“Oh dear. I was so hoping with an extra night’s rest and all, you would have gained back some of your faculties. I was so hopeful, in fact, that I did not tell your brother there were some, ah, complications in your recovery.”
“It is as if someone has taken a cloth and wiped all the writing off the slate,” he said honestly. “I see blurry images, an occasional picture of something. I get impressions of things flashing through my mind, but I do not know what they mean.”
“Do you get an impression of hunger?” Florence inquired solicitously. “You have been here more than three full days without eating a morsel of food and only drinking what little sustenance Annaleah could pour through your lips.”
Annaleah, he thought. Had she told him her name yesterday? No. No, she had been prim and formal...and frightened of something. Of him.
“I think I am a little hungry,” he admitted, attempting a faint smile.
Florence waved her cane to indicate the small banquet that had been laid out on a table behind them. “Do you feel strong enough to get out of bed, or shall we bring a tray to you?”
“I feel strong enough to try,” he said. “If I had some clothes...?”
She rapped the end of the cane on a nearby chair. “Shirt, breeches, stockings. You came with your own drawers so we did not have to scrounge about for them, but the rest came from whoever could spare it. My niece and I shall remove ourselves to the hallway while you dress, and then, if it is agreeable to you, we shall return and take tea while you replenish your strength.”
The cane gave off a muted thump with every footstep as Florence took Annaleah’s arm and retreated toward the door. Emory caught a quick glance from the celestial blue eyes, but he had no time to respond to it before the door closed behind them. She had not said a word, had barely raised her gaze above the level of the bed skirt, and it made him adjust the covers again, wondering just how long he had kicked and thrashed before he had wakened himself.
Long enough to set the devils hammering in his skull again, that much was a certainty, and he raised his hand, probing gingerly at the lump at the back of his head. The pain was still bad, but it was something he could control. The images and flashes of things, people, places that came and went through his mind had no rhyme or reason, nor could he hold one long enough to identify it. The nightmare had been all the more alarming for not knowing if it was a real event from his past that he was reliving, or something his mind had conjured to torment him. If it was real, what did it mean? His wrists had been tied to a beam in the ceiling and someone had been deliberately cutting him...but why? He had wakened the day before with nothing more than an impression of water, vast expanses of water. Now there were distinct memories of pain, but no reason behind it. Unless of course, it hadn’t really happened.
Emory ran his fingers over the tops of his shoulders and at first, felt nothing. But when he reached further back, they were there: thin raised lines in his flesh where stripes had been cut in the skin.
Searching farther afield, he peeled the covers aside and stared down at his naked body. All of his parts appeared to be there, in ample enough quantities to explain why a modest young lady would blush herself almost crimson. There were, however, other scars on his arms, legs, his hip, his belly and ribs, some more obvious than others, and most able to be attributed to other kinds of violence. There was a deep, puckered welt he surmised to be an old saber wound on his thigh, another on his arm. A mark on the back of his left buttock drew a frown when he fit the pad of his forefinger into the center of the ragged pock and realized it was a healed bullet wound. At some point in his life, he had been shot in the arse--surely a painful and embarrassing situation--yet he could not remember it. He had been shot, slashed by swords and God knew what else, but he could remember none of it! His skin was weathered and tanned from the waist up, suggesting he was no stranger to sunlight and ocean breezes. His arms and legs were like oak, tempered with strong bands of sinew and muscle. There was strength in his hands as well; enough for him to know he was not a man who squandered his days in idle dicing and dancing.
Feeling the pressure beginning to build behind his eyes again, he forced the panic aside and, after swinging his legs over the side of the mattress, used the wooden bedpost to lever himself gingerly to his feet. The room spun sickeningly for a few moments but he persevered until he was upright, swaying like a drunkard, but standing on his own with only the fingertips of his left hand resting against the post for support.
His success sent another flush of heat surging through his body and he savored the sensation of knowing that not only were all his parts intact, they were functioning normally. He searched around the floor of the bed for a moment and found what he sought, and after relieving himself in the chamberpot, he inspected the assortment of clothes that had been left neatly folded on the chair.
With modesty his first priority, he dragged a long white shirt made of rough homespun over his arms and shoulders. It was several sizes too big and fell well below his hips--he guessed it was a donation from his giant watchdog, Harold Broom--in contrast to the knee length breeches which were a stretchable, but exceedingly tight fit. There were stockings but no garters, and leather shoes with thin wooden soles. On the washstand, he found a brush and used it to tame the unkempt black waves of his hair. Noticing one glaring omission in the toiletries, he rubbed a hand over his jaw and discovered it was smooth. Someone had already shaved him, either not trusting him to do it without cutting himself, or simply not trusting him with a razor.
He shrugged the question aside and bound his hair with a length of black ribbon. He had been staring at another object on the table for a few moments, and when his hair was tamed and his hands ran out of things to do, he lowered them and ran his fingertips over the raised pattern of silver swans that graced the back of the oval mirror.
He must have stared at it for two full minutes before he finally persuaded himself to simply pick it up and turn it over. It was a strange sensation, slowly angling the polished surface upward, not knowing what to expect, not knowing what he would see or feel when he saw the face that was reflected back at him.
