Table of Contents

Cover Page

Excerpt

Dear Reader

Title Page

About The Author

Dear Reader

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Copyright

“Do I Know You?” Jennie Asked.

Did she? Had she ever really known him?

“Once…” Edward said, swallowing back every angry word he’d ever wanted to hurl at her, gentling his voice as he gentled his words.

She tightened her hand on his. “Before?”

“Yes,” he said, knowing instinctively that she meant before whatever had brought her to Avalon.

Tears trembled on her lashes, and her soft lower lip quivered slightly. “Who are you?” she asked, grasping his arm. “Who am I?”

Edward covered her hand with his. How could he tell her she was his wife and that he desperately wanted her back?

* * *

“Ms. Moon writes with a spellbinding intensity that will keep you up till the wee hours of the morning until the last page is turned.”

—Romantic times

Dear Reader,

Can you believe that for the next three months we’ll be celebrating the publication of the 1000th Silhouette Desire? That’s quite a milestone! The festivities begin this month with six books by some of your longtime favorites and exciting new names in romance.

We’ll continue into next month, May, with the actual publication of Book #1000—by Diana Palmer—and then we’ll keep the fun going into June. There’s just so much going on that I can’t put it all into one letter. You’ll just have to keep reading!

This month we have an absolutely terrific lineup, beginning with Saddle Up, a MAN OF THE MONTH by Mary Lynn Baxter. There’s also The Groom, J Presume?— the latest in Annette Broadrick’s DAUGHTERS OF TEXAS miniseries. Father of the Brat launches the new FROM HERE TO PATERNITY miniseries by Elizabeth Bevarly, and Forgotten Vows by Modean Moon is the first of three books about what happens on THE WEDDING NIGHT. Lass Small brings us her very own delightful sense of humor in A Stranger in Texas. And our DEBUT AUTHOR this month is Anne Eames with Two Weddings and a Bride.

And next month, as promised, Book #1000, a MAN OF THE MONTH, Man of Ice by Diana Palmer!

Lucia Macro,

Senior Editor

Please address questions and book requests to:

Silhouette Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave, P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont L2A SX3

Forgotten Vows
Modean Moon

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MODEAN MOON

once believed she could do anything she wanted. Now she realizes there is not enough time in one life to do everything. As a result, she says her writing is a means of exploring paths not taken. Currently she works as a land-title researcher, determining land or mineral ownership for clients. Modean lives in Oklahoma on a hill overlooking a small town. She shares a restored Victorian farmhouse with a six-pound dog, a twelvepound cat, and, reportedly, a resident ghost.

Dear Reader,

When asked to participate in the celebration of the one thousandth Silhouette Desire, I was honored. As a writer, I am relatively new to the line, but as a reader, I have been around since the beginning—as have many of you.

A thousand books? It didn’t feel like nearly that many when I was anxiously waiting for the next month’s selection because I had already read the current month’s. Did it feel that way to you?

All I ever really wanted to do was tell stories. My favorite picture of me is at about age three, in the front yard with my dolls all lined up—a captive audience, indeed—to listen to the latest of my tales. Today I feel the same sense of wonder when I complete a story. And now, my readers can talk to me. When I receive a letter from Barbara or Martha or Lulu or you telling me how much you liked that story, or when you silently tell me by buying my book, I feel just like that delighted three-year-old in her short skirt and Mary Janes. Thank you, Desire, for making that possible.

As a writer, I feel constrained to be quiet and professional as I express my appreciation for the way my work has been received. But as a reader who still eagerly awaits the great selection of stories and characters and emotions available to us each month between these familiar red covers, what I most want to say is “Way to go, Desire! May there be many thousands more!”

Best wishes,

Prologue

S he would die.

That’s what the doctors said when the woman was brought into the newly opened emergency trauma center of the small community hospital. But because they were doctors, and because this unconscious woman was the first true emergency to be brought into their shining new facility, they cleansed and patched and stitched so that when the moment of death came, which seemed imminent, she would at least be clean and whole. Then they called in the hospital chaplain.

The chaplain administered the sacrament of unction, then sat with the woman, who seemed little more than a child, mourning the waste of this young life and grieving for the pain this loss would cause her family, whoever they might be. But when she clung to life with a tenacity that amazed even him, he said a small prayer and contacted his cousin, vicar of the most affluent church in this well-to-do community for help.

It so happened that the lesson for the previous Sunday had been from the Gospel of Matthew. “…inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me,” and the vicar had preached what he considered to be one of his finest sermons in almost fifty years of service, admonishing his flock to share their blessings as well as count them during the Thanksgiving season in order to prepare themselves for the coming season of Advent. Determined to discover the effectiveness of his sermon, the vicar called on one of the leaders of his congregation, the hospital administrator.

The hospital administrator was not willing to donate the use of an exorbitantly expensive bed in the intensive care unit to the still-unconscious, unidentified and probably uninsured woman, no matter how obviously fine her clothes had been prior to her injuries. But, with gentle prompting from the vicar, he recalled that a number of semiprivate rooms were not currently in use, and, since the staff and facilities were available, he consented, without grumbling about the cost, to letting her be installed in one such room.

She would die.

That’s what the doctors said on the third day, when the infection in the woman’s lungs became pneumonia and it was obvious that she had no resources left with which to fight the disease. But the vicar had been quite busy. Donations of flowers, money and nursing care flooded the hospital. The vicar stood back, smiling gently, pleased with his flock who had opened their hearts, or at least their pocketbooks, to this waif who had quite literally been dropped into their midst.

And still she clung to life.

Matilda Higgins was a retired registered nurse who had thought she was at long last through with all-night duty. Not having much of a pocketbook, though, and thinking of her own daughters and granddaughters, she had given what she could: her time—through the long hours after midnight.

Matilda sat in a comfortable chair in the hospital room, knitting by the light of a single, discreetly angled lamp, as she had for five nights, listening to the labored breathing of her patient. When the sounds of the young woman’s breathing changed, Matilda put aside her knitting, walked to the side of the bed and studied the figure lying there with the observance that had carried her through years of successful nursing.

The patient moved restlessly, awkwardly, hampered by plaster casts and splints and tape and tubes. When she was first brought in, her dark brown hair had hung past her waist. It had been necessary to cut it close to her head in order to search out and remove tiny pellets of gravel and grit embedded in her scalp, to cleanse and treat the long gash. Now her small head, swathed in bandages, stirred on the pillows; her eyes opened for the first time since she’d been found.

She looked directly at Matilda without seeming to see her. Her mouth opened; a small tongue crept out to wet dry lips. “Renn?” she whispered, her voice cracked and rusty. “Renn?” And as strange as the word sounded to her, Matilda knew this must be someone’s name.

Matilda wanted to take the woman’s hand to calm the panic she heard in that lost voice, but that would have been awkward. Instead, she laid her hand on the woman’s feverish forehead. “Renn’s coming,” she said in her most comforting tone, praying that this was in fact a name, and that she had repeated it correctly, praying that this was the right thing to say.

For a moment, an expression that could have been panic, or hope, lighted the unknown woman’s eyes.

“What’s your name?” Matilda murmured. “Tell me your name, love, so we can find Renn.”

The woman in the bed closed her eyes, then opened them again, looking at, and also through, Matilda. With a little sigh, she sank against the pillow. “I’m Jennie.”

