He stopped as he reached the bathroom door.
She was waiting for him, and she had no idea who he was.
Once before, he’d thought that. Once before, he’d convinced himself that none of the curse of the Carlton past could intrude on the magical time he spent with her.
Well, this time she didn’t know him. Yesterday had convinced him of that much at least. But his past, with all of its suspicion and betrayal and pain, was as alive as an actual, physical person standing firmly by his side.
Laughter as soft and delicate as the melody of a distant wind chime whispered through the vicarage garden, calling to Edward and leading him deeper into the comforting, slightly shaggy maze of spring flowers and ancient trees with their tender new leaves. Leading him deeper into the maze of conflicting emotions which battered him mercilessly. Pain, anger, frustration, but most of all, weariness. Unrelenting, soul-draining weariness.
God, he was tired. Tired of being alone. Tired of always having to protect his companies, his privacy, his emotions, and even his life, from the greed that his father, and now he, seemed to attract like a powerful magnet.
For a few weeks, the woman somewhere ahead of him in the garden had made him believe in happiness and love and the goodness of others. He’d thought he wouldn’t be able to survive her betrayal. And now, wounded as she was, she tempted him once again to believe, to hope that there would be someone to take away the emptiness of his life. An emptiness that before Jennie he had so completely denied, not even he had known it existed.
No!
For a moment, he thought he had moaned the word aloud, so abruptly had the denial overcome him. He stopped, slowed his breathing and listened for any outward sign that he had been heard. “No,” he whispered when he at last accepted that the cry had been entirely in his mind.
But he didn’t know what he was saying no to—the memories of his sorrow, or the memories of those first unreal weeks with Jennie.
Not again, he promised himself. He would see to her needs and he would help her recover if that was at all possible, but he wouldn’t, couldn’t open himself to the kind of pain that she had so easily, so senselessly inflicted on him. Not again.
He heard her laughter, closer now, mocking him, beckoning to him, and now it was joined by another voice, also feminine, but deeper, and, he knew, somehow, younger. The words were indistinguishable but spoken in a pleasant, bantering tone which called from Jennie another gurgle of laughter.
Edward tensed, remembering that laughter all too well. Then, forcing himself to relax, he centered his attention on the direction from which the sounds were coming and not on the bitter memories they evoked, and continued walking.
He wanted to see her once more without the presence, well-meaning or otherwise, of the vicar or the sheriff. That was why he hadn’t waited for Lambert to arrive at the lodge but had requested a ride into town from the innkeeper. Requested in a calm, civil manner, but in a tone all of his employees would have recognized as a demand.
He hadn’t known Jennie was in the garden. That was an unexpected bonus. When he had arrived at the vicarage, he had thought merely to take a few moments in the pleasant surroundings to collect himself and his vagrant thoughts before beginning the confrontations that were sure to mark the day.
As he walked deeper into the garden, he heard Jennie’s voice join the other, and as he drew closer he began to discern words. Words, but not meaning.
“Watch out,” the younger voice said breathlessly. “To the right. Higher. Quick. Up, up. Oh, drat.”
“Ouch.”
“Got you, did he? Darn, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Jennie said softly. “Here, let me have him. No, no, no,” she crooned. “Easy. It’s time to be soft now. Easy. Easy. That’s a good boy.”
What the hell? Edward thought, even as he felt himself succumbing to the hypnotic temptation of Jennie’s soothing voice. A lie, he reminded himself. It had all been a lie. That was all he needed to remember. And someday, some way, he would learn the reason for that he.
He rounded a lilac bush and found her there, wearing another of those soft, flowing dresses and sitting on another stone bench. She was holding a half-grown yellow tiger-striped kitten that had stretched out in her lap and was purring loudly enough to be heard across the several feet that still separated Edward from the two women.
No, not both of them were women, he amended. The girl sitting cross-legged at Jennie’s feet had several years to wait before she reached that status. All arms and long legs and huge eyes in a too-thin face, she seemed, somehow, comfortable with the spurt of growth her body had given her, comfortable with the awkward age she was passing through. Comfortable with sitting and talking sad playing with a blind woman.
The girl saw him first and rose to her feet with awkward grace. “Jennie,” she said in a hushed, protective voice. “We have company.”
Jennie half rose and looked around, surely an instinctive gesture, because she looked right through him with her sightless eyes, then sighed and gave a little frown. “Who?”
“Don’t know,” the girl muttered. She lifted her chin and challenged him. “You’d better tell us who you are and why you’re here before my dad gets here, mister.”
Lambert. Edward identified who her father must be before she finished speaking. The girl’s coloring was lighter and her features finer, but her mannerisms were completely and distinctly the sheriff’s.
“I’m sorry I startled you—”
Jennie’s frown turned into a smile of such dazzling joy it hurt him to watch. “You came back,” she said breathlessly. He saw the tension drain from her as she sank back onto the bench and stroked the kitten. “I—I knew you would.”
But she hadn’t known. That much was as painfully clear to him as her happiness had been only moments before. And suddenly he felt this overpowering need to comfort her as she comforted the kitten. “It was late last night when we returned to Avalon—too late to disturb you.”
“You went somewhere?” she asked. “You and the sheriff? Is everything all right?”
No, it wasn’t, hadn’t been for a long time, might never be. But that wasn’t what she meant. She meant between him and the local law. “Yes,” he said gently. “Everything is fine.”
She extricated a hand from the cat and held it out to him. “Please,” she said, her smile an invitation he had never been able to resist, “join us.” She nodded toward the girl at her feet. “This is Jamie. Jamie, this is—” She stopped abruptly and looked toward him as her smile faltered. “I’m sorry. I don’t know your name.”
They hadn’t told her. Not one thing. And in spite of the fact that she would have to know, have to confront who she was and what she had done, he couldn’t tell her, either. Not now. Not without more support for her than a half-grown cat, an adolescent girl and an embittered and cynical man she had no memory of.
“I’m Edward,” he said, stepping to her side and, because he couldn’t help himself, taking her small hand in his.
“Edward.” Her voice caressed his name as she tested the sound of it. “Edward.”
Her fingers flexed in his and he felt their gentle pressure. Because he couldn’t stop himself from this, either, he ran his thumb over her fingers, across the one where his rings had once dwelled, and found a ridge of tortured bone beneath delicate, pale skin.
Startled, he looked down. With a sense of relief, he found something else on which