“Shouldn’t I be doing that?”
Alec looked at her like she was his savior. “You wouldn’t mind, truly?”
“Of course not. I—I don’t want to be a useless appendage to you, Alec.”
He tossed his pen onto the desktop, leaned back in his chair, and gave her a big smile. “An appendage, huh? That sounds rather absurd to me. You’re my wife, Genny. You’re carrying my child. If this gives you pleasure, by all means do it.”
Genny wondered as she totaled a column of numbers if Alec would have relinquished this task to her if he remembered. She couldn’t imagine him doing so, not the Alec who’d come to Baltimore in October.
The Carricks didn’t leave London until after Christmas. On January seventh, their carriage turned neatly through sturdy iron gates to bowl down the long tree-lined drive to Carrick Grange. An old, toothless man waved at them and Alec tipped his hat. The gatekeeper, he supposed. He kept waiting for memory to stroke, full and complete, and make him whole again. He immediately recognized certain things, like the incredibly thick-trunked oak tree just off the drive. He knew his initials were carved deep into the bark. When the Grange came into view, he sucked in his breath. It looked like an unlikely combination of a medieval castle and an Elizabethan manor house with its three soaring stories, two circular turrets on each end, scores of chimney pots, mullioned windows, and huge, carved front doors. A good deal of the fine, mellowed red brick was blackened by the fire, but only the east wing appeared to be severely damaged. His home, he thought, the place where he’d spent his boyhood. Images bombarded him, filling him. Quick, crystal-clear images that rolled in single, split-second pictures through his mind. He saw himself looking up at a very beautiful woman whose hair seemed as soft as melted gold, and he knew it was his mother and that he was very small and was hiding something behind his back, something he didn’t want her to see. Unfortunately, he couldn’t remember what it was. Then there was a tall man, magnificent on a black Barb, laughing and speaking to him, and he was again small, still a child. Then, just as suddenly, the man was gone and he was alone and his mother was there and she was crying. “Oh, God.” Alec shook his head. He was feeling the pain from the images, pain that he hadn’t experienced in decades.
“Alec? Are you all right?”
Genny speaking to him, bringing him back. Genny’s hand firmly on his coat sleeve, shaking him. He didn’t want to remember any more. It hurt too badly. His heart was pounding, his breathing harsh and raw.
An old man stood on the front steps, staring at him. Who the hell was he?
“My lord! Thank the powers you’re home.”
This must be Smythe, the Carrick butler since Alec’s childhood. His solicitor had told him of Smythe and of Mrs. MacGraff, his housekeeper.
Raw, wild feelings, not memories, swept through Alec the moment he stepped through the wide front doors. The huge entrance hall that soared upward two stories was smoke-blackened but undamaged. He felt rampant, wildly intense emotions—some deliriously happy, others so tragic that his eyes teared. And he knew those feelings were his, although they’d been felt very long ago. He’d come home to find memories, but instead those long-ago feelings from those memories had found him. He cursed, fluently and loudly, to rid himself of them. Genny stared at him. Smythe stared at him.
Mrs. MacGraff said, “My Lord, whatever is wrong?”
Genny stepped quickly forward. “His lordship has been ill. He will be better now that he is home.”
“You’re alone?” Smythe asked as he led them up the winding staircase to the upper floor.
“Is that a problem?” Alec asked.
“The men who murdered your steward, my lord, are still at large. They could be dangerous.”
“Yet you’re living here, Smythe. How many other servants?”
Smythe spoke about the servants, the damage to the Grange, the machinations of the local magistrate, Sir Edward Mortimer. He flung open the master-suite doors.
“Oh, dear,” Genny said, eyeing the impossibly grand apartment. It was a huge room designed and furnished for a king, all heavy gold brocade draperies, heavy, dark chairs and sofas, the most lush and rich of Aubusson carpets on the polished wooden floors. The fireplace was of rich Danish brick, and a warm blaze was burning. Genny walked toward it to warm her hands. She watched Alec from the corner of her eye. He was standing in the middle of the room, not moving, as if he were waiting for something. He looked tense and very wary.