One

An hour’s hard drive north and east of El Paso, Edward William Renberg Carlton IV pulled his rented Jeep to the side of the road and stepped out, twisting and stretching to ease his cramped muscles and the knot of tension that had been tightening since the night before, when Simms had brought him the photograph.

His emotions had run the gamut the last six months— from fear to shock to anger. Now his heart and soul were desolate—as desolate as the harsh scrub-desert countryside around him, as desolate as they had been before a wisp of a girl had shown him color and shadings and laughter and, he’d thought, love. Desolate. Except for the knot of tension still tightening.

Edward reached into the Jeep and lifted the picture from its folder. She wasn’t looking at the camera. In fact, she seemed to be unaware of it as she smiled wistfully at someone out of range of the camera’s eye. She’d cut her magnificent hair. Now only a short cap of curls framed her delicate face. She’d shed weight she didn’t need to lose, honed down, and lost the last vestiges of youthful softness.

“Damn it!” he muttered, forcing his fist to relax before he crushed the photograph. “Why?”

But neither the prairie dogs, the coyotes, the hawks nor the scruffy cactus answered him.

He stopped again much later, just outside the town of Avalon, his destination. A mile after leaving the highway, on a curve overlooking the naturally terraced mountainside, he pulled to the verge and looked through a break in the trees—towering pines, majestic oak, hickories and walnuts—at a town that seemed out of someone’s fantasy. He’d expected rural Southwest, perhaps even mountainous West, not a turn-of-the-century village. Not abundant, manicured and carefully planted and tended green.

He shook his head once, as though to clear it, and heard a bell, a church bell, tolling the hour. From where he’d stopped, he could see at least three churches—white frame, red brick, and one gray stone.

Leave it to Jennie to find a place like this. He felt his pain rising to choke him and fought it the only way he knew how, with his anger. Damn it! Damn her! Her whole life had been an illusion. Why should her hiding place be any different? And damn him for giving her the power to hurt him.

If he’d gone to the apartment he kept in the city last night instead of lingering at the office, Simms wouldn’t have found him to show him the picture that had ripped open wounds he’d convinced himself had begun to heal. If Madeline, his administrative assistant, had had her way, if he hadn’t heard her arguing in his outer office, Simms wouldn’t have been allowed in to show him the picture. Madeline was only trying to protect him, as she had for years. She couldn’t understand why he had to know, had to confront, had to ask, “Why?”

The eight-by-ten black-and-white photo and accompanying text had been sent to Simms, the city editor of San Francisco’s largest newspaper, with a polite inquiry as to whether it would rate a small feature, and, if not, would Mr. Simms please refer the material to the advertising department for a paid ad. The letter was signed by Wilbur Winthrop, vicar of St. Alban’s Church, Avalon, New Mexico, and said simply, “Do you know this woman?” The vicar had no way of knowing the Carlton family had owned that newspaper for four generations. Or had he?

Edward had taken the picture from Madeline and the letter from Simms before Madeline had a chance to see it. He’d left his office, taking Simms with him long enough to swear him to secrecy about the photo and the contact’s name and address, then left the building. Later, after Madeline had left no fewer than five messages on his answering machine, and had come to his apartment but had not gotten past the new security guard, he’d left that building, too. And finally, he’d left the city.

There was a small airport just outside of Avalon. Edward had noticed that while readying to leave. But he’d flown his executive jet into El Paso instead, because he hadn’t been sure of the availability of a rental car, hadn’t been sure he wanted to announce his presence in Avalon so blatantly and hadn’t been sure he wanted anyone in his offices to know where he’d gone or the folly that had brought him here. In the anonymous Jeep, he could look over the situation and leave, if he wanted, without anyone’s—without Jennie’s—ever knowing he’d been here; leave—without seeing her.

If she’s here.

For the first time since seeing the photograph, his mind began to clear. Why would the vicar place an ad like that if she were still here? Had she used the vicar, too? The woman he’d thought he’d known wouldn’t have—couldn’t have. But then, the woman he’d thought he’d known wouldn’t have disappeared with a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of bonds from his safe and after finding them nonnegotiable, she wouldn’t have ripped the stones from the rings he’d given her, returning to him only the mangled settings.

The gray stone church was St. Alban’s. Ivy grew up the wall overlooking a well-tended cemetery on the church grounds. New plantings of spring flowers bordered the sidewalks leading to the red double doors of the graceful building. The vicarage sat to one side and slightly back from the road. Like the church, the cottage was a small stone structure that needed only a thatched roof to complete the fairy-tale setting.

Edward stood on the front steps, folder in hand, and sounded the door knocker before he had time to question again the wisdom of his being there. The door opened quickly, and he found himself facing a pleasant-looking older woman.

“Good afternoon,” she said, smiling. “May I help you?” Her voice was pleasant, too, well modulated, as gracious as her surroundings, and bearing a faint trace of an English accent. In spite of the gravity of the situation, Edward felt an answering smile begging to be set free, and wondered, not for the first time since seeing the village, if magically he had been transported to some alternate reality.

“I’d like to speak with Reverend Winthrop, please,” he said.

Not by a flicker of a lash did the woman reveal any curiosity. “Certainly,” she said, opening the door wider and stepping back. “Won’t you come in? My husband is in his study. If you’ll wait in the front parlor—” she gestured to a room opening off the foyer “—I’ll tell him you’re here.”

She hadn’t even asked his name, he mused as he walked into the parlor. But perhaps as a vicar’s wife, she was accustomed to strange men knocking on her door, asking for her husband.

Or she already knew who he was.

Glancing about the room, his eye fell upon the painting. He felt as though someone had just slammed a two-by-four across his midsection. The pain was that instantaneous, that severe, when he saw the framed watercolor hanging over the mantel. He didn’t have to look at the artist’s signature; he recognized the work—a misty, otherworldly representation of the harbor during a festival of antique sailing vessels.

“That’s truly a remarkable painting, isn’t it?” a man asked from behind him. Edward used the excuse of studying the painting to calm his features and his emotions.

“My daughter sent that to me for Christmas,” the man continued. “I’ve asked her to find me more by this artist—Allison Long—but the cost of her work has skyrocketed. Oh, well. I suppose it is inevitable with talent like that. I should be grateful for the one I have.”

Was this man for real?

Edward schooled his features and turned slowly. The man across the room appeared guileless and innocent and a fitting partner for the woman who had admitted Edward to the house.

“I’m familiar with—with Ms. Long’s work,” Edward said softly, waiting.

The older man smiled. “Then we’ve both been blessed.” Then, slightly more formally, he extended his hand. “I’m Wilbur Winthrop. How may I be of assistance, Mr….”

“Carlton,” Edward told him, looking for any sign of recognition or hesitation in the vicar’s eyes and finding none. “Edward Carlton.”

“Please,” Winthrop said, gesturing toward a chintz-covered easy chair. “Sit down, Mr. Carlton. You seem… agitated. Would you care for some tea?”

“No, I—” Was he that easy to read? Edward sat in the proffered chair but refused to sink into its depths. He glanced at the folder in his hand, opened it and held the picture toward the vicar. “I’m here because of this.”

