Scandalous (7 page)

Florian's face brightened. “Amnesia?” He looked back at the patient with something close to glee in his expression. “Are you serious?”

When the stranger nodded, Florian beamed. “Fascinating. I've read about it, of course, but I've never actually met anyone who suffered from it.” Eagerly he pulled the chair up to the edge of the bed and sat down. “Have you no memory whatsoever?”

The stranger looked somewhat taken aback by Florian's enthusiasm. Priscilla explained, “Papa is a scientist. He is interested in all sorts of phenomena.”

“Oh, yes,” Florian agreed. “Right now I'm concentrating on chemical reactions. But the human brain is always fascinating. Now, is there anything you do remember?” He patted his pockets and finally pulled out a sheet of folded paper, then a pen.

“Nothing before a few days ago,” Priscilla said crisply, and went over to put her hand on her father's arm. “For pity's sake, Papa, put away your notes. The poor man is tired, can't you see? Let him go to sleep now. He's had a very rough night. Later you can ask him all your questions.”

Florian looked pained, but he stood up, reluctantly. “Very well, if you insist, my dear.” He turned away, saying to Priscilla, “But what do you think caused the amnesia, Pris? The fever?”

“Wait!” Their visitor spoke up, and they turned back to look at him. “I do have one thing I would like to discuss with you, sir.”

“Really?” Florian looked pleased and started back toward the chair, reaching in his pocket again for his notes. “About your condition?”

“No.” He smothered a smile as Florian's face fell. “It's about your daughter.”

“Priscilla?” Florian looked perplexed. “Well, you had best speak to her about that, wouldn't you think?”

“No. I mean, I have already talked to her about it, and she refuses to listen to reason.”

Florian's face cleared. “Oh. That. Well, I'm afraid you'll find that Priscilla always knows her own mind. Not much use trying to change it.”

It was the other man's turn to look taken aback, but he continued gamely, “But, sir, you can't allow her to walk into danger!”

“Danger!” Florian turned toward his daughter. “Priscilla, what's he talking about? What danger?”

“There is none, Papa,” Priscilla began soothingly.

The man on the cot snorted derisively. “Two men bashed me on the head, stole all my possessions and held me prisoner for days, and you say there's no danger?”

Florian's eyes widened. “All that happened to you?”

“Yes. That is the sum total of my memory—being held captive by two scoundrels, until I finally escaped. Miss Hamilton says they came here looking for me.”

“Indeed they did,” Florian replied. “My, I am certainly glad we decided not to tell them anything about you. Aren't you, Priscilla?”

“Yes, I am. Now, Papa, why don't we leave and let our visitor rest?”

“Wait. You haven't answered my question,” Florian protested. “Why should Priscilla be in danger?”

“Because she is planning on charging out there asking questions, that's why.”

“Asking questions of whom?” Florian asked. “Priscilla, do you mean to try to find those two men and question them? I must say, I do agree that that would be foolhardy.”

“Indeed it would, but I have no plans to do anything of the sort. Mr.—oh, bother, it is so absurd not being able to call you anything. We really need to come up with some sort of name for you, until you can remember your real one.”

“Mr. Smith?” Florian suggested.

“No. Much too common. What about Wolfe?”

Florian tilted his head, considering. “Yes. That isn't terribly ordinary. But not uncommon, either. What about a first name?”

“Oh, something plain, I should think. So we won't forget it or slip up.”

“What about George?”

Priscilla shook her head. “I've never liked that name.”

“Well, then, John.”

“All right.” Priscilla nodded. “John Wolfe.”

“I think that sounds quite believable.”

“Could we forget about my name and get back to the subject at hand?” their newly christened patient snapped. “Namely the danger in which you're about to place yourself?”

“As I was saying, Mr.
Wolfe
is concerned about
nothing. I am merely planning to go to the village and visit with Mrs. Whiting. Within the hour, I'll know all about Mr. Wolfe, if anyone saw him or is expecting him.”

