Page 15 of Obsession: The Unspoken Sin
“Well, what I wasgoingto say was good evening,” he riposted with a teasing wryness.
Just like that, the tension eased from her body. He’d always had that effect on her, and thank God it persisted even now, when she’d asked him here to share something he’d likely already gleaned.
Clasping his arms behind him, Laurence tipped his head back and inhaled the clean night air. “It’s interesting that you should ask to meet me here now.”
Alice stared at him. With his eyes closed, it was all too easy to take in his chiseled features, his strong, nobly cut jaw with a slight cleft in his chin, his sharp cheekbones, and a nose cut like it had been plucked from DaVinci’sMichelangelo, then affixed and brought to life upon this living, breathing man.
Her belly fluttered inside. A thousand butterflies danced in time to the light flicker of his tawny eyebrows. He might’ve been adamant that her feelings for him would go away, but they hadn’t. When she failed to respond, Laurence opened his eyes and looked at her.
Alice cleared her throat. “And why is that?”
“I come here every morning with your brother.”
Her features froze, and her heart stuttered. If she moved wrong, she’d break.
“I didn’t know that,” she whispered, her voice catching.
She came here because this was the place where her family had gathered for the last time before Alice left. It had been Caroline and Winchester’s wedding day. The sun had shownbrightly and they’d all gathered. Laurence had been the best man, teasing and tossing coins in the air. Knowing that not only her brother, but Laurence too, came to this very spot that she herself visited nightly felt like a full-circle moment, as if they’d been inhabiting the same world in the exact same place, but at different times.
“I’ve missed you, Alice.” Laurence’s profession came through the quiet.
Tears formed in her throat.
“I have missed you too,” she said shakily. “I’ve missed you all,” she hastily amended.
How humiliating it would be to admit that she always had and always would carry a torch for him. Alice moved deeper under the protective cover of the white birch’s high canopy of green leaves, sat, and drew her knees up against her chest. She patted the place next to her, inviting Laurence to sit. He joined her on the ground and took up a like pose.
They sat that way, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, and knee to knee. Neither spoke. They just stared out at the same spot where Alice’s brother had fallen in love, a place of happiness and peace, a place of calm.
“You always said I would fall in love,” she murmured.
“And…you did?” Laurence ventured.
There was something dark and unidentifiable underscoring his deeper-than-usual baritone. It was a tone she’d never before heard from him. And one she couldn’t make anything out of. Alice couldn’t bring herself to look at him. She continued staring out. She nodded.
“I thought I did,” she said.
She’d wanted to be loved. She’d wanted to beinlove.
She’d known she couldn’t have Laurence. He’d never see her in that light, and so she turned her gaze elsewhere and tried. She’d even convinced herself she had been in love.
It was secret. It was exciting.
“Obviously, the fact that he insisted it remain clandestine because of his reputation, and his need to build a fortune so that my brother would allow his suit, should have been all the warning I needed,” she murmured. “I think I knew it. I just let myself not heed it. Eventually, he went on to die in a duel, killed by his lover’s husband.”
“And you?” Laurence murmured.
“And I was left ruined in every way.” That whispered admission barely reached her own ears.
Alice remained still. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him. Instead, she suffered and sat in the misery of her own discomfort.
“Laurel is your daughter,” Laurence said quietly.
His wasn’t a question. He spoke with the absolute conviction of one who’d taken one look at Alice’s daughter and deduced her identity. Once again, she tried to see whether he felt disdain, disgust, or shock, but he did a remarkable job of revealing nothing and leaving her to wonder.
A muscle pulsed at the corner of his eye. “And so you exiled yourself and shut your daughter away from all her family and all her future. You consigned her to a gaming hell. Instead of—”
“How dare you?” Alice shot back. She nourished herself with his judgment. It kept her from breaking down and collapsing into a million tears. “How delusional you are. Acting as though I could live openly and freely with an illegitimate daughter and that there’d be absolutely no repercussions for my sister and Caroline and Wynn.”
