“For Millie, especially. They were good friends.”
“Yes, but even for you…”
Hastings shrugged, his own head beginning to throb. There had been no particular friendship between Helena and himself, but to be an absolute stranger to her, after all these years?
“Go get some rest, David,” said Fitz. “I know you’ve slept the least of us all.”
“I won’t be able to sleep.” He was wide-awake, an almost painful alertness, as if he’d consumed several gallons of coffee. “I’ll wait here with you.”
What was a few more minutes when he’d been waiting days?
Years.
Miss Redmayne was about Helena’s age, pretty, smartly dressed, with an air of tremendous competence. “Your brother and your husband tell me you are suffering from a rather dramatic case of memory loss, Lady Hastings.”
It took Helena a moment to realize that “Lady Hastings” referred to herself. So her husband was Lord Hastings. Husband—the very word squeezed the air from her lungs. She didn’t know anything about the man. How could she be married to him?
“When I awakened,” she said, striving to sound in charge of herself, “I was surrounded by members of my family. And I recognized fewer than half of them.”
“Of those you do not recognize, whom have you known the longest?”
“Lord Hastings”—she could not bring herself to say “my husband”—“according to everyone else.”
Miss Redmayne glanced at Venetia. “Can you tell me when they met, Your Grace?”
“The summer Lady Hastings was fourteen. Lord Hastings came to visit at Hampton House, our home in—”
“Oxfordshire,” said Helena, grateful to know that much.
“What is the latest in your life you can remember?” asked Miss Redmayne.
She thought hard. “The Christmas after our mother passed away.”
Helena had adored her mother and had been quite disconsolate that Christmas. Venetia and Fitz had persisted in telling her joke after joke until she cracked a smile.
“That would have been shortly before you turned fourteen,” said Venetia. “You missed remembering meeting Hastings by a few months.”
Helena wanted to remember meeting him—and every day of the past thirteen years of her life—but particularly him. She could not be a wife to a stranger. “Please tell me I’ll be able to regain my memory.”
“I can make no promises,” said Miss Redmayne. “Amnesia is an unusual condition, typically accompanying far more severe brain damage than is your case.”
She jotted a few things down in her notebook. “If I recall correctly, you studied classics while you were at Lady Margaret Hall?”
Helena nodded, still shocked by the fact that she’d attended university. Not that she hadn’t wanted to, but how had Colonel Clements, their guardian, ever agreed to such a thing? She’d have thought that she’d needed to not only come of age, but come into control of her small inheritance before such a feat became possible.
“Were you educated in Latin prior to that?”
“I remember Helena teaching herself some Latin from Fitz’s schoolbooks,” Venetia answered for her. “But that was when she was a little older. Sixteen, perhaps.”
“Qui caput tuum valet?” asked Miss Redmayne. How does your head feel?
“Non praecipue iucunde. Quasi equo calcitrata sum, ita aliquis dicat,” Helena replied easily. Not particularly pleasant. As if I’ve been kicked by a horse, one might say.
Miss Redmayne nodded. “It’s an odd thing. Amnesia strips one of memory of events and people. But it tends not to affect grasp of languages and other acquired skills. If you knew how to ride a bicycle before, for example, you won’t need to learn it again.”
“You do know how to ride a safety bicycle,” Venetia said, looking almost optimistic.
Helena tried to reassure Venetia with a smile, but managed only a partial one—the stretching of her facial muscles caused a sensation in her scalp that was part tearing, part burning. She would give up fluency in Latin and prowess on a bicycle immediately if she could have her memory back instead.
Miss Redmayne unwound Helena’s bandaging to check her stitches. Without any hair, Helena’s head felt unsettlingly light—and the air in the room unexpectedly cool against her scalp.
“Your head is no longer bleeding,” pronounced Miss Redmayne, “but the stitches need to remain another few days.”
She asked Helena to get out of bed and walk in a straight line, perform simple computations, and make logical deductions. “Your reasoning is fine, as is your balance—the wobbliness you might experience is caused by weakness of muscles rather than any injury to the brain. The danger now is that there might be some bleeding inside your cranium. I will keep you under watch for the next forty-eight hours.”
Helena inhaled—she’d thought the dangers already past.
“But on the other hand,” continued Miss Redmayne, “if there is no cranial bleeding, then you may consider yourself to be mending and you may gradually resume your normal activities. In the meanwhile you will likely experience headaches, more episodes of vomiting, perhaps even further temporary losses of consciousness.
“Moreover, in the excitement of waking up you may not be feeling all your pains, but unfortunately your wound extends down to near your temple, and there are quite a few nerves in the face, so certain facial expressions—frowns, for example—might pull at the stitches and be quite uncomfortable.”
Helena didn’t mind the pain, but the possibility of cranial bleeding was rather frightful. “What should I do now?”
“Take some light nourishment and rest. This is no time to strain yourself,” replied Miss Redmayne. “And don’t tax your head trying to remember. It will not hasten the recovery of your memory.”
“Can I read?”
“In a few days, yes, but for now it will likely exacerbate your headache. You must remember, Lady Hastings, even though you’ve regained your consciousness, you are still only three days past a major injury.”
