ends.”
It wasn’t until she felt the pressure on her stitches that she realized she was smiling. Yes, it hurt, but she did not stop. The sensation of pleasure and mirth was as unexpected as it was wonderful.
“Ready for a few sonnets by Mrs. Browning?” He sat down again and opened the book he’d retrieved. “‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.’”
CHAPTER 9
Helena realized, as she began to doze off, that Hastings didn’t have a nice voice, but an extraordinary one: dulcet, golden, yet subtly powerful, like a distant rolling of thunder, or the reverberation of a faraway sea.
As she teetered on the edge of sleep, he stood over her and murmured, “If you should remember everything before I come back…”
Perhaps sleep overtook her; perhaps he never finished his sentence. The next thing she knew, someone was tapping on her arms. Groggily she opened her eyes—to Venetia’s beautiful face.
“Hello, sister dearest,” she mumbled.
Venetia smiled. She had a smile as exquisite as Hastings’s voice, but it could not altogether hide her concern. “Sorry to disturb you, my love. But we’ve been instructed to wake you up from time to time, to make sure you haven’t again lost consciousness.”
She helped Helena sit up. Helena accepted a glass of water and drank thirstily. “How long have I been asleep?”
“Five hours, more or less.”
“Is Lord Hastings back yet?”
How odd that this morning his very existence was a shock to her, but now she wanted to know his whereabouts.
“No, sorry. He said not to expect him before dinner. Would you like to eat something? You are in time for a very late lunch, or a very early tea.”
“Porridge again?”
“Since you kept down your breakfast, Nurse Gardner has decreed you may have some broth and a bit of a convalescent pudding.”
“Hmm, pudding. I am in a state of unspeakable anticipation.”
Venetia smiled again and rose to ring for the pudding.
“Did you get any rest yourself, Venetia?”
“I went for a quick drive and a walk in the park with my husband—I’m only with child, not ill. I did, however, lie down for half an hour just now, since he presented me with an irresistible bribe.”
With great pomp and circumstance, Venetia revealed the “irresistible bribe.” What Helena had imagined to be a piece of pretty bauble turned out to be nothing of the sort, unless during her absence of memory it had become fashionable for ladies to wear sinister-looking talons as accessories to their silk and muslin summer dresses.
“What is that?”
“It’s a tooth from a prehistoric crocodilian. Those beasts grew to dizzying sizes. They could probably reach up from their swampy dwellings and snap in two most of the smaller saurians coming for a drink of water.”
“Good gracious. And your husband gave it to you as a bribe?”
Venetia’s face fell a little. “Oh, I forgot you don’t remember. I—we—excavated a dinosaur skeleton on the coast of Devon the summer you were fourteen.”
“An entire skeleton?”
“Eighty-five percent complete, I’d say.”
The impotence of her mind vexed Helena. How could she not remember such a remarkable event as pulling a near-complete dinosaur skeleton out of the ground?
“I have pictures, if you should like to see them,” said Venetia tentatively. “You are in the pictures, too.”
Helena made herself smile. “Yes, of course. I’d love to see them.”
But seeing the pictures would be troubling, wouldn’t it, as if she were witnessing someone else live her life?
She changed the topic. “By the way, where am I? I can tell by the smell of the air that we are in London, but is this my house, yours, or—”
“This is Fitz’s house; he inherited it along with the title.”
“I always thought the title would go to that second cousin of ours, if the earl didn’t have any male issue of his own.”
“So did we all, but Mr. Randolph Fitzhugh was already quite elderly—he passed away before the earl did.”
“Wasn’t there still someone else between Fitz and the title?”
“Yes, another cousin—he also didn’t outlive the former earl.”
“Do we have cousins who survived?” Helena tried for a joking tone, but she couldn’t help a twitch of fear in her heart.
“Our Norris cousins are all doing well. Margaret married a naval officer. Bobby is a naval officer. And Sissy is a missionary in Hong Kong.”
Sissy who could never sit still in church?
A week ago Helena would have known that Sissy had turned devoutly religious. A week ago she’d have been able to give vivid descriptions of the prehistoric monster Venetia had excavated. A week ago her entire life would