Chapter One
Lucien Furoe stared up at the imposing facade of Danvers House, his throat tight with an emotion he couldn’t name.
The grand Georgian mansion loomed before him, its weathered stone and tall windows holding no hint of familiarity.
According to Lord Rockwell Ware, who stood beside him radiating quiet concern, this had been his home for the first three and twenty years of his life.
He was now eight and twenty and had not stepped foot in this house for the past five years.
Home. The word felt hollow, meaningless. His home was a modest cottage in Malahide, Ireland, with worn wooden floors and a leaky roof that had driven him mad every spring. But that home, like so much else in his life, had proven to be built on lies.
“Are you ready?” Lord Wolfarth—Wolf, as he preferred—asked from his other side.
Both brothers had become unexpected allies, though Lucien was still working out their motives for bringing him back to England.
Rockwell professed it was because they were best friends in his past life, and that this family needed him because his father had gambled away the family’s finances, to the point that they were looking at debtors’ prison.
Rockwell cleared his throat again. “Are you ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.” Lucien straightened his cravat, a nervous gesture he’d developed since donning these foreign gentleman’s clothes.
The fine wool coat felt confining after years of simple linen shirts and sturdy working clothes.
But he was a viscount now, or so they told him.
Viscount Furoe, heir to the Earl of Danvers.
The grand entrance door swung open before they could knock, and an elderly butler appeared, his eyes widening at the sight of Lucien.
“My lord,” the man whispered, his lined face paling. “It cannot be…”
“Hello, Phillips,” Rockwell said smoothly. “Might we come in? We have news for the family.”
Phillips stepped back, his rheumy eyes never leaving Lucien’s face. “Of course, my lord. The family is at home. I shall announce—”
“No need,” Wolf cut in. “Better we handle this…delicately.”
Lucien followed them into a vast entrance hall that stretched up two stories, dominated by a sweeping marble staircase.
Strong June sunlight filtered through tall windows, catching on gilt-framed portraits and crystal chandeliers.
The faded opulence made his head spin. This was supposedly his birthright, yet he felt like an imposter in a play he hadn’t rehearsed.
A soft gasp drew his attention to the staircase. A young woman stood frozen on the stairs, her knuckles white against the banister. She was perhaps twenty years of age, with dark hair like his own and eyes the color of storm clouds.
“Lucien, you’re alive!” she breathed, and the naked hope in her voice made his chest ache. “Where have you been?” She came tearing down the stairs and threw herself into his arms.
The impact of her embrace sent shock through his system. His body went rigid, every muscle tensing as unfamiliar arms wrapped around him with desperate familiarity. She hugged him hard and long as her tears fell, yet he could only stand frozen, his own arms hanging uselessly at his sides.
As she hugged him, he felt helpless in her grief. “How could you stay away?”
He wanted to respond, to say something—anything—but his throat had closed. This woman—this stranger—was crying tears of joy over him, and he felt nothing but the hollow ache of absence where recognition should have been. The guilt was immediate and crushing.
She stepped away, and he saw her face crumple as she took in his stiff posture, his vacant expression. Her joy flickered and died like a candle in wind.
“Lucien?” The uncertainty in her voice was worse than her tears.
He turned toward her, searching her features desperately for any spark of recognition.
The shape of her nose, the curve of her mouth, even the way she tilted her head—it all seemed significant, like a language he should understand but couldn’t read.
He recognized his features but not her. Nothing.
Just as with the house, the gardens, the butler—she was a stranger wearing the face of family.
Wolf said quietly, “Your brother has no memories of who he is or who you are. He received a head injury in the Irish Rebellion and cannot remember anything from before that day. He has been living in Ireland, believing his name to be Mr. John Collins.”
Lucien was surprised that this sister didn’t crumple to the ground. Isn’t that what ladies of quality did when faced with dreadful news?
She looked at him closely. “I’m just so thankful you’re not dead. Father… He’ll be, he’ll be so relieved.”
“Lady Lauren,” Rockwell said gently, “might I present Lord Lucien, Viscount Furoe.” The formal introduction hung awkward in the air between them. “Lucien, this is your sister, Lady Lauren Cavanaugh.”
