Chrissie was so utterly shaken by that explanation that she collapsed back down onto the sofa , her legs weak and her heart suddenly thumping very hard inside her chest. ‘Are you telling me that you got...hurt?’
‘I was the lucky one.’ Jaul grimaced. ‘I survived while everyone with me was killed. I was thrown clear of the wreckage but I suffered serious head and spinal injuries and I was in a coma for months.’
In the early days of his vanishing act, Chrissie had feared that Jaul had met with an accident, only to discount that as virtual wishful thinking when time had worn on and there had still been no word from him. Nausea now shimmied sickly through her stomach and she felt almost light-headed at the shock of what he had just told her.
‘But nobody told me anything. Nobody even contacted me. Why did nobody tell me what had happened to you?’ she asked weakly, struggling to comprehend such an inexcusable omission.
‘Very few people knew. My father put a news blackout on my condition. He was afraid that my injuries would provoke a popular backlash against Dheya and the refugees. In reality what happened to me was a horrible accident and not an uncommon event on the edge of a war zone,’ he pointed out with a sardonic twist of his lips. ‘I was still in a coma when my father came to see you in Oxford—’
‘You were hurt, you needed me...and yet your father didn’t tell me!’ Chrissie registered with rising incredulity and anger. ‘Obviously he didn’t want me to know what had happened to you but I was your wife! I had every right to be with you.’
‘Don’t forget that my father didn’t accept that we were legally married. I had only informed him of our marriage the night before my trip to the camps and he was very angry with both of us.’#p#分页标题#e##p#分页标题#e#
‘But you were still in a coma when he came to see me,’ she reminded him, her eyes darkening with disgust when she considered that aspect. ‘Your father actually took advantage of the fact that you were unconscious. How low can a man sink?’
Lean dark, startlingly handsome features grim, his dark eyes sparking gold at that challenge, Jaul breathed curtly, ‘He was trying to protect me, but I do not and never will condone his interference.’
‘Oh, that’s good to know!’ Chrissie countered with biting sarcasm. ‘He kept your wife away from you when you needed her—very protective, I don’t think!’
Jaul was tempted to remind her that his father had offered her money to walk away from their relationship and forget she had ever known him and that after that meeting with his father she had agreed to do exactly that. But now that he knew that she had been pregnant and had given birth to his children, he saw the past in a very different light. She would very much have needed that money to survive as a single parent and he could no longer condemn the choice she had made.
‘So, you were in a coma,’ Chrissie recounted stiffly, mastering her raging rancour over his father’s behaviour with the greatest of difficulty because she knew that insulting the older man would only cloud and confuse more important issues. ‘When did you come out of it?’
‘Only after three months when they had almost given up hope. I didn’t remember you at first. I didn’t remember much of anything,’ Jaul admitted heavily. ‘I’d had a serious head injury and I was in a very confused state of mind with only fragments of memory all jumbled up inside my head. My memories returned slowly. My father told me that he had seen you and given you the money. He also reiterated his belief that our marriage was invalid and informed me that you would not be coming to visit me.’
Chrissie had turned pale as white paper because rage was storming through her in an almost uncontrollable surge. Had she known that Jaul was in hospital, nothing would have kept her from his side! But while he had lain in that hospital bed, his father had manipulated the situation and played on her ignorance of the accident to destroy a marriage he had abhorred. How could even the most loving son deem that a ‘protective’ act? King Lut’s interference had been wicked, indefensible and cruelly selfish. The effort of restraining the hot temper and hostility mounting inside her made Chrissie feel sick.
‘I hate your father for what he did to us!’ she snapped back at Jaul in a small, tight explosion of raw emotion that could not be suppressed. ‘He intentionally wrecked our marriage and yet you still can’t find the words to condemn him. There you were...needing me and he made sure that I was put out of the picture. How can you forgive that?’