Page 11 of Escape of the Bridegroom (Escape #2)

T hough eager to know what the doctor wished to say to him, he also dreaded a disclosure of some deeper injury.

“Your wife’s case is unusual,” Ells said abruptly as they crossed the inn’s empty common room. “I have come across men who forget moments just before and after an accident, but this total amnesia frankly worries me.”

“Are you saying she will never get her memories back?”

“I’m saying I have no idea whether she will or not. It would be common sense to encourage her by speaking of your shared past, places and events you have experienced together.”

Aidan felt heat seep into his face. “I’m afraid we do not share much past at all. I have known her less than a fortnight.”

Ells blinked, pausing with his hand on the front door. He pushed it open. “Yours was a sudden, passionate relationship? Were you happy?”

Aidan looked down his nose at him.

“I don’t ask from vulgar curiosity,” Ells snapped. “Was she unhappy enough that she might not wish to remember?”

“Christ, I hope not.”

The doctor scowled at him. “That does not fill me with confidence.”

“Nor me,” Aidan admitted. “The truth is, ours was a marriage of convenience arranged by her father. I imagine we both resented it. She had an understanding if not an engagement to another man her father disapproved of.”

Unthinkable that she could be missing Neville so much that her mind had decided to block her whole life.

He reached up and rubbed the back of his neck. “Would it help or hinder to bring him here? With her father and her sister?”

“It could not hurt if it helped jog her memory.”

“I’ll send for them today.”

He wrote to Romilly at once and was just in time to add his letter to the post bag before the London mail coach galloped in to collect it.

Returning to Eve’s room, he found Mrs. Garrick there. She had clearly spread the ballgown over the bed and Eve was fingering it with some awe.

Eve glanced up at him. “Did I really wear this?”

“Yes, you did. It looked very beautiful on you.”

“Mrs. Garrick says a highwayman brought me here. Why didn’t he steal these? Are they not real diamonds?”

“Oh, I think they are.”

“I must be very extravagant. Perhaps the highwayman felt sorry for me.”

More likely, he was discouraging pursuit by abandoning her at the Black Bull. Still, he did not seem to have extracted any of the pins.

“I’ve written to your father and your sister,” he said. “And to Mr. Neville.”

“Who is Mr. Neville?” she asked, without much interest.

He caught and held her gaze. “The man you wished to marry before your father gave you to me.”

Her eyes were serious for a moment and then smiled a little shyly. “Did I mind?”

“I think you did. I’m not sure how much. I found a book in the coffee room—one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s novels. Would you like me to read to you?”

“Yes, I would. Thank you!”

“Then you like Mrs. Radcliffe?”

She closed her mouth, frowning, and sighed. “I don’t know. Let’s see.”

Mrs. Garrick bustled off and Eve settled back against the pillows. He read a chapter to her and she seemed utterly enraptured.

“Go on!” she encouraged. “Oh, unless you are tired.”

“I’m not, just mindful of the doctor’s orders. How is your head?”

“Not so bad. Aidan?”

In what he had begun to think of as their real life, she had never called him his name, always, my lord, or Lord Wolf. He rather liked the sound of it on her lips – informal, almost warm.

“Yes?”

“How long have we been married?”

“About ten days.”

“Are we on our wedding journey?”

Fresh heat seeped into his cheeks. “No. To my shame, it did not enter my head.”

“Oh.” A frown formed and was deliberately banished.

“Ours was a marriage of convenience,” he said with rare difficulty.

“Then you did not love me,” she stated. “And I loved Mr. Neville?”

“I believe so.”

“Were you happy with that? It does not seem very convenient for either of us.”

“There were compensations. Your father paid my debts.”

She accepted that, nodding slowly. Impulsively, he reached out and took her hand. “We were getting to know each other at the ball. I was content with my bargain.”

A distracted smile acknowledged the kindness. “Perhaps I shall sleep now.”

