Lori Wilde - There Goes The Bride (33 page)

“Well?” James Robert prompted. “Just who the fuck are you, Fayrene Doggett?”

His rough language made her cringe, but she reveled in it. Ah, there it was. The anger. The emotion that meant he still cared, that he hadn’t given up on her completely. “I was born the daughter of carnival workers,” she began, and it hurt so much to say those words she thought her lips must have cracked.

“Carnies?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

James Robert snorted and dragged a palm down his face. “That explains your violent hatred of carnivals. I always wondered about it.”

His response seemed so incongruous to Honey that she almost laughed. Except nothing was funny.

“So how did you get from there to here?” he asked, anger growing in his eyes. A chill chased over her, raised goose bumps on her arms.

“We moved in caravans from town to town. It was a rough life. My parents were essentially grifters, con artists. I was forced to pickpocket and beg for money. From the time I was very small, I dreamed of a better world. I would cut pictures from magazines and paste them in a scrapbook. I promised myself one day I would escape. I would become a great lady. I would live in a beautiful house and have a loving family and lots and lots of money. Everything would be perfect and then I could finally be happy,” she said.

Tears pressed at the back of her eyelids, but she blinked them back. After so many years of disciplined self-control, she had no idea how to just let them fall. How to show her vulnerability to the man she loved more than life, but had never been able to share her true self with.

Her mind scalded with the thought of all she’d hidden from him. She felt strangled, weighted down, burdened by her lies. A great hopelessness washed over her. How could she ever expect him to forgive her? How could she ever forgive herself for cheating them of the closeness they could have had?

But if he’d known you were from carny stock, you’d never have had a chance with him at all.

Her husband stared at her, unmoving, hands clenched atop his thighs. She could see him processing what she had told him, trying to understand. But he could never really understand. His life had been blessed from the beginning. Charmed. James Robert had no idea what it took to crawl up from the gutter.

Nervously, she cleared her throat. This was a good sign, right? That he was even hearing her out. That he hadn’t already thrown her from the house?

“I never even finished high school,” Honey admitted. “My parents never stayed in one place long enough. But wherever we went, I found the local library and I read and read and read. Reading was my escape from reality. The safe haven I ran to when things got ugly. I took the GED when I turned seventeen and scored one hundred percent on the test.”

Her hands trembled. She was afraid to look him in the eyes, but she couldn’t stand not knowing what was in his eyes. The look on James Robert’s face was empty, unmoving. Honey’s soul ached. He hadn’t thrown her out yet, but the potential was there.

“My father had a heart attack that same year.” She smoothed her fingers over the skirt of her dress, ironing out wrinkles that weren’t there. “We were in Philadelphia then and my mother couldn’t handle it. Her drinking spiraled, she started dating a really rough character and dabbled with drugs. They fought all the time.” Honey swallowed. She had blocked the details from her mind so long ago. It was difficult to call them up again. “It was ugly. I tried to get my mother to leave him, but she was too deep into alcoholism to drag herself out, and I was terrified her boyfriend was going to turn his violent temper on me if I stayed. So I ran away.”

Guilt and shame suffused her as the truth spilled out of her. She told him all the things she should have told him years and years ago. She talked and talked and talked and when she was done, she sank back against her expensive leather couch, drained and exhausted.

She peeked over at James Robert, who hadn’t moved a muscle during her recitation. She wanted him to take her in his arms, kiss her gently, and tell her it was all right. The past was over, and he loved her no matter who she was. But she couldn’t hope for that. She didn’t deserve his forgiveness.

“I’m sorry you suffered,” James Robert said, but his tone was devoid of emotion. He sounded flat, dead inside.

Honey lifted her chin. Always the fighter, always the survivor. Never give up, never surrender. He didn’t ask her what happened next, but she told him anyway. “I survived. I went to a homeless shelter and they got me a job as a live-in companion taking care of a wealthy elderly woman with Alzheimer’s, who’d been a recluse for years.”

“Abigail Montgomery,” James Robert said.

“Yes. She had no immediate family left. Her only child, a daughter named Honey, had died years before in a skiing accident in the Alps.”

“So when did you decide to assume the daughter’s identity?” He spit out the words. His jaw muscles clenched tight.

“It was never a conscious decision. She’d call me by her daughter’s name and when I tried to correct her, she’d get upset. It was easier to humor her and let her call me Honey. In the beginning Abigail had her lucid days where she was more lucid than others, and even when she wasn’t lucid about the present, she still remembered her debutante days. She taught me the ways of high society. How to speak. How to act. Proper etiquette. The right way to do things. She was lonely and enjoyed my company.”

Honey stared off into the distance, remembering who she used to be and the path she’d taken to become who she was now. “As Abigail’s condition worsened, she started calling me Honey all the time. She’d kept her daughter’s clothes and gave them to me to wear. It was easy to pretend I was her daughter, who’d been living abroad for some years and had returned home to care for my ailing mother. It took little effort to fool the boy who delivered the groceries or the mailman or the local pharmacist. Remember, by this time, I was walking the walk and talking the talk of a woman raised in the lap of luxury.”

“And Abigail,” James Robert said, “because of her condition and her lack of immediate family, was no longer active in her social circle. I’m guessing her friends had long ago abandoned her, so it made it easier for you to pretend. There was no one to ferret you out as a fraud.”

“That’s right.”

His gaze hardened. “So you formed a plan to become Honey Montgomery, and you started trolling the University of Pennsylvania campus, looking for a rich husband. You knew Abigail’s gravy train wouldn’t last forever.”

“No, no,” Honey denied. “It wasn’t like that. On the one day I had off from caring for Abigail, I took a class at the university. I was interested in an education, not getting married. Marriage was the last thing on my mind.”

