You Only Love Twice (7 page)

There were no houses on the other side of the street to block Jessica’s view of the river Thames, and she had a
glimpse of punts and barges bobbing on the water, and on the near bank, children feeding the swans. Then her view was obscured as Perry nudged his horse into position, close to her side of the curricle. She had time to give him one long, aggrieved look then she clutched for the side of the curricle when Lucas suddenly sent his team flying toward the Oxford road. Their pace was so furious that everything flew by in a confusion of hedgerows, cottages and the occasional vehicle and rider. Nor did Lucas slow his pace until they had turned off the main thoroughfare and into the approach to Hawkshill. Here he drew rein.

“My thanks for the loan of your curricle, Perry,” he said. “Why don’t you go on and I’ll meet you back at the house?”

“What?”

“I’ll meet you back at the house,” said Lucas pointedly. “I’ll return your curricle to you then.”

“But I want to talk to Jess.”

“You can talk to her later, after I’ve had my say.”

“But—”

Lucas snapped, “What I have to say is for Jess’s ears only. Now, go away.”

Perry’s face flushed to the roots of his blond hair, making him look very young, and Jessica felt a wave of indignation on his behalf. She’d learned a great deal about Lucas and his family in the last three days, courtesy of old Joseph who had struck up an acquaintance with some of Lucas’s tenants, and she thought that it was a pity his tenants could not see their master now. Just why Lucas Wilde was so well liked was a mystery to her.

Lucas gave a crooked half smile. “Perry, I have an apology to make to Jessica, and it’s going to be difficult enough without you listening in.”

It was an olive branch of sorts, and Jessica did her part to help Perry save face. “And I,” she said tartly, “have a few choice words I wish to say to Lucas.”

Perry grinned. “All right, all right,” he said. “You’ve
convinced me. I’d only be in the way.” With a cheery wave, he wheeled his mount and trotted off.

As soon as Perry was out of sight, Lucas turned on her. It was the moment she had been waiting for, too. Eyes snapping, she cried, “You have no right to treat me like this. This is an abduction, that’s what it is.”

“I didn’t hear you screaming for help when I smuggled you out of the Swan. You should never have gone there.”

“How was I to know it wasn’t what it seemed?”

“You must have seen there were no females there when you entered the taproom.”

“There were women there. They were waiting on tables.”

He snorted. “Aye, women, and that’s putting it politely.”

She breathed slowly, seething. “You would know more about that than I.”

Her angry words were met by silence. Lucas was staring at her oddly. Finally, he looked away and said, “About Millie Jenkins …”

“What about her?”

He cleared his throat. “It’s not what you think, that is, I know the girl by sight, I mean, I’ve met her …” His brows came down. “Hell and damnation, Jess, I know what you’re thinking, and you’ve got it all wrong. At any rate, I’m sorry she accosted you like that, sorry for what she said to you, and that’s the only apology you’re going to get from me.”

It was her turn to stare. Why he thought he owed her an explanation for Millie Jenkins was beyond her comprehension. Did he think that just because she had allowed him to kiss her she would care? She wasn’t so naive.

“There’s no need to apologize,” she said. “I’ve had worse things said to me in the taverns of London. Nuns are not so sheltered as you seem to think. As for your relationship with Miss Jenkins, that means nothing to me.”

He grinned wickedly. “Are you sure about that, Jess?”

“Perfectly.” Her tone was frigid.

“You’re not still in love with me?”

Jessica was speechless. When she could find her voice, she said hoarsely, “When was I ever in love with you?”

His eyes narrowed on her face. “If you’re trying to convince me that you’ve lost your memory, you’ll have to do better than that.”

It took her a moment to think this through and when she did, she saw red. “You’ve been to see the attorney,” she said. “He told you that I’d lost my memory.” She breathed deeply. “I find that appalling. It’s highly unethical for an attorney to gossip about one client to another, and if it isn’t, it ought to be.”

In contrast to her impassioned tone, he spoke slowly and reasonably. “Rempel does not gossip about one client to another, so don’t get your bowels in an uproar over nothing. It was the sisters who told me that you’d lost your memory. All Rempel did was warn me that your next stop was likely to be the Swan.”

