“You look like the Goddess of Spring,” he said, “strayed out of a book of myths and legends.”
Lucy relaxed a tiny bit.That didn’t sound like a man who’d realized his fiancée was a fake.But she kept a watchful gaze on his blank face.He didn’t sound quite like himself, either.
“If I’m a goddess,” she said lightly, “then I command you to come here and sit with me for a while.It’s lovely in the garden.”
“It is.”He lifted his face to the sun, as she’d seen him do often before, and she caught her breath at the way the light gilded his features to match the shining gold of his hair.“I love the sun.”
“You should go to Italy,” Lucy said without thinking.“We should, I mean.Perhaps for our honeymoon.The sun shines there so often you could soak it up like a sponge and carry it back with you to gloomy old England.”
“Is that where you got your sunshine?”He smiled a bit, but his eyes were troubled.“I would love to see Italy.To go with you, and have you show me the places you loved there.But when I think about the journey, about stepping foot on a ship to make the Channel crossing?—”
He shuddered, a reflexive jerk of his broad shoulders that looked almost painful.
“Of course.”Lucy bit her lip remorsefully.“You lost your parents in a storm over the Channel.No wonder you’ve never wished to embark on a Grand Tour.”
“That’s not why.”He shook his head.“Or perhaps that is part of it, but it’s not the whole reason.”
Lucy’s feeling of foreboding doubled.“Gabriel.Have you remembered something?”
“No.But Fitz finally told me…” Gabriel’s throat moved as he swallowed.
Lucy left her bench and went to his side as though she’d been propelled.
The sun felt very warm after sitting in the shade, but when Lucy hesitantly reached for Gabriel’s hand, his skin was chilled as if he’d just plunged it into the cold waters of the fountain.
“Gabriel?”Her voice was small, a faint, frightened thing, but the look on his face had scared her.He looked dazed, as though he hardly knew where he was.
“I was taken,” he said, not looking at her.“Abducted.Fitz said I simply disappeared from Cambridge one night and no one knew where I’d gone.For months.”
“Good God.”Lucy was shocked.How had she never heard of this?The abduction of a duke should have been in all the papers.It should’ve been all anyone spoke about.But she’d never heard a word breathed of it.“Who were they?”
Gabriel shook his head.“Fitz didn’t know, and I still don’t remember.I only know what he told me, but…none of it makes sense.I don’t understand.”
“It must be terrible to find out something like this,” Lucy tried, curling her fingers more tightly around his unresponsive hand.“To know that this happened to you and not be able to remember any of the details.”
“Not that,” he said with an impatient slash of his other hand through the air.“I mean, yes, that.All Fitz could tell me was, whoever they were, they apparently kept me in the hold of a ship anchored off the southern coast.”
His hand turned in hers, clutching at her, and Lucy brought both of her hands around his clenched fist and raised it to her lips with tears burning in her eyes.“Oh, Gabriel.”
“That part makes sense.”He still wasn’t looking at her, his blank stare trained on the ground as though he could find answers among the carpet of flower petals beneath their feet.“In my nightmares, that’s where I am.The hold of that godforsaken ship.Alone in the dark, with no one coming for me.”
“You’ve had that dream again?”
His mouth twisted.“Every night.”
Stricken, Lucy bit her lip.“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Gabriel pulled away to wrap both arms around himself.His gaze finally snapped to hers, and Lucy sucked in a breath at the emotion swirling in the black depths.“Because what sort of man has nightmares every night, like a child afraid of the monsters under his bed?You already know I’m broken.I couldn’t bear to… Lucy.Should I be eager to show you how deep the damage goes?”
“You’re not broken,” Lucy cried.“You’re healing.There’s a difference.”
“But will I get ‘better’?If I heal, if I regain all my memories, will the man I am be better than the one standing before you right now?Because everything I learn about him makes me think that the world is better off with him gone.”
The bitterness in his voice was like a lash across Lucy’s chest, scoring her heart with deep wounds.“What’s got you in this state?”she asked hoarsely.“What else did Fitz tell you?”
He shook his head again, not a denial or a refusal but like a horse too long in harness, weary and sore from too many places to pinpoint one source of pain.“It’s no wonder I dream of it, I suppose.I was there, in the stinking hold of that leaky bucket of a ship, for three months.Three months, Lucy.And do you know how I finally got out?”
“Your uncle ransomed you?”Lucy guessed, her eyes following him as he began to pace, prowling the confines of the walled garden like it was a cage.“Or his men found you and brought you home?”
