Page 55 of Tamed By a Passionate Lady
“I am scared, James.” Her voice was shaking now. “My dream seems to have come true; you finally love me. I am scared that your memory will return, and with it, all of the reasons why you could never love me in the past. That our newfound happiness will be stolen away, before it has even had a chance to truly blossom…”
“No,” he said fiercely. “No. I love you, Adaline. Iloveyou…”
She sobbed. “You say that now, but when you remember, it may be very different…”
“I promise you,” he said, in the same low, fierce voice. “I promise you that even if it does return, it shall not steal what we have between us now. I am committed to you for life, Adaline. You have my heart, forever.”
She smiled wistfully. “I hope that it is true. I pray that it is true.” She paused. “I do not know how I could live having tasted this love between us, only to have it snatched away from me.”
He didn’t speak. Instead, he gathered her up in his arms, gently, embracing her.
She shuddered again, then stilled. He heard her sigh, as she relaxed in his arms.
They gazed into each other’s eyes, searchingly, affirming their connection. He watched as her face grew slack and her eyelids started to flutter. Within moments she was asleep, cradled in his arms.
He kissed the top of her head, pulling her closer to him. This was how it was going to be, every night, from now on. This was how it would always be.
He didn’t care about the woman in the portrait, or what Reuben had told him. None of it mattered anymore.
It was a brand new day, for all of them. He was sure of it.
Chapter 20
James gripped her, in his sleep. Somewhere, in the deepest recesses of his mind, he knew that he was holding her and that he never wanted to let her go.
But suddenly, images started to flash through his mind, which were so vivid that he gasped. His eyes flew open and he sat up, lurching, as he caught his breath.
His heart was hammering furiously, and he could feel sweat dripping down his neck. He blinked, twice, trying to clear the fog of sleep away.
He remembered. He remembered everything.
He turned to the woman, still deeply asleep, lying next to him. He could not make out her face in the darkness, but he could see the black curtain of her hair, spilling out around her. His wife. The wife that he had never loved.
She stirred slightly in her sleep, throwing an arm out. He kept watching her as his heartbeat started to slow, and full consciousness came back to him, an awareness of who he was. The man that he had been, prior to his fall.
Why it had suddenly returned, he didn’t know. Perhaps it had been unleashed by Adaline’s sorrow, when she had said that she was afraid that he would stop loving her as soon as he remembered. Perhaps it was because he had been told about things that had happened to him, over the past five years, by Reuben and by his wife. All of it probably jogged something deep within his brain, stirring it up, like sediment at the bottom of a pond.
He remembered everything.
He choked back a strangled sob. He didn’t know whether to laugh, or to cry. He had so longed for this day to come, for the fog to lift, and now it finally had.
Be careful what you wish for,he thought sadly. For you just might get it.
***
He sat in the bed, in the darkness. A deep, horrible sadness twisted around him, filling the air, polluting it. Next to him the woman kept sleeping, oblivious to the fact that her worst nightmare had come true.
The face of the other woman was in his mind now. Her perfect heart-shaped face, her delicate nose, the large, cornflower blue eyes that had always unstitched him. Her hair, like a golden halo around her face as he caressed her, drinking in her perfect beauty.
Lydia.
Her name seemed to hover in the air; he felt like he could reach out and grasp it. Lydia. The woman that he had loved more than life itself.
Quite suddenly, he was no longer in the dark bedchamber in a house by the sea. He was miles away. He was back in Liverpool, walking the streets, and she was beside him. Lydia, twirling her blue parasol to protect her porcelain skin from the sun.
***
She had haunted his dreams after he had first seen her from the window of the Athenaeum that day. He had been determined to find her, to find out who she was, and to see her again.
