Guilty Love (Completed)

Chapter Thirty'Eight

He shrugged, his face rueful. "At first I was too stunned to think, I was in shock, too, having walked in to find your husband dead on the floor and you half dead too. Then you started yelling that I'd killed him, and you looked at me as if you hated me, and said it was all my fault, he wouldn't have been dead if it hadn't been for me, and somehow I didn't care what happened to me for a while."

She closed her eyes, groaning. "Oh, Ritchie...., oh, I'm so sorry...., what can I say to you? I was so unhappy and confused, I was feeling so guilty myself and I really did think you had done it, God knows why...., I suppose I was subconsciously just looking for someone else to blame, I couldn't bear to face the fact that I had killed him."

"I worked that out," he said drily. "I didn't realise then that you had genuinely forgotten, I thought it was just the first effects of shock and trauma, and that in a few hours, a day or so, you would tell the police the truth and then I meant to get you the best lawyers money could buy. I was sure no court would convict you. It was a clear case of self-defence. He was trying to kill you, he'd been beating you up for a long time, and I agree with you, that the last time he would probably have killed you. It was self-defence, you had no choice. Survival is a very strong human instinct."

She covered her face with her shaking hands. "But I never meant to, it was...., just a sort of reflex action..., I had to stop him and I couldn't because he was much stronger than me, and I was so scared of him when he was in one of his drunken rages! I just wanted to stop him, you see, I didn't want to hurt him, let alone kill him!"

"Nobody would blame you, Linzi. Nobody!" Ritchie said, his voice gentle, taking her hands away and kissing the palm lightly. "I certainly didn't."

She sobbed. "Dont! Oh, I feel so awful! I let you take the blame! Why did you let me do that? You should have told the police!"

He gave her a crooked little smile. "Much as I would like to play the noble martyr, it wasn't quite like that. I never meant to be noble, I just kept my mouth shut and waited, expecting you to admit what had happened, and then I began to realise you weren't going to!"

She bit her lip anguish. "Oh...,  when I think..., how on earth must you have felt? What a terrible position to be in! I still don't understand why you didn't tell the police the truth!"

He looked into her eyes and softly said, "Well, you see, I was in love with you..."

A little colour crept back into her face, her face quivered with sudden feeling. "Oh, Ritchie..."

He smiled. "It didn't take long for me to guess you must have some sort of ammesia."

"I might have been lying, though, trying to put all the blame on you!"

He Shook his head, smiling property. "I knew you too well to think that. No, I worked out that killing Barty had been so traumatic for you that your conscious mind couldn't face the fact that you'd done it. Your unconscious was protecting your sanity by wiping out the memory of what really happened."

She was frowning uncertainty. "Ritchie...., at the trial..,  they said your fingerprints were on the candlestick, on top of a set of mine..., you must have touched it after I did..., after."

"I took it out of your hand," he said, his eyes sombre.
She winced, groaned. "I was still holding it?"
He nodded.
Whiter than ever, she whispered, "You should have told the police, Ritchie! You shouldn't have taken the blame!"
He shrugged. "If you had to face the truth, so soon afterwards, you might have gone out of your mind. Your unconscious had protected you from the memory by blanking it out altogether. Once I'd faced up to that, I knew I couldn't force you to remember. It might have been disastrous for your mental state. I wasn't going to see you taken off to a mental hospital, or prison, when you were in such a frail condition."

"Oh, Ritchie," she whispered, utterly shaken. "You went to prison for me, and I told you I never wanted to see you again, I said I hate you!" She remembered the way she had talked to him, looked at him, and was appalled..

His mouth twisted ironically. "That wasn't easy to take, no! I had stopped expecting you to confess by then, but I had thought you would stand by me while I was going through the trial, maybe even doing a prison sentence. You might believe I'd killed your husband, but as far as you knew, I'd done it for you, after all! I thought you would visit me in prison, that we'd stay in touch, and when I came out you would be waiting for me."

She bit her lip. "No wonder you were so angry with me! You must have hated me!"

His black lashes cloaked his eyes and he smiled slowly. "I had some very violent feelings towards you, it's true, but I didn't hate you, Linzi. You can't really have thought I ever did."

Their eyes met and she blushed, remembering yesterday, the wild, burning passion of those moments in her bed. She looked down, her lashes fluttering, her breathing very fast. "You should have hated me! I couldn't blame you if you had.

Ritchie caught her face between his hands, tilted her head to make her look up at him, stared deep into her startled blue eyes. "I love you, Linzi," he muttered passionately.

"Ritchie...," she breathed, her lips apart, quivering, and his stare dropped to them, fixed on them intensely. Slowly he bent to kiss them, his eyes closing, heat growing between the two of them.

"Linzi..., oh, God, Linzi, I love you more than my life," he muttered, and her arm curled round his neck, caressed his nape, her fingers twisting into his short, dark hair.

He lifted his mouth, breathing thickly. "Unless you want to make love here, in this field, I think we'd better start walking."

Hot colour blazed into her face.

"We'll go to my car, use the car phone to make an emergency appointment for you to see a doctor. I want you thoroughly checked over, in case you have an injury of some kind after that fall."