The Wronged Wife by Margaret Brazear

Author:Margaret Brazear [Brazear, Margaret]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781500228477
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Createspace
Published: 2014-05-31T16:00:00+00:00

Madeleine was so exhausted at supper she very nearly fell asleep eating it. Alice came and helped her to bed and she smiled and curtsied to Philippa, but still had no good word or sign of respect for Richard. All he got from her was a scowl.

"It seems I will never have her forgiveness either," he remarked.

"Either?" Philippa asked.

"I mean I will never have the forgiveness of either of you."

She stared at him in silence for a few moments, his words having irked her again.

"Did I miss the part where you asked for forgiveness, Richard?" She said, that anger brimming to the surface again. "In the years since you left here, did you never once think you might have made a mistake? Did you never once think you might be wrong?" He shook his head. "I can almost understand how the shock and anger could make you behave as you did, but you had seven years to think about it, to realise there had to be another explanation."

"I did not want to think about it," he answered. "I shut it out of my mind. It was the only way I could function."

"Did you read the letter I wrote you, telling you what happened? Did my words mean nothing?"

"Philippa, what can I say?" He reached across the table and held her hand. "By the time that letter arrived I was thinking you would have written straight away had you been innocent. I had no way of knowing you were so ill, that you could not write." He paused for a moment, then shook his head before he went on. "That letter made me even angrier if you really want the truth. I thought you were besmirching Stephen's name for your own ends; I could not believe my brother could be a rapist."

Snatching her hand away she leapt to her feet. She glared at him, as though wanting her eyes to stab knives into him, and struggled to get the words out through a massive ache in her throat, through unshed tears which brimmed and threatened to crease her lips and halt her tongue.

"But you had no problem believing that your wife, who adored the very dirt beneath your feet, could be unfaithful to you!" She shouted. "You had no problem believing that bedding another man was easy, because I was so passionate?" Her voice rose almost to a shriek and she struggled to control it, afraid that Madeleine would hear. "You had no problem believing me to be a whore who would give herself to the first man who would have her!"

"Philippa, please..."

He still sat, looking up at her, desperately wanting to go to her, to hold her in his arms, to comfort her, but afraid of making things worse.

"When I was waiting for your return," she interrupted him, "I thought about how I would tell you, and one of the worst things for me was that I knew you would be hurt. I would have done almost anything to avert

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