Dark hair and eyes to match.
King.
Arms around her, strong and safe, lifting her out of the fire. Saving her. He held her close, keeping the fire at bay, and strode away from the flames. They were freed of the fire, and the air was cool and fresh. All at once, the smoke disappeared.
Somehow, she was by a gurgling stream at Riverdale Abbey. The flames were gone. There was a young gentleman with lighthair and a charming grin, and he held a golden locket in his hand, extending it toward her.
Where was King? What had happened? Confusion assailed her, but then the young man spoke, and his voice was familiar and beloved, and her fears calmed. It was a memory, and she knew it, past blending with reality. But none of that mattered because he was here and he was hers.
She would never let him go.
“I know it’s not appropriate to give you a gift until you’re my wife, but I wanted you to have this locket,” he said.
She had never been so happy. The sun was shining, the grass verdant green, the sky overhead vast and blue, punctuated with a smattering of white clouds. How she loved him.
He handed her a bouquet of freshly picked forget-me-nots, the tiny, pale-blue flowers jaunty and beautiful. Her favorite. He had remembered. But of course he had. There had been that day by the stream when she had picked one and handed it to him, telling him that he must always remember her.
And he had given her that dimpled grin she loved and had told her she was impossible to forget.
She reached for the flowers now, and when she took them from him, the young man changed. He was suddenly different. He was taller, his shoulders broader. His hair was mahogany, and his eyes were the soft brown of a freshly turned field.
It was the man who had saved her from the flames, who had brought her to the meandering stream and the forget-me-nots ruffling in the wind. It was King.
“Will you be my wife?” he asked solemnly.
Her mind felt muddled and confused. She was meant to marry another, was she not? She thought she was, but who? The light-haired man, or the dark? Which one had given her the gift, the flowers?
Verity touched the locket.
“From me,” King said.
“No,” she tried to argue.
But she couldn’t. Because the golden-haired man and the dark-haired man had become one, and the flames had returned.
She was alone once more. Back in a burning building again, the fire ravaging the walls, the floor opening before her. She pitched forward, and then she was falling, falling, falling.
Verity screamed again, and when she opened her eyes with a jolt, she was in a room she recognized. Her bedroom, to be precise. A woman was sleeping in a chair at her bedside.
She moved her lips, forming the word. “Maman.”
Nothing but a croak emerged. Mother slept on, a slight snore rattling from her lips.
Let her sleep, she thought.
But Verity could not. Her skin was hot, so hot. And everything ached. Sweat soaked her body from head to toe. Something was wrong with her. Was she ill? Why did her skin hurt? The answers rested at the edge of her memory, but she couldn’t reach them. They were nothingness, suspended in ether.
She tried to remember the cool air by the stream, the sunshine on her face, how contented she had felt. But all she could recall was the man she loved, giving her the locket at her throat. With a trembling hand, she reached for the clasp.
The bandage and pain impeded her progress, but finally, she succeeded, and the locket fell from her throat. With her unbandaged hand, she reached for it, picking it up. Would the forget-me-not be within? Her fingernail found the place where she had pried the engraved locket open so many times before. Within was a lone, tiny blue flower. The only remembrance she had of that day by the stream.
The day that had changed everything.
The day the Duke of Kingham had asked her to be his wife.
It was there, and it was safe, and so was she. Had she been in a fire? Had it all been a bad dream? Why was her hand bandaged if not?
Whatever had happened, she would find out soon enough, when Mother woke.