Fortunately for Alec, there were no lurking feelings or emotions to accost him. He continued to stand there, rigid, but nothing came to his mind.
“Thank the good Lord,” he said.
It was nearly midnight before Genny and Alec were ensconced in a large, deep armchair before the fireplace, Genny on his lap.
“Thank God most of the damage was limited to the east wing. That was where my steward, Arnold Cruisk, lived. Whoever killed him surely wanted him dead. I’ve spoken to many of the servants. They don’t believe the murderer, or murderers, set the fire. They think it must have been an accident. They say that everyone on this estate loves the Grange too much to damage it.” Alec sighed, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes.
“You’re safe in this room, aren’t you?”
That brought him back to full attention and his eyes snapped open. “You know?”
“Yes. The memories were hurting you dreadfully, but in here they leave you alone.”
He eyed his wife. It was a bit frightening to realize that she knew him so well, was able to discern what was happening to him. She’d dealt well with Smythe and Mrs. MacGraff and the half-dozen other servants currently in residence at the Grange. They didn’t seem to mind that she was an American. He didn’t realize that it was his wife’s obvious worry for him that made his servants ready to do anything she asked.
“You’re pretty smart, aren’t you?”
“More than you know, my lord.” She nuzzled his throat. “Tell me if I’m wrong. You’ve seen images, but the difference is you’re feeling the emotions you felt at the time each incident occurred. It must be awful for you. Pain can be borne when it must be, but to be bombarded with it—out of context, as it were—I shouldn’t like that at all.”
“You’re perfectly right. It’s disturbing.”
“Oh, Alec, you’re the master of understatement. I think you’re the most wonderful man in the world and I love you so very much.”
The instant the words were out, Genny clamped her hand over her mouth, but the words had been spoken and couldn’t be retracted. She stared at him, wary, frightened, her heart pounding.
He smiled, very slowly. Then he set her away from him a bit, cupped her face between his hands, and kissed her. His breath was warm and tasted of the sweet claret he’d drunk at dinner. His tongue touched her lips and she parted them. She yielded her mouth, her body, all of her. Fire licked through her when his tongue touched hers, its heat concentrating between her thighs, making her ache, making her hot.
“Alec,” she said into his mouth.
“Did you never before tell me you loved me?”
“No. I didn’t realize that I did. And then I was afraid to tell you.”
His hands were caressing her breasts even as he nipped the corner of her mouth, touched his tongue to hers. “How could you ever be afraid to tell me that? You’re my wife.”
“Because you don’t love me. You never loved me. I think you found me something of an oddity—a woman who had no sense of taste or style, who needed you to do her shopping for her.”
“You didn’t tell me that before,” he said. “Afraid to tell me you loved me? Why, that fills me with all kinds of wonderful feelings, Lady Sherard. A man wants to be loved, he wants his lady to yield herself to him completely.”
And that, Genny thought, she certainly had done.
“You know something else, Genny Carrick? You’re not an oddity, you’re a very sweet, loving, pregnant lady. You fascinate me, Genny. Right now, do you know what I want
to do to you?”
Her heart pounded, loud, deep strokes.
“Ah, are you thinking what you want to do to me?”
She nodded, looking at his mouth, unable to find words to tell him of her feelings for him.
He was remembering so much now. It would be soon. She knew it.
Twenty-three
Alec’s memory did flood back, in an instant of time, but neither of them dreamed Genny would be the catalyst.
She was intently searching through old papers and ledgers in Arnold Cruisk’s estate office in the devastated east wing. She’d studied piles of scorched pages dealing with household accounts for a period of five years, but had found nothing she believed important, nothing that provided a clue to why the steward had been murdered. Because it was filthy in here, she’d dressed in men’s clothes, the same ones she’d worn when she’d worked at the shipyard in Baltimore.
