love torn completely in two. “You say that because the choices I made suited you.”
“Think back, Helena. Was there any point during the past few weeks when you weren’t the same woman you’ve always been?”
She was beginning to feel uncomfortably close to tears. He was expressing a level of confidence in her that she could not feel herself, telling her that she should trust the choice she’d made. “That same woman I’ve always been would never have willingly gone to bed with you.”
He inhaled slowly, then exhaled just as carefully. “I suppose the lack of residual feelings for Mr. Martin freed you to fall in love with someone else.”
Her nostrils flared. Panic spilled out of her heart into every muscle, every nerve. “Don’t be ridiculous. I have not fallen in love with you.”
She willed him to be nasty to her. She didn’t know how much more of his kindness and consideration she could take.
But he only smiled, if a little sadly. “It doesn’t matter how we label it—I can recognize depth of feeling when I see it.”
She clenched her teeth. “Perhaps it is time for you to purchase a pair of spectacles. I love Mr. Martin, not you.”
“I stand by what I said earlier. You loved Mr. Martin as he was five years ago. But that man no longer exists. Without nostalgia in your heart, he is but an unobjectionable man who holds no particular appeal for you.”
If he’d shouted at her, she could have shouted something back. But his almost saintly composure left her defenseless. She returned to her vanity, sat down, and stared into the mirror.
After a while, the connecting door opened and closed, and she was again all alone in the room.
Bea tugged on Hastings’s sleeve and pointed at a bird.
“It’s a…it’s a…” He had to look again at the bird—he’d already forgotten what it was. “It’s a chaffinch. You’ve seen those before, Bea. See those white bars on its wings? Most definitely a chaffinch.”
Bea gazed at him solemnly, waiting.
He usually said much more on their walks, didn’t he? He’d tell Bea everything he knew about the chaffinch. And if he didn’t know enough to fill a teaspoon, which was sometimes the case, he’d veer the topic to something else. Another songbird—the canary, perhaps. Then he’d talk about how one would think the Canary Islands were named after canaries, when in fact the name derived from Insula Canaria, which meant “island of the dogs.”
Today it was all he could do to put one foot in front of the other.
“This one is a gentleman,” he managed. “See its blue cap and reddish chest? A lady chaffinch isn’t quite as colorful.”
Bea looked behind them, where Helena usually followed. “Lady?”
“Lady Hastings isn’t feeling well—not well at all.”
Bea bit her lower lip. “Old?”
On a different day he would have laughed. “No, she isn’t old like Sir Hardshell. Sometimes people just need to…stay in their rooms.”
It wasn’t until he was standing in front of the pond that he realized that Bea had altered her route for the day so she could play at the miniature cottage again. Such a sign of greater flexibility on Bea’s part should have filled him with joy, but the sight of the cottage, the physical embodiment of how close to happiness he and Helena had come…
He did the only thing he could: He sat down and willed the return of Lake Sahara.
Helena had just dressed when a footman came to announce a visitor. “Ma’am, there is a Mrs. Andrew Martin to see you. Are you at home to her?”
Helena started. Mrs. Martin? Here? She put on her turban. “I will receive her.”
Mrs. Martin wore a gown of deep mourning. Helena’s heart seized. Only after a moment did she see that Mrs. Martin’s mourning gown was not one for a widow. “How do you do, Mrs. Martin?”
Her sister, Mrs. Monteth, looked like a ferret. Mrs. Martin, however, was a pretty woman of patrician mien. She and Helena spoke of the weather and her journey. But when tea had been brought in and poured, the small talk was put away.
“I can see you have your memories back, Lady Hastings—you look at me with a certain misgiving.”
“I am only puzzled by your visit, Mrs. Martin. But you are right: I have regained my full memory.”
Enough of it, in any case. She still could not remember the bum-pinching incident with Hastings—or any part of his first visit to Hampton House. Her heart constricted.
“Excellent, for I’d have come for nothing if you