An Earls lie or a scoundrels promise

He gave her one last smile.

He prepared himself to fight, to throw himself between his wife and that blade if need be, but all of a sudden, her grip loosened and her face melted. Her hard exterior gone, the guard lowered.

' Bliss, to hear my name on your sensual lips once more.'

He didn't say anything for fear of saying the wrong thing.

'I love you.' Her breath was near a whisper 'I have always loved you.'

He watched her fingers loosen around the blade a little more.

I'm the one you want.' She sniffed a little laugh and her fingers tightened around the weapon once more.

He looked into his loving wife's face, a tear single silent tear ran down her pale cheek. He knew what he had to do, he had to lie, and it to sound real, to save her, his wife. He hoped she would understand, and forgive him.

'You're right.' He sighed and let his tense body relax as much as he could allow given the situation. He watched her face fill with the hope she was clinging on to, To a delusion, and he would let her feed off of it.

'I am?...I am.' the longing in melissa voice was evident, she longed to hear what he had to say to her.

'I thought I could distance myself from you and my feelings would stray, but they haven't. 5 years was not long enough, I thought it would be.'

She smiled to herself and allowed herself to sob at his words. The knife still gripped in her hand, was at her chest as if she was holding an aching heart.

'Oh my love, I knew you still loved me. I just knew.'

He tried his best not to look at his wife who sat silently by. He longed too, but he couldn't risk her life, his baby's life.

'Come to me.' He opened his arms to her and she moved toward him without a second thought.

She reached him and he placed his hands on her arms and forced himself to rub them comfortingly. He felt sick at the contact with her. He swallowed past it.

'But you understand, don't you? Why I tried to hide my feelings for you. Why I even went as far as to marry another' god his heart hurt. He heard his wife gasp but he couldn't brake eyes contact with Melissa. He had to make her believe, until he could prise the knife from her grasp.

'I do. I was terrible to you. I should never have done what I did my love.'

She rested her head on his chest and wrapped her arms around him. The knife was somewhere behind his back. He in turn embraced her. His eyes searching for those green gems of his wife, but they were watery and cast down to her lap. She would not look at him.

Lizzie mentally closed her mind and her ears to the touching reunion that was happening. She could not listen. Every word he spoke was like a stab to her heart. Did he mean what he said?

'But what are we going to do? With her? She has stolen my place here in our home, our life.'

Blake rubbed her back. 'We will sort it, I'll divorce her and set her and the child up somewhere far away. We need not ever see her again.' He chocked the words out his mouth.

God forgive me, Sweet Elizabeth forgive me.

His lungs hurt as if trying to stop the breath leaving him, to stop him speaking the words that were causing his wife so much pain.

'You must never see her again. I won't allow it. Not when she will have your bastard child. I will give you an heir. You must never acknowledge that child.'