Free A Companion for Life by Cari Hislop Page A

ability to shine. Carrying them over to
the bed Penryth stood near her feet and held them out like a peace
offering. “You dropped your bracelets.” It was an inane statement;
the clasps could not come undone without human assistance. He, the
giver, had been symbolically thrown to the floor in disgust. The
loss of Lily’s good opinion made his swollen lip tremble as he
crawled onto the bed next to her. “May I help you put them back
on?” Her reply was to roll over onto her stomach tucking her arms
underneath her. “I’m sorry Lily. That hussy only came to hurt you
because I was swine; she hurt you to hurt me.” Admiring her lower
spine as it curved into her generous bottom he reached out and
lovingly caressed the lowest point in the curve. “Say
something!”

    “Don’t touch me.” Feeling rejected he
withdrew his hand. He could almost hear hell laughing as demons
clawed at his chest.

    “What did she say?” He cringed at his sharp
tone. His wife was going to think him a tyrant as well as a
philandering cad. “Lily…” He tried to exhale his panic. “…why did
you throw my bracelets on the ground?”

    “I don’t want them.”

    His lips hovered over her hair not daring to
land. “Lily…what did that spiteful hussy say? You can’t lie there
looking like…”

    “Like a whale?”

    “O Mam bach! Did that heartless cow call you
a whale? Is that what she said?”

    The inert body suddenly trembled. “I’m a fat
fool; your kindness, your kisses…they meant nothing.”

    “Twt lol! I swear it isn’t true.”
    “How could you kiss me like that when you
knew you were going to visit her? I thought Rosamund’s humiliations
unbearable…I wish I was dead.”

    “Don’t say that Lily. I didn’t go because I
wanted to kiss her. I went because…” Penryth pressed his face into
her hair in horror at having to admit the truth.

    “Because you have needs and I’m too fat to
fill them.”

    “That spiteful cow!” She burst into tears
widening the portal to hell. “It isn’t true! Lily, you’re bruised
and in pain…I’m not heartless.” Her angry sobs didn’t sound
convinced. “Lily, the truth is…” He lightly caressed her hair
without a response. Feeling emboldened his cheek landed on her
shoulder. “The truth is I made love to her and pretended she was
you. It was very wrong of me and I feel awful. I shouldn’t have
gone. I wish I hadn’t.”

    “I thought you were good and kind.”

    “It was a mistake; a stupid mistake.”

    “Marrying you was a mistake.”

    “Don’t say that Lily!” He pressed his lips
against her hair. “I need your smile.” He put his arm around her.
“Lily please don’t be angry with me…”

    “Don’t touch me.”

    He reluctantly ended all contact. “Our
marriage isn’t a mistake. Having you in my house makes me feel warm
and content. Melisande was just a warm body.”

    Rolling onto her side, her brown eyes blew a
frigid north easterly wind into his soul. “I know you married me
out of pity Mr Bowen, but I thought you’d have the courtesy not to
discuss my shame with your mistress. That’s all I expected, nothing
more.”

    “I didn’t tell her anything, she
guessed.”

    “How could she guess that you haven’t bed
your wife?”

    Penryth closed his eyes to escape the cold
glare. “She knew I wasn’t making love to her, she was guessing who
it might be and she deduced correctly that it was you, but that’s
over. I swear I’ll never see her again; I’d rather hang
myself.”

    His wife rolled back onto her stomach. “Do
as you please. It’s none of my business.”

    Penryth squashed an impulse to forcibly roll
her over and kiss away her cold words, but the ice was already
settling in the hellish ache in his chest. Reaching out he fingered
the orange frizzy hair draping her shoulder. He felt flattened by
melancholy as if that morning he hadn’t been the happiest man in
the world. Melisande’s sneering words repeated in his