent the servants from overhearing us. It is not my pride or yours that concerns me now. It is the child’s future I am worried about.”

“My anger is under control, Robert. You have my word I will do nothing to undermine the future of the babe. I only want some time alone with her.”

Robert nodded. “I understand. You only have to ring if you need something.”

“What I need is for you to keep Broughton and Anais away from me. I cannot imagine she will be stupid enough to follow me here, but she is desperate and desperation calls for many things. While my anger is under control now, I fear it will erupt if I have to face the two of them before I am ready. I know that I am to blame for much of this, my poor choices in life have got us here. But I am only human, Robert, and right now, right or wrong, I am livid with both of them. This punishment they have sentenced me with is, in my opinion, disproportionate to my crimes.”

“Raeburn, understand—”

“I ask for your understanding, Robert. Put yourself in my place. The woman you have loved your whole life has your child without your knowledge, she gives that child away to another man to raise, and you find out when it is too late to do anything about it. Tell me, how would you feel?”

Robert looked away and glanced down the stairs. “You are right. It is any man’s nightmare. But my wife, she’s distraught. You will have a care for her feelings also, won’t you?”

Lindsay allowed himself to see the woman who stood at the bottom of the stairs, clutching her handkerchief to her bosom. Her eyes were bright with tears, and when she saw him looking down at her, she burst into shrieking cries. He had left Anais looking much like this, crying and weeping.

What did they see, he wondered as the anger slowly left when they looked at him. A monster? A crazed lunatic?

What did he see looming before him?

Margaret Middleton looked up at him through her tears, and he realized what he saw. Finality. Resignation. The anger that had ruled him in Broughton’s study was gone, replaced by a haunting sense that he was looking at the end before it had really started. It was made all the more unbearable when he finally acknowledged that he had played a significant part in this painful tableau.

He watched Margaret as he addressed her husband. “I will be mindful of her feelings, but she has to realize—”

“I realize, Raeburn, even if my wife does not. I can only begin to fathom your shock and your pain. When you are ready, come to me, I will tell you what I can. For now, go and see her and know that you shall have all the time you need.” Robert
reached for the latch. “Molly, you may come out, if you please, and retire for the night.”

The young maid peeked around the door and stepped cautiously out, dropping a curtsy and trying valiantly not to look bewildered before she stepped between them and vaulted down the stairs.

“Take your time, Raeburn.”

Robert turned and strode down the stairs, catching his wife in his arms and hugging her to his chest. “It is all right, love, she will be safe with him. Give him a chance, love, that is all he wants.”

Looking away from Robert and his sobbing wife, Lindsay opened the door. What was he doing? He knew nothing of infants. Had never even held one. But this was his child—his daughter.

He stepped into the room that was bathed in rose light from the pink glass oil lamp that sat atop a table in the corner of the room. Beside the table was a rocking chair, with a set of knitting needles attached to a half-completed pink baby blanket that rested atop the chair cushion. A rosewood cradle with ivory lace curtains draped over the frame sat beside the chair. In the opposite corner, a bed was pressed against the wall.

Silently Lindsay took a step forward and his heart faltered with nervousness and uncertainty. What would he see lying in the bassinette? What would he say? He almost turned to leave until he heard a soft whimper and saw a swath of white lace peek out from beneath a mountain of blankets. His heart began beating again—a mad, frantic pace. He took another step and peeked down, searching through the layers of silk and lace to the plump, pink cheeks that were nestled lovingly in the Broughton family linens.

With shaking fingers he pulled back the corner of the blanket and saw what he had created with Anais.

Tears stung his eyes and he pressed his fingers to his lids, stemming the tears that sprung up with urgency. Such beauty. Such innocent wonder. Tears spilled freely from his eyes as he looked down at the sleeping baby, and he could not keep from staring at her or stem his tears. His arms ached to hold his daughter and his heart felt as if it were breaking into a million little pieces because she did not know him.

22

“May I get her for you?”

Lindsay straightened and saw Margaret Middleton standing in the doorway. She was still clutching her square of Nottingham lace, but she had composed herself and only the faintest sound of a distant hiccup remained. He tried to speak, but it came out as a harsh and strangled “please.”

