“Analise?”
“Yes. Yes, I’ll tell you if I remember anything,” she said, lying again.
He directed a quick sideways look at her.
“Do you still think you’re some Victorian woman?”
“Victorian?” She repeated the word, examining the images it elicited.
“Women who lived around the turn of the century. They were pretty different from women today.” He seemed to be speaking as much to himself as to her. “More sheltered, more vulnerable, more dependent.”
“Are you saying I’m different now?”
He pulled the car over to the side of the street and parked in front of a shop she recognized from the picture. Analise’s Antiques. For a moment she thought he was going to get out of the car without answering her, but he shifted in his seat and faced her.
“Yes, you’re acting different than you did before.” He slid from the car, away from her.
She watched his suit-clad figure as he came around to let her out. Acting, he’d said, unwilling to admit whoever or whatever she was could be real. His actions toward her were as contradictory and inexplicable as her feelings for him.
Climbing out, she stood beside him on the sidewalk.
“What was I like before...before yesterday?”
He gazed at her a long time as if searching for a hidden meaning behind the question. “I didn’t know you very well,” he finally said. “You kept to yourself a lot. But sometimes I thought we were...friends.” He suddenly frowned, as if irritated with himself. “Are you ready to go inside?”
Friends? No, she didn’t think so. With what she felt between them, they could be lovers or they could be enemies, but not friends.
His hand at the small of her back urged her forward.
She felt better the moment she entered the shop. The bell over the door jingled a welcome. She paused in the doorway, basking in the familiar sights and smells, the solid furniture, the lamps with crystal pendants or painted globes, the scents of wood and lemon oil, the faint floral aroma from baskets of potpourri. A blissful feeling reached her on two levels...the furniture that was familiar to Elizabeth as well as the shop Analise had chosen and filled with things that appealed to her.
Lottie—Analise recognized her instantly—bustled in from the back room. She squinted then clapped her hands together, lips curving up in a smile.
“Analise! I was so worried when Phillip told me you’d hurt yourself. But you look just wonderful. Come back here and sit down. I’ll make you some tea. You must be Dylan, the neighbor who paints.” She extended a hand toward him. “I’m Lottie Timmons, Analise’s assistant. You will join us for a cup of tea, won’t you? I made some blackberry-jam cookies.” She turned, and Analise followed her into a back room where a rectangular table with a chipped enamel top sat in one corner.
Lottie moved over to the other side of the room where a steaming kettle sat on a small stove.
Analise sank into a chair and looked up at Dylan. He blinked then also took a seat and grinned. “Is she always like that?”
“Not always but often,” Analise answered, smiling at Dylan’s expression as much as at her returning memories of Lottie. This was the first time she could recall seeing him so at ease, his guard down. He was even more attractive this way.
The older woman returned to the table, almost staggering under the weight of a tray holding a china teapot with a delicate pattern of roses, matching cups and saucers, and a plate of cookies.
“Here, let me help you.” Dylan rose to take the burden from her.
“Aren’t you the nicest young man.” She took her own seat at the table as Dylan set the tray down. “We’ll let this steep for five minutes, and it’ll be just perfect. It’s a new blend, Analise. Very light. I know you don’t like those heavy teas. Now tell me about your accident. Are you really all right?”
Dylan sat forward, no longer relaxed. In the abrupt, unexpected silence, Analise was acutely aware of the two intent gazes trained on her, waiting for her answer. Though Lottie’s eyes were as light as Dylan’s were dark, they were equally keen.
“Well, uh, I guess I fell down the stairs.” She lifted her hair off her forehead. “I got a couple of bruises, but Dylan took me to a doctor. He said I was fine.”
Lottie’s expression didn’t change. Analise could tell she somehow knew there was more to the story.