He did not recognize it. Not the wide brow or the smooth, dark eyebrows. Not the bold jut of the chin or the straight ridge of his nose; not the brown eyes that were nearly as dark as the lashes that surrounded them. He had ears, a mouth, most of his teeth, but he could have been looking at a stranger on the street for all the comfort and familiarity he felt. The pressure, the panic, the sense of sheer frustration made him tighten his fist around the metal handle, and with a cry that welled up from deep in his soul, he turned and hurled the mirror across the room, shattering the offending image into a hundred bright shards of glass.
Out on the tiny landing, Annaleah was in the midst of trying to eradicate an image of her own--that of Emory Althorpe’s body with the blanket twisted down around his waist. An inch or two more and he would have revealed everything she had been trying so diligently to forget since finding him on the beach. Unfortunately, her mind was fertile enough to put the two images together with the result that she had been afraid to meet his eye, certain he would sense her discomfort and know that she was not particularly thinking of her own shattered modesty. Rather, he would know she was thinking he was the simply the most spectacularly beautiful man she had ever seen in her young life. Beautiful, dangerous, and as her sister Beatrice would have said with succinct and justifiable emphasis: the kind of man who represented Instant Ruination to any woman with the modicum of sensibility to see it.
The cry of anguish, followed by the sound of the mirror crashing on the wall beside her, made Anna literally leap to one side and mash her shoulder sharply against the opposite wall. Her aunt, who was used to gongs being struck with little or no advance warning, merely turned from the tiny garret window and arched an eyebrow.
“Dear me. Do you suppose he does not like the breakfast we have prepared?”
“Auntie wait--” Annaleah held out her hand to stop
her aunt from reaching for the doorknob. “Perhaps we should call Broom.”
“Whatever for, child? A broken platter?”
Anna bit her lip and watched as her aunt opened the door. She could not very well let Florence go back inside unattended, and so she followed, but each step was cautiously placed, with every sense on prickling alert. She saw the mirror lying in a spray of broken glass beside the door, and a few feet away, Emory Althorpe was standing in front of the washstand, his broad back to the door, his hands braced against the wall, his head bent forward between his shoulders.
“I gather you have met another stranger?” Florence asked gently.
“Was it a test of some sort?”
“A test?”
“Yes. To see if I was telling the truth, or if, for some reason unknown to me, you believed I was faking this loss of everything I am, everything I was.”
When he straightened and turned around, both Anna and Florence had cause to hold their breaths, for the composition of his face had altered completely. Not the physical look of it, but rather the impression as a whole, changing from a countenance full of confusion and uncertainty to one of blackness, mistrust, and anger.
“It was not a test, Rory,” Florence said carefully. “It was merely an old woman’s thoughtless attempt to help you jar your memory.”
The accusation remained cold and brittle in his eyes for a long, silent moment, then gradually began to melt, like candle wax collapsing toward a flame. His shoulders sagged and his arms fell limp by his sides, the muscles no longer straining with tension.
“I...I’m...sorry,” he said haltingly. “I just don’t... I can’t...”
“Come,” Florence said, interrupting his attempt to explain something neither she nor Annaleah could have understood anyway. “You must be exceptionally frustrated, as would anyone who could not recognize their own nose in their own face. Sit and have something to eat. I always find it difficult to concentrate when my belly is rumbling and my tongue is dry. Eat and we can pick our way through the maze together.”
He spread his hands in a helpless gesture of apology. “I suspect I have a temper,” he said lamely.
“You did not tolerate fools or foolishness lightly,” Florence agreed. “Not even as a boy. Now come. Sit.”
The command was emphasised with two forceful raps of her cane. There were only two chairs, which Althorpe held for Anna and her aunt, but the table had been set up in front of the window, providing for a third on the recessed ledge of the casement. He sat with his back to the sun, the light turning his hair into gleaming ebony and silhouetting the shape of his torso beneath the loose folds of the shirt.
Anna nearly shook her head as she imagined all the Fates conspiring against her for she sat opposite him, her hands folded primly in her lap, her back straight, her gaze deliberately averted. She was determined not to look directly at him. At the same time she could scarcely fail to be aware each time he looked at her--which he seemed to do so with alarming frequency. Her cheeks remained continuously warm and her mouth stayed dry regardless how many times she moistened her lips. There were subtle reactions elsewhere in her body as well. A slow, rhythmic tightening chilled the skin across her breasts, while a strange shimmering sensation low in her belly made her wary of moving, even breathing too deeply at times.
Florence whacked her cane against the leg of the table.
“I said, shall we have tea or cider? Cider, I think. Much more restorative to the blood, do you not agree?”
Annaleah fumbled for the jug and poured out three glasses of the sweet apple cider for which Widdicombe House was modestly famous. While she did so, Florence encouraged Althorpe to help himself to the heaped mounds of cold sliced ham, mutton, cheese, and bread. At first he protested there being only one plate and one set of cutlery, but at Florence’s repeated insistence, and after the first mouthful of tender ham, he literally attacked the platters and assaulted the hillocks of food until there was not one single crumb left for an ant to carry away.
