How to Forget a Duke Page 6

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Beels,” she rasped, the rawness of her throat receding marginally. “I am . . .”

  It wasn’t until that very moment, sitting on the rock with her mouth open and nothing coming out, that she realized she couldn’t remember her own name.

  * * *

  By the time the carriage reached the flat slope in front of the weathered oaken doors of Rydstrom Hall, Crispin was nearly ill with fatigue.

  Mr. Fellows was already standing outside on the old flagstone path. Age had rounded the shoulders inside of his blue livery coat, and as he moved toward the carriage, the wind caught the silvery tufts of hair that formed a horseshoe shape over his gleaming pate. “Good morning, Your Grace. A pleasant journey, I”—his cloudy gray eyes widened as Crispin emerged from the carriage—“I trust.”

  Admittedly, Crispin was a little worse for wear. Under normal circumstances, he held himself to a high standard of personal grooming. But since he met Jacinda Bourne, he’d found his entire world in disorder.

  “The devil’s own, but that matters not,” Crispin said, reassembling his limbs one by one as he stepped down. It felt freeing to move about, but he was stiff from head to toe. Reaching back into the carriage, he grabbed his greatcoat and shrugged into it. The heavy garment draped over his shoulders in clean, symmetrical lines that offered a semblance of respectability to his appearance. “Tell me, have there been any visitors while I was away? Or a traveler who might have applied for a tour of the house?”

  All the way up the hill, Crispin had imagined a dozen ways that Jacinda Bourne might have schemed her way into his home, each one more disturbing than the next.

  “None, sir.” Fellows shuffled past him to retrieve the satchel from the carriage floor. “Should I have a chamber prepared for your bride?”

  “My bride?” Crispin parroted. Still thinking of Miss Bourne, he was caught off guard when an image of her flashed across his mind’s eye—her face lit by altar candles, her eyes glowing that bright, robin’s-egg blue, and a fiery lock of hair carelessly draped over the left side of her forehead. He violently shook his head to ward off the unwelcome vision. The woman had clearly become a plague on his senses. And the sooner he rid himself of her, and her uncle’s agency, the better. “I was only gone for a week. And besides that, I do not plan to bring my bride anywhere near Rydstrom Hall.”

  Fellows looked at him with confusion corrugating his brow as his hair swirled like morning mist in the wind. “Not at all, sir?”

  “Of course not,” he said with a growl of impatience. He’d already explained the reason, and he’d assumed Fellows had understood that bringing a bride home to Rydstrom Hall would be detrimental to Sybil. She was fragile and needed to be protected from the cruelties of the outside world.

  Ignoring the frown he received from Fellows, Crispin sent Jones on to the stables. Once the carriage trundled out of the way, he shielded his eyes and gazed down the hill, briefly scanning the crescent-shaped village that hugged the rocky, cliff-lined coast for a sign of a coach that might have followed.

  The absence of any carriages on the narrow lane between the tight clusters of thatched-roofed, chalk white cottages provided a modicum of relief. There were only a few horse carts and villagers on foot, tending to their routine tasks. And at the cliff’s edge, fishermen were hauling up their boats—or smacks, as they called them—by rope and pulley to secure them from the swells of churning water below.

  By all appearances, it was a typical day in Whitcrest.

  Even so, he still could not shake a lingering sense of doom that the thought of Miss Jacinda Bourne stirred within him, warning him to be on his guard. Absently, he squeezed the back of his neck to ease the knot residing there.

  “How long do you plan to stay, sir?”

  “Not long. I only returned to sort out a . . . business matter.” And to ensure that my own carelessness hasn’t put Sybil in danger of being exposed.

  As if in concurrence with his turbulent thoughts, from the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a frothy swell of waves, crashing against the jagged white cliffs. Even from a distance, the icy spindrifts reached him. The bellowing wind blew in like kite strings attached to the scarlet-hued clouds on the horizon.

  “A red sky, sir,” Fellows said from beside him. “We’ll have company by nightfall, I imagine.”

