Tempting the Bride

chapter 9



Helena realized, as she began to doze off, that Hastings didn’t have a nice voice, but an extraordinary one: dulcet, golden, yet subtly powerful, like a distant rolling of thunder, or the reverberation of a faraway sea.

As she teetered on the edge of sleep, he stood over her and murmured, “If you should remember everything before I come back…”

Perhaps sleep overtook her; perhaps he never finished his sentence. The next thing she knew, someone was tapping on her arms. Groggily she opened her eyes—to Venetia’s beautiful face.

“Hello, sister dearest,” she mumbled.

Venetia smiled. She had a smile as exquisite as Hastings’s voice, but it could not altogether hide her concern. “Sorry to disturb you, my love. But we’ve been instructed to wake you up from time to time, to make sure you haven’t again lost consciousness.”

She helped Helena sit up. Helena accepted a glass of water and drank thirstily. “How long have I been asleep?”

“Five hours, more or less.”

“Is Lord Hastings back yet?”

How odd that this morning his very existence was a shock to her, but now she wanted to know his whereabouts.

“No, sorry. He said not to expect him before dinner. Would you like to eat something? You are in time for a very late lunch, or a very early tea.”

“Porridge again?”

“Since you kept down your breakfast, Nurse Gardner has decreed you may have some broth and a bit of a convalescent pudding.”

“Hmm, pudding. I am in a state of unspeakable anticipation.”

Venetia smiled again and rose to ring for the pudding.

“Did you get any rest yourself, Venetia?”

“I went for a quick drive and a walk in the park with my husband—I’m only with child, not ill. I did, however, lie down for half an hour just now, since he presented me with an irresistible bribe.”

With great pomp and circumstance, Venetia revealed the “irresistible bribe.” What Helena had imagined to be a piece of pretty bauble turned out to be nothing of the sort, unless during her absence of memory it had become fashionable for ladies to wear sinister-looking talons as accessories to their silk and muslin summer dresses.

“What is that?”

“It’s a tooth from a prehistoric crocodilian. Those beasts grew to dizzying sizes. They could probably reach up from their swampy dwellings and snap in two most of the smaller saurians coming for a drink of water.”

“Good gracious. And your husband gave it to you as a bribe?”

Venetia’s face fell a little. “Oh, I forgot you don’t remember. I—we—excavated a dinosaur skeleton on the coast of Devon the summer you were fourteen.”

“An entire skeleton?”

“Eighty-five percent complete, I’d say.”

The impotence of her mind vexed Helena. How could she not remember such a remarkable event as pulling a near-complete dinosaur skeleton out of the ground?

“I have pictures, if you should like to see them,” said Venetia tentatively. “You are in the pictures, too.”

Helena made herself smile. “Yes, of course. I’d love to see them.”

But seeing the pictures would be troubling, wouldn’t it, as if she were witnessing someone else live her life?

She changed the topic. “By the way, where am I? I can tell by the smell of the air that we are in London, but is this my house, yours, or—”

“This is Fitz’s house; he inherited it along with the title.”

“I always thought the title would go to that second cousin of ours, if the earl didn’t have any male issue of his own.”

“So did we all, but Mr. Randolph Fitzhugh was already quite elderly—he passed away before the earl did.”

“Wasn’t there still someone else between Fitz and the title?”

“Yes, another cousin—he also didn’t outlive the former earl.”

“Do we have cousins who survived?” Helena tried for a joking tone, but she couldn’t help a twitch of fear in her heart.

“Our Norris cousins are all doing well. Margaret married a naval officer. Bobby is a naval officer. And Sissy is a missionary in Hong Kong.”

Sissy who could never sit still in church?

A week ago Helena would have known that Sissy had turned devoutly religious. A week ago she’d have been able to give vivid descriptions of the prehistoric monster Venetia had excavated. A week ago her entire life would have been in a state of perfect order: happy siblings, a thriving firm, and a devoted husband.

She ate some pudding, trying to calm herself. “What about our Carstairs cousins?”

Venetia’s expression instantly turned sober. “We don’t have any Carstairs cousins left.”

“What? There were four of them!”

“Unfortunately they all died within an eighteen-month span. Lydia in childbirth, Crespin from influenza, Jonathan of bad oysters, and Billy”—Venetia grimaced—“Billy died by his own hand—it was whispered he was suffering from an advanced case of syphilis.”

The pudding now tasted of mud; Helena set down her spoon. She’d been fond of Billy Carstairs, a moody but kind young man, always saving scraps from the table to give to the village strays. And the rest of the Carstairses had been a noisy, fun-loving bunch, the youngest born on the exact same day as her.

All dead, all gone, leaving behind only a row of headstones in the graveyard of a parish church.

She gripped Venetia’s hand. “I’m so glad you are still here, and Fitz, too. If I should have woken up to find either of you gone…”

She couldn’t quite continue.

“Now you know how we felt, love.” Venetia kissed the back of Helena’s hand. “And you can scarcely imagine how thrilled we are to have you back. Don’t worry about old memories. We’ll make new ones. We are all together now and that’s the only thing that counts.”

Hastings swung between wild euphoria and feral fear.

Helena liked him. She genuinely liked him. It was as if he’d looked up from his lonely altar in the Sahara to find it raining. Barely a drizzle, to be sure, but still it was actual precipitation, when there had been nothing but burning sky and parched sand for centuries upon centuries.

Yet by the time he returned to her side…

It was one thing to have never been given a drop of rain, quite another to have felt the cool, sweet sprinkling on his face, and then to be denied the experience ever again.

