Chapter 3
Ifall hard on my wedding day—I pitch forward and tumble onto the rug in the vestibule at St. Peter’s, heart pounding and silk billowing around me.
I blame the dress. No, I blame AJ, for one glimpse of him so very fresh and dynamic through the tall pillars in the sanctuary had my heart in my throat and my slippered feet tangled in the hem.
But a pair of small black shoes in the cloakroom catch my attention—and they’re still being worn. Muffled sniffles sound between the coats.
Poor lad.
With a quick glance about to be certain no one’s watching, I part the coats and crawl in to sit beside Cecil. I tuck my wedding gown beneath me, allowing the miserable lad plenty of space. “Can I be sad with you?”
Cecil twists away from me, chin jutted.
“Might I guess the problem? You’ve left the front door open and your elephant has escaped.”
He flicks a glance of annoyance my way.
“Oh! No, that’s not it. He wouldn’t fit through the door.”
A smile twitches, then vanishes.
“You…taught the squirrels chess and now they beat you.”
This earns a snort-laugh. He’s dreadful at chess.
I stare at my slippered feet. “Might it have something to do with me marrying AJ?”
The tiny tic in Cecil’s cheek confirms my guess. It isn’t that he doesn’t like Ansel—in fact, he adores the man. But it means I am about to do what every other adult in his life has. “You believe I’m leaving you.”
He edges closer and I pull him to me, longing to tell him the real reason I’ve rushed into this. I adore the man more than is reasonable, but I might have been content to carry on with our subtle flirtation, allowing it to unfold naturally, had it not been for the small boy now leaning against me.
Cecil Linwood came under my protective wing by accident. He is one of those precious boys who God decides must survive a bit longer when he gets himself into danger, so he’d sent me to rescue him from a runaway car. Apparently.
Rescuing him cost me my memories and for the three years since that accident, I served as his grandmother’s companion…
and his surreptitious protector. Then his grandmamma, the lovely Lady St. Laurent, named me his official guardian in her will, and I determined to see that through, no matter what it costs me.
Or whose plans I must spoil.
Heels click sharply on stone nearby, and I throw a hand over his mouth. “Cecil? Cecil!” calls a voice.
I hold my breath.
“Where is that miserable imp?” Her voice is regal and feminine, even while muttering.
When Sabine St. Laurent has passed us, we slip out and dart up the stairs, giggling like a pair of children. Cecil is the reason my life has taken this odd turn, having been the cause of the accident that erased my memories, but he’s also my reason.
I close us into the dressing room and we lean on the door, giggling together. “Now, dear sir, it’s time I teach you to dance.”
His smile falls.
But I grab his hands and spin him wildly, twirling him then dipping him back.
He grins, caught up in the moment, twisting and spinning until he lands in a heap of laughter on the floor.
The wonderful part of losing one’s memory is that you forget so many shoulds and can simply be.
I might have waltzed once, but I have no desire to relearn.
I drop beside him and we laugh our fool heads off and suddenly he’s a boy again, his features smooth and freckled. I watch him for a moment. I’ll do anything to keep that fleeting smile on his face.
“Is that your veil?” He points toward the long floating thing. “Come, try it on. I want to see how you look before anyone else!”
I laugh. But one moment I’m swishing that frothy veil before my face, pulling silly faces and the next I’m backing against the wall, panting and faint.
I am assaulted by memories so vivid they might just be the end of me.
They come in bursts, a pop of light from a photographer’s flash lamp with the heady floral scent of orange blossoms for a backdrop.
A man. His smile, his eyes.
Voice, low and gentle.
Face so very expressive.
No. That’ll do! I shake off the vision, but it continues.
His hand held out. Wind. Blowing sand. Frothy waves. Sand. Gulls.
I blink and look at Cecil. His eyes are wide, and darkness rims my vision on both sides. “What is it? Merryn?” His voice is far away, the ocean in a conch shell.