  A shiver stole over Crispin. The villagers believed that fast, vicious squalls brought unexpected visitors.

  “A mere superstition. That color of sky foretells a coming storm. Nothing more,” Crispin said, his pragmatic mind rejecting the nonsense. Even so, he recalled witnessing a sky like this four years ago—the same day that Sybil had arrived.

  But that was just a coincidence.

  He knew there was a wholly different reason to feel a bone-deep coldness when looking at a sky like that—because violent storms often brought violent deaths. And he should know. His own parents had died in such a storm and on the very spot where the sea was rising to shake its fist at the sky.

  It had been four years since Crispin had ventured to the cliff’s edge. Four years since he’d seen his parents’ broken bodies upon the rocks below. The memory still haunted him, and left him with a sense of guilt for which there was no remedy.

  “If you say so, sir.”

  Crispin nodded, more to himself than to Fellows and turned toward the open doorway. He was here to guarantee there would be no irksome, interfering meddler poking around where she wasn’t wanted. There was no remote possibility that he would ever allow Miss Jacinda Bourne admittance into Rydstrom H—

  “Your Grace! Your Grace!”

  Before Crispin could even finish his thought, a frantic voice hailed him in the distance. He turned to see Henry, Dr. Graham’s errand boy, bounding up the path and waving his arms above his dark head as if he were directing a frigate through the reef.

  “A woman, sir,” Henry shouted, his voice breaking. “She washed up on the beach. Dr. Graham sent me here straightaway after he caught sight of your carriage.”

  A jolt tore through Crispin, his gaze automatically veering toward the cliff, where a band of violet-edged clouds now lined the red horizon. The last thing he wanted was to witness another broken body upon the rocks, but it was his responsibility to take care of matters in Whitcrest.

  Not wasting time, Crispin met the boy on the path and started walking down the hill at a fine clip. “Is this woman alive?”

  “Yes, sir. But Miss Beels wasn’t sure at first. When she saw the body, there weren’t no signs of life. She reckoned the woman was covered in blood, oozing out of her everywhere,” Henry panted, his declaration carrying the excitement of one who was too young to have seen many catastrophes. When he continued, however, his tone listed downward in disappointment. “But then Miss Beels realized that the dark red was only the particular shade of the woman’s hair.”

  Crispin missed a step, pebbles skittering down the hill from the toe of his boot. His entire body stiffened as that peculiar knot of tension returned to the base of his skull. “Did you say, dark red hair?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  And suddenly, Crispin knew that Jacinda Bourne had found him after all.

  Chapter 6

  “. . . and with all her advantages, natural and domestic, she was now in great danger of suffering from intellectual solitude.”

  Jane Austen, Emma

  “Why can I not recall my own name?” she asked to no one in particular. At the moment, her only companion was the rock beneath her and the brackish blue sea rushing into the cove. Worse, because of the throbbing in her head, she didn’t know how long she’d been here, or even how long she’d been wondering who she was.

  She was certain—well, moderately certain—that she’d spoken to a woman moments ago. Unfortunately, amidst a confusing jumble of words swimming around in her head, the woman’s name escaped her. Though she did remember a rather distinct mole on the woman’s face. Surely that wasn’t something one randomly co
njured from imagination. Was it?

  Growling in frustration, she closed her hands into fists hard enough to squeeze water from her gloves. Since they were doing nothing to warm her, she peeled off the garments, one after the other, and dropped them with soggy splats onto the rock.

  The sight of her hands distracted her. The tops were pale and smooth with faint pathways of blue veins beneath the surface, her fingers long and slender, and her nails neatly rounded but bloated around the edges. Turning her hands over, her fingertips were puffy with white-edged whorled furrows, like shriveled, colorless currants. And all through her examination, she had the strangest sense that she’d never seen them before.

  But that was ludicrous. They were her hands, after all. She couldn’t have suddenly sprouted from this rock, drenched and nameless.

  She must have a name, surely.