If only he could have stayed with her, soaking up every last ounce of her lovely attention. And if only he could leave this moment to rush back to her side. But he was on one knee before Bea’s trunk and likely there to stay for a good long while.

“I know I didn’t come when I said I would and I am very sorry for that,” he repeated himself for the hundredth time. “But I couldn’t, you see. Miss Fitzhugh—Lady Hastings, my wife, your new mother—was injured and I didn’t know whether she’d live or die. I couldn’t leave her.”

No response. Bea hadn’t had such a bad case of the trunk for at least six months. But then again, for the longest time he’d been scrupulously careful about his schedule.

“If you were badly hurt, you’d want me to stay with you, wouldn’t you, Bea? You wouldn’t want me to fly off and visit someone else.”

Still no response.

He sighed. He had no idea how long they’d been at it. There were now three telegrams from Fitz in his pocket—he’d asked Fitz to cable him hourly to keep him abreast of Helena’s condition. At least she had not succumbed to cranial bleeding. He lowered himself to a sitting position, with his back against the side of the trunk. “Want me to read you a book? One of our stories?”

“I am badly hurt,” came her little pip of a voice.

It was the first thing she’d said to him since his arrival. He smiled ruefully, but also in relief. “Where are you hurt, poppet?”

The trunk had a little door at the bottom. It opened and out came her small, thin foot. He took it in hand, turning it one way, then the other.

“Listen,” she said.

“Ah, of course. If you will excuse me for a moment.” He fetched the stethoscope from his room, returned to the nursery, and rubbed his palm against the chest piece to make it less cold. He put the earpieces into his ears—Bea, who took her medical diagnoses seriously, could see out from the airholes that had been drilled into the sides of the trunk—and listened to her foot.

“Your blood seems to be pumping sluggishly and that is never good for one of the extremities—atrophy might result. In my opinion, dear Bea, you should take a walk. Exercise strengthens muscles and will make your foot better in no time.”

She didn’t say anything.

“I’ll come with you on the walk, of course.”

A long silence. “And supper?”

“I will stay for supper. And I will read you a bedtime story, too. Now will you come out? Or at least give me a time for when you’ll come out.”

Another long silence. “Four.”

It was only a few minutes past three, but at least it was something to look forward to. He murmured a silent thanksgiving.

“Sir Hardshell?”

“Of course, poppet.”

Sir Hardshell was Bea’s pet tortoise and one of Hastings’s potential headaches. No one knew exactly how old it was, except that it had been a resident at Easton Grange since the estate was first built sixty years ago, long before the property’s acquisition by Hastings’s uncle. And before that, Sir Hardshell had served for nearly thirty years as a ship’s mascot on various merchant marine vessels.

Hastings could only pray that Sir Hardshell would live to a legendary age. Bea did not deal well with changes, and there was no change more permanent than death. He made a show of listening to the tortoise’s heart and various other organs. “He sounds old, poppet, ancient. A hundred twenty, at least. You should brace yourself for the possibility that he might not make it through another winter.”

Bea made no reply. He exhaled—at least Sir Hardshell was still alive today. He set the tortoise on the floor to roam the edges of the nursery. “Shall I have some tea and biscuit sent up for you, Bea? And read you a story in the meanwhile?”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, Papa.”

His insides invariably turned into a warm puddle when she called him Papa. He rang for her tea, sat down again next to the trunk, and closed his eyes for a moment—awash in both exhaustion and gladness—before opening the storybook he’d hand-made for her. “Shall we start with your favorite, the one about Nanette’s birthday?”

The clock struck ten.

Marking at least fifteen minutes of continuous kissing for Fitz and Millie.

Helena hadn’t meant to be a Peeping Jane. Around half past nine, after she’d been talking to her brother and sister-in-law for some time, she’d dozed off. When she’d heard the next quarter hour chime on the clock, she’d forced herself to wake up, not wanting to sleep too much too early and then be wide-awake at night.

Also not wanting to miss Hastings. He’d cabled before he left Kent to let them know he was on his way, and she’d experienced a small flutter of anticipation when she’d learned the news.

But when she’d opened her eyes, she’d witnessed Fitz and Millie engaged in a passionate embrace, Fitz’s hands in his wife’s hair, one of Millie’s hands at her husband’s nape, the other somewhere too low for Helena to see from her supine position.

The polite thing to do, Helena decided, was to close her eyes and let them finish their kiss before making it known that she was once again conscious. But apparently there was no such thing as finishing a kiss, as far as those two were concerned.

She was mortified—the sounds they made could not be unheard and she’d never be able to look either in the eye again. But at the same time, she was…

She would not mind being party to a similarly heated kiss.

How would it feel to grip Hastings’s soft curls? To have his lips against hers? And to hear him emit involuntary noises of desire and relish?

A soft knock came on the door. At last Fitz and Millie pulled apart. There came hushed giggles and whispered words as they tried to make Millie’s hair look less disheveled.

The knock came again, slightly louder.

Again giggles and whispers, followed by Fitz clearing his throat. “Come in.”

The door opened. “I’m sorry,” said Hastings. “Were you already asleep?”

That voice of his—it might not lure unicorns out of their secret forests, but it could conceivably make howlingly bad verses sound like a lost Byronic masterpiece. And the question was quite tactful, giving Fitz and Millie an easy excuse for their delay in answering the door.

“We dozed off a bit just now,” answered Millie.

Helena was astonished at how guileless Millie sounded. This sister-in-law was more complicated than Helena would have guessed solely by looking at her sweet features and self-effacing demeanor.

“You are late,” said Fitz. “Bea was not happy with you, I take it?”

