Page 35 of His Forgotten Bride
“You’re making it a habit of collapsing in inconvenient locations, my lord.” She regretted the jibe the moment she had issued it, but he only gave a faint chuckle, as if her impertinence had amused him. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “That was terribly rude of me.”
“Deserved, however.” He made a brief, uncomfortable sound deep in his throat as he shifted his head on the pillow.
“Does your head still ache?” Impulsively she reached out and pressed her fingers to his forehead, but she felt only cool flesh, damp from the cloth. He sucked in a breath at the light touch.
“A bit,” he said. “It’s not so severe as it was.”
“I see.” He had been kinder than she had expected, given her prior experience with this. “Would you like me to go now?” she asked.
“No.” It was a flat, immediate denial. “Stay. No one but you would sit at my bedside, Claire. There’s no one else who gives a damn what happens to me.” His hand slipped from beneath the covers, searching for hers in the darkness. Perhaps the pain had addled his mind, sheared away his indifference…but she let him clasp her hand in his anyway, and he held it like it was a lifeline tethering him to the world.
“What has happened to you?” she whispered. It was a rhetorical question, not truly meant for him—merely her own musing on his changed state since last she had known him.
But he answered anyway, interpreting her question in his own fashion. “A memory,” he said. “Something you said…brought one back.”
“That’s what—what brings on your migraines?” she inquired. Of its own accord, her fingers squeezed his. His thumb rubbed across her knuckles in response, and she marveled at the familiar sensation. He had performed the gesture in unconscious reaction, as if his hand carried the memory of holding hers within it, responding in precisely the same manner as he had years ago.
“Yes,” he said. “Claire, I lost the greatest part of my life seven years ago. Any part of me that was worth anything was lost along with my memories.” His hand squeezed hers. “I thought it would be harder. I never speak of it. But somehow…somehow I feel as if I could tell you anything.”
She blinked back a mist of tears, swallowing hard. Once hehadtold her everything—once they had shared secrets and dreams, and it had all seemed so real and perfect, until reality had crashed down around her ears. She hadn’t wanted to believe that he had betrayed her. And she hadn’t believed it, not really—not until he’d failed to come for her. Between the two of them, perhapsshehad been the faithless one.
“You don’t owe me an explanation,” she said, her throat tight with the strain of holding back tears. “Perhaps you think you do, but—”
“I want you to understand,” he said. “I don’t want you to think me capricious or fickle.” Another slow stroke across her knuckles. “I would never want Matthew to be hurt.”
“I know,” she said, and the fingers of her free hand came up to stroke through his hair absently. A soft sigh followed, as if he took comfort from the gesture. “When—how did you lose your memories?”
“An accident, seven years ago. You can feel the scar, just here.” His hand touched hers, sliding her fingers through the silky dark locks until they smoothed across a ridge of scar tissue buried beneath the hair above his temple. “I was thrown from a horse. When I was sensible again, some weeks later, I had lost years of memory. Most of it is still missing. So much was just…gone. Friends I had made, places I had visited…the woman I loved.”
“Catherine,” she whispered. “You said her name was Catherine.”
“Yes,” he said. “Catherine. At first I thought she was a fever dream, an illusion my mind had conjured up while I was ill. I have no clear memories of her, just fragments—tiny pieces of her that stick in my mind like shards of glass.”
Her heart wrenched in her chest. “If you cannot remember her,” she asked softly, “how did you learn her name?”
“I hired a Runner to track her down. I had to find her, to know what had happened to her.” He made a small sound, turning his head into the caress of her fingers. “There was a dream I had. Or I thought it was a dream. Of carving my initials into a tree, like young lovers do. I sent the Runner to see if hers were there as well.”
In the darkness he could not see the tear that slipped down her cheek.
“He found them there, just as I described—C H. It wasn’t much to go on, you understand. But there were few enough families in the surrounding villages with female relations who would fit.”
She had been in Havenwood only a few months, and she had been residing with her sister, whose married surname was Shipley. It was doubtful the Runner’s investigation would have uncovered her presence.
“He found her.” His fingers gripped hers tightly. “Catherine Harris. She died in childbirth.” He drew in a hoarse breath. “Because my father turned her away, because he doubted her when she came to the manor, my wife and child are dead. And I can’t even recall her.”
“It wasn’t your fault.” It was hers. It washers. Her faith had been eroded by a few days of his absence, by his father’s subtle mockery. “You must know that it wasn’t your fault.”
“Nevertheless, by the time I learned of them, it was far too late.” His fingertips pressed into her palm. “I couldn’t save them, but Matthew—he’s the same age my own child would have been. It’s like having a second chance to do somethingright. I won’t grow bored with him, or abandon him. He’s not toy or a pet to me. I want him to have the opportunities I could not give my own child.” A low sound, half-pained, half-hopeful. “I need you, Claire. I need both of you. With you, I’m not quite so alone, and it feels so much like fate to have found you. When a man has nothing else, he will seize what he can with both hands.”
A ragged sound—a sob—burst from her throat.
“Don’t cry. For God’s sake, don’t. I’m not worth it, I promise you.”
But he was, and he always had been, and it wasn’t just him she was crying for—it was herself, and Matthew, and everything between them that had gone to ruin. What she had let his father destroy. The life they might have had together.
It was me. The words jammed in her throat, caught between sobs.It was me. It was always me.
“Claire,” he said. “Claire.”
