Forever My Love(59)
Both Sackville and Mira stared at him as if they hadn't quite heard what he had said. Then Sackville turned to the woman at his side, his blue eyes faintly dazed. "You told him?"
She forced herself to meet his gaze, feeling like a traitor, wanting to crawl away in shame and regret. "I'm so sorry," she whispered.
"I trusted you!" Sackville said in a rasping voice, his face heavily lined with encroaching pain. "I know you did. I… I don't know what to say—" "She didn't want to tell me," Alec broke in quietly. "I forced her to."
Sackville did not spare Falkner a glance. He continued to stare at Mira, his face contorting, his breathing irregular. "You told him. You promised you wouldn't tell anyone. You knew how important it was to me that no one know. After all I've done to help you, after taking you in instead of throwing you back out in the streets…" His voice had a queer, papery sound. "Disloyal… lying… You're not good enough for me to… to walk upon. You've unmanned me. By God, I should kill you."Mira flinched and dropped her head. On the carpet she saw the shadow of his arm lifted to strike her. She could not move as she watched the shadow begin to fall. Closing her eyes, she waited during that split second for the blow to land and the pain that woud ensue.
In a swift movement Alec grabbed Sackville's wrist. His teeth gritted as he exerted the force necessary to counter the power of Sackville's intended blow. Alec was amazed at the strength of Sackville's bulky arm and the momentum that had already gathered behind the meaty fist.
"My God," Alec said, his hand biting into the thick wrist as he stared at Sackville's trembling fist. "You would strike a woman in such a way… do you know how much you could have hurt her? She's only a small…" His gray eyes were filled with a combination of compassion, wonder, and untrammeled fury "You could have…".He broke off, his eyes flicker ing to Mira's downbent head and the delicate structure of her jaw. For a moment Alec felt a dry tightness in his throat and he could not speak.
Mira lifted her eyes to his. "How could you?" she asked, her voice shaking. "I never should have told you… but never dreamed that you would use it against him…" Her voice trailed into nothingness and she could not keep the hurt and anger from her face as she looked at him.
The charade was over.
What a threesome we make, she thought wretchedly I betrayed Sackville by telling his secret to Alec, Alec betrayed me by breaking the confidence I had given to him. And Sackville betrayed us both… forcing me to help him lie to everyone… yes, and he taunted Alec because he sensed what existed between the two of us
"I am unmanned," Sackville whispered, his voice cracking with strain and confusion. "No one was sup-sed to know. I am ruined." The locked gaze be-tween Alec and Mira was broken as they looked at the oder man. Sackville looked bewildered, frightened, Had something in his mind snapped? "I'll get him a drink," Alec said tersely, shoving Sackville down into a chair. "Leave, Mira. I'll deal with you later."
Mira fled the room without a thought as to what direction her feet were taking. She ran out the front door and flew down the steps… toward the woods, where there were no people, no poisonous words, no art. Only peace and blessed aloneness. She needed a place to heal, a place to rest.
As her feet crunched on the gravel drive, Mira stopped in sudden confusion. She found that she stood in the shadow of a newly arrived carriage. Horses' feet stomped impatiently as luggage was unloaded from the vehicle by well-dressed footmen. A tall man with familiar gold-streaked hair faced away from her as he spoke to the wigged coachman. One of the footmen helped a woman out from the carriage, and Mira real-lized that she had unknowingly stumbled into the woman's path. Somehow she already knew who it was. Trembling with a sense of unreality, Mira stared at the woman's face and met a pair of violet-blue eyes that could have belonged only to one person. Her heart seemed to stop.
It was only now that she fully realized what Rosalie Berkeley had been to her—a sister, a friend… perhaps in some ways even a mother. Rosalie had been so very different from her—open and easy to read, vulnerable and loving. Rosalie needed people and was unafraid to show it, encouraging them to need her with the same openness. Even Guillaume had been charmed by her, as much as he had been capable of being charmed. Rosalie was the kind of woman that seemed incapable of harboring an unkind thought about anyone. Rosalie was everything that Mira had longed to be.
She had remembered Rosalie as a girl of unusual prettiness, quick to smile, quicker still to blush, her face serene, her manner unpolished and artless. But the slender woman in front of her was strikingly beautiful, a glamorous creature who radiated both confidence and self-possession. She wore a gown of sea-green and white silk, with puffed sleeves showing through oversleeves of gauze. The bodice was green, the skirt pure white. Her rich brown hair was pulled back with gauze ribbons to reveal a perfect oval face with cheekbones that had not been so well-defined five years ago. Rosalie looked more womanly and sophisticated,.| yet still the innate sweetness shone on her face as she tried to suppress gathering tears.