“It took me ages to coax her out of her trunk. How is Helena?”

“Better. She wants to be served a beefsteak tomorrow.”

“I thought she doesn’t like beefsteaks.”

She didn’t?

“We’ll let her find out for herself whether she still feels the same way,” said Fitz. “About beefsteaks…and other things.”

What other things? Helena decided it was time to join the conversation. She made a soft, sleepy grunt.

“Is she still awake?” asked Hastings.

“She was asleep earlier. Perhaps we are disturbing her by speaking in here.”

Helena produced another small grunt and slowly opened her eyes. Hastings took a step toward her. “Did we wake you, Helena?”

His words were soft, but his jaw was tense. In fact, his entire person was tense, as if he were about to meet a battle of impossible odds.

“You are back,” she mumbled.

She must have said something comforting, for instantly the strain in his face was replaced by a look of indescribable relief. He smiled. “Yes, I’m back.”

“I haven’t remembered you,” she felt obliged to point out.

He touched his fingertips to the edge of her bed, a startlingly intimate gesture even though he’d done nothing suggestive. “That does not in the least diminish my joy at seeing you again, my dear.”

Fitz cleared his throat. If Helena didn’t have her stitches to mind, she’d have raised an eyebrow as high as the battlements of the Tower of London. She failed to see why a man who kissed his wife like a starving man devouring a fresh loaf of bread ought to interfere when another man greeted his own wife in a most decorous fashion.

“Did you have supper, David?” Fitz asked.

“I did, thank you.” Hastings turned to Fitz. “Where is the night nurse?”

“We told her to get up and stretch her legs. She’s been cooped up in that chair for hours,” said Millie.

Hastings nodded. “I see.”

“Fitz, Millie, why don’t you two go take your rest?” said Helena. Or be up half the night with noisy indecencies, if you so prefer. “Lord Hastings can stay with me until the night nurse returns.”

At her suggestion, a number of looks were exchanged among Fitz, Millie, and Hastings. Helena was vaguely disconcerted. Why did everyone always act surprised whenever she wanted a moment of privacy with her husband?

“Well, then, David, we’ll leave her safety and well-being in your capable hands,” acceded Fitz.

Fitz and Millie kissed Helena on her good cheek before they murmured their good nights. Hastings closed the door softly behind their departing backs. “How are you, my dear?”

“Much, much better. No more abdominal troubles, only one faint bout of nausea, and…” She lost her train of thought for a moment as he came to the foot of the bed. His long fingers traced the tapering segment of the bedpost nearest him—fingers that, given that they were newlyweds, must have freely traced the curves of her body only days ago.

“And what?” he prompted.

“And—the headache is far more tolerable.”

“Excellent.” Now he spread his fingers against the bedpost. She swallowed. “My apologies for waking you up. I wanted to be back sooner, but Bea wouldn’t come out of her trunk.”

He’d mentioned the trunk earlier, to Fitz and Millie. “What trunk?”

“She has a trunk she climbs into when she is upset.”

Belatedly she realized that he looked different: He’d put enough pomade into his hair so that only the very ends still curled. The pomade also made his hair look darker, more brown than blond. “Wouldn’t she asphyxiate inside?”

“I had holes drilled in the sides of the trunk. And there is also a small opening near the bottom through which one can hand her a cup of tea and a biscuit.”

An odd child. Helena could think of nothing worse than locking herself in a trunk. “She is not like other children, is she?”

“No child is like any other, but she does lack those instincts and skills to even remotely resemble other children.” He sighed softly. “Between you and me, I have no idea whether I am doing the right thing by waiting beside the trunk and coaxing her out. My uncle would have burned the trunk, forcing her to light the match, no less.”

She didn’t know why she found his uncertainty so attractive. She supposed she must like a man who was both humble enough to question his decisions and brave enough to admit it. “Is she genuinely distressed when she goes into her trunk?”

“Yes.”

“Then you are not doing anything wrong by being patient and kind.”

He smiled again at her, a smile both tired and happy. Something tugged at her heart. She slid her fingers along the top of the bedcover. “I never had a trunk—I could not tolerate being inside one even for hide-and-seek. But we did have a very tall tree at Hampton House. When I became particularly upset for any reason, I’d climb to the highest branch and then be stuck there, not knowing how to get back down to the ground.

“My father had a ladder especially built for retrieving me. He married quite late and was forty-five by the time Fitz and I were born. So he was at least fifty when I developed my habit of angry tree scaling. But he always came for me himself instead of sending a servant, and some of my happiest childhood memories consist of being carried on his back while he negotiated his way down that long, long ladder.”

He’d gazed at her steadily as she recounted her story, but now that she was silent, she found it more difficult to hold his gaze. “You probably already know the story,” she said, for something to say.

“No, it’s the first time I’ve heard it,” he answered, sounding thrilled about it. “You think someday Bea will speak of the trunk and her waiting father to someone?”

“She should. I would.”

The praise felt too warm—so warm that her cheeks turned hot. The way he watched her, she was sure he sensed this rise in her surface temperature. She cast about for something less warm. “What did you do to your hair? I don’t like it as much.”

His brow knitted. “How do you like it?”

“I prefer the curls.”

He looked as if she’d told him she preferred him with three eyes. “You used to make fun of them. You told me that if Bo Peep had a child with one of her sheep it would have hair like mine.”

She burst out laughing—and gasped at the pain that shot through her scalp. “You are not making it up, are you? Did I really say that?”

“Sometimes you called me Goldilocks.”

She had to remind herself not to laugh again. “And you married me? I sound like a very odious sort of girl.”

“I was a very odious sort of boy, so you might say we were evenly matched.”

