Carousel of Hearts by Mary Jo Putney
He had been intending to go to Derbyshire soon to see if the estrangement with Antonia might be repaired. Now, his face a tight mask of anxiety, Simon sent his servant to book coach seats to the north.
Chapter Eight
Dr. Kinlock was correct, Antonia decided: Adam was behaving differently, though perhaps no more so than anyone else suffering from a complete loss of memory. When they arrived back at Thornleigh she had suggested he rest, but he had politely refused, asking her permission to reacquaint himself with the house.
A little uncertainly, she accompanied him, knowing how easy it would be for a stranger to get lost in the long corridors. But it was impossible to think of Adam as a stranger.
He looked quite normal except for the discreet bandage that ran through his light-brown hair, but he reminded her of a cat exploring new territory as he prowled through the house, his eyes sharp and assessing. For all the solidness of his muscular frame, he moved lightly, again like a cat. If he had had whiskers, they would have been quivering with wariness.
Antonia supposed that he sought something that would trigger memories, but he had no success. After moving through the west wing, including the ballroom and the portrait gallery, she suggested going to the schoolroom. It was part of the nursery suite at the top of the house, with low ceilings and a splendid view of the Peaks.
“We spent a great deal of time here as children,” she remarked as they entered the room.
He stopped by a battered desk and brushed his fingers across the top, where generations of bored children had carved their initials. “Here is an ‘A.Y.’,” Adam commented. “I suppose that must have been me.”
She nodded. “Yes. They’re the most elegant initials in the schoolroom. You were always good at carving. Later I’ll show you some of the wooden figures you made when you were older.”
He considered her words for a moment, then gave a faint shake of his head as they failed to stimulate any associations. Restlessly he went to scan the shelves of well-worn books and toys, pausing at the shelf where a dissected map of the world had been left in the assembled position. “Is this how we learned geography?”
“It was the beginning.” She gestured across the room. “You were always interested in faraway places. That globe in the corner was my present to you on your eleventh birthday.”
Adam lifted the map piece that represented France and said reflectively, “The Emperor Napoleon, the Continental System, the blockade. The capital is Paris, important products include silk and philosophers.”
Neatly setting France back into Europe, he crossed to the globe and studied it. “St. Helena, the Cape of Good Hope, Madagascar, the Indian Ocean. I could set out today and navigate a ship to Bombay, yet my own name means less to me than the name of a foreign country.”
He gave the globe a spin of frustration and watched it twirl in its frame. “You say this globe was mine, yet I haven’t the faintest shred of recollection. Bizarre, isn’t it? It’s like a glass wall in my head separates personal and impersonal knowledge.”
He raised a hand to brush at his hair, then dropped it abruptly when his fingers encountered the bandage. “How did I come to live with you?”
“You were orphaned at the age of seven.”
While Antonia debated how much to tell him about his childhood, Adam glanced up. “Who were my parents?”
“Your father was a cousin of my father. His name was James Thornton.” She stopped, seeing by the sharpening of his eyes that he understood what that meant.
“I see. I assume that my mother’s name was Yorke.” His voice was flat. “What was she, a chambermaid or an actress?”
“Neither.” Antonia swallowed, wishing that she did not have to discuss something that could be so hurtful. But lies would not help him rediscover himself. “She was respectably born, the daughter of a very strict Nonconformist minister. Your father was a political radical, a poet who did not believe in anything as conventional as marriage.
“Your mother ran away with him, and both families cast them off. They lived together until your father’s death. Then your mother supported you both as a seamstress until her own death. For a few months, before my father could locate you, you were apprenticed to a chimney sweep.”
From the tightness of his expression, Antonia realized that Adam also understood what that meant, but his question came from an unexpected direction. “Was my father a good poet?”
“I don’t know.” Antonia blinked a bit. “I expect we could find out.”
“Not really necessary. It’s a fair assumption that he wasn’t very good.” Adam wandered over to the nearest window and stared out at the hills, his face hard and expressionless. “How did I feel about my background?”
“I don’t know. You never talked about it much.” She chose her words with care. “You seemed to think that being illegitimate was something of a stigma.”
“Isn’t it?” he asked dryly.
Unable to think of a good answer to that, Antonia kept silent.
Next Adam asked, “What was my relationship to the Earl of Spenston?”
“He approved of you, considered you a good influence on me.” Antonia smiled, more at ease. “He was quite right about that. You usually kept me from getting into worse trouble than I might have. Father also thought it was a good thing for me to have a companion in the schoolroom, since I was alone here so much of the time.”
Adam turned and leaned against the windowsill, folding his arms across his chest. “You were alone here?”
“Oh, not really alone,” she assured him. “I had my own household, rather like a Tudor princess. Since the principal family seat, Spensford, was entailed, I couldn’t inherit it. So my father decided when I was born that I should receive Thornleigh, which had been in the family almost as long.”