“Oh, yes, that's true,” Florian told the other man. “The vicar's wife knows everything that goes on in the area. That makes me think, Priscilla, perhaps we ought to tell the vicar about Mr. Wolfe and his problem. He is a most intelligent man. And Dr. Hightower, of course. He'd know much more about amnesia than I.”

“I don't know.” Priscilla looked doubtful. “Somehow I feel that the fewer people who know about Mr. Wolfe, the safer he will be. I had not planned to tell Mrs. Whiting anything about him. It would be all over the village before supper. And if we tell the vicar, it's as good as telling his wife.”

“Would you two stop discussing me as if I were not here?” the newly named John Wolfe said irritably. “And we were talking about
you
putting yourself in danger, not me. If those two men see you walking away from this house, they could follow you, attack you.”

“To what purpose?” Priscilla pointed out reasonably. “As I told you, if they think you are in here, they are much more likely to break in. Papa, be sure to keep all the doors locked. Perhaps it would be best if you didn't go out to your laboratory this afternoon.”

Florian looked shocked. “You're not serious. Not go to my laboratory? No one is going to attack me in broad daylight in my own backyard.”

Their visitor groaned. “Those two would have no hesitation about attacking anyone anywhere, as long as they thought they could get away with it. And if they want me, it would be far easier to seize you, Miss
Hamilton, while you're tripping along some rural path, than to try to break into a house and take me. Once they had you, they would know I would have to give myself up to them.”

He was right, of course; it was precisely what one of her own heroes would do.

“They don't know that you are in here. They could only suspect.”

“They would find out if they seized you.”

“Yes, but at rather a large risk. I would have seen them and could identify them. And whether they got you to give yourself up to them or not, they would know that I would go straight to the constable and tell him all about them.”

Wolfe raised an eyebrow. “A dead person would not be going straight anywhere.”

A chill ran through Priscilla at his words, but she stifled the frisson of fear and replied coolly, “Rather extreme measures, don't you think? Especially considering the fact that they merely held you prisoner. They had ample opportunity to murder you, and they did not. Why would they risk murdering me?”

“Why would you risk the chance that they might?” he countered coolly.

Priscilla narrowed her eyes. “You are a most infuriating man.”

“You are only saying that because you know I am right.”

“He probably is,” Florian agreed. He wore the resigned look of a man about to sacrifice his afternoon. “I shall escort you to the vicarage. Just let me put away a few things in my laboratory.”

“No, Papa, there is no need for you to do that. I am
positive that Mr. Wolfe is simply feverish. It is Mr. Wolfe and our house that are vulnerable, if there is any attacking to be done.” She sighed. “I shall take Penny with me when I call on Mrs. Whiting. Surely they will not risk attacking two women. After all, Mrs. Smithson and her daughter reached our house safely this morning, and will doubtless return home this afternoon, as well.”

Florian brightened. “Excellent plan, my dear. I was certain you would come up with the right thing to do.”

“You think that Miss Pennybaker is ample protection?” their visitor asked, his voice rising in disbelief.

All three of them turned to look at the woman in question, who was visible at the end of the kitchen table, daintily eating her soup. She looked like a small wren in her plain brown dress. Her hair, a mousy brown streaked with gray, was pulled back severely from her face and fastened into a no-nonsense bun at the back of her head. She was at least three inches shorter than Priscilla, and quite thin. She looked as if a strong wind might blow her away.

“It is not that I think her physically capable of protecting me,” Priscilla explained testily. “It is simply her presence. There is safety in numbers.”

“You think they can't seize two people?”

“I'm sure they
can.
The question is whether they
will.
Miss Pennybaker and I will be perfectly safe. There is no need for you to set Papa to worrying.”

“You are the most exasperating woman I know,” her patient said through clenched teeth.

Priscilla smiled. “Since you cannot remember past three days ago, I would say that that means very little.”

She linked her arm through her father's and led him toward the door. “Come, Papa, let's go eat our luncheon before Mrs. Smithson becomes thoroughly upset with us.”

With a last triumphant glance back at “Mr. Wolfe,” she swept out of the room.