She didn’t know enough to comment upon that, but when he was near, she was…happier.

Neither of them said anything for some time. The silence was beginning to feel awkward when he glanced at the door and asked, “Fitz and his wife weren’t actually dozing, were they?”

That seemed a much safer topic of conversation. She seized upon it. “No, they were kissing as if there were no tomorrow.”

He grinned. “And you were peeping as if there were no tomorrow?”

If only she could toss back her head. “I will have you know that once I realized what they were doing, I kept my eyes firmly shut. They should have made sure I was truly asleep before pawing each other.”

“It was probably all they could do to dispatch the nurse elsewhere.” He looked toward the bedpost, where his fingers probed the depth of its spiral grooves. “When one has kissing on the mind, it becomes difficult to think of many other things.”

The man was doing something to her. Despite her weakness and discomfort from the accident, and despite the fact that only hours ago on this same day she’d had no idea who he was, she felt…stirrings. “Did we used to kiss like that?”

Surely she hadn’t meant to ask such a question. But there it was, hanging bright and shameless between them.

His fingers stilled. “Occasionally.”

She bit the inside of her lower lip. “Only occasionally?”

He glanced at her askance, a half smile about his lips. “How often do you recommend we should have done it?”

She had no choice now but to brazen it out. “As often as I wanted, of course.”

Had it not been deep in the night she might not have heard the catch in his breath—or the subsequent unsteadiness as he exhaled. Heat curled in her abdomen.

“In that case, we did it as often as you wanted.” His hand was again on the edge of the bed, fingers rubbing against the linen sheets. “And you liked it very, very well, if I may add.”

That same heat was now everywhere inside her. “Am I supposed to take your word for it?”

He took a step closer, his eyes the color of a clear sky. “You can have a demonstration if you don’t believe me.”

A knock came on the door, startling her. “That…must be the nurse.”

“Drat it,” he said, a touch of rue to his smile. “So much prowess, so little chance to prove it.”

“Maybe when you have curly hair again.”

“Maybe I’ll make you kiss me first and prove your sincerity,” he said as he walked toward the door, “before I will stop pomading my hair.”

After the nurse took her seat, he did not leave, but sat down in the same chair he’d occupied in the morning to read Mrs. Browning’s sonnets.

“My lord, my lady needs to rest,” the nurse reminded him.

“Yes, of course, good nurse. I will not bother Lady Hastings, but sit here quietly.”

Helena was both pleased and surprised. “You don’t wish to sleep in a nice bed of your own?”

He shook his head firmly. “I’ve been away from you long enough this day.”

Her heart pitter-pattered. “It will be uncomfortable.”

He raised her hand and pressed a kiss into the center of her palm. “What’s a little discomfort compared to the joy of being near you? Now sleep, my dear; you’ve much convalescing left to do.”

She did not take much time to go back to sleep. Hastings remained awake for much longer, savoring each moment of her nearness.

It still felt like a dream to be allowed to sit next to her for hours on end. The sweet intimacy of watching her fall asleep was a privilege he’d never hoped for, not even when he wrote fiction about them. And to converse as they did, exchanges that meant something—a whole new world indeed.

He didn’t know when he fell asleep, but it was a little past four in the morning when he suddenly awakened with a stark fear in his heart. He immediately looked toward her. In the muted light from the covered electric sconce, she lay flat on her back, her chest rising and falling with a comforting cadence. He let out a sigh of relief—and only then saw that her eyes were open and a trail of tears glistened on her temple.

He touched her hand. “What’s the matter?” he whispered, not wanting to wake up the softly snoring night nurse.

“Nothing.” Helena wiped away her tears, grimacing a little as her fingers touched still-bruised skin. “I’m just being sentimental.”

“May I ask about what or whom?”

She inhaled unsteadily. “My Carstairs cousins. Do you know them?”

“Yes. I went to a great many of their funerals.”

Another teardrop rolled down the side of her temple into her hair. “I can’t believe they are all gone—especially Billy.”

His eyes widened.

She, staring at the ceiling, did not notice his reaction. “He was probably my father’s favorite among all my cousins. And mine, too. Such a gentle way he had with animals—they loved him, one and all. And the way he died was so horrible, I can’t help feeling heartbroken for him. Which is silly, of course, since I must have already shed buckets of tears earlier.”

“You didn’t shed any tears for him,” he said.

Her lips quivered. “I probably wouldn’t have let you see me cry, since we weren’t married then.”

“You didn’t attend his funeral, Helena.”

This stopped her tears. “What? Was I ill?”

“No, you were perfectly fine. You didn’t go because you loathed Billy.”

She scooted higher to rest her back against the headboard. “That’s impossible. I adored Billy. You should have seen how sweet he was with my puppy—or even stray dogs.”

He recognized her digging in her heels. And he, alas, possessed the questionable talent of making her dig in her heels even harder. But he had no choice but to go on. “Billy was nice to puppies, but he was loathsome to women. He raped five women in his service. Each time it was hushed up, but everyone knew. By the time of his death, there were no women working in the Carstairs house.”

She stared at him, her jaw slack.

“You had trouble believing it the first time, too. It wasn’t until you were eighteen and walked in on him trying to corner a fourteen-year-old maid that you changed your mind. So if you don’t believe me, I understand.”

She shook her head much harder than she ought. “No, no, you mistook me. Of course I believe you.”

Now it was he who stared at her, incredulous and—ecstatic. She took him at his word. She trusted him. Nothing like this had ever happened before.