  Yet her thoughts were in a frightful muddle. She couldn’t seem to grasp hold of one for any length of time. Even now, she caught herself staring blankly at the lavender-gray clouds lumbering in the distance, their bodies so plump and swollen they nearly touched the waves, and looking as if they required a long rest upon the shore. Once they reached her, she sensed that they would flood the cove in a less than pleasant rain shower. And she did not particularly wish to be here when they arrived.

  But where would she go?

  Again, she had no answer. All she knew was that she should seek shelter, wherever she could.

  Gradually, she slid her feet down to the sand, her boots sinking through the top soupy layer to the packed granules beneath. Legs wobbling, she splayed both hands on the rock to steady herself.

  Just then, something shifted beneath her coat, slipping down her middle.

  Clumsily, she tried to clutch the thing before it could fall. Though, for all she knew, it was a large, scaly sea creature with snapping claws and venomous tentacles—if such a monster existed—and yet she was more curious than alarmed by it.

  The thing eluded her. Dropping too quickly, it landed, a sharp edge striking the top of her boot. She winced from the unexpected sting and glared down at the object.

  Rectangular, damp and glossy, it was folded in layers of some type of cloth. Not a sea creature, then. Bending slowly, mindful of the fragile hold she had on her equilibrium, she picked up the object and placed it on the rock. The wrapping was smooth, the fabric oil slicked, and inside she discovered a book—a beautiful red leather volume, darkened around the corners.

  Overwhelmed by a nameless urge, she flattened her palm over the cover, still slightly warm from the meager heat of her body.

  Her heart tripped beneath her breast as if a sea bubble was trapped inside, and an inexplicable sense of certainty filled her. This is my book. Why else would she have kept it so secure?

  Now, if only she could remember why.

  But the effort caused renewed pain to explode at her temples and behind her eyes. She squeezed them shut. For the next few moments, even the dim, stormy light was too bright, the sound of the surf too loud.

  Still, she refused to let go of the question. The answer was just out of reach, she was sure, and if she could keep her head from pounding, she might figure out everything. Concentrating, she tried harder. Then a wave of nausea gripped her as well, churning like the roaring waves behind her.

  She swallowed and blinked several times to clear her vision until, gradually, the sensation ebbed. Well, that didn’t work, she thought, annoyed by her own limitations.

  She studied the book. If she couldn’t find the answers inside her own head, then perhaps she could find them here.

  Like her fingers, the edges of the paper were slightly bloated and rippled, creating a gradual rise from the spine to the block of cream-colored pages. Then, opening the book, she searched for clues.

  As luck would have it, she found one. There was a name printed along the upper edge near the spine, in a row of neat block letters: Jacinda Bourne.

  Was that her name? Odd, but she did not possess the same sense of ownership over the name as she did the book. Then, turning a page, the title greeted her. Emma.

  This time, a spark of recognition buzzed through her on pins and needles.

  “Miss Emma Woodhouse,” she whispered, the words caught by the wind. In that instant, she felt rooted to these pages and knew the story and each character by heart—better even than her own name. The title was like a friend offering a smile of comfort.

  Closing the cover, she expelled a sigh of gratitude for this one familiarity, drew the book to her breast, and embraced it. Hope was not lost, after all.

  Still, larger questions plagued her. Who gave it to her? Why were her own hands, hair, and clothes unfamiliar? Why was she here? And where exactly was . . . here?

  She thoroughly despised the mystery of it all and needed to uncover it as soon as possible.

  As she was fretting over this, a pair of voices drifted to her. With a glance over her shoulder, she saw two people descending a narrow winding footpath through the tufts of grasses and scattered rocks over the rise, beside the chalk white cliffs. Walking toward her were one pale-haired man, one black-shrouded woman, and one small white dog.

  The mole-woman! What a relief that she hadn’t imagined her. This was cause for celebration. Though it was short-lived because, in the very next instant, she realized she still couldn’t dredge the mole-woman’s actual name out from the seawater in her own head.

  It appeared that this leather tome was the only thing she knew at all.

