If he were not dead, by the time she was through with him, he would wish he were.
CHAPTER 4
“Your Grace! You cannot go in there!” The voice was muffled through the thick wooden door.
Alaric frowned at it, feeling the motion pull against the scar that crossed his forehead to his right eye, the scar hidden by his long mop of hair. He was sitting in the drawing room of his Bath estate. His physician turned toward the noise, mouth open in question.
The heavy wooden doors swung open, and a woman with blonde hair and piercing blue eyes walked through. She wore a thick traveling cloak and had a small boy with her. The sunlight streaming through the window caught on her earrings, drawing Alaric’s attention to the soft lines of the woman’s face.
Her mouth tightened into a line as she looked at him, eyes flashing dangerously. Yet even beneath the full weight of her rage, Alaric couldn't help but appreciate how beautiful she was.
“They told me you were unwell, but you look perfectly fine to me. If you think growing your hair out will hide your health, I fear you are mistaken.” The woman strode toward him. “You have some nerve. How dare you get your staff to lie to me? You disappear for months, and no one hears from you, which leads to all sorts of rumors, and on top of it all, when I come to find you, I find you standing in your drawing room fit as a flea!”
Alaric watched his physician move to stand between him and this irate stranger. “Madam, I can see that you are upset, but?—”
“Of course I am upset!” The woman glowered at Alaric. “Well? Are you going to explain yourself? I think it is the least you can do.”
“I think I would be hard-pressed to explain anything to anyone, especially when I have no idea who you are.” Alaric tilted his head toward the woman, wondering why she was so furious.
A part of him felt like he should be angry at such insolence; after all, he was a duke. Yet he could not muster the emotion.
Her eyes narrowed. “Do not mock me, Your Grace. You know exactly who I am.”
Alaric almost shook his head, but remembered in time that it would cause him immense pain. “I am afraid I do not. I would remember a face as pretty as yours, I am sure.”
The woman opened her mouth, her eyes full of fury, but before she could say anything, Alaric’s physician interjected. “His Grace had an accident some months ago. Among his many injuries was one to his head. Though the wound has healed, it has affected his mind.”
“What do you mean?” The woman turned to the physician. “Is he mad?”
“No, but he has lost his memories. Or at least, he has lost many of them,” the physician explained.
“That seems a rather convenient excuse.” The woman’s eyes narrowed.
“Hardly.” Alaric’s interjection earned him another glare, but he found he did not mind it.
After months of everyone treating me like porcelain, it is rather nice to have someone shout at me, though I would rather see her smile. I bet that is something to behold.
“I know who I am, my age, and that I am a duke. Though for a few days, even that was beyond me. Some things have come back, some have not. I know that I have a friend called Frederick Hale, for instance. Or I think I do. It is hard to know just what you have forgotten when so much remains a mystery.”
“Like the fact that you are married?” The woman folded her arms across her chest.
“Am I?” Alaric’s eyes widened, and he made a note to ask Mr. Wilkins why the man had neglected to mention this fact to him. “To whom?”
The woman gaped at him. “To me.”
“How fortunate,” Alaric said without thinking.
It was only after the words slipped from his mouth that it occurred to him that it might not have been the proper thing to say.
Perhaps I should check with Mr. Wilkins.
Her expression shifted from angry to outraged, then to amused, and finally into something Alaric could not quite recognize. She looked between him and the physician as though expecting either of them to tell her they were joking.
His physician sighed. “His Grace needs time. His memories are returning, but in odd sequences. The mind is poorly understood at the best of times, but in his current state, he is vulnerable.”
“It is why we have tried to keep things so secret, Your Grace,” Mr. Wilkins explained. “I dared not write to you lest it be intercepted, and I could not leave His Grace. Not when he could be so easily exploited.”
“And yet he found the time to write this to an orphanage? To claim a son that he did not even bother to tell me about?” Hiswife took a letter from a bag she was carrying. “That is your seal and your signature, is it not?”