“You’ve no reason to speak ill of the dead,” she went on, the fingers of her free hand flexing restlessly. “And it would have been to your advantage, in fact, to say something nice when I was weeping over him. I’m only speechless at how wrong I was. Father died when Billy was twelve, so he can be forgiven for not realizing what a monster Billy would become. But where was I for the next so many years? It should not have taken me that long to see the truth—and here I thought myself so clever in all things.”

“You are clever in just about all things,” he told her. “Clever, discerning, and wily. But there is also a streak of sentimentality to you. You don’t form attachments easily. When you do, you love with a great intensity and you are forgiving of flaws and weaknesses.”

She seemed surprised by his defense of her, then grateful, then bashful. “You are not speaking of yourself here, are you? You look like a man full of flaws and weaknesses,” she said, her tone half-teasing.

“That I may be, but you’ve never forgiven a single flaw of mine, much to my disappointment.”

She looked away for a moment, her fingers plucking at the sheets. “Well, at least that put an end to my silly weeping.”

He reached forward and placed his hand over hers. “Why don’t you go back to sleep? You need your rest.”

She cast him a sideways glance, but didn’t say anything.

“What is it?” he asked.

She only smiled—or perhaps smirked—with her eyes.

His heartbeat accelerated. “You are thinking of something.”

“Maybe I am.”

“Tell me.”

His hand still covered hers. But now she turned her hand so that her thumb grazed a slow line down the center of his palm. His breath caught; heat coursed up his arm.

“That demonstration you offered—I’ll take you up on it.” Her eyes turned even naughtier. “But not just yet. You must wait more time.”

“Really?” he drawled.

He rose from his seat, set his arms on either side of her, and closed the distance between their lips until only a bare inch remained.

She was surprised—and excited. Even in this dingy light he could see her pupils dilating. She licked her lips; his fingers clawed into the pillows. Their agitated breaths mingled, and all he had to do was lower his head a little farther…

He pulled back, sat down again, and smirked as she had. “You are right—not just yet. You must wait more time, my dear.”

In the morning light, Helena examined her pate, wondering whether Hastings would have kissed her during the night if she’d had a cloud of soft, wavy hair spread out on the pillow, the visual equivalent of a siren song. “I believe I may declare with great authority that I prefer not being bald,” she said ruefully.

She was surrounded by women: the day nurse, waiting to wrap fresh bandaging around her head; Venetia, holding up the mirror; and Millie, one finger on her cheek.

“You are not completely bald,” pointed out Millie. “Your hair is already growing back.”

“Never mind the hair,” said Venetia. “That hoof could have taken out your eye; at least hair grows back.”

Helena sighed. That was quite true. “Not to mention I can’t remember anything of your dino—”

Into her mind tumbled the recollection of warm summer air brushing against the skin of her nape, alternating with salty, cool breezes from the coast. She’d been sitting under a tree with a book in her hand—Wuthering Heights, to be exact—hadn’t she? And Venetia had shouted from somewhere behind her, Fitz, Helena, come look at what I’ve found.

“I remember,” she said very softly, not wanting to scatter her newly returned memories. “I remember. It was a big brute, your fossil. We knocked about it for an hour before we decided that the three of us were no match for it. Fitz suggested we ask for help from the village, so we did. And every male over the age of five volunteered.”

Venetia stared at her for a few seconds. Then she shrieked and hugged Millie hard—the way she couldn’t hug Helena. “That’s exactly what happened. You do remember! You do, you do!”

She let go of a startled Millie, laughed, and wiped her eyes at the same time. “Well, actually, not exactly what happened. There were no five-year-olds following me. Seven-year-olds, perhaps, but not five-year-olds.”

Helena laughed, too, and didn’t care at all about the discomfort it caused. “Maybe not five-year-olds, but there was that one boy who must have been no more than four, and for the remainder of the excavation he stood six inches from you, staring.” She turned to Millie. “You think Venetia is beautiful now, but she can’t hold a candle to her sixteen-year-old self. She used to pack the streets with spectators.”

Venetia smiled hugely. “Wait till I tell Lexington what a terrible bargain he received, getting my old, ugly self instead of the fresh, pretty one.”

She did not need to go find her husband. The door swung open and he was right there. “Are you all right, Duchess? I heard you scream.”

Venetia rushed up to him and grabbed his arm. “I’m perfectly fine. Helena remembered our dig.”

“The Cetiosaurus?” enthused Lexington, placing his hand over his wife’s. “Excellent. That’s what? Six months later than what she could previously recall?”

“At least seven,” Venetia corrected him.

Fitz and Hastings now joined Lexington at the door, which was becoming quite crowded. “What is all the commotion about?” asked Fitz.

“I remember Venetia’s dinosaur,” Helena announced, feeling as proud as the first time she read a book all by herself.

“Thank goodness!” cried Fitz. “That is wonderful news.”

Helena’s attention turned to Hastings, whose hair was still damp from his bath. He smiled, too, but there was a hollowness to the smile. “Venetia found the dinosaur only weeks before I visited Hampton House for the first time. Do you also remember that?”

Helena’s glee deflated some. “No, not that. At least, not yet.”

Hastings exhaled. “I suppose it will happen some other time, then.”

His reaction puzzled her. Taken together with his relief the night before at her continued state of nonremembrance, and his general nonchalance over their years of shared history wiped clean, one might be tempted to say that he didn’t particularly long for the return of her memory.

“My lady,” said Nurse Gardner, “we should have your new bandages on.”

Helena belatedly remembered her bald head. “Gentlemen, would you mind?”

They murmured their apologies and left. Hastings glanced back at her, his gaze fearful, as if she were not getting better, but worse, and any moment could be their last together.