She bristled with hostility. “You were at Hawkshill?”

“Just after you left.”

“You have no business spying on me!”

She glanced at his face, then glanced away. He wasn’t looking at her as though she’d sprouted another head, and she couldn’t detect pity in his expression, either. She didn’t know why his opinion of her mattered so much, but it did.

In a more moderate tone, she went on. “If you wanted to know anything, you should have come to me.”

“I’m here now, and I’m asking you outright—is it true what I’ve been told? Have you lost your memory, Jess?”

She asked incredulously, “Do you really think I could fool the nuns for three years?”

He shrugged. “I’m not saying you weren’t injured in the accident, but when you came to yourself, it’s possible
you decided that a life of contemplation with the nuns was much easier than the life you had here.”

He obviously knew nothing of her particular order of nuns or what was involved in looking after children. Did he think they had an army of servants to do all the work? And what did he know of a life of contemplation, especially for someone in her situation? A blank mind, a blank past, a blank name. Her throat closed as she remembered her first few months in the convent, when she’d lived in hope that someone would claim her—a father, a mother, a brother, a sister. Someone. Hopes and dreams, that’s what had kept her going, and when hope faded, the awful despair.

Things were different now. She was a real person, with a real name. She had a history. Maybe her memory would never come back to her, but she could at least try to fill in the blanks. And in three days, she’d come a long way.

Her eyes flicked to Lucas. She would be much further ahead if Lucas Wilde would only consent to answer a few questions. “Lucas,” she said, trying for a conciliatory tone, “what do I have to do to convince you I’m telling the truth?”

“You can begin by telling me when, exactly, you found out that your father had been murdered.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that she’d found out, not half an hour ago, from the attorney. Then she saw his trap. She’d recklessly told him that first day back that she’d returned to Hawkshill to find a murderer. If he’d visited Hawkshill and questioned the nuns, he would see that there was a discrepancy in her story.

“I was told in the convent,” she said, and made herself remember to breathe.

“By the woman who recognized you?”

She saw where he was leading and tried to circumvent him by going on the attack. “You did go to Hawkshill to spy on me! Well, you won’t get any answers from the
sisters, because they don’t know anything. I … I didn’t tell them about my father. I … I just couldn’t.”

After studying her expression for a moment, he said, “That’s not all. Explain if you will what happened between us three days ago. If you’d lost your memory, I would be a stranger to you. So how do you explain that you came damn near to allowing me to take you on the kitchen table? Does that sound as though you’d lost your memory?”

She was appalled. “Are you saying we were lovers?”

His eyes moved slowly over her face. After a moment, he let out a breath. “No, we weren’t lovers. But I would like to know what’s going on. If you didn’t know who I was, why did you fall into my arms when I came out to Hawkshill?”

Relief shivered through her. She sniffed and offered an explanation she thought he might accept. It was as close to the truth as she was willing to go. “You attacked me. I was frightened and confused. Then you took me in your arms. I didn’t know what I was doing, where it was leading.” She looked directly into his eyes. “I know nothing of men. If I was ever in love with you, I have no memory of it.”

“Is the past gone forever, Jess, or will your memory come back?”

She was silent for a moment, but deciding it was a serious question, she answered him seriously. “They told me that my memory would probably come back in a few days, but that was three years ago. Then they said it might come back to me suddenly, in one fell swoop. Or it might never come back.”

He stared at her then said softly, “I’m still not sure that I believe you, Jess.”

“Why would I lie about a thing like that?”

“A convent would be a good place to hide, would it not?”

“Hide?” She sat up straighter. “From what?”

“From me.”

She jerked at his words, knocking his elbow, and the horses reared up.

“Now look what you’ve done,” he roared, holding his team steady.

She was breathing hard. There was something there, a memory, just out of reach. “You quarreled with my father the night he was murdered. Don’t deny it. The attorney told me.”

“Why should I deny it? It all came out at the inquest. And there was a full house that night. About twenty people witnessed the fight.”

“You took his pistol away from him so that he could not defend himself.”

The words jerked out of his mouth. “I took his pistol away from him so that he would not kill me.”

