Unforgettable (Mockingbird Square Book 1)

by Bennett, Sara

  “But he never said anything about her to me!” Ash said, startled and irritated in equal measure. “I told him my plans for Miss Beales and he never said a word!”

  His mother shook her head. “How could he? He idolizes you, Ashley. Simon would not want to upset you, even at the cost of his own happiness.”

  Ash tried to come to grips with this. He frowned down at his mother. “Am I so blind and selfish?” he asked her at last.

  She tried to smile. “Sometimes,” she said. “But you have a great many good points as well.”

  He met her worried eyes. His brother loved this girl and he’d said nothing. Simon should have known him better than that. His brother’s happiness was important to him, and although Christina Beales had seemed the perfect solution to his future, he saw now that he hadn’t really considered the matter very deeply. Not from Miss Beale’s point of view, anyway. The Earl of Monkstead had helped him to do that and at the same time prevented him from making a disastrous marriage. He was grateful.

  And what of Juliet?

  Had he treated her as unthinkingly as he had his brother? On the surface it seemed that he had, and yet . . . A memory was stirring, forcing its way into his head . . .

  Heat, a burning sun, and the sound of men and horses. A sense of inevitability, of letting himself go, because she could no longer be his.

  These were times he preferred not to remember, the days when his life had seemed unbearable.

  Ash knew he needed to see Juliet as soon as possible. He needed to talk to her, and perhaps make reparation. He had to redeem himself in her eyes. And, he thought wryly, if she simply ripped into him then that was all right too. Indeed, it would be a relief from the cool stranger who had said goodbye to him last night.

  “I’m glad Simon will be coming down to Crevitch,” he said to his mother. “And I was thinking only the other day . . . We should hold a Midsummer celebration this year. It has been too long since we had one. Will you arrange that, mother?”

  She blinked at him and this time her smile was wide and genuine. “What a wonderful idea, Ash! Yes, I shall begin sending out invitations immediately.”

  He nodded, pleased that she was pleased.

  “Now,” he said, “there is something I really must do.”

  Puzzled, she watched him walk away. Ash was behaving very unlike himself but perhaps that was a good thing. He had begun to remind her of his father, riding roughshod over people, uncaring, and yet he had been such a dear little boy. Something in him had changed after that Juliet Montgomery business, and then that awful time in Spain.

  It was his Uncle George who had insisted he go into the army. She had still not forgiven her brother-in-law for that, but Ash and his uncle seemed so close. If Ash had made peace with him, Felicity decided it was not her place to stir things up again.

  Your son is a hero! She could still hear George’s angry cry when she demanded to know what had happened to her son, why he was being shipped home, injured. He rode at the enemy, he led the way, and victory was his! And yet there had been an expression on George’s face that told another story.

  It was the only time she had ever seen her brother-in-law weep.

  Chapter Nine

  Summer, 1816, Montgomery House, Crevitch, Somerset

  Juliet didn’t know if she was going to meet Ash in the summerhouse. She told herself she hadn’t made up her mind. And that was what she kept telling herself until it was almost noon, and even when she finally set out she thought she might walk in the opposite direction. Because to agree to such a thing seemed ridiculously impulsive after all she’d gone through.

  But weren’t you thinking only the other day how much you would like to tell Ash how you really felt? Release some of your anger and disappointment over the past? Who knows when you will get another chance? And once the words are spoken then Ash will leave you be, and you can finally return him to the past. Where he belongs.

  It was this thought, in the end, that sent her across the lawn to the small building with its shuttered windows and forlorn air.

  The door was closed. She opened it with the key she had found in her father’s old desk drawer, wondering if he had ever come here, afterwards. She doubted it. Her father was so full of his own unhappiness and disappointments that he had no time to consider whether or not Juliet was happy with what he had done to her.

  Had she turned into her father, wasting her life on regrets? Holding on to grudges until they became like poison, spreading through her mind and heart, and taking away everything that was good? If this meeting with Ash helped clear the air, then surely it was worth any discomfort it might cause her?

  Dust drifted out of the interior, shafts of light shone down through the gaps in the roof and there was evidence of damp leaking in. Her mother’s furnishings were still there, with an easel upon which the Italian count had been purporting to paint her portrait. A half-finished canvas was still resting upon it, covered by a dusty cloth. A relic from the past she had never had the heart to remove.

  She asked herself why she hadn’t come here before; she had been home now for a year, but in her heart she knew why.

  Because she hadn’t wanted to remember those heady days. She hadn’t wanted to remember how much she had loved Ash. She hadn’t wanted to think about how her life might have been if only things had been different. He had broken her heart when he left her. Would she tell Ash that? Did she dare?

  To distract herself, Juliet went over to the easel and lifted the cloth.

  Her mother’s face stared back at her, half formed and yet perfectly recognizable. The count had been rather good at his hobby after all, she thought. She hoped the absent Claudia was happy, she really did. Juliet used to wish for the opposite, that her mother was miserable, because she had left so much misery in her wake. Gradually she was learning to forgive her, and perhaps she could do the same for Ash.

