“Ordering me about, are you?” demands Gould. He’s a bit gruff, but fatherly—his bark is worse than his bite. “Ready, Miss Forsythe? Ah!” he says with a grim smile. “Mrs. Winthrop, that is. My apologies, madam. Ready for a handy escape?”
“More than ready.” I cling to my bag, and to AJ’s coat as he scrambles over me to the next seat, and the car lurches forward, propelling us away from Lady St. Laurent’s fine home. Away from Sabine.
Away from Cecil. But not forever.
“Take my card, my dear,” says Mr. Gould, passing it over the leather seat. “It’s a calling card with my exchange written on it. I’ve placed some money on the card so you can call from anywhere with a public telephone. Meanwhile, I don’t want to see your face about until probate is all settled and done.”
“And we’ll win, won’t we?”
He sighs and turns the large steering wheel, hand over hand. “It depends on how well you keep hidden. Judges are not in the habit of awarding large fortunes to those in county asylums, no matter what the will states.”
I swallow. “Of course.” He’s scribbled something on the back of the calling card—Take care and keep safe. Contact me if anyone hurts you. I’ll always believe you.
I glance at his stern face in the mirror, but Mr. Gould keeps his gaze ahead. It darts my way for half a breath, then back to the road. We’re safe now, though, aren’t we? “How long will probate take?”
“As long as I can possibly make it.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“If it wraps up this moment,” says AJ, “they’ll likely find you incompetent. Her guardianship will become permanent.”
“But Lady St. Laurent chose me as guardian.”
Mr. Gould sighs. “Her daughter doesn’t fight fairly.”
“We’ll fight this, Mr. Gould.” AJ is tense. I’ve never seen him this way before. “We cannot let her win.”
Warmth curls inside at his protective reaction, then it swirls into dread. I am leading AJ into a mess. He will find himselftied to a woman with no past at best, and an institutionalized madwoman at worst.
“I cannot stop them from institutionalizing you for a condition you most certainly do have, so I’ll need you to recover your memory. As much as you possibly can.”
I breathe, closing my eyes. The pressure of a barely dammed past pushes against my skull. “I wouldn’t count on it returning.” Mostly because I don’t want it to.
“Is there nothing you recall?”
I close my eyes and knead my temples, unwilling to brave the sharp edges of the unknown. I huddle in this roaring car, clinging to my carpetbag and cursing my past, wishing I could lay hold of it, diffuse its hold over me and live fully in the present.
Memories are dangerous.
Chapter 7
William, 1947
Memoriesareasafety.A shield against invasive forces—like perky artists with clouds of blond hair and pixie faces. Once, William might have settled for her foppish sort of pretty. But that was before he realized there are women like Helen in the world.
He’d been lost among the artwork at the cramped Newlyn art gallery for several moments before he felt this girl’s gaze on him. She isn’t a girl, likely. She’s perhaps as much as thirty, a mere decade younger than himself, but he cannot think of her as anything but a girl. Perhaps because he’s aged so much in the last two years, and hefeelsso much more than three and forty. Even so, when he peeked between two oils, that brazen doll face did not look away. Instead, her red lips curved up in a smile.
He ducks. Just ignore her, like a bad headache. Women regularly attach themselves like lichen to any man standing upright these days—even vagrants such as himself—because so few remain after the war.
He crouches in the U-shaped display, studying the names on canvas until he finds the one he’s looking for—Fisherman on the Wharfby Rupert Covington. He squints at the signature that’s unmistakably the same as the one on the painting in his cottage. The R and C have the same flourish.
He kneels to look closer, and he senses her before he sees her—that girl again. She’s straightening paintings directly in front of him, her legs stretching out from a gray pencil skirt. His heart hammers, and he pivots away on his knee. She smells of lilac blooms.
Lilacs.
Such as the ones growing around Helen’s garden swing for so many years. He offered his Helen many things as he pieced their home together, praying he’d be able to afford whatever this lovely creature who’d somehow become his wife requested. Her one demand was simple. “Lilacs. I want to sit in the garden with my tea and smell the blooms in the spring.”
So he planted the lilacs and built her a swinging bench in the midst of them. She usually sat out there in the evening, and almost never alone. She was so very tempting when she relaxed on that squeaky bench, draping her slender body over the crude wooden thing, legs propped up crossed at the ankle, that he was never able to resist slipping in beside her and sliding close. She’d swivel and slip her legs over his, weave her arms around his neck, and anchor herself against him to kiss him. Not a peck, but a sweetly lingering kiss that buzzed on his skin, even after she pulled back, smiling coyly at her effect on him.
