No. This isn’t right. Those aren’t the right memories. I squeeze my eyes shut, see the man with the gentle brown eyes and neat little mustache on the beach in shimmery mists looking at me with such adoration, but he separates into two. Then one, then two again. One figure with the calm brown eyes, the other with stormy green glowing with deep, unbridled affection, and I hear those whispered words.
You are my forever.
But they come from the stormy-eyed man. My mind…somehow, it remembered them both. My knees buckle and strong arms scoop me up, carrying me to a bench behind a wall and laying me down. AJ peers down into my face and I summon every ounce of strength into a single glare. “Truth, AJ. I want…the truth.”
His eyes spark, but it’s different. He’s a different man. There’s no trace of his usual good humor or flippancy. “It’s true, Merryn. We married six years ago and we lived in Gloucester.”
“I lived inGloucester? Onpurpose?”
He speaks quickly. Firmly. “On our anniversary, we were on holiday in Cornwall. Planned to return to your childhood home and see your mum. You hadn’t spoken in years, and you wouldn’t say why. That’s when you had the accident. You’ve been gone since then.”
For five years. I was only in Cheltenham for three, which means the missing two years before that had been spent in Newlyn.
But why? How? Did AJ know all along where I’d been…and choose to stay away?
“Iamyour first husband, Merryn. And I’ve come back for you. I was hoping you’d remember eventually…”
The headache spiders up my scalp, settling behind each ear and throbbing. Facts are spinning. Puzzle pieces doing a dance without lying flat. I look up at the man I’ve married…twice, apparently. But there’s one fact I cannot get around. A splinter I cannot dislodge.
She said, I know you now,
I knew you all along,I knew you in the dark,
but I did it for a lark!
“When we met in the park and when we courted, at our wedding…all this time, you knew.” An airy calm settles upon me. “You knew I was already…that we were—”
“Let’s just say, that day in the park wasn’t an accidental meeting. I’d been speaking with Lady St. Laurent for weeks.”
I’m trembling. “You lied to me. All this time, youlied.” He’d used my brokenness. Used it to rewrite our story to erase the past and con me into being his wife again after years of silence. Why? Because I’d come into more money.
Rupert comes toward us.
I look deep into those snapping eyes that once melted me…and feel ice. The more you love a person, the more forceful the blow of betrayal.
And for that lark you'll pay,
You'll pay the fare, for I declare,for you’re driving home alone.
Away now from Lamorna…
I looked him square in those green-gold eyes. “I never want to see you again.”
He works his jaw. “You cannot mean that.”
I choke on the anger. The wedge of betrayal has been driven between us, and I cannot see past it. Truth is a gift wrapped up in trust that you hand to the one you love best. I held out my hands for it, but they are empty. The truth he kept to himself is not just that we were married, but that years ago he tried to have me killed. I am the murdered heiress.
And now he’s about to do it again.
What will you do now, Merryn?It is Lady St. Laurent, her cloud of orange hair leaning over me in some distant memory.Eventually you have to choose what will become of you.
Rupert sidles up beside us, checking me over, looking for signs of distress. There is no guile on his handsome face, yet he’s not the man to whom I’ve committed myself. Oh, that he were!I’ve no interest in your fortune, Merryn. Just you.
Like a lovely song against a backdrop of chaos. But I’ve so tangled up my life that I cannot possibly be with him now. Not ever. And that’s perhaps the most wretched part of this decision—there is no good option.
I rise, the noise of the room thudding against my temples. Perhaps my head will explode, and then I won’t have to decide anything.
I stare down both men, poised from the inside out despite the rags my frock has now become. A quiet confidence, Lady St. Laurent called it, but she hadn’t seen—no one ever did—the quivering insecurity, the precarious foothold I had on the world and my place in it. The safe ground most humans took for granted had been turned to clouds beneath my feet when I’d lost my memory. I had nothing on which to stand. No way to make important decisions.
