“I think it is because you have not wanted to.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Perhaps. You can be very strong-willed, Kenna. It does not strike me as odd that you could be hiding what you know from yourself, especially if the truth is particularly painful.”
“Let us agree to disagree,” she said.
“Very well. Can you concede that you have erred in judging me guilty of your father’s death?”
“Yes.”
He squeezed her hand. “Good. That is something at least. And can you admit that this past year your dreams have altered slightly, introducing new people, new events, into them?”
Kenna’s brows drew together as she thought hard on the matter. “Well, yes, they have, but how could you know? I’ve only discussed my nightmares with you once, and that was when I thought you were Nick.” Her expression lightened. “Nick told you, then?”
“No. It wasn’t Nick, though years ago he discussed them with me.”
“Then Victorine. I know Nick told her everything and sometimes I shared things with her.”
“No. Not Victorine, nor your maid. I knew you told her, too. There was someone else you described everything to and she, in turn, told me.”
Kenna was puzzled. “I can’t imagine…After a moment’s reflection, her features cleared. “It has to be Yvonne. I always wrote her.”
“And she wrote me.”
“She had no right. They were confidences. I didn’t think I had to explain that to her.”
“You’d do well to remember that she is the best friend you’ve ever had, Kenna Dunne.” He said her name out of habit, quite forgetting for the moment that she was Kenna Canning now. “Yvonne loves you dearly and she wrote to me for help when she became unsettled by the accident you had.”
“What accident?”
“When you fell from your horse.”
“That?” she scoffed. “It was nothing.”
Rhys shook his head. “As it turned out it was hardly nothing.”
“I don’t understand. It was a spill, nothing more. Victorine was with me and she rode for help. I almost didn’t mention it to Yvonne.”
Thank God she had, Rhys thought, and thank God again for Yvonne’s fertile imagination, for it was she who introduced Rhys to the idea of Kenna’s changing dreams being the cause of the trouble at Dunnelly. Rhys had been skeptical at first and soothed Yvonne’s worries in a return letter, telling her that a fall from a horse was all part of being a rider, that it had nothing to do with the nightmare which Kenna had had the evening before. But Yvonne had persevered, pointing out other things that did not sit well with her any longer. Like the time Kenna had fallen down the stairs and bruised her back or the time before that when she had nearly caught her death of cold because her rowboat had tipped in the pond. Each perfectly explicable accident had occurred following a nightmare.
He mentioned these occasions and continued. “Do you remember writing to Yvonne—I think these were the words you used—my dreams are making me regrettably graceless?”
“I suppose I could have written some such nonsense, but I only meant that I was not getting enough sleep and was therefore clumsy.”
“That is the interpretation I put upon it also. Yvonne, however, thought there was some merit in looking into the matter.”
“So you came to Dunnelly,” she said. “You told me it was because of your father’s presence in London.”
“That was also true, merely not the entire truth.” There would come a time when he could tell her about his work for the Foreign Office, but this wasn’t it. “And when I arrived at Dunnelly I found you trying to free a fox from a trap that could easily have been meant for you.”
“I had a nightmare the evening before,” she said slowly, hardly able to take in the possibility he was presenting.
“So I discovered later that day. And Nick also told me the riding accident had been no such thing. Pyramid’s girth had been tampered with and the head groom had—”
“Had been ill the morning I took Pyramid out,” she finished for him. “Why did Nick say nothing to me?”
“He didn’t want to worry you and have the dreams go on night after endless night.”