She’d just given further instructions to Giles, a Carrick footman, and was standing on her tiptoes trying to reach a bound folder that sat precariously on a burned top shelf when she heard someone coming. She turned and smiled as Alec gingerly stepped into the gutted room.
She bade him good-afternoon and started to ask him how his visit with Sir Edward Mortimer had gone when Giles asked her a question. After she had answered him and then turned back to Alec, she saw that he was staring fixedly at her. Genny cocked her head to one side in question as she wiped her dirty hands on her trouser legs. She smiled. “Yes, Baron?”
Alec didn’t move. He doubted he could even if he wanted to, which he didn’t. Feelings, images, more memories than he could imagine a single person having, were swimming madly about in his brain, stirring up chaos and mental pandemonium. Then, just as suddenly, everything righted. He saw Genny for the first time, dressed in her men’s clothes, standing on the deck of the Pegasus. He remembered what he’d felt that moment when he’d first seen her. She’d been giving orders to one of her men just as she had now with Giles. Merciful heavens, he thought somewhat blankly, he was whole again.
“Alec? Are you all right?”
“I think so,” he said, but didn’t move. He’d thought upon occasion that his head would burst with too much information when his memory did return. But it didn’t. Everything was in place now. Genny was in place now.
As for Genny, she knew something was different. Quickly she said to Giles, “That will be all for the moment. Thank you for your assistance.”
Alec watched the footman leave. He remembered Giles, of course. He’d hired him himself some five years ago, just before Nesta had birthed Hallie and died. He looked at his wife now. His incredible American wife who’d run a shipyard. He said very pleasantly, very precisely, “May I ask just what the devil you’re doing aping a man again?”
His cold, distant voice froze her to the spot. This wasn’t the man who’d awakened her early this morning, his hand already stroking her, his mouth already at her breast, telling her how sweet she was, how soft and enticing. This was another Alec. This was the Alec she’d married, she realized with a start. She dismissed his words. They weren’t important. Dear heavens, he’d remembered. Finally, he’d remembered.
“You remember,” she yelled, trembling with excitement for him, for her, for both of them.
“Yes, everything, including the first time I saw you. You were dressed then as you are now. You were giving orders to a man then just as you were now.”
She ignored his words again, relief and pleasure for him flooding through her. She was happy, deliriously happy. She ran to him joyously and he caught her against his chest. “Alec, oh, Alec, you’ve come back to me and to yourself. It’s wonderful! Oh, my dear, you must be feeling ready to slay dragons.”
She kissed his chin, his mouth, his jaw, all the while chattering like a berserk magpie.
He smiled. At last he smiled.
“It’s over,” he said, looking down into her eyes. “How odd that seeing you jarred everything back into place. You in your men’s clothes. As I said, that was as I’d first seen you. The tilt of your head, perhaps, as you spoke to Giles. But the clothes helped, they definitely did.”
“Then we shall have to frame them and display them in a place of honor.”
He didn’t know what to say to that, for in that moment the past merged as it should with the present and he realized how different he’d been before and after the accident. He caught himself. No, it was Genny who had changed, not he. Now she would revert back to her old ways. He felt mired in confusion. Where everything had been simple and straightforward but five minutes before, now he was beset by mental confusion. He set her away from him.
“Alec?” Her smile faltered just a bit. She stroked his cheek with her fingertips. “Are you all right? Does your head hurt?”
Gentle, giving, soft, submissive to him—she’d been all those things since his accident. She’d yielded to him, surrendered so very sweetly to him, to all his wishes, all his desires. And he’d wondered at it occasionally, he remembered now, had asked her about it, teased her about that stubborn jaw of hers. The Alec without memories would doubtless have simply laughed to see her in breeches poking about the ruins. The old Alec, the one she had married, the Alec whom he was now, the one who’d left no doubts about what he thought of females aping men, had been manipulated very expertly and very cleverly. He felt betrayed, he, Alec Carrick, who had always been contemptuous of men who allowed themselves to be deceived by a woman. She’d done him up quite nicely.
