Lydia could tell by the way he spoke that he wasn’t sure of her response. There was just an edge of little-boy bravado to cover his uncertainty. “You’ve already given me so much,” she said, “what could you possibly have for me now?”
“While you were being fitted at Hordern’s I had this taken care of.” He released her long enough to reach into his pocket and placed a small, velvet-covered box in her hand. “If you don’t like it...”
Lydia fumbled with the tiny button and string clasp on the side of the box. When she released the fastener she opened the box quickly, prepared to love whatever it was that Nathan had wanted her to have. There was no pretending involved, however. The opal ring was breathtakingly beautiful.
Taking Nathan by the hand, Lydia pulled him into their suite. She lit an oil lamp on the nightstand and took the ring out of its velvet bed. Mounted in a yellow gold setting, the stone was iridescent, reflecting light in a pyrotechnic play of color. Tiny veins of green and blue fire flashed as Lydia turned it. She could see pink turning to red, a hint of violet, and mother-of-pearl white on the translucent, polished surface.
“Oh, Nathan,” Lydia said softly, wonderingly. She couldn’t think of anything else to say. Words were inadequate to describe her pleasure.
“Here, let me put it on for you.” She gave him the ring and held out her left hand. He slipped it on her ring finger, watching her all the while. “You really like it?”
“Like it? Nathan, you’ve dazzled me.”
He breathed a little easier then. “You could still have a diamond if you wanted it.”
“What would I want with an ordinary diamond? You chose this.”
“I chose it because it’s Australian,” he said. “I found that fire opal years ago at Ballaburn. I’ve never told anyone where it came from. It’s been a talisman for me.”
“Then I’ll treasure it all the more,” she said sincerely. Rising on tiptoe, Lydia kissed him. “How could you think I wouldn’t like this?”
Had he been so obvious, or did she simply know him that well? Both questions were unsettling. “The jeweler told me most women would prefer a diamond.”
“I would take you as the worst sort of man to lump me withmost women.”
“Then there was something he said about an opal being bad luck if it wasn’t your birthstone. That would be October.”
“It’s settled then. I say I was born in October. Choose a day.”
He smiled at the blithe way which she settled the problem. “The twenty-third.”
“Close,” she laughed. “It was the twenty-first.”
“All right. The twenty-first.” Because she had laid her cheek against his shoulder, Nathan did not see confusion cloud her eyes or the troubled frown that touched her mouth. “You can have a birthday once each month if you like.”
“No, thank you. I should be older than you in no time at all.”
He gave her a gentle push away from him. Her smile was teasing and her dark lashes fluttered coyly. The effect was spoiled when her stomach growled. “I suppose I’d better feed you, hadn’t I? Here, or the dining room?”
“Here, please.”
They ate a light meal with cheese and fruit for dessert. Nathan fell asleep afterward, his head lying in Lydia’s lap in front of the fireplace. She stroked his dark hair, feathering the silky tuft of the nape of his neck. The back of her fingers caressed his cheek, resting briefly in the faint hollow. She traced the line of his black brows and swept back the lock of hair that had fallen across his forehead.
It was after midnight when he woke. Lydia hadn’t moved, even when the fire went out. He helped her to her feet and they stumbled rather stiffly to the bed, collapsed, and were deeply asleep in moments, hands linked under the covers.
Lydia left Nathan a note on the mantel when she went out the next morning. She had no intention of being gone long, she only knew that she needed to be alone, to think. She had no particular direction in mind as she walked out onto York Street. The metallic call of a loose flock of honeyeaters caught her attention. The small songbirds pranced in the hotel garden, nervously active and noisy as they gleaned the ground for insects and the flowers for nectar. Lydia noticed her presence did not disturb them in the least.
She walked aimlessly, turning left, turning right, taking no real note of her surroundings after the songbirds. Lydia was remembering things, she was sure of it, and while the realization could have been a comfort, it was not. Lydia began to consider whether she reallywantedto recall the past. The thought that she might not was a slightly chilling one.
The return of vague memories had really begun in Samoa. The threads of the past were so elusive, so gossamer-like, that Lydia held a memory for only a moment, felt it brush her, then slip out of her grasp. Faint recognitions had happened first on Upolu. Fa’amusami had seemed familiar to her and Nathan had confirmed her suspicion, likening the native girl to someone Lydia had known before. Yet whenever Lydia struggled to gain a clear picture of Pei Ling, she saw only Fa’amusami. Now was no different. It was frustrating and annoying, this state of knowing and not knowing.
Last night, sitting in front of the fireplace with Nathan’s head in her lap, Lydia’s legs had gone to sleep. The numbness itself was not uncomfortable; she had barely noticed it until she wanted to stand. Then blood circulated quickly, tingling, pricking her skin in a hundred different places, and it was then that she really understood how numb she had been.
It was like that now. Her mind was prickly, exploding with tiny sparks that meant she was struggling to wakefulness. She wanted to be blessedly numb again. She wanted to stand. She could not have both.
On the white coral sands of Upolu a second silk thread tugged at her memory when Fa’amusami spoke of the murder of a Samoan woman. It fit with no other fact that she knew about herself, yet Lydia had felt a frisson of awareness then. There had been confusion, a measure of alarm, and when she mentioned Fa’amusami’s words to Nathan, he dismissed them, but he did not ease her mind.
The children in Saint Benedict’s school were wholly unfamiliar as individuals, but collectively they struck a chord, as though the situation itself was not a novel one.