  But not for long, she thought, determined to start remembering everything from this point forward. Then, as if to mock her, another stabbing pain sliced through her brain at the temples.

  Frustrated, she gripped the book harder. Not wanting to shut her eyes—for fear of the man and mole-woman disappearing—she bit down on her lip to fight the pain and focused on their approach.

  Mole-woman’s mouth was a blur of movement, the constant sound of her high-pitched drawl mingling indiscernibly with the gathering wind. Beside her, the gentleman nodded occasionally in response.

  Leaning heavily upon a cane, he was dressed in nutshell brown from his coat to his trousers. While his clothes were plain, they were not bedraggled like the mole-woman’s were. His coat fitted him squarely, clearly tailored, but with a mismatched button that told her it was not new, but well-tended.

  His blondish white hair and mustachios were speckled like seafoam with shades of sandy brown and boulder black. And behind a pair of half-moon spectacles his eyes were small circles of dark, inquisitive blue, the corners marked by a spray of deep wrinkles. He was no more than forty-five or even fifty, she thought, noting that his overall frame was still straight. There was no paunch about his middle either, which indicated that he moved around quite a bit. Though, with that leg of his, he surely wasn’t a laborer but had another profession . . .

  She stopped, wondering why her thoughts had brought her to such a conclusion. Strange. It was almost as if she were cataloguing him. But for what purpose?

  Yet before she could summon a reason, she caught sight of two others joining their party, coming into view just over the rise.

  One was only a boy with a mop of tousled dark hair. The other was an imposing man, looking positively thunderous in a slate gray coat with a caped edge that accentuated the impossible breadth of his shoulders. His stride was crisp and exact, his hands fisted at his sides. Waves of thick brown and golden hair whipped in the wind as if he were the creator of it. Accentuated by a growth of whiskers, the set of his jaw seemed comprised of the same rock that littered the beach. And while she couldn’t see the color of his eyes, she noticed that they flashed and crackled in time with the approaching storm.

  More than that, she saw that they were focused solely on her.

  She felt a peculiar static charge rise within her, taking the air from her lungs.

  He stopped a few paces from her, never looking away even as the pale-haired man approached him. The two men exchanged a few words, and then, wit
h a nod between them, the older man turned to her, advancing slowly, the tip of his cane sinking into the sand.

  “My name is Dr. Graham,” he said, offering a kind smile.

  A weighted pause followed his declaration. If he was introducing himself, she quickly concluded that he did not know her. Yet as she opened her mouth to reply with her own name, the one she’d found just moments ago, she’d already forgotten it.

  A cold wash of worry made her shiver. “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance. My name is”—slyly, she peeked inside the cover—“Jacinda Bourne.”

  The doctor glanced down at the book, too, his mustachios pulling down as he pursed his lips. “Were you unsure of it, just now?”

  Though she wasn’t certain why, her first inclination was complete denial.

  “Of course I would know my own name.” Her gaze flitted to the tall, forbidding gentleman. Instinctively, she felt as if admitting to any shortcoming in front of him would put her at a disadvantage. “It only slipped away for a moment because of this headache, you see.”

  “Mmm . . . yes,” he mused. “It appears as though you’ve taken a spill, Miss Bourne. May I?”

  Then, without introducing her to the tall gentleman or even the boy, the doctor laid his cane against the rock with care. It did not escape her notice that no one came forth with a ready embrace, a smile in greeting, or even a question regarding how her clothes came to be wet. Clearly, no one knew her.

  Her identity and the reason she awoke here were still just as much a mystery as before.

  Chilled by a keen sense of isolation and loneliness, her gaze strayed to the tall gentleman and found him staring at her expectantly. She wished she knew the reason.

  The doctor stepped in front of her, regaining her attention when he pointed to the side of her head that was in pain as if he meant to touch it. She eyed him with speculation, not knowing if whatever he planned to do would hurt. Yet, after a moment of consideration, she nodded, allowing him to lift her hair out of the way.