“Ah, Jennie,” Winthrop said. “Oh, my, that was fast. It doesn’t seem possible there has been enough time for it to appear in the paper and bring you here.”

That was neatly done, Edward recognized. Instead of being defensive, or volunteering information, the wily old minister was questioning him.

“The city editor knew of my interest,” Edward told him. A new thought lodged. “Did you send this to several papers or only—only the one?”

“Just the one, for a beginning,” Winthrop told him, taking a matching chair facing Edward and leaning forward. “And your interest in her… ?”

“Why?”

Winthrop blinked. “Why?”

“Why just the one paper?”

“Oh, because of its circulation. And because of her clothes. Marianna Richards recognized the one label we found as being from an exclusive San Francisco shop. And your interest in her?” he asked again.

Edward sighed. “What did she do? And how long has she been gone?”

“Do? Jennie? What makes you think Jennie did anything? And Mr. Carlton—” his voice lowered, firmed “—I really must insist you answer my question. What is your interest in our Jennie?”

Our Jennie? Edward took a deep, sustaining breath. “She didn’t mention me?”

The vicar shook his head slowly. “She mentioned only one person, if indeed she did mention anyone. Matilda was with her that night and isn’t sure she heard properly. It was a strange name, if a name at all.”

Edward studied the man across from him. He didn’t appear to be a victim, didn’t appear to be a conspirator. And, God knew, Edward had to trust someone. “I last saw her on the seventeenth of November.”

Winthrop nodded. “She came to us the week before Thanksgiving.”

“Less than—less than eight hours after our wedding.”

“Oh, my. Oh, my. Oh, dear,” the vicar said.

“When did she leave?” Edward asked, and questions welled up inside of him, spilling into the peace of the room. “How long was she here? What did she do that you found it necessary to run this?” He looked at the folder in his hand. “Did she know about it?”

He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up into the compassionate eyes of Wilbur Winthrop, who now stood before him.

“Mr. Carlton…” The vicar shook his head and crossed the room to a small cabinet, took out a glass and bottle and poured a drink, which he brought to Edward. He took Edward’s free hand and wrapped it around the squat, heavy crystal glass. “Medicinal,” he said in the same low, firm voice he had used in questioning Edward. “You really should drink it.”

Edward considered the vicar’s words and nodded. Winthrop had poured only an ounce or so of liquid into the glass. Edward drank it in two swallows, shuddered once and returned the glass to the minister. Winthrop patted his shoulder once again, placed the glass on a nearby table and resumed his place in the chair facing Edward. Leaning forward, elbows on his knees, he hesitated briefly as if carefully considering his words before speaking.

“Jennie came to us under extremely unusual circumstances, Mr. Carlton. And by being the warm, loving, gentle woman she is, she has touched all of us in this community.”

Winthrop’s smile was both self-deprecating and a little wry. “In case you didn’t notice, Avalon is… well, unique. And those of us who live here—who have lived here for generations—have become complacent and, to put it bluntly, more than a little smug about our obviously superior place in the world.”

Pausing briefly, the vicar continued. “Jennie’s needs—”

“What?”

Winthrop shook his head. “In good time, Mr. Carlton. You of all persons must know how special she is. Jennie’s needs jarred our self-created pedestals, forced us to look at ourselves and to reach into ourselves to give help to someone other than us or our immediate own. To give—because Jennie is who she is, because she responded to our care and caring with such openness and innocence—to give love to someone other than us or our immediate own.”

Edward again felt questions building inside of him. This woman the vicar described was the woman he’d thought he’d known, not the woman who’d left him. He felt his features hardening. What the hell was going on? He lifted the folder, now caught in a death grip.

“If she’s so open and honest and loving, then why—why did you find it necessary to do this?”

Winthrop reached over and peeled Edward’s fingers from the folder, which he dropped to the floor beside the chair.

“I’m sure our sheriff will want to ask you some questions, Mr. Carlton—”

“What-”

“Jennie was injured when she came to us.”

Edward felt himself trying to jerk to his feet, but Winthrop had hold of his hands, patting them as consolingly as he had earlier patted Edward’s shoulder. “I didn’t tell Jennie of my plans to contact various newspapers because I didn’t want to agitate her—or raise any false hope.”

“She’s still here, then?”

Winthrop nodded.

“Then why was the picture necessary? Why didn’t you just ask this open, honest, innocent?”

Winthrop looked at him through ageless, knowing eyes. “There is so much pain in you. What could have caused this?”

“Ask her.”

“I wish I could, Mr. Carlton. I pray daily for that option.” He raised one hand, either in supplication or to stop Edward’s continued attempts to stand. “I told you that Jennie was injured. It was rather more than a minor accident. We almost lost her. Even some of her doctors lost heart, at least for a while. I don’t ask her because she doesn’t know, Mr. Carlton. When she regained consciousness, Jennie had no memory of anything that had gone before.”

The concrete bench sat in a shaded arbor in the vicarage garden and was slightly cool, but the May sunshine, dappled through the leaves, and the gentle breeze were caressingly warm. Jennie raised her face to both sun and wind and laughed softly in delight.

“There, love,” Matilda said from her protective stance beside her. “Didn’t I promise you would enjoy this?”

“That you did, Matilda.”

“Now, drink your tea.”

Jennie grimaced but spoke with mellow good nature. “You’re beginning to sound like a nanny again, Mrs. Higgins.”

“Oops. Sorry.”

But Jennie could tell that the woman wasn’t sorry at all. She smiled in the general direction of her mother hen, took a sip from her cup, set it on the bench beside her and reached for Matilda’s hand. “Now, the guided tour you promised me. Please.”

“Where shall we start? The herb garden? The perennial garden? There is some spring color there. Or the maze?”

Jennie breathed deeply, fighting the sense of frustration and loss that bombarded her, fighting the tears that welled in her eyes. “Let’s start with something simple,” she suggested, hating the quaver she heard in her voice, “something I’m at least a little familiar with.” She found a bright smile for Matilda—the woman deserved no less. “Let’s start with—”

“Matilda? Mrs. Higgins?” Reverend Winthrop called from the house.

Matilda put a comforting hand on Jennie’s shoulder. “Would you like to wait here? I’ll just hurry and see what he wants and be right back.”

Jennie smiled and nodded. “Of course. I’m enjoying being out here. Take your time.”

She’d finished her tea, and Matilda still hadn’t returned. The bench was getting cooler. And the ray of sun had moved so that it no longer lay warm on her face. Jennie squirmed on the bench, easing tight muscles and trying to ignore the growing sensation of someone, or something, watching her. Maybe she could walk a short distance by herself. The paths were well defined; she’d learned that already. And the garden was walled—she’d learned that, too—so there was no way she could get lost.

The fine hairs on her nape prickled; her arms responded to the caress of unseen eyes. She twisted on the bench to face the direction from which those sensations seemed to come. “Is anyone there?” she whispered.

She shook her head, answering her own question. “Of course not.” Of course there wasn’t anyone there. The birds were still chirping merrily. She was just being… fanciful. She supposed it was the newness of being alone in the garden. She really ought to take advantage of this opportunity for independence. Her keepers were loving but much too protective. Surely she had some skills. But how was she ever going to discover them unless she explored?