The mere thought of sitting in bed for days on end with nothing to do already exacerbated her headache. But something in Miss Redmayne’s calm authority precluded arguing: Helena would feel too much like a quarrelsome child.
Miss Redmayne allowed Fitz and Hastings to enter the room. Helena’s eyes lingered on the latter for a moment—those cheekbones were sharp enough to cut marble. He returned the attention, but instead of the outright adoration from earlier, he gazed upon her with uncertainty, as if he’d been cast upon some distant shore and was encountering the natives for the first time.
“Where is my husband?” asked Venetia.
“He’s in the passage outside,” answered Fitz. “Now that Helena is better, he doesn’t wish to further intrude on her privacy, as he is not a blood relation.”
Miss Redmayne repeated much of what she’d told Helena, but added, “Your Grace, my lords, Lady Fitzhugh, I ask you to disperse. You will be of no use sitting here—let the nurse watch over Lady Hastings. She needs to rest and so do you. And if not, at least get some exercise and fresh air. You’ve been cooped up long enough.”
“I’d like Lord Hastings to remain,” Helena heard herself say. She’d posed no questions concerning him to Venetia and Millie, partly because she still wished he’d go away, and partly because she believed he should answer her questions himself.
Judging by his flabbergasted reaction, it was as if she’d asked the man to perform a handstand that very instant. But he was quick to recover. “Yes, of course. There is nothing I’d like more.”
That voice of his—she’d heard it earlier, but now she was surprised by its rich, pure timbre.
Venetia, Fitz, and Millie each embraced Helena, taking care not to touch her where she’d been bruised.
“If you’d like a few minutes of privacy, I can have Nurse Jennings leave her shift early,” said Miss Redmayne.
“Thank you,” replied Helena.
“You have until Nurse
Gardner arrives, my lord, my lady. After that Lady Hastings must rest.”
Doctor and nurse departed. Helena and Hastings were alone in the room, but he did not approach her bed. Instead he stood near the wall, his hands behind his back. She realized after some time that he was waiting for her to speak first.
“I’m not sure whether I should apologize for not remembering you, or whether I should ask you to apologize for saddling me with a husband out of the blue. What do you recommend?”
He stared at her. Then he shook his head, as if he couldn’t quite believe his ears. “So you really don’t remember me.”
It was less a question to her than a reminder to himself.
“No, I don’t remember you at all.”
He ran his fingers through his hair. His curls appeared wonderfully springy. “You might be surprised to know that I am usually astonishingly witty and eloquent. But I am currently at a loss for words.”
She tilted her head back slightly. “You have a high regard for yourself.”
“So do you—a high regard for yourself, that is,” he said, smiling slightly. “You believe—believed—that modesty is for those with something to be modest about.”
It did sound like something she might agree with.
She felt herself relax a little. The prospect of being married to a man she couldn’t remember had wound her tighter than a twisted rope. But speaking with him, so far, was not an unpleasant experience. That voice of his—if a viola could speak, it would probably speak with his voice. And that smile…
He was not, perhaps, conventionally handsome, but he was some kind of handsome—perhaps even some kind of gorgeous: beautiful skin, long brows, a dent just beneath his lower lip caused by the slightly forward angle of his chin. His eyes were bloodshot, but they were also of the color of warm oceans, one moment aquamarine, the next turquoise.
“Surprised to be married?” he asked, his tone conspiratorial, as if he understood her reservations. “And I don’t mean married to me, but married at all?”
She relaxed a little more. “Shocked. I’ve…I’d always believed I’d prefer to be a spinster.”
“Early in your twenties you began to think that perhaps marriage wouldn’t be so bad with the right man.”
She raised her brow just enough to avoid hurting her stitches. “And you are that right man?”
“I’ve always thought we’d be a good match,” he said. “You want to reign as the queen of all you survey, and I enjoy being the scheming vizier who whispers crafty ideas into your ears.”
An unexpected and appealing vision of a marriage, with a husband who did not need to put himself in the position of a king.
A knock came on the door. The maids delivered their breakfast trays, one with only porridge and tea for her, one with muffins and plain toast for him. He took the seat Venetia’s husband had vacated, close but not too close.
“Is that what you eat for breakfast?” she asked. “Rather abstemious.”
“It is. But we thought it best not to have bacon or grilled mackerel on my plate, in case the smell upset your stomach.”
She gave her porridge a stir, waiting for it to cool. “Tell me something about yourself.”
She could have said, “Tell me something about us,” but she’d decided against the latter. She did not—not yet—want to hear about a wonderful courtship that culminated in a fairy-tale wedding, with herself as the radiant bride. Her current incarnation might be intrigued by him, but she was not in love. And she did not want to be obliged to feel sentiments she did not.
He thought for a moment, chewing meditatively on a bite of muffin. Her eyes were once again drawn to the shape of his jaw—there were probably fjords in the north less impressively carved. As he swallowed, she became aware of his neck. He was a man of strapping build, but there was nothing thick or bulky about his neck. It was quite simply…elegant.
“I like Alice in Wonderland,” he said.
