Chapter Three
Later that day, Lucien stood at the window of the drawing room at Danvers House, watching night fall over London.
The room felt alien despite everyone’s assurances that he’d spent his youth here.
Like everything else since returning from Ireland, it was a constant reminder of what Ava’s deception had cost him.
Ava had been working as a prostitute in a high-class brothel and had found him injured in the streets of Dublin.
She’d taken him in and, learning he had amnesia, told him he was her husband, and he had believed her.
He’d had no reason not to. He spoke Gaelic and was in Ireland.
She’d seen a way out of a life she hated and took it. He found it hard to blame her.
She was a great beauty, and he hadn’t been able to resist her Irish free spirit. But she’d kept him from his true family and responsibilities. But then he had Ava-Marie…. What if he’d come home five years earlier?
He held one of his love letters to Courtney in his hand.
My dearest Courtney,
I find myself once again at my desk in the midnight hours, unable to sleep for thoughts of you.
The moon hangs full outside my window, and I am reminded of that night at Lady Ashworth’s ball when we discussed Keats’ “Bright Star.” You argued that the narrator wished not for immortality, but for the steadfastness to remain forever in a moment of perfect love.
I wonder now if you knew even then what was growing between us.
Do you recall how we debated for hours in your father’s library about whether pure reason could exist without emotion?
You were so passionate in your defense of sentiment, your eyes bright with conviction, while I stubbornly clung to logic.
How fitting that you should prove your point so thoroughly by making me fall in love with you, destroying all my carefully constructed rational arguments about marriage and duty.
I went riding today through the northern fields of our estate, where the wildflowers bloom in such profusion.
I found myself collecting them as I once saw you do, choosing each blossom with care.
Bright cornflowers, blue as your favorite ribbons, delicate Queen Anne’s lace like the lace at your wrists, bold poppies red as your lips when you smile.
I pressed one of each between the pages of this letter, though I fear they are poor substitutes for your beauty.
Father continues to press me about taking more control of the estate, but all I can think of is how empty my days would feel without being able to discuss issues with you afterward.
Your mind challenges me, your wit delights me, and your heart…
oh, your heart humbles me with its capacity for both fierce intelligence and tender emotion.
I find myself counting the days until I see you again at the Michaelmas ball.
Will you save me the first waltz? And perhaps we might slip away to the library afterward to continue our discussion about Voltaire?
Though I confess, these days I find myself far more interested in stealing kisses than winning arguments.
Tell me, my love, do you still read poetry in the garden at sunset?
Do you still defend Shakespeare’s comedies with such charming vehemence?
Do you still believe, as you once told me, that true love must be built on friendship first?
Because if so, then surely what we have must be the truest love of all.
I send this letter with a thousand wishes—that it finds you well, that it brings a smile to your lovely face, that it carries to you even a fraction of the love that fills my heart. Until we meet again, I remain
Forever yours,
Lucien
P.S. I realize I have filled this entire letter with questions and not left you room to answer. How like me, you would say, to monopolize the conversation! Write back and tell me everything! Your thoughts, your days, your dreams. Each word from you is precious to me.
His hands clenched into fists at his sides, crumbling the note. Five years. Ava had stolen five years of his life with her lies. Five years that could have changed everything. But then he’d experienced love. He’d loved Ava with all his heart, only to learn that she’d stolen another love from him.
And now he couldn’t remember her.
The door creaked open, and Caitria slipped in. “Ava-Marie is finally asleep. She keeps asking when we can go home.”
Home. That humble cottage in Malahide that had never really been his. Another of Ava’s carefully constructed lies.
“She’s had a lot of change. Is she thinking Lord Wolfarth’s house is home or is it Ireland? I wonder if she knows. Thank you, Caitria.” He turned to face her, noting the shadows under her eyes. “You should rest too. It’s been a long journey.”
She hesitated. “Are you well? You seem…troubled.”
A harsh laugh escaped him. “Troubled? I suppose that’s one word for it.
” He ran a hand through his hair, pacing the length of the room.