“My sister.” He tested the words, finding them strange on his tongue. He executed the bow he vaguely remembered from a dark recessed area of his brain, and Rockwell had also refreshed the social graces he wasn’t quite sure of. “My lady.”
Lauren’s grey eyes swam with unshed tears; her face paled with barely contained emotions.
She was dressed in a morning dress of soft blue muslin that spoke of better times.
He could see patches on the sleeve. Behind him, Wolf shifted restlessly, and Lucien caught the significant look that passed between him and Lauren.
There was history there, he realized. Yet another story he should know but didn’t.
“Welcome home,” Lauren said, her voice trembling slightly. “Madeline will be beside herself. She’s at a friend’s house, but I think it would be best if I spoke to her first. It will be quite a shock. And as for Father—”
“Another sister?” The information Rockwell and Wolf had given him on the journey tumbled through his mind. Everything was so new, and he struggled to keep it all in order.
“Yes.” Lauren swallowed hard. “Your younger sister. She was twelve when you…when you died—that is when you left.”
Left. Such a gentle word for whatever violence had stolen his memories and sent him stumbling, half-dead, into a new life in Ireland. Into Ava’s life.
Ava. His chest tightened at the thought of her. Beautiful, mercurial Ava who had nursed him back to health, who had spun pretty lies about a marriage that had never happened, who had given him their daughter—
No. He couldn’t think about Ava-Marie now.
His little girl was safe at Rockwell’s London townhouse with her cousin Caitria, and no one here need ever know the truth of her birth.
The story Rockwell and Lady Farah crafted on the journey back was simple enough: a hasty marriage to a local Irish girl, now deceased.
It was close enough to the truth to sit easy on his conscience, and it protected his daughter’s future.
Now it also protected his sisters and family name.
Lauren stood wringing her hands. “Is nothing familiar? Would you…would you like to see through the house, or perhaps our mother’s portrait?”
He didn’t have the heart to tell her nothing would bring the memories back.
But he would humor her, given what a shock this must be.
Besides, it put off the main reason for being here—to learn how precarious the family financial situation was.
Rockwell had hinted it was very dire, and the shabbiness and lack of servants indicated he was right.
Anger at the father he didn’t remember grew.
He nodded, following her up the sweeping staircase and into a long gallery lined with stern-faced ancestors he should recognize but didn’t.
She stopped before a large portrait of a striking woman in her early forties.
Dark hair like his own was arranged in elegant curves around a heart-shaped face, and something in her slight smile tugged at the edges of his mind.
“She’s lovely,” he said softly, meaning it.
“She died two years ago.” Lauren’s voice cracked. “I wish she could be here to see that her son is alive and the heir is not lost…” She trailed off, watching his face with desperate hope.
The twist of grief in his chest surprised him. He mourned not the mother he couldn’t remember, but the fact that he couldn’t remember her. That he’d been alive and well in Ireland, working his small piece of land, while this woman died, believing her son lost.
A crash from above made them all start. Heavy footsteps stumbled across the upper floor, and Lauren’s face tightened with something like resignation.
“Father,” she whispered, just as a man appeared at the top of the stairs.
The Earl of Danvers was a wreck of a man, his clothes fine but rumpled, his face flushed with what could only be strong drink despite the early hour. He swayed slightly as he stared down at their group.
“My boy? Are you a ghost come back to haunt me?” The words came out slurred.
He half-stumbled down the stairs, and Lucien tensed, fighting the urge to step back. The earl reached the bottom and lurched forward; his arms outstretched. This time Lucien did pull back, an instinctive retreat that made the older man’s face crumple.
“Of course you are a figment of my imagination. My son is long dead, and I have no heir. God is punishing me… I’m sorry, so sorry.” The earl’s hands fell to his sides. “Lauren, forgive me…” Then he turned to go back upstairs.
“Father,” he said, clearing his throat. “I’m not a ghost. It’s me. Lucien.”
His father slowly turned and then slid to the floor. “Lucien?”
“Perhaps we should move to your library, Lord Danvers,” Rockwell suggested smoothly, stepping forward. “There’s much to discuss.”
The men helped his father stand but his lordship brushed them away and swayed his way to the Danvers library. Then he collapsed into a worn leather chair, while Lucien remained standing, his body humming with the need to move, to run, to escape back to his simple life in Ireland.