Remember Me - Regency Brides 03 (7 page)

Absolutely nothing was achieved except perhaps a headache from the pressure of trying.

Walking to his window, he pushed the light blue cotton curtain aside. His eyes focused on the church, which was situated in his direct line of view, and then he did the only thing he knew to do.

Pray.

"God, I cannot understand why I can't remember. I cannot understand why I become more confused looking at my own belongings. Most of al , I cannot understand why I don't feel like Hamish Campbel ." He took a breath and lifted the miniature up to the sunlight. Thoughtful y he rubbed his thumb along the edges of the frame. "I can only conclude that You have a purpose, Lord, and need me to fulfil it. I wil endeavor to feel honored You have chosen me for Your task, and please forgive me when I have felt otherwise since I arrived in Golden Bay. I wil strive to do my best for You, dear God. Please help my faith to stay strong." He ended the prayer and stayed a minute more, gazing out the window, letting the heat of the sunlight bathe his face and rejuvenate his spirits.

In fact, he felt so much contentment in his heart that he wasn't even fazed when he tried on his clothes from the trunk and found the shoulders were just a little tight and the arms just slightly too long.

Apparently I had an atrocious tailor in Scotland,
was his only thought as he made his way to the kitchen and to the delicious food Pierre already had spread on the table.

***

Josie looked at Helen with a typical y bored expression on her features. "Which would you prefer: my picking the cup up by the handle and dropping it, getting tea everywhere, or would you rather see me using both hands to make sure that doesn't happen?"

Considering the cost of the teacups they were using, the young lady had a point.

But Helen couldn't tel her that.

"Josie, if you practice, you wil be able to hold on to your cup without dropping it and look elegant at the same time," she instructed patiently, knowing Josie was barely paying attention. The younger girl kept looking out the window with a longing expression. She cleared her throat to get Josie's attention. "Shal we begin again?"

Josie sighed with vexation. "Why don't we go visit the reverend and see how he's getting along? It's been over a week since we've seen him," she said, suddenly perking up.

Helen wanted more than anything to go but knew it was wiser to stay away. It was getting more and more difficult to live with the lie she had told him. Seeing him only compounded her guilt. "Josie, please... ," she began only to be cut short.

"Can't we go fishing instead? Sam is going to be there, and he was going to show me how to use crickets for bait."

Helen shuddered at her words. ' Your fascination with that Indian is beyond the pale! Young ladies do not go traipsing around alone with young men who are not in one's family!"

Josie's chin rose, and Helen knew she wasn't going to back down. ' You just don't like Sam because he keeps wanting to trade horses for you."

"Exactly! He is a barbarian!" In truth, Helen was a little fascinated with Sam, the tal , red-skinned man who dressed in his leather-fringed britches and only covered his upper torso with a closed vest, leaving his arms bare. It was even a little flattering he seemed so taken with her.

Josie slumped in her chair and folded her arms defiantly. "I should have been born an Indian; then I wouldn't have to learn al these dumb rules." Helen smiled.

"I'm sure there are a whole different set of rules you would have to learn as an Indian girl."

Josie's rebuttal was stopped short when her mother breezed into the room at that moment. "I just received a note from Pierre that al is going wel at the Reverend Campbel 's house," she informed them as she waved a smal piece of paper in her hand.

Helen stood and looked at her employer grateful y. "Thank you so much for sending help," she told her earnestly. "I saw he was unfamiliar with animals and even how to prepare his own meals, so I feared he would starve without immediate assistance."

Imogene raised an eyebrow as she studied Helen with a critical eye. She made Helen feel like the woman could see straight inside her mind. "I see I was right in my assumptions."

Helen could feel her heart beating with nervousness. "I beg your pardon?" she said, hoping she was misreading the direction of Mrs. Baumgartner's thoughts.

' You have feelings for Hamish Campbel !" she declared with certainty. "Your eyes light up when you speak of him, and an inner joy exudes from your heart and into your words. I would even be so bold as to say that you were in love with the reverend even before you came to Louisiana. Am I right?"

Helen tried to swal ow the lump in her throat, but she was so frozen by what she should say next" :;he was unable to accomplish the task. She said the first thing she thought of, hoping her words would defuse Imogene's assumptions. "I can honestly say that I am not in love with Hamish Campbel ." She was only in love with Trevor "North" Kent.

She must have sounded convincing, because Imogene frowned with confusion.

"Are you absolutely sure?" she asked but then continued without an answer.

"Perhaps you have not realized your feelings for him yet! Of course!" She clapped her hands together. "You need time to sort them out!"

Did a girl real y need time to realize that she had found her true love?
The moment Helen had laid eyes on North, she knew he was the only man she wanted to be her husband, the only man she could love.

"You can only be sure of your feelings if you spend time with him!" She patted Helen on the cheek and spun around to walk toward the door. "Don't worry, dear!

Leave it to me. You'l realize he is your one true love in no time!" she exclaimed over her shoulder as she left the room.

Bemused by Mrs. Baumgartner's words, Helen could only liken the feeling to being run over by a buggy.

"You may be good with manners and such, but you are wretched at handling my mother," Josie spoke from behind her as Helen stil stood staring at the door.

Blinking, Helen final y turned and looked at the younger girl. "I don't suppose you can give me any pointers on how I should do that, can you?" Josie's smile was one of pure cunning. "Only if I can go fishing with Sam today."

Plopping back down in her chair, Helen waved her hand toward the door. "Just go," she told her in a tired voice, and in just a matter of seconds, the girl had flown out of the room and down the stairs.