For a moment, fear tightened her throat and raced her heart. For a moment, her hands clenched on the edge of the bench. She could do this! She could. Then she became aware again of the sensation of unseen eyes watching her. Panic welled up within her, unexpected and unexplainable. Giving a little cry, Jennie rose from the bench and stumbled along the garden walk.

Edward stood in the shade of an ancient oak tree watching the woman on the bench. She was lovely—selfcontained, beautiful. His wife. He felt pain twisting inside him again, as demanding and unwelcome as the desire that tightened and readied his body as he let his wayward eyes caress her.

For a few minutes after the older woman left her, Jennie had sat calmly, to all appearances enjoying her solitude. And Jennie in repose was truly beautiful—truly a beautiful sight in any attitude, he corrected. He’d always been aware of that, but the past six months had refined her beauty. He mourned the loss of her hair, but without the weight of its length, it curled softly—a dark chestnut cap to frame her finely drawn features and emphasize dark brown eyes that had always seemed to be alight with the joy of discovery.

A wide-brimmed, floppy hat with ribbon streamers lay on the bench beside Jennie, and she was wearing a softly floral-patterned, flowing dress. Edward felt the pressure of his lips drawn against his teeth. How appropriate, Jennie, he thought. And how much in character for your setting.

Did she really not remember the past? Edward doubted that, just as he doubted she would thank the minister for his well-intentioned interference with her plans for a haven.

He couldn’t fault Reverend Winthrop for his innocence, for being taken in by Jennie’s act. Hell! He’d been deceived, too. And he was experienced in facing the dark side of his fellow creatures. Before Jennie, many had tried; the Carlton money, the Carlton power were too tempting for a greedy person to pass by without at least attempting to gain some. He’d learned that in a harsh and well-remembered school. But until Jennie, no one had succeeded in getting past the defenses he had so painstakingly constructed.

He clenched his hands into fists. Damn it, Jennie! Why? J wanted to give you the world. I wanted to give you my heart.

And that, of course, answered his question. The world, Jennie would have taken. It was Edward she didn’t want. And although that knowledge still had the power to hurt, it had no power to surprise him. He had always wondered how the laughing, delightful, loving woman he’d thought he’d known could love him, reserved, incapable of voicing even the simplest terms of affection or letting himself believe that love truly existed—unless what she felt for him was really only pity.

Well, he’d been wrong. About himself. About her. Love existed. It had trapped him in a hell from which he might never escape. And pity hadn’t controlled Jennie’s actions toward him. Greed had. Why hadn’t he listened to Madeline from the beginning? Madeline was more than a trusted employee, she was the closest thing to a friend he had allowed himself in years.

As though the turbulence of his thoughts had somehow called out to her, the woman on the bench twisted slightly, raised a hand to the back of her neck and appeared to be listening. Edward leaned back against the tree, deeper in the shadows. He would announce himself soon—Winthrop had granted him only a few minutes alone with her—but not yet. He felt strangely debilitated, unsure of himself and of his ability to confront this woman who had betrayed his deepest trust.

Not yet.

Again, Jennie fidgeted on the bench, but this time she turned, too, until she faced him. Looking almost directly at the spot where he stood beneath the tree, she whispered, “Is anyone there?” Then her eyes darkened. She shook her head. “Of course not,” she said in the same tense whisper. She seemed to listen for a moment longer, her hands clenched on the edge of the bench. Then, with a soft cry that could have been a moan or a plea, she rose from the bench like a startled fawn unused to its new legs, and stumbled away from him, along the brick walk.

Edward’s eyebrows drew together in a stunned frown. Jennie was a graceful woman, as light, as ethereal on her feet as a moonbeam. Why then this halting, awkward gait?

He saw the raised bricks of the path where an ancient root had tunneled beneath and lifted them; Jennie apparently did not. With a startled cry, she fell, tumbling from the path and into a bed of some green ground-cover. Edward started toward her, but something about her actions slowed his steps.

Her eyes filled with tears. “Damn,” she moaned, flailing at the ground with tiny balled fists. “Damn! Damn! Damn!”

She took a deep, shuddering breath and knelt there in the plants for a moment, as still as death, then began patting the earth in front of her, as though looking for something. When her hands encountered the brick walk, she crawled forward until she touched the elevated bricks. She patted them three or four times as though validating their existence or confirming their blame for her fall.

She dragged herself to her feet and shuffled carefully onto the path, then stood very still.

And Edward stood equally still, transfixed by the actions of this woman he had once called a wood sprite.

Jennie took one careful step, then stopped. She turned and reached in front of her, groping at space as she took another step.

Edward saw her eyes, troubled, filled with frustration. Tears quivered on her lashes. She bit at her lower lip, and her eyes darkened, the frustration shifting, changing to— to panic?

“Is anyone there?” she whispered again, her hands extended, palms out. “Please. I can feel you here. Please. Please say something.”

And the truth slammed into Edward with the force of the worst pain he had ever felt—the pain of knowing she was truly gone, that after enticing, inviting and winning his love, she had left him.

The truth. Oh, God. Edward bit back the involuntary cry that lodged near his heart.

Jennie Carlton, his wife—Allison Jennifer Long Carlton—the artist whose work Wilbur Winthrop declared had blessed both their lives—Jennie was blind.

Two

She was broken, and even she didn’t know how badly.

In the long hours of the previous night, Edward had plotted what he would do today. He’d promised himself he would see Jennie, show his contempt for her and her larcenous heart, give in to Madeline’s prudent suggestions to file for divorce and then—oh, God—and then find some way to take his much-needed revenge.

But now that he had seen her, Edward knew he could do none of the rest.

Revenge? He remembered Jennie’s eyes—laughing, glowing with what he’d thought was love, lost in contemplation of the work on her latest canvas. He thought of the stacks of completed work that had filled her studio, of the color and beauty with which she had always surrounded herself, and another small piece of him died. He felt that piece shift and tear. Curious, he thought numbly. He had thought himself past grief.

“Please,” Jennie whispered again.

Edward took a deep breath. Revenge? This was beyond anything his fertile mind would have—could have come up with.

“Don’t be alarmed,” he said softly, walking to her side. He reached for her. “Here I am. Take my hand.”

Jennie closed her eyes briefly as she slid her hand into his much larger one and tilted her head to look up toward him, just as she had countless times in the past. Edward watched the panic fade from her beautiful eyes. For a moment, forgetting, Edward expected recognition to flood them. For a moment, he expected her to smile, to whisper his name with that breathless catch of anticipation that had always beguiled him.

Instead, he saw a curious blankness in the depths of her eyes, a subtle, almost unnoticeable lack of focus, and then, finally, faint confusion.

“Do I know you?” Jennie asked.

Did she? Had she ever really known him? “Once,” he said, swallowing back every angry word he’d ever wanted to hurl at her, gentling his voice as he gentled his words.

She tightened her hand in his and reached with her other hand to grip his arm. “Before?”

“Yes,” he said, knowing instinctively that she meant before whatever had brought her to Aval on. “Before.”

Tears trembled once again on her lashes, and her soft lower lip quivered slightly before she covered it with one fragile hand and closed her eyes against an emotion so strong, Edward felt it vibrate through her, and because of their joined hands, through him.

“Oh, thank God,” she said. “I thought—I was afraid no one would look for me.”

