Before Rockwell could speak, a small figure pulled on his coat—a little girl with dark curls bouncing as she moved. She launched herself at Lucien’s legs, and he swept her up with the ease of long practice, his face transforming with a smile that was achingly familiar.
“Daid!” The child’s voice carried on the morning air. “Look what I found!”
She held up something small in her hand—a shell or perhaps a pretty stone—and the man examined it with the grave attention that such treasures deserved. The domestic scene was so peaceful, so complete, that Rockwell hesitated. What right did he have to shatter this contentment? What right did any of them have to drag Lucien back to a world he no longer remembered, to duties he couldn’t recall accepting?
But then he thought of the Earl of Danvers, and the family that was about to lose everything. The earl already thought he’d lost his heir. He thought of Lauren and Madeline, who still wore lockets with their brother’s miniature. Of Lady Courtney, who had turned down three proposals in the past year alone because no man could measure up to her lost love.
And he thought of Lucien himself—the brilliant, passionate man who had once argued politics until dawn and written poetry by candlelight. Who had been destined for great things, who had responsibilities and a legacy that stretched back generations. Did that man not deserve the chance to choose his own fate, rather than having it chosen for him by circumstance?
“Daid, this is my new friend, Farah. But I don’t know this man,” the little girl said, pointing at them.
The man—John, Lucien, whoever he was now—looked at him and Rockwell saw only polite curiosity there. No recognition. No spark of memory. This man looked at his oldest friend and saw a stranger.
“Stay calm,” Farah whispered. “We must be careful not to shock him.”
Rockwell could see the changes five years had wrought. Lucien’s hands were callused from farm work, his skin weathered by sun and sea air. He moved with the easy confidence of a man comfortable in his skin, but there was something watchful in his eyes, the wariness of someone who had learned not to trust too easily.
“I don’t know him either,” Lucien said, his accent purely Irish now, with no trace of the cultured English tones Rockwell remembered. “Who are you?”
Rockwell watched the girl cradled in Lucien’s arms. The child was undeniably Lucien’s daughter—she had his dark hair, his intelligent eyes, even his stubborn chin. But her manner of speaking, her accent, spoke of an upbringing far different from the formal education a viscount’s daughter would have received.
Farah recovered first. “I’m here in Malahide looking for someone.”
“Oh, you’re English,” Lucien said, shifting the little girl to the side. “I’m John Collins. This is my daughter, Ava-Marie.”
John Collins.The name felt like a knife twist in Rockwell’s chest. His friend, his brother, reduced to this fiction. Who had done this to him? How had Lucien become this humble farmer with no memory of his past?
“Yes, she introduced herself to me,” Farah said, and Rockwell could hear the strain in her voice as she struggled to maintain the pretense. “Have you always lived here in Malahide?”
A frown crossed Lucien’s face, and he touched his scar unconsciously. “No. I think I lived in England before cominghome, because I got injured in France, I believe. Or so my wife used to tell me. I can’t remember anything from before five years ago. A head wound took my memories.”
France.Rockwell nearly laughed at the bitter irony. Someone had told Lucien he’d been wounded in France, probably to explain his injuries and his presence in Ireland. But Lucien had never fought in France—he had been in Ireland, fighting in the rebellion that had nearly torn the country apart.
Someone had lied to him. Someone had taken advantage of his injured state and stolen his entire identity.
The rage that filled Rockwell was so intense it nearly overwhelmed him. His friend—brilliant, trusting Lucien—had been deceived in the cruelest possible way. Robbed not just of his memories but of his very self, his family, his future. Someone had committed a theft so profound, it beggared belief.
“Mr. Collins,” Farah said carefully, “this is my friend, Lord Rockwell Ware, and he has been looking for you for a long time. He’s simply overjoyed at finding you. Is there somewhere we could go talk?”
Lucien looked between them, confusion and wariness warring in his expression. “Looking for me? But how could you be looking for me when you don’t even know me?”
The simple logic of the question was heartbreaking. How could they explain that they were looking for someone he used to be? Someone he couldn’t remember being?
“Perhaps we could sit down,” Rockwell said, finding his voice at last. “What we have to tell you… It will be difficult to believe.”
The truth, Rockwell reflected grimly, was indeed more complicated than any lie. But he’d found his friend and now he was determined to take him home, ensure he took his place in society and with his family, and help him restore the Danvers good name and finances.
Chapter One
Lucien Furoe staredup at the imposing façade of Danvers House, his throat tight with an emotion he couldn’t name. The grand Georgian mansion loomed before him, its weathered stone and tall windows holding no hint of familiarity. According to Lord Rockwell Ware, who stood beside him radiating quiet concern, this had been his home for the first three and twenty years of his life. He was now eight and twenty and had not stepped foot in this house for the past five years.
Home.The word felt hollow, meaningless. His home was a modest cottage in Malahide, Ireland, with worn wooden floors and a leaky roof that had driven him mad every spring. But that home, like so much else in his life, had proven to be built on lies.
“Are you ready?” Lord Wolfarth—Wolf, as he preferred—asked from his other side. Both brothers had become unexpected allies, though Lucien was still working out their motives for bringing him back to England. Rockwell professed it was because they were best friends in his past life, and that this family needed him because his father had gambled away the family’s finances, to the point that they were looking at debtors’ prison.
Rockwell cleared his throat again. “Are you ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.” Lucien straightened his cravat, a nervous gesture he’d developed since donning these foreign gentleman’s clothes. The fine wool coat felt confining after years of simplelinen shirts and sturdy working clothes. But he was a viscount now, or so they told him. Viscount Furoe, heir to the Earl of Danvers.
