She stared at her elbow, shocked, then back at him, but there were no signs of her being overly scared of him. Heassumed that the truth was a much scarier thing to be worried about.
She swallowed hard, and when Luke saw several emotions cross her face, he decided to give her a minute to gather her thoughts.
“Phineas… is my cousin,” she said quietly.
Luke raised his eyebrows. “I was told that he is your fiancé…?”
Madelaine scoffed at that. “No! He is not! He wants to force me to marry him.”
Luke couldn’t let up now. “Do you remember anything else?” he asked.
She nodded before she spoke. “Yes. I remember… all of it.”
Luke held his breath. “Allof it?”
She confirmed it with a single nod.
“I inherited my father’s farm after both my parents died. Phineas heard about it and moved in a few short weeks after ithappened. All under the pretense that he wanted to help me. But then…”
“Why were you out there that morning? With Simon and Belle?” Luke cut her off. Right now, he needed to know the facts. He was obviously sorry for the loss of her parents. However, she had lied straight to his face, and he was only human. In this moment, he felt real disappointment and utterly betrayed.
She looked up, and when she saw his emotionless face, she quickly wiped the tears from her cheeks with her sleeve. “I need to find Timothy. He was my father’s best friend, and I was hoping to ask him for his help in this horrible situation, because Phineas took over the ranch without talking to me. He thought if he could force me to marry him, he would automatically become the new owner and gain all the rights to the ranch. I had to run away because I didn’t want to marry him. And I had to protect Belle and Simon from him and his men.”
Luke’s ears pricked up. “His men? What do you mean?”
Madelaine shrugged her shoulders. “He let a whole bunch of them move in, too.”
Luke raised his eyebrows. “How many?”
“I don’t know. They came and went however they pleased. Some stayed longer than others. I didn’t keep track.”
“Can you guess?” Luke pressed.
“I’d say, twenty, maybe thirty, overall…”
Luke made a mental note to investigate this further. His gut feeling told him that there was more to this.
Still agitated about her initial deception, he got up and started pacing up and down the room. There was still a slightly more personal matter he needed to clarify. He wanted to know why she had lied to him. “So, your amnesia…?”
Madelaine shook her head. “No. I don’t—”
“What?” he interrupted, grinding his teeth. “You don’t remember, or you don’t have amnesia?” He knew the answer by the way she fiddled nervously with the folds of her skirt.
“I don’t have it,” she finally admitted, hanging her head low and avoiding his eyes.
“Why did you lie about it? I went out of my way to help you, but you betrayed my trust. You lied to all of us! I thought Evelyn and you were so close, but you lied to her, too. Why?”
“I had to!” she exclaimed in obvious desperation. “I didn’t want you to take us all back to my father’s ranch—”
“If you had openly talked to me and explained your situation truthfully, I wouldn’t have!” Luke interrupted her harshly. This stung more than he wanted it to, and he couldn’t suppress his utter frustration as it was boiling over, so he served her a low blow. “I would have thought that a God-fearing woman like you wouldn’t deceive a man who saved her so easily. Aren’t there rules for this kind of thing?”
His cold stare was met with palpable outrage when Madelaine jumped up off the bed and stepped toward him, almost in a threatening manner.
“What are you insinuating?! That I am like you? Never!” she yelled. “I love God, and He loves me! I worship and pray to Him every single day, asking for His forgiveness! Multiple times! I know that what I did was wrong, but I will do anything to protect Belle and Simon! They are all I have left! They are my only family now! How dare you?!” She raised her fists and started to pummel his chest with little blows, openly sobbing at his accusation.
Luke was so taken aback by it that he took the painless beating for a second without defending himself. When Simon cried out her name from his corner, Luke pulled Madelaine into his arms and held her close to his chest. Things had clearly gotten out of hand, and he needed to regain control.
As he held her there for a moment, Madeleine’s body shook against his, stirring up emotions he couldn’t acknowledgeright then. She cried her little heart out, and Luke allowed her to. Although he didn’t want to admit it, because he was still adamant that his anger was valid, he knew that he had overstepped.
