Chapter Twenty-Four
Twenty-Four
Rose stilled. Had he just…?
He had. He’d called her Charlotte.
He didn’t mean to, a treacherous voice in her head said. It was a slip, from a man who’d been married to a beloved wife for two years and had grieved her for longer than that. Just go with it.
But she was sick of being the one who put up with everything. She moved from the position of kneeling over him and sat on the bed next to him, her back against the headboard, hugging her knees. As she closed her eyes, gathering herself together, she felt Henry move beside her.
“My love, what is it?” He set a gentle hand on her knee. “Talk to me. What is the matter?”
The sincerity in his low voice reassured her.
Anyone could make a mistake, and it had been an unguarded moment.
It was painful, yes, but he would apologize again and again—and for a duke who had originally seemed like the definition of haughty, Henry was surprisingly good at apologies. They could get over this.
She opened her eyes and looked down at him. “You called me Charlotte.”
“Yes.” He was searching her expression. “You do not know why.”
“What?” Adrenaline jittered through her nerves. He’d done it on purpose? “No, I don’t know why!” Was this some kind of sick game? She wasn’t playing.
“I thought perhaps that you remembered,” he said, getting up to his knees.
“Remembered what?” He was scaring her now.
He pried one of her hands away from where it was tightly wrapped in her other hand and cradled it in both of his own.
“You’ve told me that you lived past lives. This will sound strange to say, but I believe that you were Charlotte.”
A spark of hope ignited in her…
And then her brain kicked in. No. This was awful.
He was saying, in all sincerity, “Please hear me out. There have been too many coincidences. Your choice of the Shakespeare quote for a speech, for one.”
“It’s Shakespeare. It’s not exactly obscure!” She’d taken a Shakespeare class in college, and she’d seen the quote on a wedding website.
He shook his head. “Your handwriting itself. I thought I was looking at something written in her hand.” She vaguely remembered him asking about why she wrote the way she did.
“And do you not think it strange that you bought the moonstone that fits into the astrolabe in a—a bazaar? What are the chances of that?”
“The same chances as any of the other thousands of people who shop on Maxwell Street.” This wasn’t quite honest, maybe. The pendant had called to her. It had been well out of her budget, but she’d felt she had to have it.
“Listen to me.” He leaned closer, blocking out her view of anything but him. Instinctively, Rose shrank away, her back against the headboard. “When I first said the astrolabe was a gift from my late wife, you behaved as though you remembered that. Why?”
Because for a moment, she’d felt a spark of recollection, like a long-forgotten scent bringing back a buried memory.
But that feeling had made no sense. She didn’t recall any such thing. And Henry, who she’d thought might be falling in love with her, was only using her as a substitute for his dead wife. Why didn’t anyone love her for her? For who she was?
She felt a sob working its way up her throat. “I don’t know why I said that. I misspoke.”
“My middle name is Horatio.”
“What?”
“Your brother suggested it’s a highly unusual name in this era. But that is the name you gave to Aaron Coleman!”
“That is a very weird coincidence,” she admitted shakily. Even in her pain, she tried to empathize with Henry. “And I know it’s been so traumatic for you to get dragged to another century. Maybe you weren’t ready for a relationship, even a fun one—”
“Not a fun one!” he exclaimed.
“What?” She blinked at him.
He shook his head. “It is more than that, and you know it. Listen—the Venus statue in the garden. You mentioned it at the party. You never saw a picture of that statue. You remembered it!”
“I must’ve seen it somewhere!” She could picture it clearly in her mind’s eye, with the dark green yew trees behind it.
He lowered his head and pressed his lips to her hand. Rose sat stiffly, fighting the urge to pull her hand away.
“Please, close your eyes,” he urged. “Try to remember. You and I, walking in the gardens at Everly Park…”
The sob escaped now. Automatically, as if her body made the decision for her, she moved to the edge of the bed and stood up.
Was she finally learning her lesson? That love was for other people, and not for her? Blindly, she grabbed her robe off the hook on the back of the door and shoved her arms into it, covering up. It was still damp from her last shower. Sure. Because why should she have any comfort at all?
Henry crawled to the end of the bed, closer to her. “Please, open your mind to this possibility. Is it so much more extraordinary than other things we know to be true?”
“I thought you liked me!”
