Read Online Nicola Cornick, Margaret McPhee, et al by Christmas Wedding Belles - Free Book Online

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corner of the room. Lucinda’s hair tumbled down to her shoulders, sticking out
from its pins in charming blonde disarray. Daniel smiled.
    ‘That’s better.’
    Lucinda made a noise like an enraged kitten and beat her fists
against his chest.
    ‘Beast! Hateful, lying, deceitful, manipulative, traitorous beast!’
    Daniel laughed out loud. ‘Don’t hold back, Lucinda!’
    ‘I hate you! You ruined my life once before, and now you have
ruined me ! I detest you!’ Her voice broke. To his amazement, Daniel
realised that she was on the very edge of tears, his indomitable Lucinda. He
had never, ever seen her cry—not even when her pet slow-worm had died when she
was thirteen.
    His hands gentled on her shoulders. He felt a huge wave of
remorse, sobering him, humbling him. He got into—and out of—situations like
this every day of his life, but Lucinda did not. In his careless, selfish
disdain for her feelings and her future he had indeed ruined her.
    ‘I am sorry,’ he said slowly.
    Her eyes were very bright with unshed tears as she looked down at
him.
    ‘Why did you do it?’
    Daniel shrugged uncomfortably. ‘It wasn’t supposed to be like
this. We weren’t supposed to be locked up. I thought that Chance would believe
me. My plan was for him to back down and apologise, and for everyone to
congratulate us, and then we would simply walk out of there—’
    ‘And you would walk out of my life. Again. Leaving me to
explain—again—the disappearance of my fiancé.’
    There was a silence.
    ‘Something like that,’ Daniel admitted.
    Lucinda straightened, moving away from him. Daniel swung his legs
over the side of the bed and sat next to her. They were in a hastily converted
office on the first floor of Woodbridge Gaol, detained at His Majesty’s
pleasure whilst Owen Chance sent to Shropshire for urgent confirmation of Mr
Jackson Raleigh’s identity. The door was locked, and a soldier was on guard at
the end of the corridor. The Riding Officer had been apologetic but firm.
Clearly he had not thought he could consign to the filthy cells a couple who
might just possibly be all that they seemed—outraged gentry caught up in a case
of mistaken identity. Even so, their situation was not a comfortable one. The
room had one pallet bed, a desk, a wooden chair, a bucket, and that was all.
    Daniel could not see Lucinda’s face. The unruly strands of hair
that he had released now masked her expression from him.
    ‘You have never cared about anyone else in your life,’ she said
slowly. ‘It is all of a piece.’
    When he did not reply she glanced sideways at him.
    ‘Why do you not answer?’
    Daniel shook his head. He felt cold within. ‘I have no defence
against your words. You are correct. I thought only of myself and how I might
escape.’
    ‘You abandoned me without a word when I was seventeen,’ Lucinda
continued. ‘Tonight I almost forgot all of that, and was nearly seduced into
caring for you all over again. But you—you care for no one but yourself,
Daniel. You always have and you always will.’
    Daniel made an abrupt movement of pain and frustrated rage. Until
recently he had been his own sternest critic. Sometimes in the dark hours he
struggled with his guilt, but that fight was his alone and he never spoke of
it. That had changed when Lucinda had burst into his life again. She had
confronted him and made him face up to the hurt he had dealt her in the past.
And now he had hurt her all over again.
    ‘Why did you not denounce me?’ he said now. ‘Why did you lie to
save me? Why did you not tell them at once that I was using you?’
    She shot him a look from her very blue eyes. A tinge of colour touched
her cheek. She caught her lush lower lip between her teeth.
    ‘Because I find that I am not as ruthless as you.’ She knitted
her fingers together. ‘I did not want to see you hang.’
    ‘Thank you.’
    She glared at him. ‘Oh, I wanted to denounce you for ruining
me. Don’t mistake me. It is