Tears of the Moon - Di Morrissey [124]
Her bursting back into his life set his mind spinning and emotions churning. Tyndall felt a burning anger. Why should she come back into his life now, just as he was about to find the joy he’d always sought with Olivia?
He sat bolt upright. My Lord. He’d have to be first to tell Olivia. What a nightmare! He realised he must still be legally wed to Amy, unless she’d had the marriage dissolved, citing his disappearance so many years before. But his heart sank again at the knowledge that she was here and claiming to be his wife. Well, this had to be stopped and sorted out swiftly. He sprang to his feet, snatched his hat and rushed from the office.
Rosminah and the Chinese cook hurried to meet him as he came up the path, noting the sea trunk on the verandah.
‘Lady come, tuan, she no go away. Come inside, sit down, want tea and lemonade. She say she Mem Tyndall. She no listen to me when I tell her go away,’ cried Ah Sing, the cook.
‘Don’t worry about it, Ah Sing. I’m fixing things up. Where is she?’
The cook, in a lather of sweat, his round face shining, answered. ‘She in sitting room.’
Rosminah padded behind Tyndall as he strode down the hall. ‘Mem tell me unpack and wash her things. What I do, tuan?’
‘Do nothing, Rosminah. I’ll speak to her.’ Tyndall drew a breath and walked into the formal room that he rarely used in the centre of the house. He stopped and stared at Amy sitting in a cane chair, neither spoke as the years vanished and they sized each other up. They would have recognised each other in an instant. She’d kept her figure though the voluptuous curves seemed laced in place.
She was holding a tea cup which she carefully put to one side. Holding out a soft hand, she said triumphantly, ‘Hello there, Johnny Tyndall.’ There was obvious amusement in her expression and she looked more than happy as she took in the striking and handsome man before her. ‘You look well. I chose you for your looks and you haven’t disappointed me.’
Tyndall stayed where he was. ‘Why are you here, Amy? This is bloody madness. I still can’t believe you’ve just walked into my life as though nothing had happened. You should have written and told me. Not just landed on the doorstep.’
‘That’s not much of a welcome. It’s been a long trip to find you.’
‘And it’s going to be a long trip back. You can’t stay here.’
‘Now, you can’t mean that. I’m your wife. You’re just in shock,’ she said placatingly. ‘I know how you feel, Johnny. It was a shock for me too when I read about you in the London Telegraph. After all these years, suffering over what had become of you, how you’d run off and left me. Your little wife. What did I ever do to deserve that, Johnny?’ Tears welled in her blue eyes and her voice dripped with self-pity.
‘I thought you were dead for God’s sake,’ shouted Tyndall. ‘You couldn’t wait like a dutiful wife. No, you had to go to the bright lights of London then just take off and let your father and me believe you’d died. What the hell have you been doing?’
‘I don’t believe you are entitled to shout at me,’ she snapped in a steely voice. ‘It wasn’t easy for me, you know. I lost the baby, there was a flu epidemic and I went to Scotland while waiting for you to come back. But you never did, did you?’
‘There was no point in going back. The priest wrote to me that your father had died and that they had heard you’d died in London. What was I to do? And how did you get to Scotland?’
She lowered her eyes. ‘I had a kindly benefactor. I would have been lost without Lord Campbell … and his dear family,’ she hastily added.
‘I see,’ said Tyndall, seeing too clearly how Amy had survived. ‘So why are you here now? If it’s money you want, you could have written.’
‘Would you have answered such a letter?’ she asked, giving him a challenging stare.
‘There are some honest men left in this world, it might surprise you, Amy’
‘I don’t want money. Oh, indeed no.’
‘So what do you want?’
‘You, my dear husband. I feel