Carides's Forgotten Wife (4 page)

“Do not speak in code. That is hardly less strenuous on my brain.”

“I am not supposed to bombard you. Much less with my opinions. Opinions are not fact. You need facts.”

“It is your
opinion
that I am not generous. At least not in every way.”

She let out a long breath, feeling frustrated with herself. Feeling frustrated with him. With the world. She wanted to get up out of her chair, throw her cloth napkin on the floor and run out onto one of the grand lawns. Then perhaps she might rend her garment for dramatic effect and shout at the unfeeling sky.

Of course, she would do none of that. She never did.

Instead, she looked up at him and spoke in an even, moderated tone. “Of course you are.”

“Now you are placating me.”

She let out an exasperated sigh. “Are you trying to start a fight?”

“Don’t be silly. We never fight.”

“How could you possibly know that?” she asked, a strange sensation settling in the pit of her stomach.

Of course, he wasn’t wrong. They had never fought. She had done nothing but idolize him for most of her life, and then she had married him. And in the two years since they had gotten married they’d had so little interaction they hadn’t been able to fight. And, frankly, probably wouldn’t have even if she had seen him every day.

He was indifferent to her, but he’d never been cruel. There had never been enough passion between them for there to be a fight.

“I just do,” he said.

“You are so arrogant. Even now.”

“Stingy and arrogant. That is your opinion of me. How is it that we never fight?”

“Perhaps because you are not often around,” she said, taking her first bite of steak and making a bit of a show about chewing it so that he would perhaps cease his endless questions.

* * *

Leon looked across the table at his wife. He did not know quite how to read the exchange that had just taken place between them. She was irritated with him, that much he was certain of. He wondered how often that was the case. He wondered if this was unusual, if the stress of the situation was simply overtaking her, or if she didn’t usually show him her irritation.

Or, more troubling, if he didn’t typically notice it.

She had made several comments now about him frequently being away. She made him sound as though he was an absentee husband at best. Her childhood dream centered around her home being filled with parties. Centered around her hosting these events with her husband, to recapture a part of her life that was clearly past.

Both of her parents were gone. She had made no mention of any siblings. He appeared to be all that she had left, and yet he had seen no evidence that he did very much at all to support her emotionally.

That bothered him. Regardless of whether or not it bothered the man he had been before the accident was irrelevant to him in the moment. She was caring for him. And she clearly felt uncared for in many ways.

He felt compelled to remedy that. If he had to sit around this manor and do nothing but heal for the next several weeks he might as well focus on healing his marriage as well as his body.

It was deeper than that, too. Deeper than just a desire to right a wrong from the past.

Rose was his only touchstone. She was the only person who knew him. The only person he really knew. She was his anchor in an angry sea. And without her, he would be swept away completely.

He needed to shore up the connection between them.

He had lost himself. He could remember nothing of who he was. And from the sounds of things, their connection was much more tentative than it should be.

She was all he had. He could not lose her.

There was only one solution. He had to seduce his wife.

CHAPTER FOUR

I
T
HAD
BEEN
nearly a week since Leon’s return to the manor and he still hadn’t remembered anything. Rose was fighting against restlessness, hopelessness and the growing tenderness in her heart whenever she was around him.

As if that tenderness is anything new.

True. She had always felt...something for him. More than she should. He didn’t care for her like that. He never had. But she could never quite stamp out that...that
hope
. That need. For someone who had been confronted with so much loss she retained rather more than a normal amount of idealism.

There was some part of her that believed steadfastly in happy endings. And being rewarded for good behavior. That was probably why she had always done exactly as her father asked. Why she had done her best to wait for Leon to come around to the idea of being her husband.

And why she had never actually sat down and told him how she felt. Better to close the door herself than have him do it.

“Don’t start hoping again now. Once he remembers...everything will go back to the way it was.”

She lay down on her back on her favorite settee, staring at the ornate ceiling. Then she heard heavy footsteps on the marble floors. She sat up, clutching the book she had been reading to her chest.

“Rose?” Leon strode into the room, looking much more alert and able than he had only a few days ago. He had been resting quite a bit, and had taken several meals in his room since that first night here. It seemed to have paid off.

“Just reading,” she said.

“What are you reading?”

“Nora Roberts.”

“I don’t think I’ve read her. Maybe I have. I wouldn’t know.”

She laughed in spite of herself. “I doubt it.”

“It’s not the sort of thing I would usually read?”

“Unless it’s business-related literature you don’t strike me as the sort of man who reads.”

“You don’t think?”

“You’re usually very confident about who you are, and how you see yourself. What do you think?”

“I think that... I cannot imagine myself going to university. But that’s impossible. Being in the position that I’m in I must have gone.”

“You didn’t,” she said, imagining that it was all right to confirm this.

But you don’t think it’s okay to confirm that your marriage is not quite what it seems?