Edward heard a world of fear and loneliness in her words, far more than seemed possible in the pleasant surroundings of the vicarage garden.

“Who are you?” Jennie asked him, once again grasping his arm. “Who am I?”

Edward covered her hand with his, marveling as always at the contrast between her soft, fair, almost translucent skin and his rougher, darker, almost swarthy coloring. He didn’t know which of them was trembling; it didn’t seem to matter. What mattered was the emotion that gathered in his throat, making speech all but impossible. What mattered was this fragile, delicate woman who was looking up at him with such hope. How could he tell her who she was and what she had done? How could he even believe it himself?

Why had Jennie left him? Not for money. He’d bet his life on that. Now. How—why—had he ever thought her capable of that?

His arms ached with his need to pull her close, to hold her against his heart, to fill his senses with her light perfume, to take the comfort her arms, to feel the passion her sweet body had always brought him. Instead, he restrained himself, limiting himself to smoothing his hand over hers one more time before taking a step away, still holding her hand. A lifeline, he thought, looking at their entwined fingers. But for her? Or for himself?

“I think—” Remarkable. His voice almost worked. But what could he tell her? “I think before either of us says much more, we need to talk with Reverend Winthrop.”

A second man was waiting in the parlor with Reverend Winthrop. He studied Edward critically and narrowed his eyes when he saw what Edward only now noticed: Jennie’s scraped knees and the small tear in her skirt. At about six foot two, the man stood eye to eye with Edward, although he probably carried a few more well-muscled pounds than Edward. He had the look of a battered warrior, in his eyes and in the lines of his face. Edward had no doubt that somewhere on his person, this man carried a badge of some sort—a fact that was quickly confirmed.

“Good afternoon, Miss Jennie,” he said in a gravelly voice that carried the remnants of a soft southern drawl.

Jennie smiled toward him. “Good afternoon, Sheriff Lambert. Isn’t it wonderful? This man knows me.”

“Might be, Miss Jennie. Might be. You hurt yourself?”

Jennie grimaced and sighed. “Am I a mess? I fell. It was stupid, I know. To fall, I mean. I was trying to walk in the garden alone. But, Sheriff Lambert, this man knows who I am. He said he wouldn’t tell me until we came back to the house. Ask him. Please ask him.”

Lambert put both his hands on Jennie’s shoulders, with the familiarity of someone who had done so many times before, and Edward forced himself to deny the tension that tightened in him.

“I will, Miss Jennie. But now I want you to go upstairs with Mrs. Higgins and take care of your lovely knees.”

Jennie straightened her small shoulders, and Edward recognized the defiant lift of her chin. “Sheriff Lambert,” she said in the same gentle voice Edward had once heard her use on a gallery owner who had made the mistake of thinking he could lie to her about sales of her work, “in spite of appearances and circumstances, I am a mature adult. I will not be sent to my room like a child.”

“No, Miss Jennie, and I wouldn’t do that to you, either. But I’m going to talk to this man and find out who he is before I let him try to tell me who you are. When I’m satisfied, we’ll all talk together. And that’s a promise. Until then, you just don’t go getting your emotions in a lather.

“You’ve been hurt enough, and none of us,” he continued, giving her shoulders a little shake, “none of us is going to let you be hurt again. Understand?”

After Jennie and a woman introduced as Mrs. Higgins left the parlor, Edward walked to the fireplace and looked again at the framed watercolor. His ship, the Lady B, named by his father years earlier, created the visual focus for the painting. Even at rest, bare-masted, with no sign of a crew, she seemed to dance in the water, to shimmer across the misty canvas.

He bowed his head in his hand. What now? How had Jennie come to Avalon? Why had she come to Avalon? And how had she been hurt? He straightened his shoulders, drawing his strength around him, and turned. Wilbur Winthrop was still standing near the door to the hallway. Edward pierced him with an accusing glare.

“You didn’t tell me she was blind.”

The two other men exchanged a long, measuring look, but it was Lambert who spoke. “Well, now, that answers one question, but it sure does raise up a host of others.”

“I’ll need to use your telephone,” Edward told the minister. “I have to call my assistant, arrange to have my plane flown here, put a—a what?—a neurologist? on standby, have someone get my apartment ready for Jennie—”

“I don’t think so.”

The quiet determination in Lambert’s voice put an abrupt end to Edward’s disjointed planning.

“You don’t think so? Sheriff, I have every right to take my wife home.” Edward heard the words spilling from his mouth.

Where had those words come from? He had fully intended to leave her to her own devices, with her greed to keep her company. Greed? Jennie?

He felt a hand on his arm and dimly realized Winthrop had led him across the room, was pushing him down into the chintz-covered chair, was once again wrapping his fingers around a squat, heavy glass. “Drink,” Winthrop insisted. “You look like the walking wounded.”

Edward did as he was told. He laid his head back against the chair and drew deep, even breaths, at first barely aware of what he was doing, then gradually recognizing what was happening to him. He began fighting the shock, fighting the fear and anger that had waited just below his conscriousness to claim him. Gradually, he summoned the strength of will that had sustained him over the years.

He couldn’t come apart now; he hadn’t since his parents’ deaths, and he’d been only ten at the time. He was an adult now, a grown man who could face any problem.

He became aware of the force with which he grasped the chair’s arms, of the silence in the room broken only by the ticking of a clock, of his own breathing. He became aware of Lambert watching him. Slowly, he released his grip on the chair, eased his breathing and met Sheriff Lambert’s steady gaze. Instead of the derision or pity he expected to find in the sheriff’s eyes, Edward found a grudging respect, as well as a wariness he felt sure this battle-weary warrior showed everyone.

“I have some questions for you, Mr. Carlton,” Lambert said, taking a small notebook from his suit coat and making no reference to what had just passed. “Let’s start with Jennie’s full name.”

“Allison Jennifer Carlton,” Edward told him in the same dispassionate tone of voice the sheriff used. Then, realizing Jennie had claimed the name Carlton for only a few hours before she disappeared, he added, a little too loudly in the waiting silence of the room. “Long. Her maiden name was Long.”

He saw Winthrop’s head jerk up, saw the horrified questioning glance the minister shot at the watercolor he so prized.

“Yes,” Edward told him, without waiting for the man to ask. “Yes,” he said, sighing, expelling a little of his own pain. “Jennie is that Allison Long.”

Jennie leaned back in the chaise longue in her room, her knees faintly smarting from the antiseptic Matilda had applied, her ego faintly smarting from being sent to her room.

Her life was being discussed downstairs. She had a right to be there. She had a right to have a voice in any decision made.

She smiled ruefully. Sheriff Lambert was probably right to exclude her. Apparently, she hadn’t done such a bang-up job of running her own life until now.

Her finger ached. Absently, she rubbed it, as she found herself doing often when she tried to put order to the puzzle of her life. The doctors told her they could fix it—a simple surgical procedure—rebreak the bone, set it properly. Jennie shivered. She’d had enough pain to last a lifetime. Too much pain, she acknowledged, remembering how it had been when she first woke up in the Avalon hospital.

She closed her eyes, and the field behind her closed lids grew dark. It wasn’t always dark; it was—it was more like walking into a dense fog just after twilight. Interesting, she thought. A new analogy. Before, she had compared her lack of sight to trying to look through layer upon layer of vaporous gray scarves.