Helen thought about al that had transpired since she had arrived in Louisiana and wondered if things could become any stranger. Here she was in love with a man who had no memory and whom everyone believed was someone else. She was trying to hide the fact that she was in love with him, but now Imogene Baumgartner was determined to see them together.

Why am I fighting this?
Helen thought, but deep down she knew the answer.

Guilt was holding her back. Guilt over lying to poor North about who he real y was.

The whole purpose of making him think he was Hamish Campbel was to have a chance at winning his heart. But even if he never got his memory back, could she live with such a lie hanging over her head? Could she even keep up the charade without anyone finding out?

She imagined tel ing the vicar from her vil age, the Reverend Wakelin, about her deceptive deeds and wondered what he would say. -Helen knew he would be very disappointed in her, because she was growing more and more ashamed of herself.

"Pierre!" North cal ed out as he entered his house, holding a basket of eggs. He'd been in Golden Bay
nearly
two weeks now, and dealing with the animals was stil a daily chal enge. "1 got out every single egg without damaging myself in the process!" he announced proudly as he put the basket on the table.

Pierre peered over his shoulder as he knelt in front of the fireplace, where he was adjusting the metal rack mounted inside. "Very good, monsieur. Perhaps tomorrow you wil be able to get a little more than half a cup of milk from the cow."

North laughed at Pierre's drol tone. "Could you let me savor my smal victory before criticizing my failures?" "I am just helping you to strive for more, monsieur," Pierre countered with laughter in his deep voice. "Wel , I am about to strive to write my first sermon, so if you'l excuse me, I'l go and get my Bible." "It is Saturday!" Pierre exclaimed with disbelief "You are only now preparing your sermon?" North stopped in his tracks and looked to Pierre with concern. "That's not the way it's done?" he asked cautiously, not thinking about his words. Pierre blinked at him and paused a minute before asking, "You don't know?"

North felt like a fraud. Here he was pretending to be the person he real y was...except he couldn't remember being that person. And if everyone knew he couldn't remember, then they would either think he was crazy or doubt his ability to lead them.

Which would be a proper assumption in his case because he had no idea how to be a vicar and no inkling as to whether he was even good at public speaking.

Maybe the reason he came al the way to America was because everyone back in Scotland thought he was a terrible preacher.

"Uh...my experience has been somewhat ...limited," he final y answered with the biggest understatement of the decade.

Pierre's right eyebrow rose in query. "How limited?"

"Practical y nonexistent."

Pierre just stared at him for a moment, making North wonder what he was thinking. Would he go tel the Baumgartners that he was a fraud? A novice who had no business pretending he knew
anything?

Then Pierre suddenly turned from him, and his shoulders began to shake. North peered closely at him, and when he'd walked to face Pierre once again, he realized the man was laughing!

"I'm sorry, monsieur, but you English are very funny," he said, as tears started to run down his dark cheeks. "I wish I could be in that church tomorrow. It would be more-" He interrupted his own sentence as he tried desperately to hold on to his usual dignified disposition. "More entertaining than watching you milk that poor...cow!"

North sighed as he watched Pierre sit down at the table and completely cover his face as his whole body shook. North wished he could see the humor of the whole situation. He could use a good laugh.

Leaving the stil -laughing servant in the kitchen, North dragged his feet into his bedroom and took the Bible from his night table. He opened the book at random, praying for divine intervention, and landed in the book of Exodus. He read the story about how Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt and how their disobedience kept them in the desert, which should have taken them a short time to go through, for forty years.

He sat there for a moment and thought about how that story could be used in a sermon, but then he had a horrible thought. What if he had done some incredibly bad thing or had been disobedient to God before he came to America? Perhaps God was punishing him for this.

Perhaps he would be stuck in a wilderness of forgetfulness for forty years like the children of Israel!

Looking back down at the faded pages of the Bible, North quickly flipped the pages away from that particular book. He decided it would be best to look for something else.

He looked through several passages, and none seemed to be right for his first sermon until he found the book of Job. Here was a man who had lost everything but stil would not blame God for any of his misfortunes. And in time, God restored him above and beyond his former glory because Job stayed faithful to God.

North rubbed his chin as he thought about how Job's life was similar to his own.

Everything had been stripped from him, so if he continued to keep his faith in God, perhaps He would restore to North what he had lost.

He determined he would build his sermon around the story of Job. North felt that since he was so affected by the story he would have the passion to convey the lesson to others.

Encouraged that he had a theme for his message, he took several sheets of paper from his trunk and went to the kitchen with pen and ink in hand.

"You look pleased with yourself," Pierre observed. "I wil assume it is because you have found a theme for your sermon?"

"Yes, you may assume," North said with a relieved smile. "I am speaking about the life of Job and how we should keep our faith in God when things go wrong in our lives."

Pierre looked impressed. ' An excel ent topic. How wil you begin?"

North thought a moment. "I wil open by reading the scriptures." He opened his bottle of ink, situated his papers just so, and dipped the tip of the pen into the bottle.

' And then?"

North looked up as Pierre sat across from him. He had on the same suit as yesterday, and North couldn't help but notice his own servant dressed better than he did.

"Then.. .I wil put the story into my own words-explain it, if you wil ."

He began to write down the scripture reference in his bold, yet expertly done, script. ' Ah..." Pierre sounded thoughtful. ' And where shal you go from there?"

North smudged his paper when his hand jerked at Pierre's words. "I should have more?" Suddenly the process seemed complicated again.

"Oui,
monsieur. What you've described wil take less than seven to ten minutes. It wil need to be a great deal longer than that."