But at the same time, perhaps it didn’t matter.In the few short moments he could recall spending with her since his fall, he had felt the pull toward her instantly.
Gazing at Lucy’s slumbering form, her hastily pinned-up waves of hair already beginning to rebel and her declarative dark brows slightly knit in sleep, Gabriel thought perhaps he’d simply met a woman whom he’d been unable to envision giving up.
Already, he felt as though he would do almost anything to keep Lucy by his side.
She stirred, brows wrinkling harder for a moment as she grimaced at what must be an awful crick in her neck.With a muffled noise, she pulled herself painfully upright.The book slid from her lap to bang on the floor, and Lucy darted a guilty glance at him.
Smiling to reassure her, Gabriel said, “Don’t worry, I was already awake.How long have I been out?”
She checked the ormolu clock in the corner of the room.“Gracious.You slept for four hours!”
“It’s hard work healing a head injury, I suppose,” he offered, feeling vaguely like he ought to apologize for spending the bulk of the day unconscious after such a dramatic morning.
To his surprise, Lucy tensed.“Are you healed?”
“My head is a little improved, I think.The headache has abated somewhat.But if you’re asking whether my memories have returned, I am sorry to say they have not.”
Paradoxically, that appeared to relax Lucy.“Not to worry.The medical texts I’ve been looking through all seem to say the memories will come back on their own, in time.”She leaned down to retrieve the heavy tome that had fallen off her lap.“There are several very interesting accounts of amnesia patients going about their lives while waiting for their memories to come back.”
Gabriel grimaced.“An ordeal that will hopefully be of short duration.”
“Actually,” Lucy mused, “according to the literature, a lot of patients seem to find a sort of peace with it, an ability to approach the unfamiliar with a sense of curiosity and wonder that made up for the disorientation.And their families report that their afflicted loved ones were?—”
She hesitated, biting her lip, and Gabriel frowned.“Were what?”
“Nothing awful,” she hastened to reassure him.“Only…the family and friends of the amnesia patients all tended to say the same thing—that the person without memories was almost morethemselves, as though they’d been stripped down to the core of who they were.Not to echo Dr.Perry, but it reallyisfascinating.I wonder what I’ll discover about whoyouare, at the core.”
She blinked innocently, but for some reason Gabriel felt a shiver of unease grip his guts.“It’s sweet of you to want to research my injury,” he said slowly, “but I shouldn’t like to put you to any trouble.”
“Oh, it’s no trouble.”Her cheeks had gone very pink; it was damned pretty.“I love to read.All writers begin as readers first, I suppose.”
“You’re a writer?You mentioned an income, but I assumed it was an inheritance of some kind.”
“I have that too,” Lucy told him.“But I try not to spend too much of it.I prefer to live on the money I make from my writing.”
“I wish I could remember.I feel like a cad,” he confessed quietly, studying her.“We must be so close, intimate enough that I spent last night with you, and yet I can’t remember anything about you.I can’t even remember what we did last night.”
Her blush extended down her slender throat to color the part of her chest he could see above the gathered bodice of her day dress.
“Please, let’s not speak of it.Not yet at least.It’s almost as though you are meeting me for the first time.And in a way, I feel the same.Perhaps we might…defer discussion of what has passed between us until we know each other a bit better?”
“That makes sense,” Gabriel agreed, though he felt obscurely disappointed.It wasn’t exactly that he’d hoped she would immediately offer to give him a very physical demonstration of all they’d done the night before…but he hadn’tnothoped for that.
Still, he could see that she was uncomfortable with the topic, and, wishing to spare her sensibilities, he changed the subject.“So, when is Dom arriving?”
She blinked.“Who?”
Gabriel stilled, his insides chilling.What did it mean that his betrothed didn’t know Dom?
“My cousin,” he clarified carefully.“Mr.Dominic de Vere.We grew up together.Surely…you would have notified my family of my accident?”
If anything, this topic seemed to make Lucy even more uncomfortable than the discussion of their intimacies.“Oh yes, of course.Your cousin, Dominic.Well, you see, the thing is.Oh dear.The thing is, I’ve never met Mr.de Vere.”
Were he and Dom no longer close?Gabriel couldn’t fathom it.
Feeling more at sea than he had since the moment he realized he’d been catapulted fully grown into an unknown future, he said, “What about my uncle?Lord Roman de Vere.Surely, you’ve met him.”
She shook her head, lips pressed together in distress.“You…had a falling out, some years before I met you.I’m not sure what it was all about; you never speak of it.”
