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Chapter One
The choice was a simple one, Anna Traverne reflected dismally: agree to become Graham's mistress, or starve.
If she had only herself to consider, she would choose starvation with scarcely any hesitation, but there was Chelsea, too. In the end Anna knew that mother love would prove stronger than pride, morality, or physical revulsion. She simply could not allow her five-year-old daughter to be thrown with her into a cold and uncaring world when it was within her power to prevent it.
But the idea of lying with her brother-in-law, of suffering his hands on her person and his body invading hers, made her physically sick.
"Dear God, please help me find some way out of this mess." As a clergyman's daughter, she naturally turned to prayer when she was desperate, but Anna uttered this one without much hope. Lately God hadn't seemed particularly interested in listening to so insignificant a being as herself, so the whisper was more an automatic response to her upbringing than a heartfelt plea for divine intervention. She had prayed so much and so hard during the last harrowing hours of her husband's life that she now seemed to be incapable of sincere prayer. She had broken down completely at his funeral. Since then, her emotions had been muted. She had not felt anything -- not hatred, or fear, or love, or even grief -- very intensely.It was as if a cold gray fog had fallen over her life.
Six months now she had been a widow and the last three of those, at Graham's insistence had been spent in England. From the moment she had first set foot again in Gordon Hall, Graham had been after her. At first he'd been subtle, and she'd hoped she wasmistaking the motivation behind his overly enthusiastic kisses and squeezes. After all, she was the new widow of his younger brother, his only sibling. Perhaps lavishing caresses on his brother's relic was how he dealt with his grief. But even as she had tried to convince herself of that, Anna had suspected differently. She'd known Graham too long, and too well, to truly believe it.
Graham had wanted her from the time the three of them were children together. Wanted her, not loved her. Paul had loved her, despite the fact that she was only the daughter of the local vicar, when he and Graham were the sons of the rich and powerful Lord Ridley. And she had loved Paul in return. They were the same age, their birthdays only one month apart, and from childhood he had been her dearest friend. Marriage had only slightly altered their relationship. Theirs had been a union, full of mutual affection and respect, and devoidof surprises on either side, so well had they known each other. Anna had fully expected it to endure, and ripen, over the course of their natural lives. Then, at the unbelievably young age of twenty-four, Paul had died. With his death her life, and Chelsea's, had shattered like fine glass.
Unlike the bull-like Graham, Paul had been slender, with a pale complexion and flaxen hair so like Anna's own that strangers had sometimes mistaken them for brother and sister instead of husband and wife. But for all his appearance of fragility, Paul had always seemed perfectly healthy. Although, as Anna's father had often said, appearances could be deceptive. After Paul's death, the doctor had told her he must have always had a weak heart.
If only she had known! If they had known! Then they would never have embarked on their wild adventure, would never have thumbed their noses at his family and the world they had known and set off for Ceylon.
They had made a runaway match of it. Their act of defiance had left Paul's autocratic father and brother screaming with outrage, though for very different reasons. After the wedding, old Lord Ridley had objected because Anna, as a mere clergyman's daughter, was not a fit wife for his son. Graham had been angry because even then he had wanted Anna for himself. Oh, not to wed, of course -- Graham had too high an opinion of himself for that -- but to bed. The very idea had sickened Anna then just as it sickened her now. Paul's father had cast him off, and the newlyweds had found themselves almost completely without funds. Their sole resources had been a small legacy left by Paul's long-deceased mother and a tea plantation on the island of Ceylon that had been his mother's girlhood home.
Anna and Paul had been young and high-spirited, and so in love that they hadn't cared. They would take up tea planting and make their own way. It had seemed a marvelous adventure at first. The very strangeness of her new home had entranced Anna. But the hot, steamy climate of Ceylon had never agreed with Paul. After Chelsea's birth, he had fallen prey to a succession of fevers that had left him thin and paler than ever, and had weakened his already less than robust heart. At least, so had said the doctor, finally summoned against Paul's wishes by Anna when he had been stricken yet again with one of the everlasting tropical illnesses that continually plagued him. That articular fever, generally mild, should not have killed him -- but it had.
"Why didn't we come back to England as soon as we saw the climate didn't agree with him?" Guilt served no purpose, Anna knew, even as she muttered the agonizing thought aloud. But the knowledge that Paul would still be alive had he never married her and as a consequence been forced to leave his home was always there, lurking on the edge of her consciousness. In a way, she had killed him, she and his unforgiving. . .
Green Eyes. Copyright © by Karen Robards. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