She gritted her teeth and banished that thought. One thing at a time. And anyway, she intended to have this discussion with him. She intended to end their marriage. But she doubted news of a divorce would be overly welcome to him right now. Especially not when they needed to keep his condition a secret. Especially not when he would have no one else looking out for him. No one else who knew him to help him through all of this.

“Then how... I know enough to know that that is not typically how the world works.” He rubbed his hand over his chin, his skin scraping against the whiskers there. The sound was...strangely erotic.

Rose had no experience with men. Not intimate experience. Beyond that single chaste kiss on their wedding day, and the strangely arousing experience of putting his T-shirt on him, she hadn’t really had any physical contact with a man. Why would she? She had been waiting for Leon. Fool that she was.

As a result, she imagined she was a bit more affected by everyday things than a woman with greater experience would be. Looking at the situation with a little bit of distance she felt sorry for herself. Poor, innocent Rose quivering over whiskers.

Too bad she had no distance in the situation. She had...longing that she could do nothing about, sadness that never seemed to go away, that permeated her entire being and settled a heaviness over her chest, and a deep fear that Leon would never remember anything. Coupled with an almost equally deep fear that he would remember everything and she would have to leave this house, leave him, and move forward with her goal of independence. Of letting go of her feelings for him.

“I’m fuzzy on the details, and I’m sorry about that,” she said, trying to ignore the heat in her cheeks. “All I know is that you were working for my father, for his company. In a very low-level position. You were a teenager. You had not graduated from school. Instead, you left and went straight into the workforce. You did something at the company to catch my father’s eye, and from there he began to mentor you. He took a very personal interest in you, and he began to groom you to be his protégé.”

“My family wasn’t rich,” he said, a strange, hollow look taking over his eyes. “I know that. I’m from Greece. We were very poor. I came here by myself.”

It struck her then, how little she knew about him. She knew he was Greek, that much was obvious, but she didn’t know about his background, not really. She was struck then how little she knew him at all.

He had appeared in her life one day like a vapor and she had hero-worshipped him from that moment on.

That is, until she had fully realized that he would never quite conform to the fantasy she had built around him in her mind. She didn’t wonder why he had married her. The perks of the union were obvious. Her father had been dying, and he wanted to see her settled. He had offered the company and the estate as incentives to Leon, and had put a time frame on the union likely to make sure the two of them gave it an adequate enough try.

All of that made sense. But she suddenly realized that she was the one who didn’t make sense. What had she been hoping for? What on earth had she possibly thought would come from all of this? Who did she imagine he was? That was the problem.
All
of it was imaginary.

As she sat here in the library attempting to reconstruct who Leon was for his own sake, she realized just how much of the puzzle she was missing.

It made her feel... It made her feel small. Selfish. As if she had only ever seen him as an object of fantasy, who lived and breathed to serve her girlish dreams.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She blinked. “Yes. Do I not look all right?”

“You look as though you have been hit across the face with a mackerel.”

She tried to laugh. “Sorry. It’s just... I don’t actually know as much about you as I should. When confronted with the gaps in your memory I’m forced to examine the missing pieces of my knowledge.”

He frowned. “I suppose I bear some part of the blame in that. If not most of it.”

“I don’t think that’s true. I think in this case the fault is squarely mine.”

“I cannot help you with it now. I don’t have answers to any of the questions.”

“I don’t expect you to,” she said, feeling rather weak and pale.

“I do know a few things,” he said, squaring his shoulders, his eyes taking on a determined glitter. That made her feel more at ease. That reminded her of the Leon she had always known.

Sharp, determined, ever in command.

“That’s reassuring,” she said.

“I know that we are having dinner outside on the terrace tonight. And I know that it’s going to be Maine lobster. Which I know is your favorite.”

“How exactly do you know that? You didn’t know what
your
favorite was only a few days ago.”

It wasn’t really because of his memory loss that she found this strange. She wasn’t sure he had ever known her favorite foods.

“I am fully capable of making inquiries. Probably better than I was just a week ago. My entire life has become dependent on answers, and in part, the quality of my questions. I did my best to rustle up some members of the staff so that I could figure some things out about you.”

“You didn’t have to do that.” She felt slightly panicky. As though she was being given a gift that was entirely unearned.

“I know I didn’t. But you are my wife. Not only that, you have been taking care of me ever since the accident.”

“Not entirely. We’ve had a nurse on call. The doctor has been in constantly. I—”

“Just knowing you were here has been invaluable.” He smiled and she felt it all the way down, deep. It made her stomach tighten, made her heart flutter. Why was it always like this?

He extended his hand, his dark eyes meeting hers. She looked down at it as though it were a poisonous snake.

“I’m leading you to lobster. Not to your doom,” he said.