  If he had asked her to run off with him eight years ago, would she have done so? Her head said no, but her heart told a different story. And if she had run off, what then? In hindsight he had been a young man with his own wants and desires, a boy under the influence of his uncle, and not the prince she had imagined. Would he have cared for her in the way she deserved? Things might have ended badly for them both.

  Juliet hadn’t looked at it like that before. Yesterday evening, seeing him again, reliving those times, seemed to have clarified her thoughts. They had been in love, caught up in a mad passion, but perhaps they had been too young after all.

  Awful as it seemed, perhaps Ash’s uncle and her father had been right when they separated them.

  There was a footstep behind her, and she turned. Ash was silhouetted in the doorway and despite everything she’d been telling herself, despite her determination not to allow this poignant place to affect her, Juliet felt her heartbeat begin to quicken.

  On his walk through the woods, Ash had wondered if she would be here. He wouldn’t have blamed her if she wasn’t. The more he thought about that time eight years ago, the worse it all seemed. He’d failed her, and by the time he realized it was too late. Even his mother thought he was selfish. Was it possible to make amends after all these years?

  He looked about him, seeing the dust and dishevelment. As he stepped out of the light and into the room itself he saw her beautiful face, and just for a moment she looked stricken. And then she was calm again, her emotions hidden from him, and he wondered if he had imagined that first impression.

  “Juliet,” he said, because formalities seemed ridiculous at this point.

  “I’m afraid the place is very neglected,” Juliet said, sounding less calm. “I haven’t been here in years and my father would have been happy if it had fallen down.”

  Ash walked over to the easel.

  “You remember my mother,” she murmured, when he glanced at her. “You used to joke that she was happy to have our company.”

  “I remember.” The unfinished portrait was good, and he had always thought there was
something of Juliet in the eyes and the shape of the face. “Do you ever see her? I mean, has she visited you? Once your father was dead, I wondered if she might have found the courage to return.”

  “Perhaps she didn’t want to,” she answered him. “No, I have not seen her since she left.”

  She looked sad, and her unhappiness found an echo in him. He wondered if he could do something to bring Juliet and her mother together again, repair that relationship at least. Would she be grateful to him? Would she smile at him then like she used to?

  “Would you meet with her, if it was possible?”

  Juliet seemed perplexed. “Perhaps. I don’t know.” Then, taking an audible breath, as if she needed strength to say what she was about to say, “Do you ever think that perhaps they were right to send you away and marry me off? I don’t mean right, but . . . we were young, and if we had done what my mother and her Italian count did, then who knows what may have happened to us? We could have ended up in the poor house, Ash. Or playing cards for a living.”

  She smiled as if the last was a joke, but Ash wasn’t deceived. He knew what she was saying to him, and it hurt. “You don’t think I could have carried it off? You think I would have abandoned you somewhere along the way, when I got bored?”

  “I think you were young and under prepared for such a thing.”

  He wanted to argue with her, loudly. He wanted to say that he would have done anything for her. But in his heart he felt the doubts and the questions, and he wondered if she was right. The letter from Simon, and his mother’s words, were very fresh in his mind. If he was selfish now then what was he like when he was nineteen?

  “The army was a hard taskmaster,” he said instead. “I found the life difficult. My uncle thought it would be the making of me but I loathed every moment of it. I wanted to come home, and when I asked about you, I was told you had married Baron Flett.” He paused, there was more, but why should he burden her with it? In the end he shrugged and said, “I made the best of it, Juliet. I expect you did the same.”

  She was watching him, seeing the emotions in his face, hearing them in his voice. He couldn’t hide them, and he didn’t want to.

  She nodded slowly. “You’re honest,” she said, and it didn’t sound like a compliment. “I did wait. Even though I was married, I waited for quite some time. I would still have run off with you, if you’d come for me. But then I realized you weren’t coming.”

  “Would you have run off, like your mother?” He looked astonished. “I thought that was the last thing you would have wanted once you were married! You always said how heartless she was to do such a thing, and that you would never leave like that. I just presumed—”

  “Did I? Yes, I suppose I did, but it’s different when you’re in the situation yourself. Anyway, you didn’t come so I got on with things. I made a life.”

  “As did I.”

  There was a flash of anger in her eyes but she said no more.

  He walked over to the shuttered window. The gaps allowed him to look out and he did so, finding more words.

  “I did love you,” he said. “Yesterday, at the lake . . .”

  “What about yesterday at the lake?”

  He turned to face her then. He knew what he was thinking was ridiculous and impossible and she would laugh in his face. I wondered if I still do.

  “Ash,” she said quickly, and the moment was lost. “You can’t just walk back in here and drag up the past. It’s painful, for you as well as me. I know we have to talk about it, but surely there isn’t all that much to say. We were young, we made mistakes . . . You say you loved me but I’m not even sure that’s true.”

  He stepped closer, feeling the urgent need to make her understand. “I did love you, but as you pointed out, I was young. Unsure of myself, I suppose. My uncle was my guardian and I had always trusted him to guide me. All my life he had impressed upon me that Crevitch was not mine, not really, that I was a custodian for future generations. It would be inconsiderate of me, he said, to risk all of that for a girl I would not even remember in a year or two.”

