But what other options were there? Did it even matter? Whether she’d been thrown into her next life, the afterlife, or even a past life, what if thiswasher life now? Should she hang on to her old life or seize the moments before her? Should she fret and worry or relax, letting life take its course? Would it help or change anything?
Probably not.
All she knew now was that she knew nothing for certain. What had happened or was happening to Mikah’s own body was a mystery. There was no way for her to know. Mikah felt suddenly ill, and Hero knocked her wine glass over, sending the glass clattering into the silver and recalling Mikah to the present moment.
“I’m so sorry, my lord,” Hero mumbled. “How clumsy of me.”
“Not at all,” Ian answered as a pair of footmen rushed forward to deal with the spill.
Mikah stilled in awareness. The brisk tattoo of her heart against her ribs, the sickening butterflies in her stomach.Hero’s stomach. Was Hero as aware of Mikah as Mikah was of her?
That was a thought-provoking concept though Mikah hadn’t gotten the vibe that Hero knew she was there so far. She didn’t feel worry or fear from Hero, and surely a Victorian lady would totally freak out if she started hearing voices in her head. In a pre-Freudian world like this, such madness would probably get a girl shuttled off to the nearest loony bin before she could blink.
Still, how to test it?
Mental dominance certainly belonged to Hero. Though Mikah had asked a dozen questions in the beginning, none of them stood out as something Hero couldn’t have initiated. She could have been disoriented or suffered temporary memory loss enough from the blow to her head to ask many of the same things that Mikah was thinking. The injury could have left her as lost in thought and reflection as Mikah was.
But Mikah had said her name. Hadn’t she?
Hmm, Mikah thought as she sipped from the freshly poured glass of wine while she considered her role in this bizarre new world. Was she merely a bystander, or was she to be a player? Suddenly, she wanted to test the idea. Wanted to see if she was to have any control. But what to do? If she wanted to get up or move, there would be no way to tell if it were she or Hero who had started it, so the test would have to be done with words. Something Hero would never say. Like Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
Mikah opened her mouth…
Chapter Seven
“Ah, here’s our dinner.” Ian greeted the arrival of their meal. “Again I must apologize for the informality of the dinner. I find it tedious for both myself and the men to have them wait on me course by course, so I’ve had them just bring it all at once so I might serve myself.”
“Not at all, I find it very charming,” Hero replied, taking the wind out of Mikah at her lost chance for validation as their meal was laid out on the table before them. Dishes were revealed one by one. A small tureen of mushroom soup, a leg of spring lamb, veal in a white wine sauce, haddock and oysters from the firth, estate-grown vegetables, and a sour cherry trifle. “My goodness, it all looks wonderful and I declare I’m simply famished.”
Really? I declare?Well, that was all Hero.
Stomach grumbling, Mikah let it go for the moment as Ian dished her up a bit of each offering. The food looked familiar though far more elaborate than she consideredsimple fare, but it was all delicious.
It would take some getting used to, she supposed, this clashing and melding of what they both knew and didn’t know, what they liked and didn’t like. She wondered again if Hero were there like a reflection on the other side of a mirror, having these same musings, and was determined to find an opening to test her theory, but for the moment her stomach took over at the sight of the tempting meal.
While they ate, Ian related anecdotes from his youth and university days and invited Hero to share some of her own. Again, Mikah was awash with memories. These wereherstories. She couldn’t shake that feeling. It wasn’t just as if she were on the outside looking in, a bystander in the life she was living. These memories were as real to her as anything she could recall from her own childhood days.
Hero had been raised within the bosom of England’s highest nobility. Mikah remembered the house she had grown up in, her family. Besides her father, she remembered her mother, sisters, and brother. The antics of Hero’s sisters brought a poignant ache to her chest. She recalled Hero’s wedding to Robert Conagham nine years before when Hero had been just nineteen to his forty-three. The marquessate of Ayr had been just an earldom until Robert Conagham’s father had gained a higher ranking for service under William IV. As a duke’s daughter, Hero had been trained well for her new responsibilities, though her marriage to Conagham evolved to friendship more than anything else. Their marriage had been comfortable, companionable.
Mikah also remembered Robert Conagham’s death—her husband’s death—just nine months before. The wait at Cuilean to see if she would bear the next marquess. Her retreat from her home of almost a decade when it was determined she would not.
Still, Mikah’s own life and memories were just as clear. Her life and family, growing up near Oshkosh, going to car shows in Stevens Point with her dad. Getting hassled by her brothers all the time and going to the prom with Billy Pierson. Graduating from Northwestern and getting her job at the Milwaukee Art Museum.
On the other hand, she vividly recalled the gut-wrenching agony of having several miscarriages and the death of Hero’s infant daughter as if it were her own. The barren life of childlessness. Mikah felt the anguish of that loss acutely, felt Hero’s agonizing pain. As singular friends of Victoria and Albert, Robert and Hero had enjoyed the Queen's favor. Queen Victoria, who already had eight children, frowned upon the lack of children to the marquessate but had been compassionate to Hero’s struggle. Hero had compensated for her losses by showering attention on the little princes and princesses. She’d frequented Windsor and been a guest at Balmoral.
Forget dreams, comas, and death. She wasn’t just playing a part in this dream. She waslivingit.
Mikah was Hero now. One with her. In her. Maybe this was what it felt like when schizophrenia set in. Maybe she was like the woman in theSeven Faces of Eve. In that book, many different personalities had existed in the same body, but Mikah had always thought that schizophrenics weren’t aware of the other personalities inside them.
Geez, they were going to lock her up for sure.
All the panic that had swelled and ebbed over the course of the day crashed over her like a tsunami and her fork clattered to the plate.
“My lady?” Ian asked with evident concern, reaching out to her. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
No!
