She was Mikah Bauer, but the Mikah within her was entrenched in a mental tug-of-war against thesomeone elsethat she was as well. It made no sense and she couldn’t seem to focus in either direction. Her brow wrinkled as she tried to push through the mist engulfing her mind and choose a direction, and her labors didn’t go unnoticed by the man at her side.
Sympathy stamped on his handsome face, the marquess squeezed her hand. “I don’t mean to distress you, my lady. Rest now. We can talk later.”
He moved to withdraw and rise but she clutched his hand. “No! I would like you to stay, if you don’t mind. Will you help me?”
Lord Ayr sat back and flashed a half-smile that would have set her knees trembling if she’d been standing. Her prone position was good for something, it seemed.
“Of course,” he replied.
“Tell me who I am. I mean, I know. Yet I’m so muddled,” she argued almost incoherently. That wasn’t it at all. She knew…perhaps too much. “Tell me?”
“You are Lady Hero Conagham, Marchioness of Ayr.”
“Hero?” her brow wrinkled, but then Mikah knew the answer just like that. “My mother loved Shakespeare.”
Mikah couldn’t understand why she was saying this. Her name was Mikah. Why would she agree that she wasn’t and still feel the answer to be right? Why would she know that tidbit either? Her mother hated Shakespeare…and yet didn’t. She shook her head once more against the confusion.
“I had thought you may have been named from Christopher Marlowe’sHero and Leander,” Lord Ayr said with a smile.
“No, Mother thought this more amusing.”
“Naming you Hero?”
“No,” she answered and then smiled reluctantly at his jest—she knew he intended the question as a little quip because the crinkles at the corners of his eyes deepened just a bit. It made her feel better, so she tried to focus on him instead of wallowing in the chaos of her mind. “Much Ado About Nothing.Mama thought the play was pure hilarity. She thought that the antics of Beatrice and Benedick the most amusing banter ever written for the stage, but she disliked the name Beatrice intensely.”
“So she named you Hero instead.”
No!
“Yes,” she said, and in her foggy mind, shewasHero…
…and Mikah.
And that was the problem. The source of the chaos.
She couldn’t seem to separate the two. It was as if her consciousness had somehow been influenced by this Hero Conagham. She picked away at the back of Mikah’s mind like a termite digging her way in so that she might overrun Mikah’s psyche, battling to be at the forefront of consciousness. The bewilderment and shock that riddled her since the accident had left her in this fog-ridden state while she tried to comprehend what had happened or at least come to terms with it. Was she hallucinating, perhaps?
Or, considering the appearance of the man before her, dreaming?
Either way, she was still Mikah. But not.
If that made any sense.
Mikah didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry, because she knew it did not. She was afraid that if she did engage in either one, she might not be able to stop. That alone might get her sent to the loony bin, if the insanity in her head did not.
Sensing that her distress was escalating again, Lord Ayr squeezed her hand, “Don’t think about it now, love. Just rest. Tomorrow we’ll go home to Cuilean and there everything will get better.”
Cuilean,Mikah thought dreamily, letting her eyes drift closed. The tension and anxiety drained away.Home.
Love.
Chapter Four
The castle at Dùn Cuilean
On the shores of the Firth of Clyde
Ayrshire, Scotland
