“Marry me, Anna.”
How, with one look, one touch and a few words, had he wrapped her within his illusion? How could she see K.C. before her when he’d barely existed before, had never been more than the play of childhood, the brief, bold vision of youth?
She was shocked back to simple reality. Kent Landover was before her now. K.C. was gone, might never have been. And she was left as crazy as her mother, as crazy as this man.
She stepped back once more, putting distance between them. His hand tightened on her fingers. She saw his oversize scrubs. What she’d thought were beige loafers she now saw were foam rubber slip-ons. The uniform of the institutionalized. How had this happened? Why? When?
She looked back up into his eyes. He’d come to her. She’d help him. That she could do.
She took a step toward him. Again she wondered what had happened to him to cause such a complete break with reality.
“Kent?”
“K.C.,” he softly insisted.
“K.C.” She obliged. “Those are rather unusual clothes for a cowboy.”
He looked down at his outfit. “Please pardon my attire, Anna,” he said with such sincere formality, a bit of her heart chipped away. “I was in the hospital…”
Her heart broke.
“They wanted to keep me there. They didn’t believe me when I said I felt fine, actually never better. They said my head was hurt. I’ve a bump, a few bruises from the blackout, but nothing to keep a man locked up.”
Now there was no doubt. He had been institutionalized. The reality of it was worse than she’d imagined.
“Then I saw you on the TV…” he was saying.
Those commercials she’d done for the cleaning business.
“I couldn’t find my clothes anywhere, so I borrowed these from the hospital. I’m going to return them as soon as I find mine.”
“Of course.” She nodded.
“I couldn’t wait another minute. I’ve been looking for you for a long time, Anna. Ever since you left.”
She tried to smile. “Now you’ve found me.”
“We’ll never be apart again, Anna. Never.”
She felt the constriction building through her body. Soon it would require release in tears or screams or a blank, unseeing stare out a window for a long, still moment.
HE LOOKED INTO HER FACE, wishing her thoughts were his. He’d been too abrupt, he thought. He’d been clumsy, raw, spitting proposals at her like a sailor newly dry-docked. She was scared. He could see it in the white circles of her eyes.
He looked away from the crown the color of pale amber and the eyes he’d made large by his rush of words. He looked down, seeing his ill-fitting pajamas worn from too many washings, and felt the fool. He’d seen her, and from that moment on, there’d been nothing else. He’d come like a man possessed, single-minded in pursuit. She, so nobly bred, had been too gracious to show her real response. God, he was as simple as the land and the life he loved. She must think him crazy.
He looked back up into those white-ringed eyes that reflected his own fearful heart. “I’m not crazy.”
There was no more than a blink, delicate as a fairy wing. Her mouth opened. He waited for her words bringing either condemnation or resurrection, but she said nothing. He watched the lips curve like a new bud unfurling. He didn’t have to touch his own lips to know a smile had found its way there, too.
He wasn’t quite sure if he’d been accepted or absolved. He wasn’t certain about a lot of things. He didn’t know why others kept confusing him with another man, a strange man who shared his name but nothing else. He didn’t know why he thought he, no more than a cowboy, could win the affections of a countess. There were a lot of things he was uncertain about. Some moments were even downright shaky. Things he had an idea he’d once believed and understood now made no sense. He didn’t understand his ease traveling through the streets of this strange city. Nor did he understand the sudden flash of images in his mind, so different from the life that he knew was his. Then, at times, there was nothing—a complete blank…save for Anna. Anna was the one constant.
“K.C.” The sweet voice of his salvation pulled him from his whirl of thoughts. He looked and found the cool, green rest of her eyes. Everything that had seemed senseless made sense once more.
She gave his hand a squeeze. “Let’s go have tea and Mama’s scones.”
She led him, and he had a sense of being very young and very happy for no reason other than being near her. A sense that those same words, these same steps in perfect rhythm, her hand held tight in his, had all happened before. Once upon a time.
“Anna?”
She stopped and turned toward him, smiling that smile he’d also seen before, would remember forever.
“I may be a little crazy.”
Those eyes welled into wide rings again, the colors brightening as if wet. Her hand dropped his. As her fingers pulled away, his own still reached out. She stepped toward him, laid her cheek against his in the briefest of moments and whispered, “Me, too.”
She stepped back and took the fingers that had never stopped reaching for her. She smiled. “Come on, cowboy.”
HER MOTHER FED HIM SCONES and tea, and Anna excused herself to take a shower. But first she slipped back down the stairs to the reception area. Ronnie glanced up from the morning paper as Anna came into the room.
“How’s our cowboy?”
“‘Our’ cowboy? Weren’t you the one a few minutes ago sizing him up for a Square Rock Stomp?”
Ronnie smiled. “Any guy who can look at you like that when you smell of herring can’t be all bad.”
Anna shook her head. “Kent Landover.”
She was about to flop down into a chair when Ronnie cautioned, “Not the crushed velour.”
She straightened and, folding her arms, leaned against the wall, staring forward, not seeming to see.
“I didn’t know your mother and you had such impressive connections.” Ronnie laid thick her accent.
“Mom worked for the Landover family for four years.”
“No kidding?”
“It was years ago. I was a baby. Mama wasn’t much more than a child herself, nineteen. She’d met my father in her first foster home. He’d shown her the ropes, protected her. They were separated, but as soon as he could, he came for her. They married and came to California to start a new life together. He was killed in a car accident not long after I was born.” Anna’s voice dropped. “Mama never loved another.”
She gathered memories. “After my father’s death, Mama got a job on the Landovers’ household staff. She was lucky. The position didn’t pay much, but it included room and board. We lived on the estate, in the back, in a cottage with gingerbread trim.”
Her thoughts drifted further. “Kent was about two years older than me. An only child, he’d been left to the care of nannies and nurses since he was born. His parents were busy people. His father had his businesses, his mother her charities and social intrigues. I was Kent’s first real friend, and he, mine. His parents didn’t approve of the friendship. I was a servant’s child. They spoke to my mother, but when Kent came to our cottage, a lonely child wanting to play, Mama didn’t have the heart to send him away. Sometimes, when Mama was working and Kent’s parents weren’t home, we’d even play at the big house. Games children play—hide-and-seek, ‘Mother, May I…?”’
“Dress-up?”