He looked her over, his fingertips stroking his jaw. “One thing that’s difficult about wearing a man’s pants, Genny,” he said finally. “I have to pull them completely off you to take you. That’s why a female should wear skirts, my dear. Then a man can toss them up and enjoy a woman whenever he wishes.”
She stepped back, surprise and hurt washing through her, making her pale. But her voice remained calm. “I’m wearing pants simply because it’s so dirty in here. My old gowns are too small to wear now, and I don’t wish to ruin the new ones you bought for me.”
“As I recall, you always sounded so very reasoned when you wished to continue playing the man, playing at something you could never be. Have you always envied men, Genny?”
She stared at him, anger roiling up from her belly at his indifferent cruelty. She held onto her control. “No, I’ve never envied men. I don’t like them a great deal, however, when they feel it necessary to look down upon women who happen to know the same things they do.”
“But, Genny, you wouldn’t know a damned thing about designing or building vessels if your father hadn’t treated you like a male and taught you.”
“A man wouldn’t know a thing about building vessels either unless someone taught him. Doesn’t that tell you something?”
“It tells me that you had no mother to teach you how to be a woman. Thus you can ape a man but you can’t even select appropriate women’s clothes. That’s what it tells me.”
She slapped him, hard, and his head snapped to the side. Breath hissed out between his teeth. He grabbed her arms, shook her, then dropped his hold. He stepped back. “Get out of those damned ridiculous clothes or I’ll tear them off you. Do you understand me? Never do I want to see you playing the man again.”
She ran from the room without another word, without a backward glance at him. She feared what she would say, what she would do, if she remained.
Alec stared silently after her. He drew a deep breath. She’d manipulated him royally, he thought again. So neatly. He’d been willing to give her anything, to allow her to pursue whatever absurd desire she had. He’d allowed her to take over the bookkeeping for the Night Dancer. All because he’d loved her, all because he’d thought it would give her pleasure. No, it was the blank-brained Alec who’d fallen in love with her. Not the old Alec. The old Alec had kept women in their place, using them, enjoying them when he wished to, but not allowing them to become part of him, deeply part of him. The old Alec had slept several times with Eileen Blanchard. The old
Alec had jested that she could give him a harem for a Christmas present.
Alec sighed. He’d liked Genny very much, cared for her enough to marry her. And now he’d been unfair. He’d seen her in those damned clothes, gained his memory, and lost his head. The good Lord knew that he should be calling for champagne and celebrating. He was whole again. He was also married to a woman who’d managed to make him into a weak-willed ass who would accept and encourage her in anything she wanted to do. It wasn’t to be borne.
Acting like a man, and at the same time she was carrying his child. He wanted to shout at himself to stop it. For God’s sake, he was himself again. There wasn’t a single blank spot. He saw Burke and Arielle Drummond and he saw Knight Winthrop, heard him pontificating in the most cynically amusing way about his sire’s philosophies. Knight was now married with seven children. And he, Alec, a man who’d never intended to remarry, was tied to a female whose motives left him uncertain, who made his body randy with lust and reduced him to an anger-monger, something he’d always abhorred before.
He was whole again. Despite everything else, he was as he had been. He saw Hallie, knew her, and wished that she were here right now so he could hug her close and tell her how much her father loved her. He saw the little boy again—himself twenty years before—helplessly watch his mother cry because his father was dead. He didn’t feel the awful wrenching pain now. The memory was simply there and he knew of the loss, but all the pain was faded into the past, years and years into the past, where if belonged.
And Genny was looking up at him with trust and sweetness and wonder. It was their wedding night, and he’d loved her until she’d trembled and he’d trembled, and he’d held her and stroked her beautiful hair until they’d both slept, close in each other’s arms. And he’d wakened her in the dark hours of the night and loved her again, and her beautiful cries had filled the night, and him.
Alec glanced around the smoke-blackened, devastated room and wondered what Genny had really been doing in here. He saw piles of scorched papers on the remains of his steward’s desk and wondered cynically if she’d been trying to figure out the worth of Carrick Grange.
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