Margaret stepped into the room and padded softly across the carpet until she was standing over the cradle. With an ease that amazed him, she swooped down and lifted his daughter from the silk linens, covering her pink cheeks with butterfly kisses and murmured endearments that came naturally to a mother’s lips. And then she turned and presented him with a sleeping cherub—an angel he could not take his eyes off of.

Margaret placed his daughter in his arms and he continued to stare down at the babe in wonder. A life. He had created a life!

His gaze, blurry, roved over her chubby cheeks and red bow mouth, hungrily cataloging her features, embedding them for eternity in his mind. Margaret removed the lace bonnet that
shielded the babe’s head and he sank, almost unthinking, onto the chair.

Beautiful black curls, which were in the image of him, covered her small, round head. The profoundness of what he was seeing stunned him and his arms began to tremble as the full realization of what he was seeing began to sink in.

“Call if you need me. She may need to be fed,” Margaret said, running her fingers through the babe’s locks. As she did, the child stirred and opened one eye that was edged with long, sooty lashes, and then she looked up at him, seeing him—
her father—
for the first time.

“Her name?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.

“Mina is her name, my lord. Anais named her. We did not change it.”

“Mina,” he repeated.

Margaret left, closing the door so that a sliver of light from the oil lamp in the hall filtered into the nursery. He looked down at the sleeping bundle in his arms and marveled at the beauty—the perfection of his daughter.

She squirmed in his arms and he saw her pink little toes curl when they met the cold air. He smiled, such perfect little toes, all five of them. He counted her fingers next—all there. His hand, large and tanned, ran over the silky curls. She pressed her cheek into his arm and he felt her heat sear him through his linen shirt.

She had his dark hair, his lashes, and from the glimpse he had, she bore his eyes, as well. But the shape of her face, a perfect oval, was her mother’s. She had Anais’s cheeks. Anais’s lovely mouth and proud chin. He kissed her chin, feeling the softest of fluttering against his cheek—baby’s breath. There was
nothing sweeter than the feel of an innocent child’s breath against one’s cheek—nothing more wondrous than knowing that the baby was your own flesh and blood.

Mina stretched against him, yawning widely and throwing her arms up wide alongside her head. He laughed through his tears and reached for her little fist and brought it to his mouth, kissing her with such love he thought he would die of it. “You will consume me, little Mina, just as your mother has.”

She yawned again and he released her hand, allowing his fingers to trace the delicate blue veins on her wrist. His blood. Anais’s blood. The blood that now swam in Mina’s veins.

He looked down at his child and squeezed her to him. Mina was a beautiful visual of his love for Anais. It was out of love that Mina had been born. But Anais had not wanted that love—the life they had created.

But he wanted it. God, how he wanted this child. He closed his eyes and brought her to his chest, not caring that his movements were awkward and stiff. This was his child. This was his right.

He rose from the chair and walked to the bed. Reclining, he brought Mina’s chest to his chest, and he slipped her inside the opening of his shirt so that she was lying against his skin and she could hear his heart beating beneath her ear. He hugged her and cupped her head in his palm, loving her as she breathed her innocent baby’s breath against his chest.

“She never gave us a chance—gave
me
a chance,” he said to his sleeping daughter. “She never allowed me the opportunity to show you how very well I could love you—how well I could love you both. I could have stopped. If only I had known, Mina. I
would have been a good husband and a good papa. If only I’d known…”

The sound of pounding feet on the stairs made his arms tense. Instinctively he held Mina tighter to his chest. Feminine weeping echoed along the walls, and he braced himself to see Anais—to see the woman he had loved so desperately; the woman who had betrayed him so mercilessly.

She appeared in the door, the warm light from the oil lamp illuminated her from behind, and her golden curls, which were spilling from her coiffure, glistened like a halo around her head. At one time he thought of her as an angel; now he could not even bring himself to look at her.

Heavy silence made the atmosphere taut, and he did nothing to relieve the obvious strain she was feeling. He did not comfort her as she sagged against the door and wept. Instead, he looked down at his sleeping daughter and willed himself to maintain some semblance of calm.

“Your revenge upon me has been complete, Anais,” he said, his voice hoarse with pent-up emotion. “I trust you are well-satisfied with the events. We are even now, are we not? I have broken your heart, and you have destroyed mine.”