“What did you quarrel about?”

“You, of course. You told him that we were lovers in a deliberate attempt to trap me into marriage.”

She gasped. “I told him? I can’t believe I would do such a thing unless …” Her face blanched, and she stammered, “unless it was true.”

His face darkened. “What kind of man do you think I am? Of course it wasn’t true! I was going to marry Bella. Then your father came barging into the Black Swan and that was that.”

“I’m sure I had no part in it. I’m not that sort of girl.”

“How do you know if you’ve lost your memory?”

She looked up at him with a stricken expression. “Lucas,” she breathed out, “are you saying that I was a … a scarlet woman?”

There was a heartbeat of silence before he answered. “No, Jess. All I’m saying is that you were sweet on me.”

The breath she’d been holding rushed out of her lungs as relief swamped her, then she sucked it in again when she saw the humor in his eyes. “Just tell me what happened that night,” she snapped, then, remembering that
she’d decided to be conciliatory, “Tell me. Please. I have to know.”

He hesitated then said, “I was not long back from the war and was drinking with friends in the Black Swan’s taproom, celebrating my engagement to Bella Clifford. Soon after my friends left, your father entered. He’d been drinking and was in a towering temper. You’d told him, so he said, that we were lovers. He accused me of ruining you for other men. There was a fight. When he pulled his pistol on me, I took it away from him. He left. Shortly after, I left, too.”

She was shaking inside. “Why would I tell him we were lovers if it wasn’t true?”

He studied her face for a moment, then exhaled an exasperated breath. “Because, from the time you were a girl in pinafores, you’d set your heart on me. Everyone knew it. In fact, it was a great joke in Chalford. I tolerated your attentions because, well, I didn’t want to hurt your feelings. You were only a young girl, and I was flattered, I suppose, that you hero-worshiped me. But that night, you went too far.”

This unflattering picture of herself made her writhe, but she couldn’t deny it. She was remembering how she’d felt when Lucas had kissed her and she’d practically allowed him to take her on the kitchen table.

She lifted her chin. “It wasn’t all one-sided,” she said.

“No,” he said simply. “It was easy to ignore you when you were a child, but …”

“But what?”

He turned his head to look at her. “But when I came home from the war, you were all grown-up.”

His eyes were locked on hers, and she felt it again, the irresistible tug on her senses. He felt it, too. She heard the catch in his breath, saw the way his lids grew heavy. Not again. Dear Lord, not again.

“Jess,” he whispered.

She caught his wrist, preventing him from touching her.

“Why did you buy Hawkshill, Lucas?”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

His lips thinned. “Why does anyone buy a property that adjoins his estate? I wanted your acreage.”

“The attorney says you paid more than Hawkshill was worth. Was it blood money?”

He swore. “Blood money for what?”

“Murdering my father.”

“One more crack like that and I’ll put you over my knee and paddle your backside.”

“That’s no answer. The attorney said you felt guilty because you’d disarmed my father and he couldn’t defend himself. Is that true?”

He nodded. “That’s about it.”

His answer was a tad too pat for her liking. “There must be more to it than that.”

He looked as though he were ready to explode. “Look, I wanted your acreage and I paid a fair price for it. That’s all there was to it.”

“Where did you get the money? The attorney told me you were living off the charity of relatives then. So where did the money come from?”

“Rempel doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut. I borrowed it from friends.”

“Oh, don’t worry! I had to pry everything out of the attorney. He wouldn’t answer my questions. That’s why I’m asking you. What friends?”

“Rupert Haig for one. My cousin Adrian for another. They’ll tell you.”

“Do you know what I think, Lucas? I think you’re lying.”

He spoke through clenched teeth. “There’s a lot you don’t know, Jess, or you wouldn’t speak to me like that.” “Then tell me!”

“I wanted to provide for you in case anything happened
to me. Yes, I felt guilty about your father because I’d taken his pistol away from him. What’s wrong with that? And you have to understand how it was with us. My God, I’d been looking after you since you were a scrawny brat. You looked up to me. I felt responsible for you. Somebody had to. Your father was a wastrel. He never gave a thought to your welfare.”