Page 70 of Dangerous Exile
A spark flashed in the blue of his irises and his eyes went wide. “Did you have ribbons in your hair?”
She stilled, her look riveted on him. “I did.”
His eyes closed, his head shaking slightly. “The vision is fuzzy, but they are there. Orange. They were orange. So strange. I’d never seen a girl with orange ribbons in her hair. Yellow, pink, white, red, but never orange. Orange against the dark chestnut curls. So stark. So odd. Orange.”
Tears welled in her eyes as she stared at his face. She ached to reach out and grab him, shake him, shake every memory free from the web in his brain, but she held her hands at her sides, afraid to interfere with how close he was to finding the memory in his mind. “You remember?”
His eyes opened to her.
“Maybe.” His voice was a whisper. “Maybe I do.”
“That was the first time I met you.”
He looked to the mud creeping along the edge of the pond. “Did I get the shoe out?”
“You did, but in the process, you fell in, getting muck up to your waist. You said your mother wouldn’t care. You even struggled farther out into the lake, mostly on your belly, getting mud all over your white shirt so you could reach clear water and wash my shoe clean. You were my hero.”
His look darted back to her. “I’m not your hero, Ness.”
She smiled, unwilling to argue with him. “But you were that day. And you’ll not take that away from me.”
His gaze swung away from her, glossing over as he studied the edge of the pond for long seconds. Whether he remembered more or not, he wasn’t admitting to.
His lips parted, his words coming slowly. “That image—that image of you with the orange ribbons and the fat chestnut curls. I want that. I want that memory. But I don’t know if I want the rest.”
She stepped closer to him, slipping her left arm under his, entwining the splint down along his forearm and curling the tips of her fingers into his palm. Her cheek went onto his upper arm, the wool of his tailcoat rubbing her skin as she looked up at him. “I don’t blame you. I didn’t know what had happened here, Talen. I never could have imagined. But if I had…if I had known all of it was as horrific as that, I never would have brought you here. Never would have insisted. You were right to avoid this place.”
His chest lifted in a deep sigh. “But now we’re here.”
“We are.” She shifted her look to the water, leaning into him, her temple resting on his arm. “And I don’t know what is the right thing to do now. I wanted you here to remember the good, not the bad. That was all.”
“I don’t know either.” The rasp in his voice hitched, his words a low rumble over the water, pain etched in the crevices.
They stood, silent minutes passing, watching the ducks dive and peck away at invisible delicacies under the water.
“She didn’t say it.” The words blurted from Ness’s mouth, the thought that had been heavy in her mind since they’d left the manor house.
Talen looked down at her. “Didn’t say what?”
Ness straightened next to him. “The dowager didn’t say that her son is the earl and it’s a title that is, by rights, not his. Not with you alive.”
His eyebrows lifted, deep lines etching into his skin. “My aunt seemed overwhelmed by the whole of today, and understandably so. Our appearance. What she had to tell me of what had happened to my parents. Secrets like that are maggots on one’s soul and she handled the whole of it with more grace than I thought a woman like her capable of.”
Ness’s lips pursed and she nodded. True, the dowager had been under an incredible amount of stress with what she had to report.
“I hadn’t given it a thought myself,” he said. “But you found it odd?”
Her shoulders lifted. “I find this whole situation disastrous. What happened to your parents, what happened to you. You’re right, I don’t think anyone was thinking about the earldom today.” She shook her head, dismissing the thought. “When did the dowager think she would be back with the bible tomorrow? I heard you ask before you mounted your horse, but I didn’t hear her answer.”
“She thought to fetch it and be back by early evening.”
Ness smiled, leaning into his side once more. “I cannot wait to discover what your full name is.”
“Talen. Talen Blackstone better be what she comes back with.”
Ness laughed. “I will accept that as well. Prefer it, even.”
{ Chapter 25 }