She took a deep, fortifying breath and continued. “Actually the bump on my head caused a little problem. I have a kind of amnesia. It’s not total, at least not anymore. I just have holes in my memory. Things are coming back gradually, but—” She tried to smile, to minimize the little problem that had changed her whole world. “But there are still parts of Analise Parrish missing.”
Lottie studied her quietly then turned her attention to the teapot. She poured the steaming liquid into dainty cups and served the three of them. Analise sipped her tea gratefully. Lottie was right. It was just the kind she liked, hot and light. She reached for a jam cookie. They were very similar to the kind Mama often served with tea.
Lottie sat back, sipped her own drink and shook her head. “No,” she said. “That doesn’t seem right. Your aura’s so bright today, so dense. You have more, not less.”
“More what?” Analise whispered the words. She studied Dylan closely, but he only looked puzzled, his broad forehead wrinkled.
“I don’t know. Just more. More life. More of you. It’s almost like you have a double aura, but there’s no division between the two, no war of souls going on. It’s brighter, has more light, more depth. Goodness, you must be able to feel it, something this significant.” Lottie munched a cookie, as comfortable with her strange observation as if they’d been discussing the weather.
Analise’s hand trembled as she raised her cup to her lips.
Lottie was talking nonsense, babbling about psychic phenomena as she was wont to do. But this time her words made a frightening kind of sense.
Analise felt like there was more of her, that she had two people inside her body. She felt in her heart that she was Elizabeth, but she knew in her mind she was Analise. Was Lottie wrong about one thing? Were there two souls warring for her body? If so, then Elizabeth was obviously the invader. She’d seen irrefutable proof that this tall, blond body belonged to Analise.
Dylan listened to Lottie’s bizarre words, watched Analise’s reactions. It was becoming harder and harder to doubt her sincerity. It was possible she really did have some degree of amnesia, especially after the trauma of her injuries. Even so, he couldn’t be sure of the degree or how long it would last. In his position, he had to assume the worst, couldn’t afford to let anything slide by him. Now he even had to question Lottie’s part in all this. She could be Analise’s accomplice, deliberately trying to divert him.
He decided to turn Lottie’s words against her, see what she did then. “So you don’t think she really has amnesia?”
“Dear me, no, I didn’t say that,” Lottie protested.
“Then I don’t think I quite understand what you mean.”
“Why, I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Analise. I can only see the outside evidence of what’s going on inside. Do have another cookie. I don’t care what those boring people say, I think a little sugar and caffeine get one off to a good start in the morning.”
He turned his attention back to Analise and found her looking away from him, through the open door into the main area of the shop. She rose as if in a trance then moved through the door and across the room, a slim, fragile figure weaving among the dressers, tables, lamps and other items toward an old spinet piano.
Her walk, her body sway, were subtly different. The contemporary suit she wore seemed out of place. In a long gown with puffed sleeves and corseted waist she’d look at home among the antiques.
“It’s Rachel’s!” she exclaimed delightedly, plunking an out-of-tune piano key, interrupting his own strange trance. Damn! He was letting her crazy story get to him. “Where did you get Rachel’s pia
no?” She bent to examine it more closely. “Here’s the scratch on the leg where she whacked it with the broom handle. She hated to take lessons and—”
She stopped and looked at him then at Lottie, her expression fearful. For an instant his heart went out to her. No matter if she was lying or not, it was still possible—he wanted it to be possible—that she was a victim, caught in a web of circumstances not entirely of her own doing.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, returning to the table and falling back into her chair. “The accident...I still get a little confused.”
She looked so damned helpless, so unlike herself. He wanted to rush to her aid, lift her in his arms and soothe her, carry her away from the circumstances that had put them both in this position.
He clenched his jaw. That was illogical, emotional thinking and wouldn’t get him anywhere. He had a job to do, a mission to accomplish. She hadn’t given him any reason to believe in her innocence. Quite the contrary.