She hesitated, feeling very much like she didn’t deserve to touch him. Feeling very much like this was intended for a woman who didn’t exist. The devoted wife she wasn’t. The devoted wife she would be if Leon had any interest in being a husband in real life.

Or she was overthinking it. This was just dinner. This was only his hand.

She took a deep breath and wrapped her fingers around his. Lightning shot over the surface of her skin, crackling over her entire body, leaving her breathless, leaving her knees weak. She hadn’t touched him since the wedding. She hadn’t touched any man since then. She wasn’t entirely certain she had
really
touched anyone at all.

Her father was gone. And even when he’d been here, he’d been spare on physical affection. All of her close friends, the ones she’d made in her two years of university while starting her history degree, had moved away. None of them were spending their twenties rotting in their parents’ estates. They had all moved to Manhattan, London, exciting places. They were all pursuing careers, or higher education. Bigger goals than clinging to good memories. They were out making
new
memories. And until this moment, until his skin touched hers, she didn’t realize how incredibly lonely she had become.

She had no one to blame but herself.

And this is why you’re leaving.

She took a deep breath, trying to do her best to keep her reaction to him concealed. But then she made a terrible mistake. She looked up, her eyes meeting his, and what she saw there astonished her.

His eyes weren’t blank. They weren’t flat. They were... They were molten. The heat there a perfect reflection of the fire that was rioting through her core.

“Come on,” he said, his voice rough.

She could do nothing but follow him. Which was terribly telling. Not just of this moment, but of the past fifteen years or so.

And once they were outside, her breath caught in her throat, all of the sensations building in her chest, making it impossible for her to do anything but stand there and tremble. He was touching her. And right before them was a beautifully appointed table set for two, a candle at the center.

It was like something that had been torn from her fantasies. Her girlish fantasies. When loving him had simply meant aspirations of sweet romance, holding hands and making sophisticated conversation.

Back before she had realized that there was much more to the connection between men and women than candlelight and hand-holding.

“Is something wrong?”

She looked at him, at his fierce expression. There was an intensity behind his eyes that she couldn’t decode. All she knew was that she had waited most of her life to have him look at her like this. And for some reason he was looking at her this way now. She was... She was powerless to resist. Utterly and completely held captive by that look in his eyes.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she lied, making her way across the expansive terrace and taking her seat at the table.

She noticed then that Leon had a glass of water in front of his plate rather than wine. “I didn’t think you were on pain medication anymore,” she said.

“I’m not. But as I’m not entirely certain what my relationship is to alcohol I decided it best to continue to abstain. I seem to have done all right without it in the past week. Why start now?”

She nodded slowly. The truth was, Leon overindulged in everything. It was difficult to say what specifically he might have a problem with, and what specifically he just chose to indulge in to excess. But she was grateful that he was choosing to remain completely sober tonight. The idea of him being drunk and amnesiac made her feel far too much like the predator he had implied she might be when they had first left for the airport in Italy.

“Oh. Well. Maybe I should drink something else then.”

“You’re fine. It occurs to me that we’ve been talking rather a lot about me. I want to hear more about you, Rose. Because it isn’t only myself that I have forgotten about. I don’t remember anything about you.”

Her heart was thundering hard, her throat suddenly dry. “I’m not sure that I’m a very interesting topic of conversation.”

“I doubt there is anything more interesting to a man than the topic of his wife.”

“We don’t... We don’t have that sort of relationship,” she said, the truth stumbling out of her mouth uneasily.

“Why not?”

“I’m not sure that you are well suited to marriage.”

He frowned. “Have I been unkind to you in some way?”

“No,” she said, trying to dispel his fears quickly. She was afraid that he was imagining himself to be some kind of monster when that couldn’t be further from the truth. “You are independent. We do not live in each other’s pockets, as you have already noticed by virtue of the fact that we have separate bedrooms. We do not often take long meals together out on the terrace. We do not often share our innermost thoughts.”

“Why did you marry me?” The words were so confused, so utterly filled with disbelief. It was shocking. To hear him question why on earth she might have married him.

“I could give any number of reasons a woman would marry you. You are incredibly handsome. Successful. And as for me... I am... Well, let’s not be dishonest about the situation, Leon. I am quite plain.”

He frowned even more deeply. Then he reached across the table, the edge of his thumb touching the corner of her mouth. Her heart slammed hard into her breastbone, her entire body going rigid, every fiber of her being on high alert to see what might happen next. He traced the line of her upper lip, then dipped down to the lower one before sweeping his thumb up to her cheekbone, dragging it slowly across her skin.

“I will confess that my first thought was that you were plain. But as I have spent time with you, as you have cared for me... I can no longer see what I first did. The only real memory I have, the only concrete image in my mind is your eyes. You are what I
remember
, while everything else is vague impressions and hazy ideas. If it is not entirely absent altogether. Your eyes are my truth, Rose. How could I find them, or you, anything but incredibly beautiful?”