He wasn’t sure if he wanted to sing hymns of praise or collapse into weeping.
She looked so much the same—pocket-sized with a heart-shaped face, broad forehead, and pointed chin. A smattering of freckles dusted her nose and cheeks. Her eyes were the same soft silvery green-gray, fringed with dark lashes.
And yet . . . she was utterly altered.
She wore a dress rather than trousers, for one thing. Kieran had rarely seen her in a gown, the most memorable occasion being their wedding day. Her dark, unruly hair was long now and severely styled, pulled against her skull with militant ruthlessness.
Even her accent had changed, no longer the cultured Scottish lilt of her upbringing or the guttural brogue she had adopted after her father’s death. She sounded more English, traces of Scotland only occasionally rising in her vowels.
Most significantly, there was a wariness to her, a quiet hesitance that had never been there before.
Ah, my love. What horrors have ye suffered?
Part of him had hoped . . .
That if they could only speak to one another, that she would . . .
She would . . . remember him.
How could she have forgotten all that they were to one another? How could that knowledge simply have been . . . erased?
The worst of it?
He would not be telling Miss Eilidh Fyffe she was his wife. At least, not anytime soon.
“Overwhelming her with information will likely do more harm than good,”his friend, Dr. Alex Whitaker, Lord Lockheade, had said just yesterday evening.“Ye mustn’t push, Kieran, no matter how much you’re tempted. We must simply give her time and provide opportunities for her memory to return naturally.”
Kieran had agreed.
But now, with Jamie before him, achingly beloved and yet hauntingly different, he wasn’t sure he could withhold everything in his heart.
It was a hellish sort of pain to pretend not to love her.
As if sensing the weight of his affection, she looked away again, her eyes fixed on her breakfast.
“Allow me to tell you what ye did after your father and James died,” Kieran said.
“Master MacTavish, I do not wish to have my youthful stupidity recounted—”
“Nae. Please hear me out. This is helpful, I promise ye.”
She relapsed into sullen silence, the stubborn set of her jaw abruptly so familiar that he had to stifle a smile.
Herewas the woman he knew—obstinate, fiery, resolute.
She was not entirely gone, his Jamie. Sparkling flashes of her did surface.
He continued on, “Ye buried your father and brother and sold what ye could of your father’s effects and paid his debts. But after that, ye were impoverished without a way to provide for yourself. Ye had few choices.”
“Women rarely do,” she said, brows drawing down. “I remember bits and bobs of this. I certainly remember the grimness of the choices I faced. My memory is not entirely derelict.” She all but rolled her eyes.
“Aye.” Though if she had forgotten Kieran, then her memory was more damaged than she yet realized. “I had sent a letter to your father a few months before his death, promising that I would give Jamie a position aboard ship. Your brother was handy with a chisel and lathe—or so your father said—so I offered him employment as carpenter’s mate aboardThe Minerva,an apprenticed position where he would learn the trade.”
She reached for the teapot and poured herself some more tea. The slight tremor of her hand, however, betrayed her.
Ah, my love.
She was not as unaffected as she appeared.