She slid down onto the pillows, and he raised the covers up to her shoulders.

“I wrote to Grand Court too,” he said, “asking them to send over your things.”

“Do I have much?”

“You didn’t bring much. You didn’t mean to stay but I persuaded you.”

Her closing eyes flew wide open. “Why?”

“Oh, to make us more comfortable. Go to sleep now.”

***

W HOEVER THIS MR. NEVILLE was, I must have been mad to prefer him to Aidan.

The thought came to her as they played a hilarious game of jackstraws that afternoon. Aidan had found the game in the common room along with Mrs. Radcliffe’s novel. They were playing on the bed.

Aidan had a charmingly carefree laugh, and it seemed he brought his complete attention to everything he did. Without cheating for her or against her, he took on every problem as though it was of world importance, then howled with mirth when he caused everything to collapse.

She was sorry when the game ended, but just as they were shovelling the straws back into the box, the little maid Jilly appeared clutching a handful of cutlery and asked if they would like dinner.

“Oh, yes, please,” she said brightly. “And Dr. Ells said I could get out of bed for it too.”

“I’ll set you up at the table,” Aidan said, lifting the other chair from the desk and carrying it over to the round table where Jilly was setting two places.

Hastily, Eve smoothed her borrowed nightgown over her legs beneath the covers, and accepted Aidan’s help to place the borrowed robe around her. For some reason she blushed as she slid out of bed—perhaps because she looked so ridiculous in Mrs. Garrick’s voluminous garments.

But Aidan didn’t laugh at her, merely smiled in a conspiratorial sort of way and gave her his arm for the ridiculously short distance. She didn’t need to lean on him, but she did, just to make him feel useful. She rather liked the feeling of being supported, although she hoped uneasily that such poor spirit was not habitual to her.

They were served by Mrs. Garrick and Jilly, who were clearly not used to entertaining the Quality at their inn but did their cheerful best. Eve liked them. And she liked that Aidan did not appear high in the instep either. She had learned that she was not gently born—her father was a mere cotton mill owner with many other strings to his bow—even though she had married a baron. She gathered Aidan was one of those land-rich, money-poor gentlemen.

How did she know about such people when she did not even know her own parents’ names?

She was enjoying a small slice of apple tart with fresh cream to finish the meal, when they heard the distinctive arrival of a coach in the yard below.

“Another mail coach?” she guessed. “Or the stage this time?”

“No,” Aidan said, rising and crossing to the window. “I rather think... Yes, it’s a private carriage. Lady Grandison herself, with a basket and various bags...and Miss Cole.”

“Oh dear,” she said nervously. “Will they want to see me?”

“They will want to be assured you are well. Lady Grandison is a kind hostess and Miss Cole seemed to be a new friend to you. You might recognize them.”

“I might,” she agreed, though she doubted it. Why would she recognize social acquaintances when she did not know her own husband? Unless she knew them better than she knew him. Lowering thought.

Aidan went down to meet them and brought the two ladies into the room.

Miss Cole was lively and pretty, Lady Grandison all that was amiable. Both seemed very concerned for her, which was kind. She wished she could recall her friendship with them but she just didn’t. They did not make her more uncomfortable by harping on this weakness, merely joined Eve and Aidan in a cup of tea, and told them the latest news about the burglary.

“Sir John is the local magistrate as you know,” Lady Grandison said, “and he thinks the burglary is possibly related to the recent highway robberies committed over by Beldon. He’s hoping to catch the miscreants before they vanish into the rookeries of London, but he doesn’t seem very hopeful. I am quite mortified! My guests have lost jewels and coin, Sir John many family heirlooms, and some of his favourite porcelain and antiquities. And all while we were dancing in the ballroom below, blissfully unaware of the crime being committed over our heads!”

“Don’t be mortified, my lady,” Aidan said. “You can hardly blame yourself for being burgled! And you may yet get your stolen goods back.”