  Juliet went to speak, and then changed her mind. Her lips were pressed tightly together and her face was pale, but her dark eyes were bright with emotion.

  “I told him I did not believe that. I loved you and wanted to marry you. He said I was still too young and that I must go into the army, that it would help me to see things more clearly. I argued with him.”

  “Ash,” she murmured. She was closer now but he didn’t remember her moving. She felt her hand on his arm as they stood together in the dimly lit room.

  “I asked him to give me his word that he would do his best to prevent your father from acting against you. I knew how angry he was, and that he would be thinking of your mother, and because of that he would be quite irrational. I wanted him to wait for two years, until I was able to take control of my inheritance. Uncle George swore he would do as I asked.”

  “I was married within the month,” she said, but she was staring up at him in wonder. “No one told me any of this. My father said nothing of your request, and I certainly never saw your uncle.”

  He touched her fingers with his own, tracing their shape. She hadn’t known. He had thought . . . he wasn’t sure what he had thought. He’d written to his uncle, asking him about Juliet, but it was his mother who replied with the news. Her letter had reached him after he had joined his regiment in Spain. He still remembered the feel of the paper and the seawater stains that blurred some of the words.

  Miss Montgomery is married now and you must get on with your career. Uncle George says you will make a fine soldier . . .

  “I should have told him no, refused to go, but I believed it was the right thing to do. I trusted George.” He shook his head, suddenly weary of the recriminations. “As you say, we could still have been miserable together, regretting every moment.”

  Her mouth trembled and he could see she was close to tears. Time to leave the past behind.

  “My brother tells me there is a doctor at the hospital here who is rather partial to you.”

  She managed a husky laugh. “Doctor Knowles? I am rather partial to him, too. He’s a remarkable man.”

  He waited but she said no more on the subject, so he let it lie. But he thought he understood what she was telling him. She had found someone else. No wonder she hadn’t wanted to rekindle what they once had—he had left it too late. Eight years too late. The best thing to do now was to be a gentleman and step away, leaving her to enjoy her new life.

  “It’s time you were happy, Juliet,” he said, making a credible effort to smile.

  She looked back at him bemused, her lips slightly parted, and suddenly he couldn’t resist. Selfish he may be but he had waited a long time for this. Ash bent his head and kissed her.

  Chapter Ten

  Summer, 1816, Montgomery House, Crevitch, Somerset

  Her lips clung to his. The taste of him went to her head and she swayed against him, feeling his arms go around her, pulling her close. This was Ash, her Ash, and the past meshed with the present until she didn’t know what day it was.

  She didn’t care.

  “Juliet,” he groaned, tilting his head so that he had better access to her mouth. She couldn’t remember him ever doing that before, and the way he turned her so that they were seated on the dusty sofa, she didn’t remember him doing that either.

  He’d loved other women, she would be a fool to believe otherwise, but just for a moment she felt some of her desire for him lessen. Then he was kissing her face, light kisses, like an endless caress, and she laughed in delight.

  “Open your eyes,” he said.

  She did, and he was smiling tenderly at her. He lent in and kissed her on the lips, a chaste kiss this time, the sort of kiss she remembered from the past. Before they grew better at kissing and touching and making love. And every time they were together the need grew stronger, and more difficult to resist, until they didn’t even try.

  Was that
truly love? Or had it simply been lust?

  Ash’s chaste kiss had deepened and for a time she couldn’t think at all. She twined her arms around his neck and ran her fingers through the hair on his nape. There was a scar just below the crown of his head, where the bullet had glanced off him—she remembered reading it in the newspaper—and she touched it gently.

  “You were hurt,” she whispered.

  “I was,” he agreed, and kissed her again.

  She undid his necktie with shaking fingers, pressing her lips to the warm masculine skin of his throat. Tasting him, remembering. He slid his hand inside her gown, finding her breast, murmuring as her nipple nudged against his palm.

  She wanted him. She was already imagining his mouth closing on that pink bud, before his hand slid further down her body, to the heat between her thighs. After all this time she was trembling with need, barely able to restrain herself. In another moment they would be at the point of no return, and she didn’t care.

  ‘Bad blood’, her father’s voice sounded in her head, making her pause and wonder if somehow they really had travelled back to the past and he was here in the room with them, about to begin shouting those horrible, horrible words.

  Ash had stood in front of her, she remembered, while she dressed. He had been as white faced and frightened as she, and yet he had protected her.

  “Juliet?”

  She was back, and the room was empty apart from Ash and herself. A very grown up Ash compared to the boy she’d been remembering. There was a frown on his face and his blue gaze was searching hers.

  “You disappeared for a moment there,” he said. “I lost you again.”

  “I was thinking . . .” She looked away, seeking for something to say to create a distance between them. To allow her to gather her thoughts and her breath before it was too late. She needed to steady herself, to consider what it would mean to her reputation, not to mention her heart, if she plunged into an affair with Ash after all this time.