She found herself adding, “As a female, I was a sad disappointment to my parents. They tried so long for an heir, and I was all they could manage.”
“One would have thought they would be proud of their efforts,” he said quietly.
Antonia gave Adam a suspicious glance, unsure whether she was getting a compliment or a tease. His expression was unreadable since he stood against the light from the window.
“As a leader of the Whig reformers, my father believed landlords should be intimate with their tenants and obligations,” she explained. “That’s why he arranged for me to spend as much of my time here as possible. So I could know the people and be trained in land management by the steward. He had very advanced ideas about female abilities.”
“Did your parents ever come to visit you?” Adam asked.
“Of course they did,” Antonia said defensively. “And you and I always spent Christmases at Spensford.”
“How very good of the earl and countess,” Adam murmured, his voice dry again.
“They weren’t neglecting me, or at least, not by choice.” Antonia flushed at the implied criticism. “What they were doing in London was important. My mother was a great hostess, as involved with politics as my father. Their efforts improved the condition of people all over Britain. And my father had his own responsibilities at Spensford.”
“How did you feel about that?”
“I understood, of course. My father was a great man.” Antonia found that she had pulled a lock of hair over her shoulder and that she was twisting it nervously.
With a scowl, she tossed the hair back and lifted her chin. “He believed in education and made sure that I had the best available servants and teachers.”
“What persuaded him to admit the bastard son of a mad radical and a female with no common sense into the household?”
In spite of the casualness of the way Adam leaned against the windowsill, Antonia could see tension in him. What must it be like to hear all this as if for the first time?
“When you were found in London, you were sent up to the nursery in Spenston House to have the soot cleaned off. Father was planning on finding you some respectable foster home or apprenticesh
“So I was rather like a toy to keep you quiet?”
“It wasn’t like that!” For some reason, tears were stinging her eyes, and Antonia felt an ache so deep that she had been able to deny its existence. “My parents cared about me, they really did. About you, too. It’s just that they had other responsibilities, important things that needed to be done.”
Adam made a move as if to go to her, then subsided back on the windowsill with an oath. “I’m sorry, Antonia. I didn’t mean to upset you. It just seems like such a bizarre arrangement. If I was raised with you, one would think I would be less surprised by it.”
Antonia randomly picked up the nearest toy, a painted wooden top, and examined it with a great show of interest, not wanting to meet her cousin’s eyes. Even among the aristocracy, setting up a five-year-old girl in a separate household was unusual, to say the least. But it didn’t mean that her parents didn’t care, she told herself fiercely. They were different, special. It was wrong to judge them by the standards of common people.
“Perhaps you always thought the arrangement bizarre, but never mentioned it aloud because it would seem ungrateful,” she said stiffly.
He turned to stare out the window again, his face brooding. “Am I unnerving you?”
Another surprising question. “A little,” she admitted. “I don’t know what to expect. You are so utterly familiar to me that it is hard to remember that, in your eyes, I am the veriest stranger.”
“I unnerve myself,” he said bleakly.
She saw the tension in his shoulders and swiftly crossed the room to lay a comforting hand on his arm. “I know you must find this terribly difficult,” she said softly. “To be surrounded by people telling you what kind of person you are and what you should remember.”
His gaze fell to her fingers where they rested on his forearm. His mouth tightened. Antonia had touched Adam with the casual intimacy of a family member, but the expression in his gray-green eyes was not casual.
Memory was a bond that stretched two ways. Since Adam did not remember their mutual past, her concept of her cousin could no more exist for her than Adam existed for himself. When she touched him, he must see her as a virtual stranger behaving with provocative familiarity.
As taut silence twanged between them, for the first time in her life Antonia was sharply aware of Adam as a man, an intensely and disturbingly masculine one. Over the years she had remembered him in terms of friendship, kindness, and trust, but now he was an unpredictable stranger, not simply an adult version of the cousin she had grown up with. The disquieting moment convinced her that they were truly strangers to each other as nothing else could have.
With studied casualness, as if there had not been that flash of insight to change her perceptions, Antonia withdrew her hand. “I want to help you in any way I can, Adam, but I’m not quite sure how to go about it. Tell me how you want me to behave. If you want company, or a guide, or questions answered, I will oblige the best I can. If I am too much in your pockets, feel free to chase me away. I promise I shall not take it amiss.”
“Thank you. I will need that, I think,” he said. “This must be as difficult for you as for me.”
“Nowhere near as difficult as it would have been if you had died.” Antonia paused, then said unsteadily, “I never felt as alone in my life as when I thought you must have been killed in the explosion.”
He watched her gravely. “Perhaps the Adam you knew is dead. I certainly don’t know who or where the fellow is.”
Her eyes met his, searching. “I can’t believe that the basic material of your personality will change that much,” she said slowly, willing him to believe. “You still have humor and intelligence and kindness. If you never regain your memories, we will just have to create new ones.”