While he ate Florence casually expanded upon what Anna had told him about his family members, the estate at Windsea, the years he had spent growing up in Torbay. Anna listened intently as well, finding it increasingly difficult to resist glancing across the table. Each time he shifted or moved, the sunlight winked through a lock of his hair, drawing her attention to the slope of his neck or the noble outline of his profile. She tried to compromise by watching his hands, but there too, the movement of those long, strong fingers sent tiny shivers down her spine and made her remember how warmly his fingers had curled around hers the previous day.
Another wink of light made her look up and this time her heart all but stopped in her throat. He was grinning at something Florence had said, and the effect on his face was even more devastating than she had imagined it could be. His mouth evoked sinful thoughts at the best of times, but when he smiled it caused a squirming flutter of pleasure where she should have been ashamed to feel such a thing. She found herself avoiding his glances less and less, meeting and holding his eyes for longer and longer periods of time. She was still not completely at ease doing so, but when she was caught the first time and did not burn up in flames, the second was easier. The third time she even returned his smile with a shy imitation of her own.
“The vicar,” Florence was saying, “is naturally anxious to speak with you.”
“So anxious,” Althorpe said carefully, “that he has left me here, in your care, instead of taking me home?”
“When we first found you on the beach, we had no way of knowing if anything had been broken, most particularly your head. We all agreed it would best not to move you too soon.”
“And that is the only reason?”
Florence’s face remained admirably blank. “Whatever do you mean?”
Emory drained his fourth glass of cider and set the empty goblet carefully aside. “I mean...I may have lost my memory, but I have not lost my sight or my wits. You both look as if you are sitting on broken glass, wary of my asking a wrong question or venturing onto a subject you would prefer not to broach. And this room. It is under the eaves, is it not? Rather a peculiar choice of accommodations if I am, as you say, an old family friend. Furthermore, since I have been here, there has been a guard on the door.”
“Broom? Why, Broom is hardly--”
“I can only assume he was put there for one of two reasons: either to keep me in, or to keep everyone else out. And since he is a fairly large brute, and wears a proportionately large pistol tucked in his belt, I am inclined to believe it is the former.”
“We are not holding you prisoner in this room, Emory. You are free to come and go as you please.”
He searched Florence’s face for the truth, then the dark eyes flicked in Anna’s direction. Obviously not as skilled at concealing her reactions as her aunt, she could feel the heat flooding up her neck again but it was too late to look away. He had laid his trap well, for she could not have broken his hold if she had wanted to. Moreover she was left with the distinct sensation that he had climbed right inside her thoughts and had a thorough look around before he finally relented and turned back to her aunt.
“Fair enough,” he murmured. “If I am free to come and go as I please, you have no objections if I borrow a horse and ride over to Windsea? Perhaps if I see my old home it will jog some memories clear. For that matter, a ride into Brixham, or Paignton, or Torquay might accomplish the same thing. If, as you say, I spent a great deal of time on the docks and in the harbor, someone there might know what happened to me three days ago. I could post a notice, or offer a reward for information.”
The side of Florence’s mouth curled down the same measure of distance that her eyebrow inched upward. “All things considered,” she said on a sigh, “I doubt that would be your wisest course, Rory dear. I should not think you could offer as high a reward as the King’s Bench has posted for information concerning your whereabouts.”
He studied her without moving for several long m
oments, then slowly folded his arms over his chest and leaned back against the window casement. “Have I committed some crime?”
“You have been accused of committing one,” Florence conceded. “There has been no proof offered, however, and quite frankly, without absolute proof I cannot bring myself to believe any of the charges laid against you.”
“Any of the charges?” he asked softly. “Implying there is more than one?”
Florence waved a hand with some impatience, sending one of her gold rings flying off her finger. “All unfounded, so far as your brother has been able to determine. On sheer rumor and speculation alone they are claiming you conspired to help the enemy, committed treason, even that it was your ship that assisted Napoleon Bonaparte in escaping his prison on Elba.”
Emory had started to lean over to retrieve the ring, but at the mention of Bonaparte’s name, he froze. His hands rose to his temples and his fingers squeezed until the veins in his arms stood out like thin blue ropes.
He lowered the spluttering length of fuse to the touch hole and watched the small puff of powder explode against the charge. A split second later the huge cannon reared back in its carriage, the breeching tackle straining against the force of the shot as it was expelled in a huge cloud of white, acrid smoke. He had covered his ears, as had every other man in the gun crew, but the concussion rocked the deck under his feet and shook every bone in his body, and after more than a dozen such horrendous impacts, he could feel blood beginning to trickle down the sides of his neck. Already the men were loosening the tackle lines, reeling the heavy gun back on board. At his shout of encouragement, one man was there waiting to swab the smoking barrel, another to load fresh powder and packing, a third to ram the charge in place while a fourth lifted a thirty-two pound ball of lead into the muzzle. It was a dance they had done many times before, practising and drilling with precision until they could fire two deadly rounds per minute.
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