able to feel anything—women wore enormous bustles then. All I wanted was for you to notice me.”
“Did I hit you?”
“A tremendous, well-deserved punch to my face. I walked around with a black eye for a week—and was a bit sad when it faded away completely.”
Her lips trembled with mirth. “My goodness, such a romantic.”
“You find it funny now. But imagine if your recently recouped memory had extended a few more weeks to include my first visit to Hampton House. You’d think me quite the despicable snot.”
“And all you have to do is prove to me that you are not.” Her hand reached up and took a strand of his hair between her fingers. “Simple as that.”
She gently pulled on that curl and let it go. “It’s so springy.”
They’d barely grazed at the truth, but she was satisfied—and distracted. By his hair, of all things.
“I feel like a sheep that has been overlooked during spring shearing,” he murmured.
“Yes, adorably fluffy.”
Another time he might have protested the use of that adjective. But now he was all too relieved. “Would you like me to pull my chair closer, so you may fondle my hair with greater ease?” he asked.
She beamed at him. “Why, yes, I’d like exactly that.”
In the evening she asked him to read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. He gladly obliged, reprising his performance from earlier, with distinct voices and accents for the characters. He did so well that Nurse Jennings, the night nurse, clapped at the end of a chapter.
Helena joined in the applause. “Bravo! Bravo! And you have read the book to me before, have you not? I have a sense that this is not the first time I’ve heard the Cheshire Cat purr like that.”
“No, the only other time I’ve read the book to you was when you were unconscious.”
She appeared mystified. “I don’t suppose I can remember anything from those three days, can I? Yet I’ve a distinct feeling I’d heard you do a similar reading.”
Was she about to experience another opening of the floodgate? And how far would she remember this time? His fingers tightened around the pages. “I don’t know what to tell you.”
She made a resigned pull of her lips. “I must be imagining things, even though I’d swear I’m not.”
He looked down at the book. “Would you like me to go on to the next chapter?”
She pondered her choice. “Nurse Jennings, would you care for a bit of fresh air just now?”
Nurse Jennings did not need to be asked twice. “I should dearly love it. Thank you, my lady.”
Hastings held his breath. Helena wanted to speak to him in private. Had she remembered something crucial?
The door closed behind Nurse Jennings. Helena turned toward Hastings. “I must have been completely distracted by your ravishing curls earlier. The more I think about it, the more I am puzzled. Why should you dread the return of my memory so much if the worst you ever did was put your hand once on my bum?”
So no further recovery of memory—at least not yet. “Well, let’s see. When I visited your house the next summer, I’d grown two inches, but alas, so had you. You towered over me as much as you ever did and ignored me with vicious cruelty. So I set up a trap to lock the two of us together into a wardrobe in the attic. Unfortunately you were one step ahead of me and locked me in by myself instead.”
She grinned toothily. “Well done, me.”
“You didn’t let me out for six hours—it was only by the grace of God that my bladder held. And when you finally came to release me, you wore such a spectacular smirk—it haunted me for months upon months.
“The summer we were both seventeen I was almost tall enough to look you in the eye, but still frustratingly half an inch short. On the other hand, I was no longer a virgin, having been freshly plucked a fortnight before, so I made sure to corner you at every opportunity and inundate you with all the lurid details.
“You’ve always been a bit of a beanpole, so I made sure to tell you how enormous the barmaid’s bubbies were and how round her arse. Then I told you about her sweet cherry of a mouth—nothing but pout, but which managed to swallow me whole.”
Her jaw fell—it was a somewhat shocking conversation, even between spouses. “What did I say to that?”
“You said, ‘To fit entirely into a little cherry of a mouth, you must