Page 32 of A Lady's Heart Deceived
They were walking side by side. A small child was held in the man’s arms, while two older children trailed behind them. The heavily pregnant woman leaned in and spoke to her partner. The man laughed. There was a comforting familiarity about the exchange. It spoke of a long, loving relationship.
As they drew closer, Maggie narrowed her eyes. Her whole focus was now on the man. On the familiar features. On that winning, charming smile. She could hear his laughter carrying on the light wind.
Maggie stopped dead in the street, unable to take another step.
“What is it? What is wrong? Maggie?” said Piers, reaching for her arm.
“It’s Robert.”
Her legs buckled from under her.
Chapter Twenty
When she came to, Maggie found herself staring up into Piers’s dark brown eyes. They were two pools of deep worry.
“Thank God. For a moment there I thought you had expired on the spot.”
She tried to sit up, but her woozy head quickly put paid to those plans, and she settled back carefully onto the pavement.
“Steady. Just rest for a minute longer. Let yourself come fully awake.”
Blinking, she tried to recall what had been going through her mind the moment before everything went black. “What happened?”
“You fainted, Maggie. I managed to catch you as you fell.”
I fainted.
She had never passed out before. The anxiety attacks had always made her giddy and light-headed, but not enough to lose consciousness. “I don’t understand,” she murmured.
And then it all came rushing back. The couple. The gaggle of happy children.
Him.
Piers had dropped to the stone pavement beside her and was cradling Maggie in his arms. A small crowd was gathered around them, strangers all staring down at her. No doubt they were wondering why the well-dressed young woman was lying on her back in the middle of the footpath.
“Please make them go away. This is all too embarrassing,” she whispered, clutching the lapel of his coat. She needed something, someone steady to hold onto.
He lifted his head and nodded at the onlookers. “Thank you for your kind concern, but please — give my wife and me a moment to handle this matter in private. She will soon be well enough for us to continue on our way home.”
Maggie hid her face in the front of Piers’s coat waiting until the last of the gathering had dispersed. The only concession to her public embarrassment was the fact that she was in Coventry, and no one apart from Piers and his family knew her. Or her family.
That’s not true. Robert knows who you are.
He had to have seen her fall. To have heard the small cry she let out as she collapsed.
Piers shifted his weight and struggled to his feet. He hauled Maggie upright, staggering back as he took her weight. She fell against him. Her legs felt like they were made of jelly.
“You saw him, didn’t you? I mean, he wasn’t a ghost,” she said.
“I heard you say Robert just before you dropped. But I was too busy stopping you from dashing your head against the stone path to have time to look around.”
The crowd of onlookers had moved on, going about their business. No doubt they were all talking about the lady in the blue gown who had collapsed in the street, giving their own opinions as to what could have been the cause of her distress.
Robert and his family were nowhere to be seen.
A gust of icy wind raced up the street, and a shivering Maggie pressed herself against Piers. “I can’t believe he is still alive. That he would fake his own death. How could a man do such a dishonorable thing?”
“I don’t know, but I swear I will get to the bottom of this. The blackguard will pay for what he has done to you. There is nothing he could possibly say that would make any of this right. You have suffered the worst of torture at the hands of that selfish cad.”