It was only a matter of time.

Hastings sat by her bedside, his head in his hands. He knew this. He knew this all along. But he’d hoped for a little more time, a little more of this miracle.

“I see you’ve wisely decided not to hide your curls from my ravenous sight,” she said, startling him.

He straightened in his chair. “You are awake.”

“And have been for several minutes.”

He helped her sit up higher and rang for her luncheon. “Admiring my cross-between-golden-retriever-and-French-poodle hair?”

One side of her mouth lifted. “I am ravished by the beauty of those curls.”

She probably wouldn’t speak so flirtatiously had they not been alone. But the day nurse had gone to use the water closet. He retook his seat. “Ravished, eh?”

“Indeed. But I would have been even more ravished if I weren’t wondering at the same time why you look so dejected.”

Of course she’d notice. Hadn’t he himself told her, only hours ago, that she was wily, discerning, and clever? And he hadn’t been exactly subtle in his reactions, ricocheting from dread to hope and back again in dizzying succession.

He raked his fingers through his hair. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to distract you from the pure joy that is my beauty.”

She studied him for a moment. The bruises on her face were fading more rapidly now; in a few more days they would be only faint smudges of discoloration. And her eyes—her gaze was at once intense and sympathetic. He’d seen her look at others this way, but never him.

“Why don’t you want me to regain my memory?”

The bluntness of her question made him perspire. But he met her eyes and answered truthfully, “I do want you to regain your memory. You’ve made many friends and lived an interesting and accomplished life. It would be a crying shame if you can’t look back and see this path you’ve blazed for yourself.”

She considered his answer for a moment. “But?”

Was she ready for the whole truth? Was he?

“Do you remember what I told you about melting into a puddle at my first sight of you?”

She smiled just perceptibly. “Yes.”

“My sentiments were not reciprocated. You took a look at me and went back to your books. You were not one of those girls who fell in love easily, not to mention I was five inches shorter than you. I, on the other hand…”

He’d declared his love again and again when she’d been comatose. But if he uttered those words now, with her perfectly awake and lucid, he’d never be able to repudiate that sentiment. And she would always know.

He played with the edge of her bedding, not quite meeting her eyes. “I, on the other hand, fell madly in love. And when I realized that I was invisible to you, I resorted to gaining your attention by any means possible.”

“What did you do?” Her tone was amused, fond even.

“The better question would have been, what didn’t I do?” He raised his face. “A week after we first met I tried to pinch your bottom.”

She stared at him, halfway between outrage and laughter. “Truly?”

“My only defense is that I knew I wouldn’t be able to feel anything—women wore enormous bustles then. All I wanted was for you to notice me.”

“Did I hit you?”

“A tremendous, well-deserved punch to my face. I walked around with a black eye for a week—and was a bit sad when it faded away completely.”

Her lips trembled with mirth. “My goodness, such a romantic.”

“You find it funny now. But imagine if your recently recouped memory had extended a few more weeks to include my first visit to Hampton House. You’d think me quite the despicable snot.”

“And all you have to do is prove to me that you are not.” Her hand reached up and took a strand of his hair between her fingers. “Simple as that.”

She gently pulled on that curl and let it go. “It’s so springy.”

They’d barely grazed at the truth, but she was satisfied—and distracted. By his hair, of all things.

“I feel like a sheep that has been overlooked during spring shearing,” he murmured.

“Yes, adorably fluffy.”

Another time he might have protested the use of that adjective. But now he was all too relieved. “Would you like me to pull my chair closer, so you may fondle my hair with greater ease?” he asked.

She beamed at him. “Why, yes, I’d like exactly that.”

In the evening she asked him to read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. He gladly obliged, reprising his performance from earlier, with distinct voices and accents for the characters. He did so well that Nurse Jennings, the night nurse, clapped at the end of a chapter.

Helena joined in the applause. “Bravo! Bravo! And you have read the book to me before, have you not? I have a sense that this is not the first time I’ve heard the Cheshire Cat purr like that.”

“No, the only other time I’ve read the book to you was when you were unconscious.”

She appeared mystified. “I don’t suppose I can remember anything from those three days, can I? Yet I’ve a distinct feeling I’d heard you do a similar reading.”

Was she about to experience another opening of the floodgate? And how far would she remember this time? His fingers tightened around the pages. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

She made a resigned pull of her lips. “I must be imagining things, even though I’d swear I’m not.”

He looked down at the book. “Would you like me to go on to the next chapter?”

She pondered her choice. “Nurse Jennings, would you care for a bit of fresh air just now?”

Nurse Jennings did not need to be asked twice. “I should dearly love it. Thank you, my lady.”

Hastings held his breath. Helena wanted to speak to him in private. Had she remembered something crucial?

The door closed behind Nurse Jennings. Helena turned toward Hastings. “I must have been completely distracted by your ravishing curls earlier. The more I think about it, the more I am puzzled. Why should you dread the return of my memory so much if the worst you ever did was put your hand once on my bum?”

So no further recovery of memory—at least not yet. “Well, let’s see. When I visited your house the next summer, I’d grown two inches, but alas, so had you. You towered over me as much as you ever did and ignored me with vicious cruelty. So I set up a trap to lock the two of us together into a wardrobe in the attic. Unfortunately you were one step ahead of me and locked me in by myself instead.”

She grinned toothily. “Well done, me.”

“You didn’t let me out for six hours—it was only by the grace of God that my bladder held. And when you finally came to release me, you wore such a spectacular smirk—it haunted me for months upon months.