Adam tried to smile. “Whatever the rest of my family is like, certainly I have been fortunate in having you. Thank you, Antonia.”
He thought of Adam Yorke as a stranger whose life he himself had inherited, or perhaps purloined. What had a baseborn man of unremarkable appearance, and surely unremarkable fortune, done to win a woman like this? Her inflammatory beauty drew him, but even more than that, he craved the warmth and honesty in her cinnamon eyes.
The only personal memory he had experienced since waking up after the explosion was a single flash of Antonia laughing up at him, delight in her eyes, her lithe body vibrant in his embrace. That image had come to him when she first told him that they were betrothed, and it had haunted him since. It had made it possible to believe that they were in love with each other, yet his lack of memory hobbled him in his dealings with his cousin. The last thing he wanted was to alienate her by behaving inappropriately.
He wished that he knew Antonia well enough to take her in his arms, but he daren’t touch her for fear of undoing whatever miracle of charm the original Adam Yorke had performed to convince Lady Antonia Thornton to marry him. Even at the most optimistic estimate, it would take time to rebuild whatever relationship had been between them. He felt like a blind man rumbling around a china shop, risking the destruction of the unfamiliar objects around him.
Wearily he raised his hand and rubbed his temples. “Perhaps now I should take your advice and rest. I have enough to think about for the time being.”
Adam was more than tired. He was emotionally and physically drained. It had been foolish of him to insist on exploring the house when they returned from Macclesfield, but he had had an intense need to develop a sense of place to fill some of the voids in his mind.
He had also hoped that some sight or sound would have meaning for him, but there had been no such event. The closest he had come was experiencing a vague sense of familiarity at the sight of the Peaks.
As he followed his cousin to the bedchamber said to be his, Adam tried to formulate a strategy for learning about himself. He had a servant, a valet cum groom named Bradley, whom he would have to become reacquainted with. So far they had only exchanged the simplest of sentences. Perhaps Bradley would have more alarming information about his alleged past.
Antonia had told him that he was involved in various commercial enterprises and that there were papers to examine. Also, the engineer whose invention had put him in this state wanted to talk to him when he felt capable.
At the moment, the only thing Adam felt capable of was prolonged sleep. Maybe he would wake up and this whole mad affair would turn out to have been a nightmare.
* * * *
Adam slept from late afternoon straight through to the next morning. When he awoke, his memory, alas, was as blank as it had been the day before.
As he began stirring about the room, Bradley magically appeared with a pitcher of hot water. The valet had grizzled hair, an eye patch, and a villainous scar across his cheek—not the usual discreet gentleman’s gentleman.
After washing up had revived him, Adam warily said, “You know that I have no more memory than a newborn?”
“Aye. Mrs. Winslow explained the situation to me,” Bradley said, unperturbed.
“How long have you been with me?”
“Five years. I went out east with the Indian army, and after I was discharged, I had a run of bad luck in Calcutta.” A pained expression crossed his battered face. “In fact, you bailed me out of the local jail.”
“What were you doing there?” Adam stopped. “Forget that I asked that. I’m probably better off not knowing.”
“That’s what you said then, too,” Bradley said, a glint of amusement in his one visible eye.
Adam smiled back, feeling more relaxed. “What else should I know about myself?”
Bradley considered. “You always preferred shaving and dressing yourself.”
“That is still true.” Adam felt obscurely glad that some traits hadn’t changed. Next question. “Were you privy to all my disgraceful secrets?”
Bradley looked distinctly uncomfortable
“I sound like a dull dog,” Adam murmured.
“Never that, sir. But you kept yourself to yourself.’’ The servant thought some more. “You were always gentlemanly with everyone, high and low. Too much so, in my opinion,” he added with a burst of candor.
Adam grinned, understanding why he had kept the old reprobate around for five years. “I think that is about as much information about myself as I can absorb at the moment. Where are my clothes?”
Examining his possessions was another way of establishing what kind of man he was. Apparently he liked good quality in material and tailoring, but there was a total lack of ostentation. Adam approved of that. He supposed that being comfortable in his own clothing was a reasonable place to start defining himself.
After dressing in what Bradley assured him was correct country attire, Adam went downstairs. He paused at the bottom of the main staircase, trying to remember if he knew the way to the breakfast room.
Instead, in the morning stillness he heard the lilting sound of a harp. Curious, he followed the melody to the music room, where he found Judith Winslow bent over a golden harp, her face absorbed in the melancholy tune she played.
When he cleared his throat, she looked up in surprise, then offered an uncertain smile. He smiled back. While she lacked Antonia’s splendor, Mrs. Winslow was a most attractive female. “Good morning. I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”
“That’s all right. It is rather early to be playing, but I find it soothing.”
“Do you need soothing, Mrs. Winslow?”
Judith watched as Adam circled the music room, his quick glance registering everything. He had not been prone to probing questions before, but then, he had not been in such a situation. “Well, the last few days have been rather . . . tiring.”