H
E LAY LOOKING AFTER
P
RISCILLA
and her father as they left the room, wavering between cursing and breaking into a smile. She
was
irritating; he did not need to remember his whole lifetime to know that she was more irritating and headstrong than most women. She was foolishly refusing to listen to reason—and the fact that she could make him want to laugh at the same time somehow added to his annoyance.

Well, there were two things he
did
know about himself. This episode had shown them to him. One was that he was used to being in command. His surprise at having his opinion ignored told him that, as well as the frustration and nasty sense of helplessness he felt. He was also certain that most women were more pliable than his benefactress.

He wondered whether that knowledge came from his being married. The thought brought him up short. He tried to conjure up the image of a wife or a home, but he could not. He certainly hoped he was not married. Because a third thing that he suddenly knew about himself was that he was intensely attracted to this maddening woman.

There was something about her independent air that was quite alluring. It was challenging; it made a man want to prove that he could turn that prickly attitude into
a womanly softness. At the same time, it spoke of an inner passion, a wellspring of emotion far stronger than the usual feminine gentleness. He also felt a definite response to the soft curve of her breasts and hips beneath her ordinary dress. Last night, he was sure, there had been a time when she was leaning over his bed, and her hair was down, falling in a luxuriant chestnut mass over her shoulders, almost to her waist. Even in his weakened state, the sight of it had stirred him.

He closed his eyes, remembering the hot, sensual dreams of the night before. For a time, he had thought he was in a brothel in China. How had he known the place? Another bit of mystery. He had been pulsing with desire; he could almost taste the fevered kisses he had given…someone. He could not remember her face or form, could not remember anything except the honeyed taste of her mouth, the heat and hunger that had consumed him. Had it been a memory? Or merely the delusion of a fevered mind? Somehow, mixed up in the dream, there was Priscilla Hamilton, smelling faintly of roses and leaning over his bed, putting a cool cloth on his head and murmuring to him.

He groaned, wondered what he might have said or done in her presence. Had she guessed the import of his dreams? Had he spoken of the desire that gripped him?

He told himself he could not have, or she would not have spoken to him so straightforwardly this morning. She was, after all, a proper lady—a proper British lady, which he knew meant even greater gentility. She would have been far too shocked and outraged to even speak to him again, he thought, if he had been talking of brothels and prostitutes and passions.

With a groan, he turned over onto his side. Just thinking about such things, especially in connection with Priscilla Hamilton, was beginning to heat his blood.

It was absurd. He was sick, he could remember nothing of his life—yet the uppermost thing in his mind was a woman who stirred his desire. It would make far more sense to try to remember who he was and what in his life might have brought about his capture by those two men. And what was he going to do? He had no clothes, no money, no identity. Even once he was feeling better, he hadn't the slightest idea what he would do or where he would go. Obviously, he could not continue to impose on Priscilla Hamilton and her father forever.

He closed his eyes. On a wave of such thoughts, he drifted into a troubled sleep.

 

T
HOUGH SHE WOULD
never have admitted it to him, her guest's vehement warnings made Priscilla glance cautiously around her when she and Miss Pennybaker walked out of the house. Everything looked the same, from the garden well to the unstirring lilac bushes to the trees down the lane from their house. She could see no sign of anyone lurking, watching their house.

Still, she gripped the handle of her umbrella tightly as they set off down the lane, and her eyes flitted from one side of the road to the other, on watch for the flutter of a garment behind a bush or a glimpse of a head peering out from around a tree. No matter how much she had argued against her visitor's admonitions, she could see their wisdom, and she knew that if his predictions proved true, she would have to fight for Miss Pennybaker, as well. Priscilla wanted to be prepared for whatever might happen. Indeed, deep in her soul of
souls, where some strange part of her craved excitement, she was almost hoping that something
would
happen.

It did not. Her walk into the village was entirely uneventful. And after fifteen minutes of chatter from the vicar's wife about this person's liver complaint and that one's runaway pig, she was sorry that she had ever had the idea of calling on her. It was obvious that no one in the whole town had spoken about a visitor from America, either seen or expected, for such an event would have taken precedence at least over the pig.