“I find that hard to believe.” His eyes were cold, unfeeling. “Coming from a liar like you.”

Real fear pushed bile into her throat. She curled her fingernails into her palms. She was losing him. He wasn’t going to forgive her. But she couldn’t fault him. She’d done an unforgivable thing.

“And the day I met you?”

She sat up straighter. “That was the day I killed Fayrene Doggett, and Honey Montgomery was resurrected from the grave. I knew that a man like you, from a rich, successful family, could never love a common carny pickpocket like me. I became what you needed me to be, James Robert.”

“I guess you’re pretty lucky Abigail Montgomery died when she did, or you wouldn’t have been able to fool me for long. If we’d stayed in Philadelphia, I would have eventually found out the truth. Unless, that is, you killed her.”

Honey gasped as if he’d slapped her. “Do you actually believe that of me?”

“How would I know? I have no idea who you really are.”

“I’m not capable of murder.” Her voice quivered, half with anger, half with fear.

“I didn’t think you were capable of lying and cheating your way into marriage, either, but apparently I was wrong. I always knew you were one determined woman. That you never let anything stand in your way. It was one of the things I admired most about you.” He gave a rough, humorless laugh.

“I’m not denying that Abigail’s death, two weeks after we met, made my deception much easier. And the fact she left me a small inheritance gave credence to my story that medical bills and bad investments had wiped out the family fortune.”

Honey felt the familiar ache of loss and loneliness deep within her heart, a void that plunged straight through to her soul. A single tear slid down her cheek. Wet and hot. She didn’t swipe it away, just allowed it to roll until it dried at her chin.

“You tricked me into marriage. You were the one who insisted on a quick elopement.” Resentment was etched into every corner of her husband’s face, and she couldn’t think badly of him for it. He had every right to his resentment, his anger, his hatred for her and what she had done.

“I did it only because I loved you so much,” she murmured.

He made a harsh, unforgiving noise. “You irrevocably altered the course of my life, without my knowledge, without my permission. You cheated me.”

“Please,” she begged for his understanding, even though Honey Montgomery Cartwright never begged. “I couldn’t bear the thought of living without you, and I knew if you found out who I really was, your family would pressure you to dump me.”

“You’re probably right about that.” His eyes were cold as flint, the look in them striking her through the heart. The gulf between them loomed impossibly wide. And she realized there was no bridging this canyon. There was no going back.

“And you would have done it because you had a hard time standing up to your family, James Robert.”

“Just like Delaney does,” he said.

The mention of their daughter’s name brought them out of their muddled past and back into the room, back to the reality that their daughter had been kidnapped from the chapel on her wedding day. Honey wanted to reach over and touch her husband’s hand, but she was so terrified he’d shake off her comfort. She couldn’t bear that.

“You’ve lived in fear all these years. That the world was going to discover your dark secret. That’s why you were so insistent on things being perfect. That’s why you pushed the girls the way you did. Everyone was watching. You couldn’t risk a misstep, nor could your children.”

“Yes,” Honey admitted.

“Lying turned you into something you’re not, into someone you’re not. I’ve watched you change over the years, and I never understood why you did the things you did. At times I felt like you were doing your best to push me away.”

Her husband was right. She had pushed him away with her demands of perfection. She’d known she was pushing him away, forsaking intimacy for secrecy. Honey thought of all the love she’d missed, all the joy she’d negated. In her desperate need to forsake her past, she’d hopelessly maimed her future.

Despair seized her. Turned her inside out as the world as she knew it flipped upside down. And nothing would ever be the same again.

“And now,” she whispered, “I’m being blackmailed by my own mother. She saw my picture with Delaney in
Society Bride
and demanded twenty thousand dollars or she was going to the police. I paid her off.”

James Robert got up from the couch.

“Where are you going?” Honey asked, nervously lacing her fingers together.

“To phone the police.”

Terror gripped her. “You can’t. If you call the police everyone will find out about me.”

He stared at her. “Keeping your secret is more important than our daughter’s life?”

“No, no, of course not. It’s just that I’m sure my mother is behind this kidnapping. She won’t hurt Delaney. We can pay her off and still keep things quiet.”

Hatred flared in his eyes. “Good God, woman, you can’t keep living this lie. It’s over. Everything is over.”

Honey closed her eyes. He was right. She’d been hiding and lying for so long, her values had gotten completely screwed up. Her eyes flew open. Mentally, she braced herself. “Call them.”

James Robert reached for the phone at exactly the same moment it rang. He picked it up. “Hello.”

Honey sank her teeth into her bottom lip.

“Evan,” James Robert said on a sharp intake of breath.

Hand splayed over her chest, she got to her feet and went to stand beside her husband. He had a short, one-sided conversation with Evan that she couldn’t decipher, then he hung up and turned to look at her.

“Delaney left Evan a note.”

Honey blinked. “A note.”

James Robert pursed his lips and glared at her. Honey felt his rage all the way to her bone marrow. “I guess it was a good thing you didn’t let me call the cops.”

She frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“Seems our daughter was desperate to get out of the marriage, but because of you and your inflexible demand for perfection, she had no idea how to tell us she didn’t want to marry Evan. Congratulations, you officially pushed her over the edge.”

Misery lay like granite in Honey’s stomach. “What are you saying?”

“Delaney hired someone to take her hostage.”

Nick had been in a car accident racing to rescue her. He could be hurt. He could have been killed.

Delaney felt a shock of fear and dread unlike anything she’d ever experienced before. The white-hot pain of sorrow rocketed into her heart, so intense she thought she was going to be sick.