Chapter 4
He hangs out the dormer window, forearms folded on the sill.
“You can probably see Lady Treadwell’s gold gown from up here.
” A flash of his smile, and a teasing glance my way.
“Like Cleopatra of Egypt she was, and her poor balding husband was nearly blinded by the gown. And possibly by the tiara as well. It reflected off his shiny pate.”
My hand flies to my mouth, covering a laugh. Something heavy melts and floats away. “She wore a tiara?”
“But you missed the glorious Lord Stanley of the Banleys.” It is our nickname for the pompous gent who strolled through our park every day, a regular victim of our commentary.
“Three of the ladies he’s been shamelessly flirting with all approached him the moment he walked in. Which put him in quite a pickle.”
“Poor sot.”
“Mmm.” AJ takes a long, deep breath of fresh air, now moist with the start of a light drizzle. “Might I join you?” he asks, waving a hand over the expanse of mossy shingles.
I open my mouth, but all the words disintegrate from my mind. I inch to the right and pat the space beside me, dipping my face to hide the warmth creeping up in waves as the man I have jilted comes to sit beside me. I do owe him an explanation, at least.
He threads his tall frame through the window and suddenly his masculine presence is beside me, taking up all the air. He stares out across the sky as if we are stargazing on the lawn rather than eluding our wedding.
He says nothing for several long moments, and I can’t say anything. But in the quiet my soul sinks back into my body, as it always does around him. Without thinking, I lean into his side and his arm naturally anchors me to him, igniting pleasant tingles. Yes, I am in love with AJ.
A hard tug of longing surfaces, the heady aroma of the forbidden Belgian chocolate, but if I smell it for too long I shall choose to keep it.
I shift gently away and he releases me. It might have been wonderful, marrying him.
He is forever surprising me, disarming me, and delighting me.
Even when I abandon him at the altar. Rain dots our faces, cooling my skin.
I hide my face, waiting for him to say his piece. He did find my note, didn’t he?
He rocks back. “Sabine’s in a state, by the way, which you’ll be glad of.”
“I will not.” I play with the lace on my gown. “She’s worried, is she?” The neatly pressed and regal daughter of my late employer has positioned herself opposite me on the chessboard in every way and has never once worried over me.
“I’d call it more…stirred up. Perhaps a bit eager to see the back of you. Hoping you’ve disappeared.”
My chest tightens again. “She’s not had it easy, losing her mother and sharing her inheritance with a stranger.”
A grin flickers, and his deep voice resonates through me. “Only you, Merryn Forsythe. Only you would feel charitably toward a woman like that.”
A sob catches in my throat. Why did I think to throw this man over?
For his own good, that’s why. Now that is proof I love him.
“Fine night, isn’t it?” He leans his shoulder against the dormer with a casual smile. He takes my hand as if to reassure me, threading our fingers together. “What ails your heart, my lady?”
I shrug. “The past.” The terrible dread that some unknown life will roll like a wave over the sparkling present, and I’ll be responsible for what some other version of myself chose in another lifetime.
I stare up at him, drinking in the sight of those vibrant green eyes, the good humor on his face that deepens into longing. He reaches out to graze my cheek with that calmly confident touch that always makes me lean into his hand.
“Sing to me, Merryn,” he whispers, kissing my hair.
“Now?” Perhaps he hasn’t seen the note.
“Won’t you, my love?” The breeze picks up, spraying us with a light mist.
I lean back, staring at the deeply gray sky laced with clouds, and summon one of the many familiar old folk songs etched into my heart.
The wind doth blow today, my love,
And a few small drops of rain;
I only had but one true-love,
And I and he are twain.
After several moments of perfect silence, my heart pounds as I realize this is the time for truth. “I’m storry. Starry.” Ugh! Rotten words. “Sorry.” My brain will forever be broken.
He flicks a gentle finger over my stuttering lips, smoothing out the words and breathing is suddenly difficult.
I should edge away…but I cannot. I remain, accepting his gentle touch.
He is still the man who has walked me from clouds into daylight, grief into hope, the dearest friend I’ve ever had.
The one I cannot imagine absent from my life.
I look down. “It would be a terrible idea for us to marry, AJ.”
“The worst.”
“You’ll come to regret it.”
“Only when you burn my toast.”