“The summer we were both seventeen I was almost tall enough to look you in the eye, but still frustratingly half an inch short. On the other hand, I was no longer a virgin, having been freshly plucked a fortnight before, so I made sure to corner you at every opportunity and inundate you with all the lurid details.

“You’ve always been a bit of a beanpole, so I made sure to tell you how enormous the barmaid’s bubbies were and how round her arse. Then I told you about her sweet cherry of a mouth—nothing but pout, but which managed to swallow me whole.”

Her jaw fell—it was a somewhat shocking conversation, even between spouses. “What did I say to that?”

“You said, ‘To fit entirely into a little cherry of a mouth, you must have a tiny endowment.’”

She burst out laughing. “What did you say to that?”

“I sputtered something, protesting that hadn’t been what I’d meant, but I couldn’t exactly pull down my trousers to prove you wrong. You, coldhearted wench, you retorted, ‘I’m sure you didn’t mean to divulge such embarrassing personal details, but don’t worry. Pay the barmaids enough and they won’t laugh at you.’ Then you winked at me. I was utterly humiliated.”

She chortled with glee. “My, I was something else.”

“So was I, one might say, quite the annoying twit.”

And was that conclusion enough to explain his alarm at the possible return of her memory?

She covered her mouth and yawned. “Excuse me. I can’t believe how much sleep I need these days.”

He felt himself unknotting with relief. “Then sleep. Your health is the most important thing right now.”

“Would you mind starting the next chapter of the book?”

“Of course not. I’ll read until you fall asleep.”

She took one of his curls between her fingers. “Fitz has a room for you. You don’t need to sit in a chair all night.”

He rubbed a finger on the edge of the book. “I want to.”

Now she lay her entire palm against the ends of his hair. “In case I wake up in the middle of the night crying again and need someone to smack some sense into me?”

In case this was the last night he was allowed such a privilege.

“Something like that,” he answered. “I might have been a twit and a snot earlier in life, but I’ve grown up to be the voice of reason and the repository of good sense.”

Helena’s stitches were removed the next morning. She was also declared to be out of danger, no more fears of cranial bleeding. She immediately wanted to be out and about, but acquiesced under the combined weight of Miss Redmayne’s advice and her family’s insistence that she continued her bed rest for a few more days.

At least she was allowed to read. Hastings introduced her to the book she’d written for writers seeking to understand the inner workings of publishing. He also brought her secretary, Miss Boyle, to her bedside, to furnish the necessary explanations for her to deal with Fitzhugh and Company correspondence that had accumulated during her absence.

It was, interestingly enough, not as dispiriting a process as she’d thought it would be, trying to relearn in scant days everything that had earlier taken her years to master. She was more frustrated by the lack of progress on the part of her memory. Given that she’d regained a not insignificant portion soon after she awakened, she’d expected to make similar progress, if not every day, then at least every other day.

But the recovery of memory, alas, followed no regular schedule. She was beginning to fret that nothing else would come back when, on the fourth day after she awakened, while Hastings was again away in Kent to visit his daughter, she suddenly recalled the weeks surrounding Venetia’s first wedding.

Venetia had been seventeen and Helena and Fitz fifteen. Most of Helena’s thoughts at the time had revolved around her fear that Venetia might have made a terrible mistake in her choice of a bridegroom. Hastings, alas, did not feature at all in the resurfaced memories, except as an aside from Helena to Fitz, hoping he wouldn’t bring his stupid friend to the festivities, and Fitz replying that Hastings couldn’t come even if he wanted to, as he had to attend his guardian’s funeral on the same day.

When Hastings returned, she eagerly recounted her new recollections and teased him for his unfounded fear: Her opinion of him in the present hadn’t been at all affected by the new revelations of the past.

He took a deep breath. “But I wasn’t wrong. You didn’t like me in the past.”

“In the distant past,” she pointed out. “And I already knew that.”

He smiled rather wanly. “Well, congratulations. I know how much you wanted to remember more.”

She fluffed his lovely hair. “Don’t be so afraid. I’ll keep you—if just for your curls.”

This second recovery of memory dispelled much of her anxiety: It was only a matter of time before she had everything back. And in the meanwhile, her physical self grew ever stronger and more energetic, her siblings were both well and happy, and she had Hastings, who, when her eyes grew sore and weary from reading correspondence addressed to Fitzhugh and Company, read the letters aloud to her, making even the driest business dispatches sound like love letters from Keats to his beloved Fanny Brawne.

One afternoon, Helena awakened from a short nap to find Fitz, rather than Hastings, sitting by the bed, reading a business report of his own.

“David is at a meeting with his business managers,” he informed her before she could ask the question.

“Excellent,” she said, “so he does have something else to do. I was beginning to worry that I was his whole life.”

“You don’t seem worried,” Fitz replied wryly. “Indeed you seem greatly pleased that he has devoted so many hours to you.”

She grinned and chose not to directly address that comment. “I’m surprised to see you without your wife.”

“So am I, as a matter of fact. But she has a charity committee meeting to attend, and I thought I’d profit by calling on another one of my favorite women.”

He smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling very slightly in the sunlight streaming in through the window. Fitz had always been a handsome young man, but she could see now that he was also going to be quite a handsome older man someday.

“I’ve been such trouble to you,” she said impulsively, feeling a rush of love for this dear brother.

“I’m torn between answers.” His expression turned mischievous. “Should I say, ‘Not at all’? or, ‘We are used to it’?”

She chortled. “Either way, you—and everyone else—have been too kind to me.”

Fitz set aside his report. “Including David?”

“Yes, including Lord Hastings.”

He leaned forward in his seat and regarded her for a moment. “You like him.”

