The Captain's Return. Elizabeth Bailey

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      Chapter Two

      For a few breathless moments, Hal’s poise near deserted him. He had made a dreadful mistake! Was this whey-faced creature—this demure little matron, becapped and respectable—was this his fiery Annabel? She had never been a beauty, but she’d been spirited. She’d had a special magnetism that had haunted his dreams, along with those flashing green eyes.

      Then he realised that they were staring at him in both shock and bewilderment. That there was a gauntness in her cheeks where there had once been bloom. But recognition surfaced just the same. This was Annabel.

      Disappointment thrust at Hal, driving down the guilt, and he was conscious of a craven wish that he had not come. But his scheme—designed to thwart the inevitable defiance of the remembered Annabel—was fairly embarked, and he was as well trapped himself as he had thought to trap his quarry.

      He became aware of the cleric at his elbow, the innocent Mr Hartwell, whom he had suborned into establishing his claim in a bid to make it impossible for Annabel to repudiate him.

      “Mrs Lett is a good deal overcome, sir.”

      An understatement. She was clearly near swooning with shock. There were two females fussing to either side of her, the younger of whom was despatched by the other to fetch a glass of water. He had not intended Hartwell to make so public an exhibition of the affair.

      “I feared that it would prove overwhelming,” he responded, and noted with dismay that Annabel’s silent figure flinched at the sound of his voice. She evidently knew him.

      The vicar’s expression was expectant. It flashed through Hal’s mind that his assumed role demanded more of him. He hesitated. Should he go to her? Would a true husband at this juncture seize her in his arms? He could not bring himself to do it! Not to the female staring at him in so bemused a fashion. He did not even know what to say to her.

      In truth he had not planned beyond the softened presentation by a local man of the cloth. But then it had not occurred to him that he would find so altered a creature in the woman he had loved and wronged. Nor that he would meet with anything other than a rebuff. Hence Mr Hartwell.

      “If Jane will only hurry with that water,” came worriedly from the older female, who was chafing one of Annabel’s hands. “I fear she may faint away, Mr Hartwell!”

      “I never faint.”

      Hal felt his guts go solid. Annabel’s voice was a thread, but he would have known it anywhere. Its clear tone was in his head in too many recollected utterances to be mistaken. Deep inside the stranger he was confronting lurked the woman he had known.

      He knew that it behoved him to consolidate the position he had adopted, but some quality in Annabel’s dull green gaze—it had used to be anything but lacklustre!—made him pause.

      His soldiering instincts came to his rescue. When baulked by the enemy, retreat and regroup. He set his shoulders and summoned a hearty air.

      “Perfectly true. To my knowledge, she never has fainted.” He turned to the vicar. “All the same, I believe it will be best if we withdraw for a space, my dear sir, and allow my wife a little time to recover.”

      Annabel stared after his retreating back. Wife? His wife? She became aware of coolness against her lips.

      “Drink, Annabel.”

      She did so, bringing up a wavering hand to clasp the cool glass. There her fingers encountered Jane’s, bringing her a little more alert.

      “I think I can manage.”

      “Very well, but I will remain close by.”

      The glass came into her full possession and Annabel drank deeply. Her head began to clear. But an odd sensation, as if she were living in a dream, possessed her.

      If she was not asleep, then Hal was here! Hal, whom she had last seen on that fatal night which had shattered her then known life, casting her adrift in this alien sea. Forced to hide her identity under a living lie, that a false cloak of respectability might be cast over the shadowed little creature that was her innocent daughter.

      Hal, whom she had been unable to forget—unable to forgive!—reminded daily by the growing likeness in Rebecca’s face and hair. How had he traced her here? Why had he done so? Foolish question! The answer was in Mr Hartwell’s announcement.

      Murmurs above her head reached vaguely through the cloudy thoughts that roamed her mind.

      “He is so extremely handsome, don’t you think?”

      He had ever been so, and he had changed little—if she had been in any condition to judge. A dashing red-coat, who had returned her deep regard—inexplicably! Many had been her rivals, and no one had been more surprised than Annabel when he had sought her out.

      “And so like Rebecca. There can be no doubt of his being her father.”

      No doubt at all. And so everyone must suppose who saw him. Oh, she was undone indeed!

      A faint protesting sound escaped her, and the two ladies immediately bent towards her.

      “Poor Annabel, are you a little recovered?”

      She turned her eyes on Charlotte Filmer’s anxious features. “I think I shall never recover.”

      “Oh, don’t say so!” exclaimed Jane Emerson. “You are shocked, of course, and have not yet had time to realise—”

      She was cut off with unusual curtness by the gentle Mrs Filmer. “Hush, Miss Emerson! She has time enough for realisation. Dear Annabel, take one little step at a time, I urge you. To be so suddenly re-united with your husband must be a severe disorientation.”

      “Oh, yes, and he clearly saw it,” agreed Jane eagerly. “It shows such delicacy of feeling in Captain Lett to have brought Mr Hartwell to pave the way.”

      Captain Lett! She had forgotten. Hal had come here posing as her husband, revoking her pretended widowhood. She was not ruined, but rather vindicated—but by a further lie. And one which gave him rights he did not have!

      Abruptly, the implications of his action leaped into her mind. A surge of warmth overtook her as a memory—long thrust away as too painful to be contemplated—burst into life.

      That little summerhouse! She had gone there, dragged by his impatient hand, only to indulge in a quarrel so empassioned that the deep-seated emotions that had bound them together had flamed, disastrously consuming them both.

      Annabel had not blamed him for it, though he had bitterly condemned himself. She had been as much at fault, had owned as much to Papa. Only—

      Her chest locked as the long-buried hurt rushed up to taunt her. Only Captain Henry Colton, in whom she had believed so implicitly, had failed her. And now—more than three years too late!—he dared to return in a mockery of that role he should rightly СКАЧАТЬ