Because she had belonged there.
“How much more?” His voice came out low, rough.
Pink bloomed across her cheeks. She dropped her gaze again, just for a moment, then lifted it, meeting his head-on. “We were… lovers.”
Something in his chest knew her answer before his mind could catch up. His body remembered. The way she felt in his arms, the taste of her lips, the fire that ignited when he touched her.
But with those feelings… a sharp unease pricked the back of his mind.
Had he taken advantage of Daisy and then left her? Had he abandoned her, knowing there was no future for them? That didn’t feel like something he would do.
But from what she’d said, he… had.
His hands flexed at his sides, torn because he still ached to touch her. But uncertainty held him back.If he had loved her once, how had he ever let her go?
“Daisy,” he said carefully. “What—exactly—happened between us?”
She exhaled a shaky breath.
It was too much.
Alastair pulled out one of the chairs and gestured for her to sit. “I think we need to talk,” he said.
But she only shook her head, ignoring the chair. “It doesn’t matter. It’s all in the past.”
“It does matter, though. All of this matters. Why didn’t you tell me… before?”
She plucked at her apron, avoiding his eyes. “I didn’t recognize you at first. When I found you, with your beard and all the blood, there was little to recognize.” She crossed to the window and gazed out at her carefully tended garden. “I didn’t suspect anything until you opened your eyes. The color… it’s quite memorable. But still, it didn’t seem likely.”
“You recognized… my eyes?” Why did that make his heart skip a beat?
He wanted—no, he needed to know everything now.She knows me. It was difficult to imagine thatthis woman, thatDaisywould give herself easily—or that she’d allow intimacies merely because he was the estate owner’s son.
What wasn’t she telling him?
And she’d recognized his eyes…
“The green color… it’s surrounded by yellow flecks that glow like gold.” A rueful smile flashed across her face. “I didn’t say anything because it seemed impossible, you know? Too much of a coincidence that it would be you, after all these years.” And then she looked up again, and there was no missing the confusion in her haunted stare. “Why, of all places, would you be left for dead behind my shop?”
Fate?
Alastair dropped into the chair he’d drawn out for her. Not because he’d tired himself out, but because her simple explanation all but crushed him.
After all these years…
“I need to know what happened. Before.” If she’d been one of the tenants’ daughters, he never should have become involved with her. But even as he acknowledged this truth, he understood why a younger version of himself would have pursued her.
Because this… connection between the two of them had been so powerful, it had managed to invade his dreams when nothing else had.
She let out a nervous-sounding laugh.
“We were friends at first. You caught me picking berries and insisted I share them. The next day, you taught me how to fish. I was four and ten and you were two years older—so very grown up. I didn’t realize you lived in the manor, and by the time you told me who you were, I didn’t care. We swam. Weclimbed trees. I’d never had a friend like you. Those are some of my fondest memories. And then later…”
“Later?”
“Things changed. The second summer, you held my hand. And sometimes kissed my cheek. We were pirates, but we were also spies. We even pretended to marry once.” She laughed. “And by the third summer… We believed ourselves to be soulmates. We were incredibly naïve, of course. By then, my parents knew we met sometimes. My father warned me not to become attached. And rightly so.”
She tightened her arms around her middle before continuing.
