I turn and spot a familiar figure in a long cape striding through the crowds, looking for me. “Sabine’s private agent.”
Ansel leaps up and extends a hand. “Shall we adventure, my lady? Into the past, so we may write the future.”
I take his hand, poised to chase my peace around another corner. I cling to him and giggle. Of all the foolish choices I’ve made, wedding this man is not one of them. With his help I shall rebuild my life, collecting fragmented memories and welding them together into my story. I do love stories. Perhaps this will be exciting. A treasure hunt.
I cannot wait, I tell myself forcefully, to stumble upon the first piece of my past.
Chapter 9
Ineverfallasleepon trains. That’s why it’s utterly shocking to blink on the moving vehicle as we accelerate from a stop and find a paper fluttering against my face, placed there while I wasnotsleeping.
I pluck it off my nose. It’s a scrap like the ones in my jar of words. In angular, precise printing, it says:Holiventure. In which Merryn and AJ have a holiday in an adventurous fashion.
Suppressing a grin, I turn to my husband who is definitely sleeping.Trust no one,Gould warned, but here at least is one person I can trust completely. My carefree, fun-loving husband sleeps as passionately as he lives, sprawled across the seat and restless. Terrible snores erupt from his nose. Then he shifts, kneeing my hip. After a dramatic series of snorts and grunts, he yanks his cap lower over his eyes and lets out a long, gusty breath.
With careful fingers I slide his money pouch out from his waistcoat pocket, dodging the sleepy hand that attempts to batme away, and I spread the coins over my lap. My fluttering heart needs security and a plan.
Two half-crowns, six florins, four shillings, three pence.
Accounting for a shared room at two shillings a night, plus food and bus fare around Cornwall, we have roughly a week to explore the coast and find my past. And that past had better include a home, for we don’t have train fare back to Cheltenham.
I’ll be back for you, Cec. I vow it.
Every farthing will be spent building a case so I might keep that promise. Even if finding my past costs me everything. We’re firmly committed to this journey now, and there’s no returning. Come what may. Or we fail, and face—
I can’t breathe.
I reach across AJ and jiggle the lower window up, releasing fresh air into our stuffy third-class compartment. I close my eyes and lean back as a salty sea breeze hits my face. Wisps of memory needle me at the mere scent of the salty wind.
I shall never forget the moment Dr. Bartlett had liberated me with a few words. He’d not declared me cured…buthopeless. “There is no more progress modern science can make,” he’d told Lady St. Laurent.
The release had been immediate. I quite enjoyed my current state.Adoredit, actually. I loathed that anything should dislodge it.
Lady St. Laurent bristled at the doctor’s pronouncement, however. “You claimed itwasn’tpermanent.”
“A bit of a misnomer, perhaps,” he said. “You see, the deeper centers concerned with the making of new memories are not, in fact, destroyed, but the nerve tracts through which impressions travel appear to be impeded, which—”
“Dr. Bartlett, I am paying you in the King’s pound notes. I expect information delivered in the King’s English.”
He sighed. “It means her memories haven’t vanished, Lady St. Laurent.”
And there…therelay the threat.
“Her mind is merely having trouble retrieving them.”
“Well, then…fetch them back.”
“I’m afraid it isn’t that simple. You see, we recall things because we’ve formed associations with the events as we’ve stored them. Place yourself back in that context, and you’ll retrieve the memory associated with it. But sometimes the brain blocks those to protect you from…something.”
Something.
But what?
From that moment on, I’d turned sharply away from those tiny sparks of memory. Sometimes they’d float by with the scent of a certain tea. Perhaps on a song. But I never gave them space to flourish.
Until now. One cannot live in society forever as a hobbled-together collection of broken pieces. Sooner or later the flaws are pointed out and you are made to fix them.
Athunkjars me. A heavily bearded man in a rumpled coat is sprawled in the aisle, shoved out of the seat he tried to take two rows back. He rises with a grunt, blinking exceptionally blue eyes, and when he nears, it strums a chord of familiarity.