I force myself to look into his face. “The truth is…I’m not certain who I was, AJ. I’ve lost more than a few memories—all of them, in fact. The slate was wiped clean.”
Except for a man on a beach, looking at me. Loving me.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” His gaze is steady. Waiting.
“You don’t seem surprised.”
“I was when I first heard.”
I sigh. “You spoke to Lady St. Laurent.”
“At length. Shall I reenact my surprise for your benefit?”
“Faith, AJ! I’m trying to tell you why I cannot marry you.”
He tips his head, studying me with intensity welling in those gold-green eyes. “Very well, then. What is the reason, Merryn Forsythe? In your estimation. Why can’t you marry me?”
Desire eclipses reason and I cannot speak for a moment. I look away. “I should think it obvious. You don’t know who I am. I don’t even know.”
“My background wouldn’t impress anyone.”
He may come from plain stock, may have danced around the country from this position to that, but at least he knows every unfashionable detail of his life. Knows for certain who and what he is. “AJ, I’m afraid I’ve…that is, what if I’ve already promised myself to someone?”
There. It pulses out in the open, a thudding silence after my simple words.
He runs his fingers along his jaw, considering this. “No wedding ring?”
I shake my head. There was no ring or even the mark of one after the accident.
“And you’ve run an advert?”
I didn’t want anyone to come looking for me when we placed that advert…until they didn’t. We were certain someone would appear—maybe several people, for the advert was prominent—but the silence that followed hollowed out my heart and left it quietly hungering to be filled.
Which AJ filled in an instant. He continues to, even now, with a flood of warmth. “Then it would seem you’re free to do as you wish. And with the blessing of Lady St. Laurent, who granted you the funds for this wedding so you might continue on with your life.”
A sob rises in me, a fresh wave of missing her. “Lady St. Laurent felt indebted to me.”
“Because you were in her employ?”
I shake my head. “The position came later. We met when she struck me with her automobile.”
A frown. “For which she was grateful?”
Apparently she didn’t tell him these details.
“I saved her grandson, Cecil, when she nearly struck him with her automobile.” She’d announced she was capable of driving the new luxury vehicle, I was told, and her pronouncement was often sufficient to make something true.
Yet not that time. The only things I recall about that day is the sight of a tiny boy, with his elfin ears protruding from beneath his cap, the roaring green automobile careening his way, and that forceful, nearly visceral urge to spring in front of him and roll the boy to safety.
“It’s how I lost my memory. She hit me instead of him. ”
His eyebrows rise. “You’re doing a miserable job of dissuading my interest.”
“Really, Ansel. Be sensible. There might be anything behind that closed door—and one day it will open and spring upon us.”
He leans close in the cool breeze, wrapping both my hands in his. “Do you wish to have done with me, Merryn Forsythe? Have your wishes changed? If so, I’ll escort you home.”
I flinch at the word home. My charming room adjoining Lady St. Laurent’s has been a refuge since that accident—its narrow brass bed, flower-embroidered coverlet, and the faint scent of roses that always lingered in the air.
In the days when life felt impossible, a giant game to which I’d lost the rule book, that small room had anchored me.
I never imagined leaving…until the will was read. It granted me a small fortune, made me guardian of Cecil and trustee of his inheritance, but her daughter Sabine inherited the house.
Yet the will had been read. It granted me a respectable stipend and guardianship of Cecil, but deeded the house—my dearly loved sanctuary—to Sabine. After the wedding breakfast there, a condition upon which Lady St. Laurent insisted, I would not belong there anymore.
AJ was to have been my sanctuary, my own corner of the world. Glancing at him, I ache for it to be real.
“Merryn?”
Tears warm my eyes, blurring the sight of his dear face. His dear, kind face that always appears when the day is at its worst.
He smiles, tipping his head and lifting my hands to kiss them. “You’re so pretty.”
I laugh. “You’re a dear, you know.”
His hundred-watt smile grows even brighter and I madly long to kiss him. No, I’ll never wish to be done with Ansel James Winthrop.
But I choose to be. For his sake.
“You take your memories for granted, AJ. You know who you are and where you fit into the world. All I have is…blanks. And they’re not coming back. What if the things I’ve forgotten prove…dangerous?”
He tugs me close to him until I’m embraced by his luminous energy and eternal, deep-seated delight in the world.