I close my eyes. The man is laughing. Peaceful. His eyes glow with the rightness of the moment. His expression is gentle. Filled with a deep and abiding affection.
I shake my head. “Noth…noth—”
“Merryn!” It’s Cecil. He’s worried.
I surface in my dim, insulated reality—the one where I’m standing in the oldest church in Cheltenham with a small boy who has no one but me, and I’m about to walk down the aisle to marry Ansel James Winthrop.
This. This is my reality.
“I’m fi—I’m…fine.”
“You’re remembering.” His solemn face is watching, eager for me to be all right.
I offer a shaky smile. “More than I wish to.”
His face is pale. “Don’t leave me. Don’t leave.”
I grab his shoulders. “That’s the last thing I intend to do.” It might be anything. Anyone. A picnic at the beach. A cousin beckoning me near.
“You’ll go back. I always knew you would.”
“There’s nothing to go back to.” Not yet, at least. And there won’t be, as long as I can help it. I pry my mind out of the hazy images and squeeze Cecil’s hand. He never came for me. Whoever the man is, he never came. So he is allowed to remain in the past, along with whatever we once had.
I place a hand on my chest as my heart vibrates a frantic rhythm. I breathe in again, deeply. Which is a mistake.
The scent of blossoms overpowers me. A band of cold moves up my forehead and the wall is holding me up as I break into a sweat, sucking in quick teaspoons of air. I’m swept up into a gentle tornado of sea breezes and birds screaming and water slapping and hissing over sand and a man—
No. Pull yourself together.
Wrenching off the veil, I throw it on the floor and stare at the tiny flowers snaking through the frothy material.
I hereby formally and officially cut all ties with my past self, whoever she may have been, and I choose the future.
One with AJ and Cecil in it. I squeeze my eyes shut and the memories cool, retreating into the past, leaving only a vague tingling in their wake.
“Miss Forsythe!”
Oh no.
“Miss Forsythe, the music’s started,” comes a voice from somewhere down the curling staircase.
I bury my face in my hands. Wearing that veil might be the death of me. Can I marry AJ without one?
“Mer?” Cecil’s hand tugs at me.
I will not cry. I will not.
It will catch up with you one day, Merryn. Not even I can stop it. Years ago Lady St. Laurent spoke those prophetic words. When one cannot outrun the tiger any longer, one must stand and face it—and outsmart it.
But I can’t outsmart what I cannot see. Dread rolls over me.
“Merryn!” The voice echoes from somewhere distant.
The fog recedes, leaving jagged pain in the back of my head, a white-hot lightning streak.
The past has no hold over me. None. I am wonderfully tangled up in this new story.
I’m mere minutes away from belonging to Ansel James Winthrop forever, and all I have to do is walk up that aisle and accept the gift of his love he has offered to me. I can almost taste it.
But some of the sweetest things, like Belgian chocolate truffles, are denied us for our own good.
I force another shaky smile for Cecil, and he smiles back, but he isn’t fooled.
Sabine St. Laurent, daughter to my late employer and reluctant aunt to Cecil, sweeps up the stairs and glares at me.
“Compose yourself and come on.” Then she aims that look at Cecil.
“You’d best stay with me.” She pulls him along, but I am frozen in place, hot and cold flashes creeping up my scalp.
I cannot make myself descend the stairs toward my wedding.
Cannot shake the lingering dread that plagues me every time the past comes knocking.
No. No, I cannot marry Ansel. Not this way.
But the music has begun, the church is full, and my groom awaits me at the end of the aisle.
“Merryn!” calls a voice, tight and insistent.
There is no escape now…except through a window. A circular one that appears easy to open. How utterly scandalous! I pop it open and lean out, seeing only shingles and the jutting dormer windows. I scribble a note for AJ.
You coward.
I’d deliver it myself, if he weren’t already in the sanctuary.
Heels tick on the steps. They’ll be scandalized if they find me on the roof. But mortified if another man surfaces with a claim on me later. Which is worse?