When she slept, she had vision: color—vibrating, shimmering color—if not always shape. And sometimes her dreams were peopled. One person appeared repeatedly—a tall, stern man. In her dreams, she teased him, sensing it might somehow be similar to baiting a tiger. And although she never clearly saw his face, on rare occasions she found her efforts rewarded by a rusty, little-used smile.

Was he the one who had come for her?

She had been so afraid—When? Jennie couldn’t consciously remember feeling the soul-shriveling depth of fear she now knew had once gripped her. When?

“Here you go, love,” Matilda said as she entered the room. “Blackberry tea and some of Mrs. Winthrop’s wonderful chicken salad.”

Jennie looked up, not distracted by Matilda’s loving offering. The man who had come for her was tall. Was he… dark? Was he… stern?

“Matilda,” Jennie asked. “The man who—the man downstairs—what does he look like?”

“Ah, Jennie, Jennie,” the older woman said softly, sitting beside her on the chaise and placing the tray across Jennie’s lap. “I suppose he’s a fine-looking man, healthy, strong of will and body, but, child, he doesn’t look like he’s ever in his life smiled.”

Sheriff Lucas Lambert’s office was in keeping with the affluence of the town: state-of-the-art computers and communications equipment shared spacious, carpeted quarters with high-tech filing and retrieval systems, welldesigned furniture and cubicle dividers and professionally uniformed employees.

The office was distinctly out of keeping with the rugged, world-weary man who seated himself behind his oversize mahogany desk and glanced quickly through a file a deputy had handed him as he and Edward had entered the building.

Lambert tossed the folder onto his desk, glanced at it, glanced at Edward, opened a desk drawer and brought out a much fatter folder and placed it beside the first one. He took the pen and small notebook from his jacket and aligned them with the folders. He picked up the pen, rolling it between his fingers as he studied Edward. Then, apparently reaching a decision, he dropped the pen to the desktop. “Your identity checks out.”

Seated in a chair in front of the desk, Edward only nodded. He was unaccustomed to being doubted, surprised there had ever been any question of his truthfulness.

“You didn’t report your wife missing.”

“There didn’t seem much point in reporting anything,” Edward said tightly. “I had a—a farewell note from her telling me how much better her life would be without me in it.”

“Didn’t you find it a little strange that your wife of— what?—eight hours or so just up and took off?”

“Hell, yes, I found it strange,” Edward said with quiet fury. “As strange as the fact that our airline reservations for our trip to Hawaii had unexplainably been rescheduled for a later flight, as strange as the fact that my private office was burglarized that afternoon requiring me to go down there. As strange as the fact that when I returned to my home, my brand-new wife, one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of bonds and several other reasonably valuable items were missing. As strange as the fact that when I went to Jennie’s studio, trying to make sense of what had happened, I found it stripped of any sign of her, including all of her unsold work.

“Yes, Lambert. I found it damned strange. But I had a note from her. A note, damn it man, that stripped me as bare as that studio. A note taunting me with the wonderful new life she was going to lead once she broke free from me.”

Lambert leaned back in his chair, once again sliding his pen through his fingers, once again seeming to come to a decision. He stood and nudged the fatter of the two folders across the desk toward Edward. “Take a look at this while I change clothes. Then we’ll both go take a look at the place where your new bride spent two, maybe three days of that wonderful new life.”

Edward was feeling sick, physically ill, when Lambert returned to the office wearing jeans and climbing boots and carrying a lightweight jacket. He dropped another pair of boots at Edward’s feet.

“You’ll need these,” Lambert said. “I think they’ll fit you.”

Edward closed the file, but he couldn’t close away the memory of the police photographs or the medical reports. He couldn’t close away the rage that he felt growing inside him—the need to hit—to hurt. He held his hand flat on the cover of the folder as if by doing so he could hold all its horrible contents away from him, away from Jennie. God, no wonder she didn’t remember. Thank God she didn’t remember.

“What did this to her?”

Lambert took the folder from him and put it back in the desk drawer before he answered. “For a while, I entertained the thought that maybe you did this to her.”

They took the sheriff’s Land Rover. They’d driven for over an hour, most of it on narrow dirt roads, the last fifteen or twenty minutes uphill on a rutted, hole-pocked narrow trail. They’d long before left the green surrounding Avalon and had entered what Edward had always thought typical of eastern New Mexico—harsh, rocky land, barren except for scattered cactus, which now, but only for a few short days, blazed with color, outcroppings of rock, the badlands of hundreds of B-grade western movies, and mountains—harsh and unforgiving.

Lambert eased his vehicle across a boulder-strewn dry gully, left the track and pulled to a stop at the edge of the precipice that overlooked the dry bed of some ancient ocean.

“Watch your step,” Lambert told him and felt his way over the edge and onto a barely visible animal trail. With only one quick glance toward the valley floor, Edward followed, feeling rocks sliding beneath his sturdy boots.

Finally, they reached an outcropping of rock that formed a narrow ledge and an overhang that created a sort of cave. The animal trail continued downward, but Lambert stopped.

“There are two ways to get here,” Lambert told him. “Up from the valley floor, or down from the ridge.” He pointed to a shallow depression beneath the overhang. “Two high-school boys cutting class and out exploring for outlaw gold found Jennie there.

“We don’t know when she lost her sight, but even sighted, there’s no way she got here by herself. She either fell or was pushed from about where we parked,”

In the last few hours, Edward had been hit with almost more than he could stand. For his sanity, for Jennie’s sake, he had to emotionally separate Jennie from this anonymous broken woman who had been discarded on a New Mexico mountainside. He had to get his protective armor in place, had to stop acting like a terrified ten-year-old. Never again, he’d promised himself years ago, would he give in to the nameless, numbing horror he had once experienced. And he hadn’t. Until now. But not until Jennie had he let himself be vulnerable again.

“You’re sure she didn’t come here for some reason?”

“What reason?” Lambert asked. “And yes, I’m sure. She couldn’t have walked it. The trail down from the top is a cakewalk compared to the one up from the valley floor. And we found no vehicle.

“You last saw her on the seventeenth of November,” Lambert asked abruptly. “What was she wearing?”

What was she wearing? For a moment, the memory swirled through Edward’s mind.

He pulled the sheet over Jennie’s bare shoulder and smoothed the dark hair away from her cheek, placing a kiss that was much more chaste than anything he felt at that moment on the tender skin he had just exposed.

“God, I hate to leave you,” he told her, tracing his finger over her cheek, outlining lips that only a short while before had driven him nearly crazy with her untutored passion.

“And I hate for you to leave, but you know Madeline wouldn’t have called unless it was important,” she said.

“Are you all right?” he asked her. “Really all right? I didn’t hurt you?”

She grinned at him then. “One of my deepest, darkest secrets is this hidden desire I’ve had to be ravished by a loving madman. Edward?” She sat up in the bed, letting the sheet fall away from her as she captured his face in her small hands.

“Edward, I’m teasing you. Of course you didn’t hurt me. You’d never do that.”

“She was—she was dressing for dinner,” he said, forcing himself back to the present. “We were going to go out to eat when I returned… before we caught our flight.” Edward threw off his memories. “Could she have parked somewhere else and walked in?”