In me. A body can feel when they’re loved by AJ.
“Then let us fill those blanks with new memories.” He speaks into my hair.
“Scores and scores of memories, all the firsts and the best and the worst. Anywhere you like. Egypt, India…Liverpool.”
“Liverpool?” I giggle through my tears.
He leans back and shrugs in his playful way.
“I’m sure it’s exotic to someone.” He flashes a grin.
“Forget the old memories. If they don’t want to stick around, fine.
We’ll build you an entire catalog of new ones, from the mundane moments to the grandest, most exhilarating once-in-a-lifetime experiences a lady has ever had. ”
“How many once-in-a-lifetime experiences are you suggesting?”
“Three or four at least, to start.” He runs one fingertip along my jaw. “But of course, you have to marry me first.” A wink.
Hope tries to surface.
Don’t do this to him.
“Very well then, how’s about this? An arrangement.” He drops his hand, leaving me slightly bereft. “I’ll offer you nothing more than my name and protection for the moment. Seeing as you need both rather urgently.”
Nothing could be more true.
“Then later, when you fall madly in love with me,” he says, touching one dark curl, “you can say the word and we’ll give this marriage a go. There, now. Not a bad scheme, is it?”
I imagine kissing that smiling mouth. Kissing it often and easily. Dancing through life and laughing our fool heads off, delighting in each other and our life to the end of our days.
“I’m under no delusion that you’re in love with me, Merryn. You told me as much when you proposed this…this little arrangement.”
I blink. “I—”
“But I do believe you need me. And that you’d be foolish to make a go of it on your own, with that Sabine out for your blood.
” He moves closer. “Please, let me do this for you. Marry me now, and it’ll free us to go wherever we wish.
Two adventurers with the right to strike out together.
” He smiles invitingly, almost with a challenge, as he lobs the decision back to me.
He is nearly too good to be true. Too wonderful, too patient.
Perhaps I should look deeper into his motives, and into my own past that surely exists somewhere, but so much good fortune has befallen me since the accident, as if God is making up for the gaping loss, that it seems foolish to poke at it.
No ring. No response to the advert. Nothing but vague images that might or might not be actual memories.
I smile, placing my palms flat on his suit jacket. A tickle of good humor sparkles inside, his amusement contagious. “Very well, Lord Winthrop, I believe I shall.”
His smile is wide at the use of our playful moniker. He flings his arms around me, and we fall back together as he laughs.
I scramble to regain control and push back his boyish enthusiasm. “This may come at great cost.”
A lopsided grin. “You might tire of my company.”
I press my lips together in a smile. “Suppose you burn my toast.”
“I’m fastidious about my bread. Well then, my lady.” He rises and offers me his arm. “Shall we wed?”
I blink up at him. “What, now? It must be half an hour into the ceremony. Won’t they wonder where we’ve been?”
“Let them wonder. I love to be interesting.”
I laugh, each exhale releasing tension. This will be a sweet memory stamped upon the fresh pages of my new story.
A mix of the appalling and the marvelous.
Heady intensity and glorious wonder. I don’t wish to look back upon the mess I made of this day, but I will forever remember the way Ansel James Winthrop charmed me into joy. Again.
“Come on,” he says with a conspiratorial wink. “Let’s go shock them all.”
The ceremony is terrible. The guests turn to watch me walk down the aisle that is far too long, far too grand, and they whisper. Those wretched old gossips hiss back and forth, likely speculating on the delay. The scandal of something not going exactly as planned.
But AJ smiles at me from the end of that aisle, and his look could light a cave on a dark night.
I blame the next mishap on that great, blinding smile that has my heart outpacing a racehorse.
Halfway up, my slipper catches my dress and I fall for the second time today, plunging toward the stone floor.
Ansel catches me as if rescuing me is a reflex.
Marriage is the Russian Roulette of humanity—deposit yourself firmly in the arms of another, and hope they deign to catch you every day of your life.
I will be all right.
For the entire three years of my current existence, my delicate roots have lain aboveground, desperately poking at the dirt, looking for a place to plunge down and anchor themselves. To hold me steady against the weather. Now at last I feel those roots slip into warm, loamy soil and go deep.
Yes, I am safe. I have found an anchor for my soul. And for several hours, I am blissfully happy as Mrs. Ansel James Winthrop.