“I do!” He gazed up at her earnestly. “I understand that you are Rose. That your life here, your family, your friends, the places you’ve lived, the places you’ve worked…
all have made you the wonderful woman you are, and there’s never been anyone like you.
” These were romantic words, but he immediately ruined them with, “But you were Charlotte before that.”
“No, I wasn’t! Why would you call me her name in the middle of…” She gestured wildly toward the bed. She still couldn’t believe that he’d done that on purpose.
“I thought you would remember this past life. Because you said, Goodness gracious, and those are not your words. That is something Charlotte would say.”
She cringed, body and soul. That had been something she’d said in a vulnerable moment, and for Henry to repeat it back to her, as evidence that she wasn’t really her, was too much.
“You haven’t known me long enough to know all my words,” she shot back.
A nagging voice inside of her pointed out, though, that he was right.
She’d never said that in her life before.
Her mother hadn’t gone around saying it, either.
She didn’t know where it had come from. But as angry and hurt as she was, she pushed the thought away.
People said all kinds of weird things in bed, didn’t they?
Henry got to his feet. “I have presented several facts. You must at least consider my theory!” His flare of anger scared her. He actually might be out of his mind.
She said, “You need to leave.”
Immediately, he softened. “Don’t be like this.”
Where would he go? Jason had said he could get him a hotel room. Her phone was still in her purse, hanging next to the front door, and she banged the door open and stalked over to retrieve it.
“Rose.” He’d followed her out to the living room, stark naked, a beseeching look in his eyes. “Please. We don’t have to speak of it anymore.”
That wouldn’t change what happened. In the middle of making love to her, he’d let her know that she was a substitute for someone else.
Her throat was so tight that it burned as she dug the phone out of her purse. “You can’t stay here. I’m sorry. I don’t feel comfortable with it anymore.”
Henry turned away, his hands clasped on the top of his head in frustration or defeat. She wished he wasn’t so beautiful. And that he didn’t have the best round ass. And that he hadn’t completely ruined a love affair that was already going to be bittersweet.
With shaking fingers, Rose pulled up Jason’s number.
Jason answered after half a ring. “Rose, what’s up?”
“Henry can’t stay with me anymore. He needs a hotel room.”
After a fraction of a moment, Jason asked, “Are you all right?”
That was sweet of him. But she wasn’t going to talk about this with Jason, of all people. “I’m fine. I just need some space.”
“Sure.” His matter-of-fact tone reassured her. “He’s agreeing to leave?”
“Hang on.” Rose took the phone away from her ear and looked up at Henry, who turned, fixing her with another agonized stare.
Her heart wrenched for him. But it was just too weird.
She couldn’t share her home with someone who thought she was his dead wife…
especially someone who she, unfortunately, was in love with.
She asked him, “You’ll go to a hotel, right?”
His jaw flexed. “Of course I will not stay a moment longer where I am not wanted.”
She returned the phone to her ear and said quietly, “He’ll go.”
“Give me, uh…twenty minutes. I’ll pick him up.”
“Thank you so much. I’m sorry—”
“No, no, it’s fine. Uh…Are you still going to help him get back to his time?”
He was probably asking because he still wanted to know how the astrolabe worked, and she still didn’t know exactly why. But she thought he actually felt for Henry, too.
“Yeah,” she said.
After she hung up, she said woodenly, “Go get dressed and get your things. Jason will come get you.”
He threw up his arms in frustration. “If you would just consider what I’m saying!”
“Don’t you dare yell at me!” He hadn’t quite been yelling, but still.
His jaw flexed. “I would think that you, of all people, would be willing to entertain the impossible—”
“Go get dressed!”
He stomped to the bedroom, and she felt a pang of sympathy for him again.
He was half out of his mind from grief and the disorientation of being in the twenty-first century.
But knowing that didn’t make it any easier on her bruised heart.
She wanted him to leave so she could cry and eat ice cream and maybe call her best friend for support. Call her old-fashioned.
She walked back to the bedroom, where he was jerking up his pants. “I told Jason I would still get you home if I could.”
He picked up his shirt from the floor. “I am sure you’re more eager than ever to be rid of me.”
“I’m the one who wanted you here! You never wanted to be here!”
He walked over to her, his shirt unbuttoned. “Will you at least try to remember?” He touched her cheek, and she pulled away. “Please, Rose.”
“No.”