She didn’t raise her head to look at him, preferring instead to appear engrossed in stirring sugar into her tea.
“Knowing this,” he continued, “ye took Jamie’s letter of commendation, cut your hair, put on your brother’s clothing, and came aboardThe Minerva, no one the wiser. Certainly not myself. I had scarcely seen ye before ye landed aboard ship, so it was weeks before I realized what had happened.” He clenched his hand. The shock ofthatdiscovery still haunted his dreams.
She swallowed and raised her head, looking away from him.
“Do ye remember at least that much?” he asked.
She did not reply.
Silence hung in the air between them.
Kieran waited.
Finally, she brought her eyes back to his.
“I remember . . . very little,” she admitted, the words reluctant. “I remember the moment of Jamie’s death. The horror of it. And then my father dying the next day. I remember feeling panicked, knowing that I had no living family to turn to for help. I sold the tester bed and my father’s worn clothing—anything to bring in a few coins. I remember the despair and terror of having no good choices for my own future. Everything beyond that is mostly blank until . . .”
The silence returned.
Kieran’s right leg bounced, the jittery state of his nerves demanding an outlet.
“Until?” he prompted.
She sucked in a slow, deep breath. “Until I awoke in a hut on the island of New Caledonia in the South Pacific. Mrs. Gillespie and the Reverend were at my side. I had received a rather severe head injury. Somehow . . . a whole year had passed that I had very little recollection of. I dimly remembered that I had been aboard a ship calledThe Minerva. I had a memory of Dr. Alex Whitaker, as he was kind to me, along with a vague recollection of native villagers pulling me from the ocean and rowing me on an outrigger. Reverend Gillespie says they brought me to him because I appeared pale, like the European missionaries.”
She continued to avoid looking at Kieran, her words wooden, her tone subdued.
Again, words and behavior he would never have associated with his wife.
Jamie was vibrance and color. A flamingo feather on white sand. A crimson hibiscus flower against lush greenery. Not some drab, faded woman in another’s cast-offs, frayed and worn.
The thought hurt.
It made him want to snatch one of the claymores from the wall and battle something mythological and dangerous.
But like such monsters, the battle he fought here was intangible.
She needed to remember.
Shehadto remember.
So many questions scalded the back of his throat.
Things she had to know but would not say.
Namely, that Jamie had beenincreasingwhen last he saw her. What happened to their child? Kieran thought he knew, but he wanted to hear it from Jamie herself.
It was the one question Alex specifically ordered him not to ask.
“No matter what happens, bite your tongue, Kieran,”Alex had said.“Give her time to volunteer the information. Your only goal should be to re-earn her trust.”
So instead, Kieran offered simpler information.
“Allow me to fill in a few gaps for ye, then. Aboard ship, ye formed a friendship with myself and four other men—Andrew, Rafe, Alex, and Ewan”—he named them, ticking off on his fingers—“and we called ourselves the Brotherhood of the Tartan, as we were all Scottish. The Brotherhood was marooned in the New Hebrides;The Minervasailed off without us. Only yourself remained aboard ship from our wee band. It was supposed thatThe Minervawrecked on a reef soon after. We assumed for years that her entire crew perished, yourself included. But a wee while back, we discovered that Captain Martin Cuthie, and his first mate, Mr. Robert Massey, survived. Significantly, both men claim that an explosion destroyedThe Minerva. Last autumn, we learned that ye had survived as well, though ye suffered from an alarming loss of memory.”
Jamie paused, her jaw tightening. “Yes, I have been told much of this. But as I have no recollection of any of these events, I fail to see why I am here now.” She sipped her tea before raising her eyes to his. “What is the point of this, besides poking a stick at the hornet’s nest of my memory? Some things are best left alone or one is liable to be stung.”
Kieran swallowed back the jolt of anguish her words caused. The point of all this was to rememberhim, to remember their love—
