He had been speaking with an old acquaintance, the Marquess of Brisbin. He had asked Brisbin if he had been introduced to Miss Brooke. Torrie had seen her at a number of balls, their gazes clashing several times, always an answering spark lighting in his belly. He had wanted an introduction.
“Miss Elizabeth Brooke?” Brisbin had repeated, laughing. “Why should you want to be introduced to that dreadful nobody? She’s a plain, plump little partridge, isn’t she? And not a dowry to speak of.”
It all came rushing back.
He had never called Bess those hideous words. It had been someone else. And she had overheard and mistaken Brisbin’s voice for his own. Relief washed over him, along with outrage at Brisbin’s cruel remarks.
It hadn’t been him.
He had been drawn to Bess, even years ago. Because she had bloody well always been meant for him.
Always.
“Torrie?” Monty was standing before him, his countenance lined with concern. “You’re deuced pale. Beelzebub’s banyan, you aren’t going to swoon, are you?”
“That’s a new one,” he muttered, thinking he had never heard his friend use that oath before and then wondering why he gave a damn.
But for some reason, his friend’s odd oaths from over the years were raining in his mind. He remembered them all.
Monty grinned. “It’s a recent invention. It has delightful alliteration, don’t you think?”
“Christ,” he mumbled. “You’re a Bedlamite.”
“So you’ve been telling me for years,” Monty said. “I happily ignore all the aspersions you cast upon my character. Since I love you like a brother, I’m willing to forgive you.”
His mind was whirling. He felt…dizzied and overwhelmed and relieved and terrified and overjoyed, all at once.
And confused.
So very confused. Because suddenly, the old Torrie was merging with the new Torrie, and he didn’t know which of them he was. Didn’t know where his old self ended and his new self began.
“I think I need to sit,” he managed.
Monty directed him toward a Grecian couch. “Here you are.”
He lowered himself to the cushions in a daze.
Hattie was at his elbow, looking at him as if she feared he might shatter into pieces like a broken glass. “Shall I fetch you something, Torrie?”
He looked at his sister and felt his world shift. She was no longer a stranger tied to him by the fragmented shards of what he could recall. She was the sister he had known since he was in leading strings. She was a mischief maker with a generous heart and a love of cats, and she had followed him and Monty everywhere in the careless days of their youth.
“I remember,” he told her with feeling. “It has all returned to me, Hattie. Suddenly and just now.”
“Oh,” she breathed, staring at him solemnly for a moment before her expression gave way to a tremulous smile. “Oh, thank heavens. Does this mean that I finally have my brother back?”
Torrie swallowed down a lump of emotion. “You do.”
She threw her arms around him impulsively, her exuberance taking him by surprise and knocking him into the cushions at his back. But he held his sister tightly, relief and elation and another strange, indefinable sensation sweeping over him.
She didn’t just have her brother back.
He had himself back, too.
Now, all that remained was to win back his wife.
Because one thing hadn’t changed when his memory had flooded his mind. Torrie still loved Bess more than he had ever thought it possible to love another. And he would do whatever it took to earn her forgiveness.
CHAPTER17
