“So, we shouldn’t keep secrets between us.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Depends on whose secrets they are. Sometimes a person can’t share, even if they want to, because it’s not their secret.”
She nodded. “That makes sense. Then maybe I can’t share this secret, as it’s not just mine. But you’ll just have to trust me when I say follow Rockwell’s advice. You won’t regret it.”
He reached up and brushed an escaped curl from her cheek. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Lucien watched the waves lap against the shore, their rhythmic motion almost hypnotic. The afternoon sun had begun its slow descent toward the horizon, painting the sky in strokes of gold and amber that reminded him of Courtney’s eyes. Beside him, she sat with her knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them, her skirts spread around her on the sand like the petals of a flower. The breeze lifted tendrils of her auburn hair, and he resisted the urge to reach out and tuck them back into place.
“It’s beautiful here,” she said, breaking the comfortable silence that had settled between them after Caitria had taken Ava-Marie back to the house. “I’d forgotten how the light changes everything at this time of day.”
“It reminds me a bit of the Irish coast,” he found himself saying. “Though the cliffs there were rougher, wilder somehow.”
She turned to look at him, curiosity in her amber eyes. “Do you miss it? Ireland?”
He considered the question, surprised to find the answer wasn’t simple. “Parts of it,” he admitted. “The simplicity, perhaps. Knowing exactly who I was and what was expected of me each day. No complicated social obligations, no family fortune to restore.”
“No memories to recover,” she added softly.
He nodded, feeling a familiar twist of guilt in his chest. “No ghosts of a man I can’t remember being.”
Courtney drew idle patterns in the sand with her fingertips, her expression thoughtful. “Tell me about her,” she said after a moment. “About Ava.”
The request caught him off guard, and he tensed slightly, unsure how to respond. So far, he’d managed to avoid this conversation, but here, with the sun setting and the sea whispering secrets to the shore, it seemed impossible to deflect.
“Why would you want to know about her?” he asked, watching Courtney’s face carefully.
“Because she was important to you,” Courtney said simply. “Because she gave you Ava-Marie. And because I think understanding your life in Ireland might help me understand who you are now.”
Lucien sighed, picking up a smooth pebble and turning it over in his hands. “She was…vibrant,” he said finally. “Full of life, always laughing or singing, with this wild copper hair that seemed to catch fire in the sunlight. She found me after I was injured—nursed me back to health.”
He paused, choosing his words carefully. The truth about how Ava had deceived him, pretending they were married when they weren’t, creating an entire fictional past for them, wassomething he couldn’t tell her. Only Rockwell and Farah knew the truth, and he intended to keep it that way. The shame of it, the implications for Ava-Marie’s legitimacy—the consequences for his family, for Lauren and Madeline finding good matches… Hell, even he needed a good match. It would be devastating if society ever learned the truth. He didn’t really know this woman.
“Did you love her?” Courtney asked, and though her voice was steady, he caught the slight tremor in her hand as she brushed sand from her skirt.
Chapter Eleven
“Idid,” heanswered honestly, staring out at the horizon. “She was my anchor when I had nothing else. And when she died…” His throat tightened. “When she died, I grieved for her. For the mother of my child, for the woman who’d made me feel alive.”
He glanced at Courtney, saw the gentle sympathy in her eyes, and continued, “But looking back now, knowing what I know about who I was before…” He shook his head. “It was a different kind of love than what we apparently had. Simpler in some ways but also built on a foundation of emptiness where my memories should have been. She didn’t care who I was but only what I could do for her. She just wanted out of her horrible life of destitution, and I can’t blame her for that.”
“I can’t imagine how disorienting this situation is for you,” Courtney said, her voice soft with genuine compassion.
“The hardest part was learning she kept things from me,” he admitted carefully. “Not just about who I might have been, but about our life together. Small things at first, that grew larger over time.”
Lucien let out a bitter laugh. “The irony is, I still don’t know all of it. There are still pieces of the puzzle that don’t quite fit.” He thought of the truth he could never share. That he’d never actually married Ava, that Ava-Marie was illegitimate and he felt the familiar twist of shame and fear in his gut.
Courtney seemed to sense there was more he wasn’t saying. “Is that why it’s hard for you to trust now? Because she wasn’t completely honest with you?”
Her perception startled him. “Perhaps,” he admitted. “How can you trust your own judgment when it’s been proven fallible? How can you trust others, when the one person you relied on completely wasn’t entirely forthcoming?”
“People have different reasons for keeping things to themselves,” Courtney said gently. “Not all of them malicious.”
“No,” he agreed, meeting her gaze. “They’re not.”
The unspoken question hung between them:But how do I know I can trust you?It wasn’t fair to her, he knew. She’d given him no reason to doubt her sincerity. But the wounds Ava had left were still raw, still bleeding whenever he prodded them.
“What are you looking for now, Lucien?” Courtney asked, drawing her shawl more tightly around her shoulders as the evening breeze picked up. “In a wife, I mean. I know you have no choice but to marry, due to your family’s finances, but surely you want to be happy?”