The only bright spot was that her friend Anne Chalcomb also chanced to visit Mrs. Whiting that afternoon, and she and Penny walked home with her. Anne was quite a bit older than Priscilla, but she did not think or talk like a middle-aged woman. She was interested in women's suffrage, as was Priscilla, and she was well-read and able to talk on a variety of subjects. Though Priscilla knew that Anne must be fifty years old, she did not look it. Her figure was still quite trim, and her face was lovely, despite the lines that had begun to form around her eyes and mouth.

It seemed to Priscilla that an indefinable air of sadness clung to Anne, even when she smiled or laughed. She supposed it must be that Anne still mourned her husband, who had died almost ten years earlier. Priscilla could not imagine why Anne would be sad over his being gone. She remembered Squire Chalcomb as a large, sour-faced creature with a terrible temper, and she had heard more than one of the older ladies say that Anne was far better off without him. However, there was no accounting for love, Priscilla knew; perhaps there had been something in the man that only Anne could see.

They walked to Priscilla's cottage, chatting about a
letter that Priscilla had received from Mrs. Pankhurst, describing some of her travails while in prison for the cause of women's suffrage. At the gate to Evermere Cottage, Priscilla stopped and turned to say goodbye to her friend while Miss Pennybaker went on up the path to the cottage. However, Priscilla found to her surprise that Anne had turned off the road with her, as if to follow her into the yard.

“I thought I would pop in and get Mrs. Smithson's recipe for elderberry wine,” Anne explained. “She promised to give it to me last time I visited you.”

“Oh.” Priscilla thought of the man in the room off the kitchen. She did not want anyone to know about him, not even her good friend, but she could hardly refuse to let Anne come in, either. So she smiled, thinking that she would simply have to make sure that the door to his room was closed. “Of course. I'm sure Mrs. Smithson was quite pleased that you asked.”

Anne followed her around the house to the kitchen door at the rear. Priscilla opened the door and stepped in quickly, but she stopped short, brought up abruptly by the sight of “Mr. Wolfe,” sitting at the table, taking tea with Mrs. Smithson.

“What are you doing here?” she snapped without thinking.

His eyebrows rose lazily at her words. “Well, good day to you, too. I knew you would be glad to see me so improved. Mrs. Smithson's soup has worked wonders.”

The cook beamed at him.

Anne came around to stand beside Priscilla. She stopped and gazed at the man in amazement. He was, Priscilla had to admit, a sight to stare at. Mrs. Smithson had evidently dragged out some old clothes of one of her
brothers' for him to wear. Priscilla supposed it accomplished the purpose of keeping him decently covered—but only barely. The muscles of his arms bulged against the lawn sleeves, and the shirt could not be buttoned for several buttons down, leaving a fair expanse of his chest exposed. Both trousers and sleeves were too short, and his thighs filled the legs of the trousers in a way that was almost obscene. Priscilla wondered that he could sit in them without cutting off his breath.

He gazed blandly at the two women with his clear green eyes. It irritated Priscilla even further that he hadn't even the grace to look abashed at being caught here, and in such attire. Anne turned curiously toward Priscilla, and Priscilla grappled for some explanation.

“Uh, Anne, I—I forgot to tell you. My cousin is visiting us.”

“Your cousin?”

“Actually, a quite distant cousin. From America,” Priscilla improvised wildly. “His grandfather was related to mine, but he sailed to the United States when he was a child. Cousin John was kind enough to look us up while he was visiting Britain.”

“How nice,” Anne murmured in their visitor's direction, but Priscilla could see the faint puzzlement in her friend's eyes. Nothing she had said explained what he was doing here in this condition.

“Unfortunately,” she went on rapidly, “Cousin John had a slight accident on his way here. He, uh, got sick, and his luggage was, uh, lost.”

“Yes, I arrived on their doorstep in a fever, and without a bag in sight,” the man added easily. “I am most fortunate that my cousins were willing to take me in.”

Anne smiled. “Priscilla is the soul of kindness.”

A devilish glint sparked his eyes, and the corner of his mouth twitched. “Yes, I have found her to be so. A veritable…saint among women.”