“Lord Wolf is right, ma’am,” Miss Cole said. “And if you ask me, now that the danger is over, I think everyone is delighted to be part of such a story. None of it will reflect badly on you.” She smiled. “I’m just glad Lord Wolf found you, Eve. He was beside himself with worry.”

That was interesting to her, if she could believe it...

“We brought your things,” Lady Grandison told her, “as Wolf requested. But my hope is you will be able to return with us to Grand Court.”

In truth, she found this idea daunting in the extreme. Not just the inevitable jolting of the journey but being among a houseful of people she could not remember.

“How kind you are, but I don’t believe I could just yet,” she managed.

“The doctor has forbidden her to travel until he has seen her again,” Aidan added.

“Dr. Bagshott?” Lady Grandison demanded.

“No, Dr. Ells.”

“Never heard of him. Bagshott is a good man—shall I send him over?”

“Thank you, no,” Aidan said firmly. “Or at least, not yet. I think Eve needs rest and peace to recover properly.”

She breathed a sigh of relief, although another thought struck her. “If you would like to go back to the party, Aidan, I shall be quite content here with Mrs. Radcliffe for a few days. I shall send word to you if anything changes...”

“No, you won’t,” Aidan said. “As the man said, Here I stand .”

The ladies departed with good wishes, leaving behind a basket of delicacies from Lady Grandison’s cook. Jilly put away the clothing they had brought. Eve examined the two morning gowns and a travel dress, together with a pelisse, a bonnet and a travelling cloak, a few shifts and petticoats, a fine lawn nightgown, and a hairbrush. None of them seemed familiar.

“I appear to travel light,” she said to Aidan when he returned to the room. By then she was back in bed in her own fine nightgown and looking forward to another chapter of Mrs. Radcliffe.

But as it turned out, she fell asleep only halfway through.

***

O N THE PREVIOUS NIGHT , Aidan had slept in one of the hard chairs by the bed. Tonight, he helped Jilly make up a truckle bed in Eve’s room, very, very quietly, so as not to wake her.

It was silly, really. They were married. There was no reason in the world why they should not share such a large bed. But he had married the Eve who existed before the accident. This Eve, beguilingly similar and yet tantalizingly different, was new to herself as well as to him.

The same chivalry that had made him lie on top of the bed at Grand Court, now kept him out of it altogether at the Black Bull. Even though in many ways he was closer to this Eve who relied on him, than to the previous Eve who had despised him and rightly so, although she had claimed not to during their dance. He wanted to believe that.

Aware that she might well prefer privacy altogether, he still could not bring himself to leave her alone all night. He was too afraid of a relapse.

And yet so soundly did he sleep, waking only to bright daylight, that he doubted he would have heard anything short of a cry for help. As it was, he could hear her now, moving surreptitiously about the room.

Afraid she was ill again, he raised his head and she froze.

She stood beside the big bed, staring at him. One hand clutched her bedcovers, as though she had been about to draw them back and climb back in. The other grasped a bundle of clothing to her bosom. Her hair fell loose about her bare shoulders, for her nightgown without the robe he had seen at Grand Court, was a surprisingly wispy affair of lace and temptation. And it so happened that she stood in a beam of sunlight that shone right through to her delectable, slender figure.

Desire, unexpectedly fierce, surged through his veins. Fortunately, so did humour, for the sight of her standing there so unmoving, as though she still hoped to evade attention, was suddenly funny.

His lips twitched. “Are you cold?”

A blush stained her skin from the neckline of her night rail to the hairline of her forehead. “No,” she said, clambering onto the bed and hiding herself beneath the covers. “I meant to dress in bed without your waking.”

“Like on a winter morning,” he said with a quick grin, remembering boyhood occasions when he had dressed under the warm bedclothes.

She looked bewildered. He doubted she had known many cold mornings and she clearly couldn’t remember them if she had.

“I’ve got a better idea for a more restful start to the day. I’ll fetch you coffee from the kitchen, then leave you in peace to dress wherever you like.”

