Forcing his eyes open, his gaze roved over her lovely face, her brows pinched in concern and mouth beginning to pull down at the corners into an unhappy curve.
“I remember,” he said, his own voice unrecognizable.Harsh.Raw.
Something flashed in her blue eyes, a sharp flicker of fear.“What do you remember?”
Nothing, he wanted to cry.I don’t remember anything and nothing has to change.
But it was far too late for that.
“Everything,” he said, and watched the light die out of her eyes.“I remember everything.”
* * *
Lucy’s heart froze in her chest like a rabbit staring down the sights of a gun, then immediately kicked into a frantic pace.
Her hands tightened on his shoulders but when he pulled away to stand, she let him go and stumbled to her feet as well.
“That’s wonderful,” she said, hating the quaver in her tone but unable to steady it.
“Is it?”
In the terrible silence that followed, Lucy could almost see him drawing the mantle of Thorne over his shoulders.
She knew it for what it was now: armor.Defense.Protection for the vulnerable, abandoned, betrayed boy he’d been—and never wanted to be again.
She knew him so well now, Lucy thought in despair.Which was why it surprised her not one whit when he cast himself down into one of the chairs in an elegant sprawl and looked up at her with dark, hooded eyes.
“I remember it all,” he said with a careless gesture of one long-fingered hand.“Including you passing yourself off as my betrothed.A fitting vengeance for my many crimes, I’m sure.”
Lucy tensed.“You think I told my family and friends that we are engaged in order to punish you for something?”
“Why else?”He shrugged, but his face was still and watchful.
“To protect you,” she said evenly.“From being found out as The Gentle Rogue.And to protect myself, of course?—”
“From being found with The Gentle Rogue lying in your garden after falling from your window, yes.”His lips quirked into the semblance of a smile.“What an awkward position my clumsiness put you in.”
Awkward.That was a good word for this conversation, Lucy thought bleakly.Awkward and painful beyond belief, to look at this man she’d held in her arms and taken into her body and to whom she’d surrendered her heart…and see a stranger staring back at her.
No, not a stranger.A mask.The old Thorne mask he’d fashioned from pain and loss and trauma, and wore to hide his true self from the world.
No wonder he’d been attracted to life as a highwayman.How much simpler to tie on a scarf and a domino, andpoof, be someone else.
“I remember everything that happened between us, too,” Lucy said, moving to stand beside the window where she could look out at the plum tree shedding its silken petals over the kitchen garden.“For instance, I remember what you said last night before we fell asleep.”
“Come, Lively, you know better than to hold what a man says in bed against him,” he replied with a sardonic twist to his tone that she hated.“Or on a settee, as it were.”
“Why are you doing this?”she whispered, though she already knew.She’d always known he would push her away the moment his memories came back.
The more fool her, for allowing herself to forget.
“I’m not doing anything,” he denied.“Merely trying to sort out the past few weeks, which have been uncommonly eventful.Surely you agree.”
“Last night,” Lucy pursued doggedly, her gaze riveted on the plum tree, “you told me you love me.”
She heard him shift in his chair.Probably shrugging again, the wretch.“And last week you told me you hate me.We are people of strong passions, Lively.”
“I don’t hate you,” she said.
