Free A Chance Encounter by Mary Balogh Page A

cynically.
    â€œYou could have had it all, could you not, Elizabeth, had you only waited a little while?” he said. “You must have felt that fate had dealt you a treacherous blow. But you have made your choice, ma’am, and you must live by it. You will stay away from William Mainwaring. Do I make myself understood?”
    His words had thawed some of the numbness that seemed to grip Elizabeth’s heart. “Remove your hands from me, my lord,” she said calmly. “I have nothing to say to you, now or ever. I had never thought to hate anyone. But I believe I do hate you.”
    They stared at each other for a long moment, each cold and unyielding. Finally his hands dropped and she turned to go back the way they had come.
    â€œLet us continue with our walk,” he said stiffly. “You are flushed and breathless. I do not doubt that I still have the mark of your hand on my face. It would not do for us to be seen in the near future.”
    They walked side by side, coming around at the back of the hill, and climbed the slope to join the other group, which was still at the top, sitting on the grass admiring the view.

CHAPTER 5

    S he was listening to her father again, her father without his usual gruff manner, hesitant, troubled, almost apologetic, telling her. After all the agony and uncertainty that had gone before, she finally knew the worst.
    â€œNo!” she was saying. “Please, no!”
    â€œI’m sorry, Lizzie,” he said. “I can think of no way to soften the blow. Eventually you will realize that you are well out of it, of course, but...”
    His voice trailed away when he realized that she was not listening. She rocked back and forth on the chair, her hands spread over her face, trying desperately to shut out the truth, to blot out reality, life.
    â€œNo!” she moaned over and over. “Please, no. It can’t be true. No! Oh, God, no!”
    John was there, though she had a feeling suddenly that it was a few days later.
    â€œElizabeth,” he pleaded, kneeling on the floor in front of her and trying to look into her face, “You must pull out of it, love. You have not eaten for days.”
    â€œNo,” she moaned.
    â€œHe is a scoundrel, Elizabeth,” he said angrily. “You must tell yourself that over and over again. Let me hear you.”
    â€œNo,” she replied, her hands before her weary face again. “No. No. No. Robert!”
    She screamed the name and clawed at the arms of the chair as she pulled herself upright, gasping for air. John had disappeared. Everything had disappeared. She stared wildly into the darkness, heart thumping loudly, hands gripping bunches of the bedcovers. It took her several seconds to realize that she was in her bedroom at the Rowes’.
    Elizabeth slumped back against the pillows and closed her eyes. She put her hands, palm downward, on the bed beside her and concentrated on breathing slowly and evenly. The old nightmare! She had thought she was over them. But, of course, the reappearance of Robert in her life was bound to revive some of the old pain. It would pass again, she told herself soothingly, unconsciously assuming for herself the role that John had played for several weeks six years before.
    She would not think about it anymore tonight. She must think of something more pleasant. Elizabeth knew from experience that if she tried to divert her thoughts entirely from that episode in her life, she would fail utterly. She must relive some pleasant memory, before things went bad. She set herself deliberately to recalling the evening when Robert had first told her about his grandmother, his mother's mother.
    â€œShe lives in Devonshire most of the time,” he had explained. “We used to see her once a year when Papa would send us down there for a duty visit. At least, Tom used to come for the first few years. Then I suppose he felt himself too old, so I used to go alone, with a