“No. Please.” Priscilla shot him a dark look. “You are flattering me. Anyone would have done the same. But I am rather surprised to see you up so soon. I think you should have stayed in bed. You must not overdo.”

“I can feel my energy returning. I have a sound constitution, you know.”

“No, actually, I don't,” Priscilla retorted dryly. “There are so many things about you I don't know.”

“I feel the same way.” Now a full-fledged grin curved his mouth. “About you, dear cousin.”

Priscilla glared at him. He gazed blandly back.

“I am glad you find your situation so amusing,” Priscilla told him sourly.

“Come, come, Cousin Priscilla,” he said, slightly emphasizing the familiar name in a way she found vastly irritating. “You are too serious. One must look at oneself with some sense of humor. Otherwise, things become far too bleak.”

He rose and walked toward them, his careful steps betraying the fact that his muscles were still somewhat weak and shaky from his illness. “Pardon me, madam,” he said, addressing Anne. “I am afraid that my cousin was so surprised by my improvement that she forgot to introduce us.”

“Oh.” Priscilla colored. “I'm sorry. Anne, this is John Wolfe. Cousin John—” she had to force the name out “—this is my dear friend and neighbor, Lady Anne Chalcomb.”

“I am pleased to meet you,” Anne said warmly, and moved forward to meet the stranger, holding out her
hand. She stopped abruptly, suppressing a gasp. Suddenly the color fled her face.

“Anne?” Priscilla looked at her, startled, and started forward to take her arm. “What's the matter? Are you all right?”

“What?” Anne looked at her vaguely. “Oh.” She glanced back at John, who had stopped a foot away and was looking at her with some uneasiness. “I—I'm sorry. It was silly. For a moment there, I—But no, it's impossible. Ridiculous.”

She forced a smile and held out her hand to John. “Pardon me. You will think I am a befuddled old woman.”

“Never that, my lady,” he answered smoothly, taking her hand and bowing over it.

“You are very kind.” She smiled at him and turned toward Priscilla. “But now I must be on my way. I want to reach Chalcomb Hall before the sun sets.”

“Of course. But what about your recipe?”

“What? Oh.” Anne colored, embarrassed. “You're right. I am sorry.” She turned toward the table, where the cook still sat. “Mrs. Smithson, you had promised me your delicious recipe for elderberry wine.”

“Right you are, my lady,” Mrs. Smithson said, promptly getting up and bustling across the kitchen.

Anne followed her and took the slip of paper Mrs. Smithson gave her, then turned to Priscilla and John and gave them a perfunctory smile. “I must go now. I—If you'd like, I could bring over a few of Henry's clothes for you, Mr. Wolfe. He was a large man, also. It would do better than Gid's things, I am sure, until you recover your own trunks.”

“Yes, my lady.” He smiled engagingly. “I am sure it
would be a good deal better. As it is, I am hardly fit to be seen.”

Anne took her leave of them quickly. Priscilla watched her friend go, puzzled by her behavior, then abruptly decided to run after her.

“Anne!”

Anne was through the rear yard and almost to the path leading to Chalcomb Hall, but she stopped and turned at Priscilla's cry.

“Anne, did you—did you recognize Mr. Wolfe?” Priscilla asked when she drew even with Anne.

Her friend looked startled. “Recognize him? Why, no, how could I? I have never met him before.”

“But you—when he came closer to you, you reacted oddly.”

Anne shook her head, looking embarrassed. “Please, no, it was nothing, really. It was just that for a moment he looked…rather like someone I used to know. But it's impossible. It was long ago, before your cousin was even born, I imagine. And he wasn't an American, anyway.”

“Who was it?” Priscilla pressed on, intrigued.

“No one. I mean, well, no one that you would know. It was merely a trick of the mind, anyway. My—my friend hadn't the same coloring, even. It was just an expression, something about his eyes. It was only for an instant, then it was gone. ‘Tis of no consequence, anyway.”

“Oh. Well, I wanted to ask…that is, it would be better perhaps if you did not mention that you had met Mr. Wolfe. He is, uh, still not well enough to see visitors, and you know how everyone would come at the mention of a stranger.”