She was not yet quite comfortable admitting to an outright attraction to her husband, but she was able to say, “I could do far worse waking up to a stranger as my husband—I am quite grateful to my own good taste.”

“Hmm,” said Fitz.

She raised a brow—how wonderful to be able to use every muscle of her face without fear of pain. “Now, what does that mean, sir?”

“It means, dear sister, that I’m glad to hear my friend spoken of so highly. He was devastated when you ejected the contents of your stomach upon being introduced to him.”

She grimaced. “That was a complete and utter coincidence. My stomach had been feeling unwell from the moment I opened my eyes. The nausea happened to build to a crescendo when Hastings was presented to me—nothing to do with him at all. Besides, I’ve since formed a favorable opinion of him.”

Fitz tented his hands under his chin. “So are you ready to decamp to his house and be his wife?”

“I can’t live under my brother’s roof forever when I am already a married woman. But as for becoming Hastings’s wife in truth—I’ll make him court me a little more. Mother always said, bless her memory, that a girl ought not to bestow her favors too easily or too quickly.”

She was half jesting, but Fitz’s brow furrowed. “You are not planning to flirt, then thwart him, are you, my dear?”

That was not an opinion she’d expected from her own dear brother. “You believe that’s what I will do?”

“The truth is, I haven’t the least idea what you will do.” Fitz sighed. “I only ask that you have a care with my friend, Helena. He is entirely besotted with you, and that puts him utterly in your power. Keep in mind that while he is perfectly capable of making fun of himself, he is far from thick-skinned. If anything, he is more sensitive than most.”

This surprised her—Hastings had seemed utterly fearless. “Is he?”

“Yes, very sensitive. And very proud.”

She was disconcerted to be reminded that she’d known her husband for only a few days, that her knowledge of him, however intimate to her own mind, was far from complete. “Thank you, Fitz. I will remember that. And…” She hesitated a second. “And his heart is safe with me.”

Fitz regarded her another long moment before he smiled again. “I’m glad to hear that. Shall I ring for some tea?”

On the last day of Helena’s convalescence, Hastings was obliged to travel to Oxford to attend the funeral of a classics professor under whom he’d studied and with whom he’d corresponded regularly in the years since.

He was jittery on the return trip—the last time he’d left her for an appreciable amount of time, she’d recovered a solid block of her memory. Walking into Fitz’s house filled him with both anticipation and unease.

The time had probably come to tell her the entire truth. Her life was no longer in danger; her mind was as robust as it had ever been; it would be a discourtesy to continue to keep her in the dark.

She was not in her bed when he entered her room, but sitting before the vanity, frowning at the reflection in the mirror. On her head she wore one of the close-fitting turbans Millie’s maid had fashioned for her, this one made from an auburn silk that rather matched the color of her eyebrows.

“I’m back,” he said.

She turned her head and regarded him severely. His heart leaped up his throat. What had she remembered now?

“Is it because I am bald that you haven’t kissed me?” she demanded.

“What?” He goggled at her, astounded that she could even conceive of such a thing. “Of course not.”

“Then why haven’t you proceeded to that demonstration yet? It has been almost a week since you offered me one.”

“Because—you have been unwell and I don’t wish to rush you.”

His reply was not dishonest, but he was still reflexively shying away from the greater truth.

“You can’t rush me—I won’t allow you to rush me,” she said, her tone haughty. “But you do owe me that demonstration. A man who dares tell me that I enjoy kissing him had better be ready with the proof.”

Her hand reached up and felt around the edge of the turban. The gesture, in sharp contrast to the imperiousness of her words, was quite tentative. It dawned on him that she was genuinely concerned that her lack of hair was somehow responsible for his lack of aggression.

“My dear Helena, I assure you, you are just as pretty without your hair.”

She pulled her lips tight. “Liar.”

He approached her and, in one quick gesture, yanked the turban from her head.

“Give it back!” she cried. One of her hands covered the top of her head; the other grabbed at the turban.

He took her by the shoulders and turned her toward the mirror. “Look at yourself.”

She dropped her hand from her head but kept her gaze firmly averted. “I look like a prisoner.”

“I know conventional ideas of femininity demand the presence of hair—a great deal of it, preferably. But set aside your preconceptions. Don’t judge your appearance on what it is not, but on what it is.”

She glanced at the mirror and grimaced.

“You are beautiful as you are,” he murmured. “I don’t think I’ve ever noticed the shape of your cheekbones, the sweep of your eyebrows, or the fullness of your lips as well as I do now.”

He cupped her chin, his thumb pressing into the center of her bottom lip. Their gaze met in the mirror. Her lips parted; her breath caressed the top of his hand.

His heart pounded: She wanted to kiss him. Not because he’d blackmailed her, not because they had to in order to convince Mrs. Monteth, but because she wanted to feel his lips against hers, his tongue in her mouth.

He meant to do it properly, start slow and soft, and only gradually build toward the wildness that had always characterized their kisses. But the moment he touched his lips to hers, she locked one arm behind his neck, and all thoughts of leisure and gentleness leaped out the window.

He devoured her. And she, her tongue mobile and eager, devoured him in return. He pulled her out of her chair and pushed her against the edge of the vanity. She grabbed his hair and moaned, a sound of stark hunger—and it was all he could do not to push up her nightgown and sink into her then and there.

He pulled back before he could become further aroused. They stared at each other for a moment, panting.

“Is this what always happens when we kiss?” she asked, licking her kiss-swollen lips.

He had to clench his hands so as to not fall upon her again. “Precisely.”

She took a few more agitated breaths, then grinned. “You are right. I do like it very, very well.”