Analise picked up a cookie, broke it in half, then broke it again. She couldn’t bring herself to put the dry crumbs into her dry mouth. Damn it! She hadn’t felt confused a minute ago. She’d recognized the piano, remembered Rachel’s tantrum quite clearly, remembered helping her friend rub the scratch with walnut meats to try to hide it.
“You seem confused about a lot of things.” Dylan leaned forward, cradling the delicate cup in his big hands. If he exerted just the tiniest bit of pressure, he would surely crush the thin china.
“I don’t know about the scratch on the leg, but that piano came from Rachel Waller’s estate,” Lottie said.
“Rachel’s estate.” The words hit hard, reminded Analise that the vibrant young woman she remembered as though it were yesterday was dead. She must have known where the piano came from, woven the facts into her delusion. That was the logical explanation. “Did I know Rachel?”
“Oh, I doubt it. She died several years ago. But her house is right next door to yours. That’s where you live now, isn’t it, Dylan? I’m amazed they ever rented to you. So many heirs, and they can’t agree on anything. She didn’t leave a will, and she never married, so of course there were no children, but the cousins converged from every direction.”
“Rachel never married? But she was so pretty. She had so many beaux.”
No one said anything for a long moment.
Well, there, she’d dropped another conversation stopper. Was she ever going to quit doing that? She crammed the crumbled cookie into her mouth, washed it down with the now-tepid tea.
“You sound like you knew her personally,” Lottie said, her voice oddly quiet and contemplative.
“You just said the woman died several years before Analise moved here.” Dylan turned to Analise, his dark eyes riveting, demanding. “Unless you visited her before she died.”
“Not likely,” Lottie answered for her. “Rachel Waller was a recluse for most of her life. We used to talk about her when we were children. We said she must be a witch, that the only time she came outside was at night. People said you could hear her crying and moaning sometimes, but it was probably only the wind.”
Happy, vivacious Rachel a recluse? Going out only at night? Crying and moaning?
“Why?” The word came out a croak. Analise cleared her throat and tried again. “Did they say why? What happened to her to cause her to be like that?”
“There were lots of stories, of course. Some said she had a lover who left her or died. My mother always maintained she never stopped grieving for her best friend, the girl who lived in your house, Analise. For some reason she blamed herself for her friend’s death.”
Analise’s breath caught in her throat. She grasped Lottie’s arm. “Who was her best friend? What was her name? Who lived in my house before me?”
Lottie looked startled, blinked several times. She set her cup down and placed her hand over Analise’s. “It’s been so long,” she said, her voice soothing as though she recognized the urgency of Analise’s question. “I don’t remember. It was a pretty name, a foreign name.”
Analise heard Dylan suck in his breath.
She leaned closer to Lottie. “Dupard?” she asked, softly. “Was her name Dupard?”
“Why, yes, that’s it. Elizabeth Dupard. I always thought that was a lovely name. When I was a little girl, we’d play that we were Rachel and Elizabeth. We didn’t have video games then, you know. Elizabeth always came to a tragic end. I preferred to play Elizabeth. I was sure she was as beautiful as her name, and besides, dying young sounds so romantic when you’re ten years old.”
“When did she die? How did she die?” Analise realized she was squeezing Lottie’s arm. She loosened her grip, clenched her hands in her lap.
“I don’t know, dear,” Lottie said. “Maybe an illness. They didn’t have all these miracle drugs in those days, and a lot of people died young.”
“But there must have been talk, like there was about Rachel. They must have wondered why Rachel blamed herself for Elizabeth’s death.”
Lottie laced and unlaced the fingers of her small hands, obviously distressed with the intense turn the conversation had taken. “People love to gossip, of course. The theories ranged from Elizabeth being locked out in a snowstorm with Rachel not hearing her cries and letting her freeze to death, all the way to the lurid type, like Elizabeth stealing Rachel’s boyfriend and dying in childbirth. Most versions involved a man, somebody’s lover, though the stories varied as to whose lover.”