It’s time to set aside the Belgian chocolate.
I prop up the note on a table and scramble out the window. There’s a ripping sound. I scoot toward a dormer and hang on, feeling rather wicked as I tuck the torn silk gown about me…but safe. Every person carries baggage into marriage—the trouble is, I haven’t any idea what mine is.
No one tells you how lost and foolish you feel without the library of accumulated experiences everyone takes for granted. They are the lens that clarifies everything, including ourselves. They are accumulated knowledge, distilled down into wisdom.
For months after the accident I scrambled to collect any tiny drops of who I’d been, but memories are elusive. So I swallowed the loss of myself and walked around in a great dark tunnel, praying someone would come light the way for me.
Then I happened upon Ansel in the park and he made me forget I’d lost anything at all. After several long years, no one expected my memories to return, anyway.
And they didn’t. Mostly.
Tiny, uncertain glimpses. Until I put that veil on my head and the forgotten had risen, a vibrant flash of sunlight in the darkness that left me gasping for breath.
My past self is a stranger, with her own will and experiences. I don’t know anything about her, except that she existed—and that she owns me, in a way.
I have tried, but there is no escaping that hold.
Footsteps echo in the hall just inside. I curl tighter under the eaves, holding my breath. But this won’t be him—he’ll find my note and leave the church through the rear entrance directly below me.
Which makes this the worst place I could have chosen. But also the best. I need to know—what sort of man have I thrown over?
Nothing happens for a long, breathless stretch.
The roof tiles warm beneath me as the town shifts below.
This quiet is dangerous, and oddly peaceful.
It allows my mind to wander, and fresh images roll through my mind without my permission.
The instant thrill of his approach when first we’d met, the energy he radiated as he looked up at me in the tree.
I’d been grieving terrible news that day, and the world was heavy.
Then he walked up carrying my dropped book, his face, entirely handsome and vibrant, turned up toward me.
Toward me.
Grief parted for a moment and I saw brightness on the other side.
He raised his hand. “Come on, jump,” he said, and one didn’t simply ignore that radiant smile.
So I jumped. I fell into his arms and slid down the length of him while his gaze took me in, hovering on my face.
“Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire…
” His smile was quick and bright, and he did not release me as he continued quoting Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
“But only he who sees takes off his shoes.” He tapped my stockinged foot with the toe of his boot, and his smile deepened. “Hello.”
“Walk with me?” I said brazenly.
“Anywhere,” he said, gently turning us in a circle. “Shall we reside in Italy?” As the Brownings had.
“That seems a sufficiently long walk. You’ll need your shoes.” Then he offered me his arm.
“Just a walk,” I said.
“For now.”
“There is only now,” I said quickly. “How do you fancy this scheme? One walk, no names, no titles, just us, enjoying companionship on a fine day.”
“And the Brownings.”
Even now I can feel the electricity of that moment. “I suppose they may come.”
That walk ended after a mere four hours but continued the next day without either of us acknowledging it.
We simply allowed our paths to converge again in the park, exchanged rapid-fire words, hardly able to get them all in before dark, and then parted once again.
It picked up again the following day and the day after that, going on for just over three weeks until I suggested marriage in that sudden burst of hope, wishing to cling to the delight I’d discovered in that park, that lovely lifeline in the midst of loss and darkness.
And he agreed.
Which shouldn’t have happened, because now I am breaking his heart. My own too, if I am honest.
I lean forward to witness his reaction—will he be angry and storm out, or be hurt and slink off, burying his face in his hands? Perhaps something else entirely?
The door opens, then gently closes.
Hurt. I have injured him with my foolishness, my selfish and impetuous nature, because I haven’t any idea what I’m doing.
Then the door below slams open. I lean forward, straining to see his familiar tousled hair. The triangle of his back.
“Who are we hiding from?”
I jump at the whisper right behind me. I turn. “AJ!”