Lambert shook his head. “She was wearing a white silk dress, silk lingerie. No jewelry. No hose. No shoes. The boys found her on the twenty-first.”

“So she had four days to get here.” Edward focused his thoughts on those days rather than on the way Jennie had looked in the photos. “Four days to—to do what?”

Again Lambert shook his head. “I think she was here at least as early as the nineteenth.”

“Why?”

“It rained on the nineteenth. Her clothes were… muddy.”

“Who?” Edward shouted. It was either shout or scream. He looked at the ridge above him. “What kind of animal would do this?”

“I don’t know,” Lambert told him. He studied Edward carefully. “And until I find out, Jennie’s a ward of the court. I’m her guardian. Until we find whoever did this, I’m not letting you take her out of my jurisdiction.”

Edward met Lambert’s appraisal with one of his own. “I won’t try to,” he admitted. “It doesn’t seem I’ve done too good a job of protecting her. I appreciate all the help I can get. I do want to bring some of my people here, make arrangements to stay as long as necessary. I’m not leaving Jennie.”

Lambert nodded his agreement. “I’ve got some ideas of my own now that we know who she is, but do you have any suggestions as to how we find the bastard who did this?”

Edward looked over the valley floor. He wasn’t ready, or able, yet, even to consider that Jennie had been taken from him, that she hadn’t left voluntarily. But even if she had left willingly with someone, she had been betrayed even more brutally than Edward.

“There was no ransom demand.”

Lambert waited quietly while Edward sifted through his memories, realigning them, examining them in the light of what he had learned in the last few hours.

“Two suggestions,” Edward said finally. “We need to find the former security guard at my apartment. He quit without notice and left the day before the wedding. And…maybe you’d better do this. Ask Winthrop’s daughter where she got the painting.”

Edward allowed his bittersweet memory only a moment’s life.

“It was Jennie’s wedding present to me. The last time I saw it, it was in my apartment—and so was Jennie.”

Three

Jennie awoke while the house lay silent and still. Quietly, she made her way to the window seat and pushed open the casement window. Then, drawing her feet up onto the cushion in front of her, she rested her chin on her knees and surrendered to the gentle breeze that drifted through the window as she listened to the predawn sounds of birds searching for their breakfast.

Her world was still dark, and would be until the sun rose to lighten the dense fog of her sightlessness.

And she was alone. Still. Though surrounded by a house full of loving, caring people.

Had she always been alone?

This was the question that had filled too many of her sleepless hours in the months of her life since she had first woken up in Avalon.

She couldn’t have been—not if she trusted her dreams.

But after what had happened to her, who, or what, could she trust?

The man hadn’t returned by the time she had been put to bed like a child or an invalid. She didn’t even know his name.

“It’s better this way,” Reverend Winthrop had insisted softly, patiently, and with a sadness she had not heard before in his voice. “Lucas will explain, if any explanations are necessary.”

Better for whom?

Not for the first time, Jennie wondered how she looked. She knew she was shorter than most people, or at least those she had met in Avalon, whose voices all seemed to come from above her head—even Matilda’s. And small. At least compared to Sheriff Lambert, who had carried her easily on more than one occasion when she was in the early stages of her recovery.

But did she look like a child? Or worse, like someone who couldn’t cope with the slightest obstacle, frustration or tension?

Didn’t they know? Didn’t they know that her every waking hour, and too many of her sleeping ones, were filled with all of those things?

Who was the man?

Was he the tall, stern man of her dreams?

And why hadn’t he returned?

“Foolish question,” she whispered to the caressing breeze. He hadn’t returned because Sheriff Lambert hadn’t let him return—wouldn’t let him until he had completely checked out the man’s story and probably his life from the day he was born. The man in her dreams would not quietly tolerate that kind of inspection, that kind of doubt.

But then, the man in her dreams was just that—a figment of her imagination, created by her subconscious to ease her loneliness, to fill the awful empty hours of the night when her doubts and fears crept around her.

She heard noises through the open window, the sounds of kitchen windows on the floor below being opened and then the robust and off-key singing of Caitlin, the Winthrops’ cook and housekeeper, as she began preparations for breakfast.

Jennie sighed and rolled her head and shoulders, hating the tension that too often plagued her, then relinquished her comfortable place at the window. Matilda would be coming soon to check on her, and because Jennie didn’t want the kindhearted woman to worry about how long her charge had been awake, she eased herself back into bed and pulled the sheet up.

Maybe today he would return, she thought as she turned onto her side and burrowed her cheek into the softness of the down pillows. Maybe today someone would tell her who he was. Maybe today someone would tell her who she was.

Edward paced the comfortable room, impatient for dawn to finish lighting the sky, impatient to make the telephone calls he had promised Lambert he would wait to make. Impatient to see Jennie again. To confront her with his accusations? To comfort her? Or just to hold the woman who was his wife and pretend that the last six months had never happened? To pretend that she loved him, to pretend that he was capable of giving her the love he’d once thought she wanted from him?

Lambert had brought him back to the outskirts of Avalon to this converted private hunting lodge last night too late for anyone with any decent manners to go banging on the vicar’s door. The problem was, Edward wasn’t feeling particularly decent, mannerly or even civilized by that time. What did keep him from rebelling against Lambert’s edicts was the knowledge that Jennie was probably asleep and that she’d need all the rest and strength she could stockpile against the time he finally told her all he knew about her disappearance. If he told her the whole story.

What Edward didn’t understand was why he had also acquiesced in the matter of not contacting his office until the next day. Postponing telling anyone until after he had talked with Jennie, until after he’d had time to absorb at least partially all that he had learned that day, until he’d had time to understand at least partially all the conflicting facts and emotions that had battered him that day, had seemed reasonable, natural even.

But that had been while he and Lambert were seated in front of a still-necessary fire in the huge stone fireplace downstairs, eating the thick roast beef sandwiches the sheriff had, with no apparent effort, convinced the innkeeper to produce long after the dining room had been cleared. Edward had leaned back in a heavy leather chair, poised between exhaustion and jittery nervous energy, and accepted a welcome brandy and not so welcome advice.

He had, reluctantly, accepted the sheriff’s advice, knowing that all hell could have broken loose in his corporate offices in the twenty-four hours since he’d left San Francisco without telling anyone where he was going.

Now, in the gray light of early morning, all that kept him from calling Madeline was his promise to the sheriff, a promise he was eager to be released from but that he would honor.

At last, faint noises rose from the rooms on the ground floor. He stopped near the window, listening, until he recognized the sounds of the lodge coming to life. At last. It seemed hours since he had given up on sleep. He rolled his neck and shoulders in a vain attempt to ease the tension there, then headed for the shower in order to prepare himself for the day’s events. There was no more time for delay. Jennie was waiting for him.

He stopped as he reached the bathroom door.

She was waiting for him, and she had no idea who he was.

Once before, he’d thought that. Once before, he’d convinced himself that none of the curse of the Carlton past could intrude on the magical time he spent with her.

Well, this time she didn’t know him. Yesterday had convinced him of that much at least. But his past, with all of its suspicion and betrayal and pain, was as alive as an actual, physical person standing firmly by his side.