“Do you know what I learned today? Five years ago, when Ava found me, my father still had most of the family fortune intact. The estate was prosperous. My sisters had their Seasons to look forward to. And I was engaged to marry a woman who apparently loved me enough to remain faithful to my memory all these years.”
“My lord…” Caitria began, but he cut her off with a sharp gesture.
“If Ava had told me the truth, if she’d helped me find my way home instead of spinning her web of lies, everything would be different.
I would still have helped her escape that life she hated and never wanted.
My father might not have lost himself in grief and gambling.
My sisters wouldn’t be wearing patched gowns and living in a crumbling house.
And while I would still not have remembered Lady Courtney…
she might have been able to move on, or we could have had the time to learn if… ”
He broke off, the weight of possibility crushing his chest. He’d seen Courtney today, beautiful and poised, her eyes full of a love he couldn’t remember deserving.
What might have grown between them if he’d returned five years ago?
Even without his memories, they could have built something new.
Instead, she’d spent those years mourning while he played at being a farmer, believing himself married to a woman who’d stolen him like a magpie stealing something shiny.
“Courtney loved me,” he said quietly. “In all those letters she shared with me—preserved with such care—I can see how much we loved each other. We could have had a life together, children of our own. Instead…”
“Instead, you have Ava-Marie,” Caitria said softly. “Would you trade her? Even now?”
The question hit him like a physical blow.
“No,” he admitted. “Never. She’s the only pure thing to come from all of Ava’s lies.
” He pressed his forehead against the cool glass of the window.
“But I’m so angry, Caitria. Every day I discover new consequences of Ava’s choices.
New ways her deception destroyed lives.”
“She loved you,” Caitria offered hesitantly. “In her way.”
“Did she?” He turned, his voice bitter. “Or did she just see an opportunity? A gentleman with no memory, ready to be molded into the husband she wanted? Even on her deathbed, she didn’t tell me the truth. She let me believe…”
A sharp knock interrupted his dark thoughts. Both turned to see Phillips. “Viscount Milburn, my lord,” he announced. Courtney’s brother, Tarquin, stood in the doorway, his expression grim.
“Forgive the late intrusion,” Tarquin said, stepping into the room. “But I thought you should know. Your father was seen entering Crockford’s gaming hell an hour ago.”
Lucien’s chest tightened. After all their discussions today about the family’s precarious finances, after all his father’s tearful promises to change…
“Excuse me, Caitria,” he said tightly. “It seems I have urgent business to attend to.”
“Be careful,” she warned. “You don’t know London anymore.”
But he was already striding from the room, the viscount falling into step beside him.
“I’ll be with him,” Tarquin called over his shoulder.
The unfamiliar weight of his new responsibilities settled around his shoulders like a sodden cloak. This was his life now. Trying to salvage what remained of his family’s fortune while a little voice whispered that none of this would be necessary if Ava had simply told him the truth.
“Your father’s been like this since your ‘death’,” Tarquin explained as they descended the stairs. “The grief broke something in him. He gambles to forget, drinks to numb the pain. It’s gotten worse since your mother passed.”
“And no one thought to stop him?” Lucien demanded.
Tarquin’s expression hardened. “Many tried. Your sisters. Your friends. Your father’s friends…. But a man determined to destroy himself will usually find a way.”
“But I’m home now. He has no excuse, and I won’t tolerate this behavior. I’ll lock him away if I have to.”
They emerged into the cool night air, and Lucien tried to get his strangled emotions under control.
“If only you’d come home sooner. Thank God Rockwell found you when he did,” Tarquin said as they entered his carriage waiting outside.
“That bloody woman… Courtney told me what happened,” Tarquin was referring to Ava and her lies, and while his heart had loved her, he could not defend her actions to Tarquin.
“I loved her,” he said suddenly, surprising himself.
“Even knowing what she did, I still love her. We built a life together, raised our daughter…” He broke off, the familiar guilt twisting in his gut at perpetuating Ava’s lie about Ava-Marie’s legitimacy.
They could find no record of his marriage to Ava.
She’d told him they were married when in fact they never were.
“She helped you when you were alone. I’m not surprised you loved her. She was all you had. But now?” Tarquin asked quietly.