It was with some effort that she looked back up into his eyes. “That’s the something you want to tell me?”
“Why not? And eat. We haven’t been able to get much nutrition into you. You woke up just in time, in fact. They were going to tube feed you, starting today.”
She’d been wary to break bread so soon after her gastrointestinal tumult. But his words reminded her that her body must be famished from its long sleep. She swallowed a spoonful of her porridge.
“You do know that Alice in Wonderland happens to be one of my favorite books, do you not?”
“I do.”
His answer was a reminder of the asymmetry of knowledge between the two of them—he probably knew more about her than she did. As engaging as he was to look at—those eyes seemed to shift colors with the smallest movement on his part—and as melodious as he was to listen to, she must not forget that he was most likely a man with a goal.
A goal that resided somewhere below her waist.
She narrowed her eyes slightly. “Are you trying to curry favor with me, Lord Hastings?”
Hastings could not get enough of being a stranger to her: the courtesy and attentiveness on her part—not to mention the complete absence of scorn and revulsion. Yes, she was wary. But in her shoes, who wouldn’t be?
“You are a lover of books; I am one as well,” he replied. “Since we can no longer rely on our past history to guide what we say to each other, a book we both enjoy seems a good place to start.”
She didn’t answer immediately. He was awestruck: She was considering his answer with care, rather than dismissing it outright as so much rubbish.
“Who is your favorite character in the book?” she asked, lifting another spoonful of porridge toward her lips. There had been a cut on her lower lip; it had largely healed, though a reddish welt still remained.
“The Cheshire Cat,” he answered without hesitation.
“Why him?” Her eyes, framed by all that stark white bandaging, were greener than he remembered, the color of a lovingly watered lawn.
“He is mischievous and unpredictable. And he comes and goes as he wishes. When I was a child, I would have loved to be able to disappear at will.”
She examined him—she’d been examining him ever since she called for him to stay with her. “And what would you have done with such an ability? Eavesdrop on others?”
It was not, as questions went, particularly probing. Yet if he were to give a proper answer, it would reveal more of himself than he’d ever been willing to let her see.
“Just to get away from where I was,” he said.
“And where were you?”
“Under my uncle’s control.” He bent his face to the plate, almost…shy to be speaking so honestly about himself.
“Was he a harsh disciplinarian?”
He raised his head. Her gaze was still fixed upon him, a cautious attention, but one not colored by prior prejudices.
He’d often dreamed that one day she’d suddenly see him as he wished to be seen. This was not the fulfillment of that childish dream, but still, it was beyond anything he could have realistically hoped for: a true new beginning.
“Yes,” he said, even though the admission made him feel vulnerable.
She gazed at him a moment longer before looking down to find her teacup. “I’m sorry to hear that. My father was a soldier, but he was no martinet. He loved to laugh. And he was wonderfully kind.”
That was the view all the Fitzhugh children took of their father. “Fitz once told me he always called you his beauty.”
“Yes, so I could grow up next to Venetia without feeling that I am in her shadow.” Her lips curved slightly. “It probably left me with a highly inflated sense of my physical appeal.”
“Or perhaps he was simply like me,” he said impulsively.
Her expression turned quizzical. “How so?”
“Fitz had warned me about Venetia before my first visit. He said grown men turned into jelly at the mere sight of her. Well, my carriage pulled up to your house, a young girl stuck he
r head out of an upper-story window, and I turned into jelly right on the seat of the carriage.” He broke a piece off the half muffin that remained on his plate, his heart beating rather uncomfortably fast. “But that girl wasn’t Venetia. It was you.”
He’d never told her of his fierce attraction to her from the very beginning—he couldn’t in the face of her indifference and, later, her contempt.
It was hard to tell whether she was pleased by his confession—she lifted the teapot to refill her cup and seemed to have eyes only for her task. “What else do I need to know about you?” Her voice was cool, as was her demeanor.
He’d likely discomfited her, a stranger whom she wished to keep at arm’s length going on about how lovely he found her. He broke off another piece of the muffin. “I have a daughter named Beatrice.”
His siring of an illegitimate child had never sat well with Helena. But she needed to know about Bea.
His declaration took her aback. “You were married before?”
“No.”
She blinked at the implication of his words. Displeasure gathered between her furrowed brows—then further displeasure as she winced from the pressure on her stitches. Her bruises seemed to turn darker, like thunderclouds on her face. “Who is her mother?”
“A London Cyprian by the name of Georgette Chevalier—her real name was Florie Mims. She was my mistress for some time and died of pneumonia when Bea was three months old.”
“How old is Bea?”
“Two months short of six.”
Suspicion and temper flared in her eyes. “And how long have we been married?”
“Not long at all. This Season.”
She exhaled. Her face lost some of its severity. “For a moment I thought you’d sired this child during our marriage.”
“I would never treat our marriage in such a light manner.”
Yet he had antagonized her with greater fervor than ever after he gave her no choice but to become his wife.
This Helena, however, did not recall his past idiocy. Her mind was solely focused on the present. “Does she live in your—our household, your daughter?”
Tempting the Bride Page 10
