Circle of Pearls by Laker Rosalind

Author:Laker, Rosalind [Laker, Rosalind]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2016-01-20T05:00:00+00:00

12

Anne could tell she was about to receive visitors by the footsteps approaching her bedchamber. She was fully dressed and lay propped against cushions on a day-bed in her comfortable room, a good fire blazing in the fireplace. She had never been robust, but she was not ailing unduly during this pregnancy and her original fears of not surviving another childbirth had gone. It suited her that everyone wanted her to rest, because it meant she was able to catch up on her sleep, the lack of which was caused through still longer nocturnal embroidery sessions.

Her maternal instincts had always been strong and she longed for the baby she would hold in her arms. Had someone reminded her that Makepeace was the father she would have been caught off guard, because she had chosen to think of the forthcoming child as Robert’s. She had succeeded in withdrawing her mind from anything that upset her and had reached a point where she could shut herself away with whatever she wanted to believe was true. She had even perfected a way of not quite looking at Makepeace’s face at table or about the house, and at night she slipped into her void completely while he persisted in his fetish of wanting her to gaze on him. She supposed her lowered lashes and the shadows cast by the single candle-flame hid from him the fact that her inner self was never there.

The door opened and Makepeace entered, unaware that the ends of her lashes drooped to make a mist of his face. ‘Anne, my dear.’ He rarely spoke without the familiar endearment, even when he was angry. ‘You are in for a little surprise. The eminent Mr Wren is here and — er — your daughter is back.’

She thought she must collapse with joy. ‘Let them come in!’ she cried.

Then Julia was in the room and rushing to her. ‘Mama! How are you?’

‘I’m well, dearest child! Don’t think otherwise. I’m just being a little lazy, that’s all. Oh, how glad I am to have you home again.’

Then Christopher joined the happy reunion, taking the hand that Anne outstretched to draw him close. Makepeace watched from the other side of the room, knowing himself to be forgotten, shut out from this charmed circle. Never once had Anne looked rapturously at him as she did now at the two arrivals. Not for him the spontaneous outburst of delight or expressed gladness for his presence. He was tortured by jealousy. It seemed to scorch the back of his eyes. His obsessive love for her gave him no peace, and although he had done everything he could think of to concentrate her affections solely towards himself, he had failed. There was one weapon left and he would use it. All along he had hoped it was something she would do by her own wish, showing that her Cavalier husband was forgotten and at last he was first with her, but that had not happened. Now he would make it happen.

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