“Am I...” A flustered look crossed her face. “Am I a modest person?”

Aidan propped up his head on one hand and regarded her. “You would seem to be. Though to be fair, we have not spent much time under the same roof.”

The familiar little frown flickered between her brows. “I find that odd. I cannot remember you at all before we met in this room, not your face or your name. And yet somehow, you do not feel like a stranger. I feel like a stranger.”

“You must feel very alone and very frightened,” he said gently. “But you are dealing very bravely with the situation. I think that is your character.”

“Then I haven’t...changed?”

He hesitated from sheer ignorance. “Perhaps you are a little less defensive, but your family would know more—”

“Why was I defensive?” she interrupted. “Did I not like you?”

“I gave you no reason to like me,” he said ruefully.

“But you do now,” she said. “I must always have liked you.”

“I wish that were true.” The words slipped out with a crooked smile, but he found he meant them. And that was not so much to do with regret for past behaviour as with the odd intimacy of the moment. A waking conversation with a friend that he had never known in his adulthood.

She liked him. That pleased him right down to his suddenly restless toes.

“Then if you are still feeling modest,” he said, “avert your eyes while I find some clothes. I’m afraid I am stark naked again.”

She averted her face somewhat hastily and he was sure she blushed. “Then you are not modest?” she asked.

“Just thoughtless,” he said, sitting on the side of the bed and reaching for the clothes he had cast on the floor beside it last night.

He pulled on his pantaloons and was fastening them when she moved very slightly. She was watching him. He bent for his shirt and rose to pull it on, hoping she was not disgusted.

“This has happened before,” she blurted.

The shirt fell around him as he spun to face her. “You are remembering?”

She stared at him, concentrating hard, then blinked and blushed again, shaking her head. “No. But something was familiar.”

“Grand Court is full of guests. We shared a bedchamber. Perhaps you are starting to remember.”

He tucked his shirt into his pantaloons and left her, wondering at the odd conflict in his mind. He wanted her to be whole in mind and body. She needed to remember. Only...only he rather liked things as they were, without all the baggage of what had gone before.

Then he remembered dancing with her. What had gone before was not all bad either. Brushing the confusion aside, he clattered downstairs to beg coffee from Mrs. Garrick who was in the kitchen, sharply instructing a sobbing Jilly to pull herself together before she scalded herself.

“Is something wrong?” he asked, and they both spun on him in surprise.

“Lord, no, sir, just my girl being soft. What can we do for you?”

“Coffee, if you please. And my wife is feeling well enough to come downstairs for breakfast.”

He waited in the common room for his coffee, giving Eve time to make herself comfortable in private. He was not much used to considering others, so it was a novel sensation.

***

I T WAS A DAY OF PLEASANT discoveries. After enjoying coffee sitting on his wife’s bed with her, he visited his horse and then took himself for a brisk walk, both to ease his cramped, restless limbs which were unused to being cooped up for so long, and to give Eve time alone. Although happy to look after her, he didn’t want to irk her.

He returned to find her outside in the paddock behind the stables, one arm around Jilly, the maid who was no longer weeping.

“Kitten died,” Garrick said disgustedly, coming up behind him. “Jilly broke her heart for it—it’d lost its mother too soon and Jilly cared for it almost from birth. But it was never right and couldn’t survive. Never saw such a fuss over such a tiny creature.”

“Have you buried it?” Aidan asked, with vague memories of losing an old, beloved hound when he was about ten years old.

“Your lady wife took her to say a prayer over the little thing. Made our Jilly easier.”

Aidan had felt better too when he and the old kennel master had buried his dog with ceremony. There weren’t many, he reflected, who would have bestirred themselves for a tavern maid’s grief. He was proud of his Eve, although the kindness all came from her nature and was nothing to do with him.

Garrick was shaking his head. “Never understood females,” he muttered. “But if the girl stops snivelling, I’m grateful.”