“So you must have heard the stories.” At the sound of Dylan’s voice, Analise turned slowly to look at him. “The stories about Rachel and Elizabeth. That’s where you got the information for your own story.”
“Yes,” she agreed reluctantly. “I must have.”
“I guess that’s possible,” Lottie said, “but those stories died out a long time before old Rachel’s death, and she’s been gone quite a few years.”
“Somebody probably told Analise something when she bought the piano,” Dylan suggested, his eyes remaining locked with Analise’s though he was speaking to Lottie.
Analise would have liked to believe it too. That would mean she was normal, just a little muddled from the fall, confusing things she’d heard with things she’d experienced.
But it didn’t feel right, and Lottie was shaking her head as she poured more tea into all three cups. “The piano was part of the inventory when she bought this shop. The heirs had to sell off most of the furniture to pay Rachel’s burial expenses.”
Analise’s eyes misted at the sad picture Lottie painted of her former friend. The woman she’d fantasized as her friend, she reminded herself, but her eyes were suddenly brimming with tears anyway. She knew on a rational level that she’d never known Rachel Waller, but she remembered her, remembered their closeness, their laughter, their dreams.
Dropping her gaze to her hands which were twisted around her cup, she blinked rapidly to clear the moisture from her eyes and the foolish notions from her head.
As she looked up again, she saw Dylan watching her, his features softened. He reached a hand across the table toward her, then suddenly changed his look to a scowl, withdrew his hand and pushed his chair back from the table.
“I’d better get on to work,” he said gruffly. “Thanks for the tea. I’ll pick you up about six, Analise.”
He walked through the shop and out the door. The bell jangled behind him.
Through the shop’s plate glass window she followed his progress as he strode purposefully, to his black car with never a backward glance.
And while it made no sense, his going left an emptiness.
She should have been glad to be rid of his distrust, his suspicions, his perpetual questions. But what she felt as he drove away was the loss of someone to whom she was mysteriously linked even though she couldn’t deny the possibility that he’d tried to harm her. Someone who, her heart told her, had been a part of her life through good and evil for a very long time.
Even as the car vanished from her sigh
t, she knew he’d be back, knew their business wasn’t finished.
If they hadn’t been lovers, what had they been to each other?
Chapter Six
Analise jumped in sudden fright as she felt hands on her shoulders, but these hands were small and gentle. “What’s wrong, Elizabeth? What’s happening?”
“I don’t know.” Belatedly it hit her. Fearfully, excitedly, she looked up at Lottie. “Why did you call me Elizabeth?”
“Did I?” Lottie frowned thoughtfully. “How odd. All this talk about Rachel Waller and her friend, I suppose. You finish your tea now, and I’ll tidy up. Mrs. Arnold should be in about eleven to decide which wardrobe she wants. I certainly hope she takes that big walnut one. We could use the space.”
“Please,” Analise said, “talk to me for a few more minutes. You’re the first person I’ve felt comfortable with since all this started, the first person who doesn’t seem to think I’m completely mad.”
Lottie sat beside her and patted her hand. “Poor dear. Of course you’re not crazy. Any time people don’t understand something, instead of just accepting and believing, they have to find some way to explain it. Thinking that person is insane is a very handy method.”
Analise grinned wryly. “But I’m one of those people who think I must be mad.”
“Not a bit of it. Let me brew up another pot, and you tell me all about it.”
Analise clutched the woman’s arm as she started to rise.
She couldn’t accept Lottie’s understanding without telling her everything, the worst. “Lottie, when I woke up yesterday morning, I thought I was Elizabeth Dupard.” She swallowed hard. “I still think I am, even though I know that’s not possible.”
Lottie nodded slowly, as if Analise had just confirmed something. “That opens up some intriguing possibilities. I’ll just be a minute.”
Analise knew the only rational possibility for her delusions, but she sat straighter in her chair, waiting for Lottie to return and offer an explanation other than insanity.
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