escape you. And look!” She turned and gracefully swept her arm in a full arc, taking in the empty room. “Gone again!”
“Why are you here?” Nella asked, stepping forward so she could clearly see Blanche’s face. There was something vile in the way she looked at Nella.
“I came to confront you. I came to make sure you understand that I know what you did.”
“And what is it you are accusing me of having done?”
“You know what you did, you bitch. You stole James away from me.”
“I did not,” Nella said. “I saved him from you.”
“I’m carrying his child!”
Nella felt as though she’d just been thrown from a high cliff. The pain she experienced was unlike anything she’d ever suffered before.
“And if I don’t believe you?”
“Oh, but you do. You know it’s not only possible. It’s probable. It’s true. James would never have married you if he hadn’t been tricked into it. And you will have to live with what you did for the rest of your life. You will have to live with the fact that you ruined any possibility for James to ever be happy.”
Nella tried not to let Blanche see how much her words upset her but it was impossible. The pain was too raw. Her words too true. She would have to live with what she’d done to James her whole life.
“Can he even bear to make love to you? Or has he spared himself the embarrassment of looking at your ungainly body?”
Blanche continued to taunt Nella with a snide expression on her face. “I daresay, if he has lain with you, he leaves your bed before dawn. I’m sure he spares himself the horror of having to look into your face first thing every morning.”
Nella felt her courage shrinking. She could not listen to much more of Blanche’s insults. “Why are you doing this? Why have you come to rail at me?”
“Because I want you to know what is going to happen to your husband’s babe. It is too late to get rid of the bastard or that would have been my first choice. So, I’m going to go far away to have it. Then, I’m going to leave it in the first back alley I come to. I want you to know that it’s your fault your husband’s child will grow up alone, unloved, and in squalor. I want you to live with the knowledge that your selfish action has ruined your husband’s life and the life of his child.”
“You mustn’t!” Nella cried.
“Oh must I not? And who, pray tell, would want to raise the little bastard. You?” She hurled the words at Nella.
Nella recoiled. “I…I…”
Blanche gave a vile laugh. “The only way the child survives is if you take it and leave James. Forever.”
“But I…”
Blanche drew a small note from her reticule. “This is where I will be in seven months. If you want to rescue the babe, you’ll be there. You’ll take the babe and then leave England.”
Nella gasped.
Blanche threw the note to the floor and swept across the room to the door.
“It’s on your ugly head now.”
And she was gone.
Nella retrieve the note. A scant line of scribbles spread across the face of the letter.
Bellingshire House, Windermere
She sat unmoving for a long while after the front door had closed and the sounds of Blanche’s carriage crunched away from Colworth Abbey. She sat even after the maid came to take the untouched tea tray. She sat long after luncheon was served and went uneaten.
What had she done?
And worse, how could she live with what she’d done?
~■~
James finished his business as quickly as he could. He was anxious to get back to Nella. Something was wrong but he had no idea what it was that could be making her ill.
He rode out of Town, but first he took the time to stop at his aunt’s home.
“Come in, James,” his aunt said when he entered her suite of rooms on the first floor.
James went across the room and held his aunt’s hands in his. “Hello, Aunt.”
“I’d heard you were in Town and so hoped you would stop by before you left. Did your wife accompany you?”
James shook his head. “We just hosted a two-week house party and she preferred to stay in the country and rest.”
“Please, sit down.”
James sat in the chair beside his aunt.
“How is your wife? I’ve often thought of the two of you.”
James sat forward in his chair. “That’s the main reason I’ve come to see you.”
A worried frown covered his aunt’s