Eve’s outing into the fresh air appeared to do her no harm. Over breakfast in the common room, they talked about animals and the possibility that she had owned one, then about Aidan’s love of horses. Afterward, he took Eve to meet Atlas in the stables and she stroked his nose and gave him an apple, which the horse consumed with great speed.

“I wonder if I ride?” she said.

“If you don’t, I can teach you at Wolverton Hall.”

She accepted that and they took a short stroll, talking of everything and nothing.

It was some hours later, during a game of chess—Garrick had uncovered an old board with most of a set of pieces—that Aidan realized he was not merely content but actively happy. Spending time in a country inn getting to know a fascinating girl he was not even bedding.

“What are you smiling at?” she asked suspiciously. “Am I in check and haven’t noticed?”

“No, you’re far too downy for that. I was just thinking how much I like you.”

She flushed with clear pleasure, although she laughed it off. “What, just because I can play chess? Or do you imagine you’ll win if you distract me with flattery?”

In fact, the honours were even. They were setting up a third game to decide the issue when a post-chaise came clattering into the inn yard, and he saw Romilly alight ahead of his daughter Miranda, her aunt, and a stranger he took a moment to recognize as the clergyman who had married him to Eve. Mr. Neville, Eve’s former betrothed. The man she had loved. And Aidan had laughed when she’d told him—not from malice, merely from somewhat unsympathetic humour.

A surprisingly powerful jolt of jealousy shot through him. Neville was a good man who cared for orphans. Aidan could not compete with that.

But this was not about Aidan. It was about Eve’s recovery. On impulse, he said nothing about the new arrivals, and all Eve’s concentration was on screwing up a fresh scrap of paper to act as the missing white pawn.

Romilly all but burst into the house, calling loudly for the innkeeper. Eve glanced up, taking in the whole party before they even noticed her, and turned back to the board. She moved the papery pawn forward two squares. Aidan met it head-on.

“Eve!” Miranda squealed, rushing across the room to them.

Aidan rose, his attention all on his wife who looked merely startled.

“Look, Papa!” Miranda cried, pointing an accusing finger at Eve. “There’s nothing wrong with her! It’s all a hum!”

“Naughty puss,” said the aunt indulgently and yet with an irritated look in her eyes. “I daresay she brought us here just so we could meet some of his lordship’s noble friends.”

Eve’s startlement had turned to bewildered alarm. He could see no trace of familiarity or even recognition in her face as her gaze jerked from person to person. She stumbled to her feet, trying to fix a pleasant smile to her lips. She did not turn to Aidan for help, but he could not leave her struggling.

He stepped round beside her, letting his fingers brush hers in comfort. “You must excuse Eve’s reticence. I’m afraid she still remembers nothing of her previous life before the injury to her head.”

“What injury?” Miranda said scornfully.

But Romilly was scowling. His hand shot out, sweeping back the hair that Aidan had arranged to hide the bandage around Eve’s forehead.

They all stared at her. Eve stared back, clearly feeling she was in the wrong but unaware how to fix it.

Aidan closed his fingers around hers. “Eve, this is your father, Mr. Romilly, your aunt, Mrs. Strang, and your sister, Miss Miranda.”

While they all gawped at each other, Aidan turned his attention to the silent clergyman who stood behind the family, looking both serious and uncomfortable.

With odd reluctance, Aidan reached between Romilly and Miranda, his hand held out commandingly. Neville grasped it instinctively.

“A pleasure to see you again,” Aidan said, drawing him nearer. “Though I could wish it were in better circumstances. Eve, Mr. Neville, the old friend of yours who married us.”

Eve blinked at him. Her eyes, which had seemed to be feverishly searching her family’s faces, now looked blank with disbelief.

“Mr. Neville runs the charity for your orphans,” Aidan said.

“Orphans?” she said, vaguely.

“Good grief,” Miranda said in mingled awe and disgust. “Is Eve mad?”