A Portrait of Love (The Academy of Love #3) - Minerva Spencer Page 0,50

stared at her.

Now, Honey! Leave now—

She sat down again.

His lips curved. “Thank you.”

Honey studied her clenched hands and unclenched them, forcing them to lie flat and supine in her lap.

“I’ve been thinking about when I sat for my portrait.”

Her head jerked up. “I thought you didn’t remember me.”

“I didn’t, at first.”

She flushed, the shame of being forgotten fresh all over again.

Simon shook his head. “I can see you don’t understand. I have … problems remembering things.”

“Problems?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of problems?”

“It’s difficult to explain.”

“Well, try.”

Rather than be offended by her tart tone, he gave her a slight smile. “It started during the war, after I’d been injured the first time.”

Honey hadn’t known he’d been injured more than once. But why should she? It wasn’t as if the papers published news of each and every injury an officer suffered.

She settled back a bit more. “What happened?”

***

Simon wished he’d never started down this road and looked for the quickest way off of it. But he had her attention and he realized that he’d do anything to keep it.

“That’s the thing—I can’t recall any of it. One moment I was on my horse, heading down a rocky incline, the next—” He shrugged. “I woke up in a bed three days later. Nothing more than a few scratches on my body,” he lied, not wanting to tell her about the fragments of human bone and iron they dug out of his back. “But there was blood running from my ears and I had no memory of anything.”

“You mean, no memory of your injury?”

“No, I mean anything. I didn’t even know my own name.”

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “How dreadful.”

“Yes, it was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever experienced. Even worse than Waterloo. It lasted for three months. People told me who I was, of course, but my life seemed like somebody else’s—like someone in a book.”

“What finally made you remember?”

Simon opened his mouth to tell her about the night it all came back and then recalled to whom he was speaking: little Honey Keyes. He looked into her worried gray eyes and shuddered. Thank God he’d caught himself in time. He could just imagine telling her how his men had smuggled a Spanish whore into his makeshift hospital room.

Given his reputation for philandering, they had—rather bizarrely—hoped that vigorous bed sport would jog his memory and remind him of who he used to be and what he used to do. Perhaps it hadn’t been bizarre at all, because he’d woken the next morning knowing who he was.

Simon saw that she was staring at him intently, waiting for him to finish the story.

He said, “A friend of mine from Eton came to see me and suddenly it all came crashing back—everything other than the injury itself.”

“How fortunate you were,” she said in a wonderous voice.

“Yes,” he agreed. “I was fortunate.”

“And yet you never remembered what happened?”

“No, I never remembered.” That much was true, at least.

“And nobody who’d been there that day saw anything?”

Simon hesitated. Why tell her nobody else survived that charge? Why tell her that two hundred and fourteen men had died—all except him: Lucky Fairchild. That was what some people took to calling him—although only behind his back.

Lucky Fairchild lying in a pile of dead bodies, most of whom bore bayonet wounds through their necks and torsos—the signs of thorough enemies. All except for Simon, who’d only had a stab in the arse.

Ha. Lucky.

He met her anxious gaze and lied, yet again. “Nobody was close enough at the time. There were no witnesses to what happened.” He didn’t tell her that he’d been able to figure it out well enough even without a witness. A piece of artillery or bullet must have hit the man riding beside him, and a piece of that man—or his horse—must have hit Simon. Or maybe just the sheer percussive force knocked Simon off the horse. Or maybe his head got kicked on his way toward the ground. Or after he hit the ground. It didn’t matter; it was not a tale for a lady’s ears.

“I’m afraid my memory has never been the same since. I’ve … well, lost a great deal of the past.”

Her eyes were suddenly shining with unshed tears.

“Here then,” he said. “What’s this?” His heart skipped uncomfortably in his chest. “Don’t worry, love. I was fine. Hector was fine.”

Her lush lower lip quivered. “Hector?”

He gave what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Yes, my horse, Hector. He came out of it without a scratch. No problems with