Laughter as soft and delicate as the melody of a distant wind chime whispered through the vicarage garden, calling to Edward and leading him deeper into the comforting, slightly shaggy maze of spring flowers and ancient trees with their tender new leaves. Leading him deeper into the maze of conflicting emotions which battered him mercilessly. Pain, anger, frustration, but most of all, weariness. Unrelenting, soul-draining weariness.

God, he was tired. Tired of being alone. Tired of always having to protect his companies, his privacy, his emotions, and even his life, from the greed that his father, and now he, seemed to attract like a powerful magnet.

For a few weeks, the woman somewhere ahead of him in the garden had made him believe in happiness and love and the goodness of others. He’d thought he wouldn’t be able to survive her betrayal. And now, wounded as she was, she tempted him once again to believe, to hope that there would be someone to take away the emptiness of his life. An emptiness that before Jennie he had so completely denied, not even he had known it existed.

No!

For a moment, he thought he had moaned the word aloud, so abruptly had the denial overcome him. He stopped, slowed his breathing and listened for any outward sign that he had been heard. “No,” he whispered when he at last accepted that the cry had been entirely in his mind.

But he didn’t know what he was saying no to—the memories of his sorrow, or the memories of those first unreal weeks with Jennie.

Not again, he promised himself. He would see to her needs and he would help her recover if that was at all possible, but he wouldn’t, couldn’t open himself to the kind of pain that she had so easily, so senselessly inflicted on him. Not again.

He heard her laughter, closer now, mocking him, beckoning to him, and now it was joined by another voice, also feminine, but deeper, and, he knew, somehow, younger. The words were indistinguishable but spoken in a pleasant, bantering tone which called from Jennie another gurgle of laughter.

Edward tensed, remembering that laughter all too well. Then, forcing himself to relax, he centered his attention on the direction from which the sounds were coming and not on the bitter memories they evoked, and continued walking.

He wanted to see her once more without the presence, well-meaning or otherwise, of the vicar or the sheriff. That was why he hadn’t waited for Lambert to arrive at the lodge but had requested a ride into town from the innkeeper. Requested in a calm, civil manner, but in a tone all of his employees would have recognized as a demand.

He hadn’t known Jennie was in the garden. That was an unexpected bonus. When he had arrived at the vicarage, he had thought merely to take a few moments in the pleasant surroundings to collect himself and his vagrant thoughts before beginning the confrontations that were sure to mark the day.

As he walked deeper into the garden, he heard Jennie’s voice join the other, and as he drew closer he began to discern words. Words, but not meaning.

“Watch out,” the younger voice said breathlessly. “To the right. Higher. Quick. Up, up. Oh, drat.”

“Ouch.”

“Got you, did he? Darn, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Jennie said softly. “Here, let me have him. No, no, no,” she crooned. “Easy. It’s time to be soft now. Easy. Easy. That’s a good boy.”

What the hell? Edward thought, even as he felt himself succumbing to the hypnotic temptation of Jennie’s soothing voice. A lie, he reminded himself. It had all been a lie. That was all he needed to remember. And someday, some way, he would learn the reason for that he.

He rounded a lilac bush and found her there, wearing another of those soft, flowing dresses and sitting on another stone bench. She was holding a half-grown yellow tiger-striped kitten that had stretched out in her lap and was purring loudly enough to be heard across the several feet that still separated Edward from the two women.

No, not both of them were women, he amended. The girl sitting cross-legged at Jennie’s feet had several years to wait before she reached that status. All arms and long legs and huge eyes in a too-thin face, she seemed, somehow, comfortable with the spurt of growth her body had given her, comfortable with the awkward age she was passing through. Comfortable with sitting and talking sad playing with a blind woman.

The girl saw him first and rose to her feet with awkward grace. “Jennie,” she said in a hushed, protective voice. “We have company.”

Jennie half rose and looked around, surely an instinctive gesture, because she looked right through him with her sightless eyes, then sighed and gave a little frown. “Who?”

“Don’t know,” the girl muttered. She lifted her chin and challenged him. “You’d better tell us who you are and why you’re here before my dad gets here, mister.”

Lambert. Edward identified who her father must be before she finished speaking. The girl’s coloring was lighter and her features finer, but her mannerisms were completely and distinctly the sheriff’s.

“I’m sorry I startled you—”

Jennie’s frown turned into a smile of such dazzling joy it hurt him to watch. “You came back,” she said breathlessly. He saw the tension drain from her as she sank back onto the bench and stroked the kitten. “I—I knew you would.”

But she hadn’t known. That much was as painfully clear to him as her happiness had been only moments before. And suddenly he felt this overpowering need to comfort her as she comforted the kitten. “It was late last night when we returned to Avalon—too late to disturb you.”

“You went somewhere?” she asked. “You and the sheriff? Is everything all right?”

No, it wasn’t, hadn’t been for a long time, might never be. But that wasn’t what she meant. She meant between him and the local law. “Yes,” he said gently. “Everything is fine.”

She extricated a hand from the cat and held it out to him. “Please,” she said, her smile an invitation he had never been able to resist, “join us.” She nodded toward the girl at her feet. “This is Jamie. Jamie, this is—” She stopped abruptly and looked toward him as her smile faltered. “I’m sorry. I don’t know your name.”

They hadn’t told her. Not one thing. And in spite of the fact that she would have to know, have to confront who she was and what she had done, he couldn’t tell her, either. Not now. Not without more support for her than a half-grown cat, an adolescent girl and an embittered and cynical man she had no memory of.

“I’m Edward,” he said, stepping to her side and, because he couldn’t help himself, taking her small hand in his.

“Edward.” Her voice caressed his name as she tested the sound of it. “Edward.”

Her fingers flexed in his and he felt their gentle pressure. Because he couldn’t stop himself from this, either, he ran his thumb over her fingers, across the one where his rings had once dwelled, and found a ridge of tortured bone beneath delicate, pale skin.

Startled, he looked down. With a sense of relief, he found something else on which to focus, a small trail of blood oozing from a tiny wound in the fleshy pad of her thumb. “Your cat has drawn blood,” he said.

“Let me see,” Jamie said.

The girl pushed her way between them and grabbed Jennie’s hand. “Oh, darn,” she said. “I’m sorry. Heathcliff’s had his shots so that—”

“It’s all right,” Jennie told her.

“But-”

“It’s all right, Jamie,” she repeated again. “He was just playing.”

“Something to clean it with would be in order,” Edward told the girl.

“And I’m supposed to believe it’s all right to leave you alone with her?”

“Yes,” Jennie insisted softly. “It is. And no, I don’t need any first aid.”

Jamie studied him with Lambert’s wary, suspicious eyes. And then, because Edward couldn’t stop this, either, another, darker thought intruded. Meggie. Was this how his sister would have been at Jamie’s age? Tall, yes. That had always been a given. But would she have been poised and comfortable with herself beneath the mantle of security Jamie wore so casually? Or would she have been awkward and at war with a body growing too fast for her heart and mind to keep pace with?

This was something else that Jennie had done to him. She had drawn him out of the shell he had so painstakingly erected and laid open wounds he had thought long healed.

Forcing himself away from those thoughts, he smiled at the girl. “You might as well tell Reverend Winthrop I’m here, even though I’m pretty sure the innkeeper has already called your father and told him that he brought me into town.”

Jamie grinned at him. “It’s a small town. It’s either great or a really big pain depending on your attitude and what you want to keep secret.”

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