Read Online The Duke's Deceit by Sherrill Bodine - Free Book Online Page B

his silken hands, she swallowed, a difficult task considering the tightness of her throat.
    “Yes, soon all your memories will return. I, too, look forward to that day.”
    It was becoming a habit to stand at the upstairs window to observe Mary undetected. She was preparing for her morning ride. Of late, he’d stayed away. His sleepless nights were forming the pattern of his days. The dark hours found him, wide-eyed, staring at nothing as he forced inroads into his blank mind, searching for any faint memory. He was beginning to see a path, the faintest lightening in the blackness. He sensed that patience was not a virtue he’d ever possessed, but he practiced it now with Mary. He desired her. But for unknown reasons he felt compelled to keep his distance. The kiss, the few touches between them had produced feelings that did not match his fuzzy yet oddly distinct recollections of his intended bride. Had the accident altered him in some way, or perhaps her, so that whatever was between them had grown and ripened?
    A wave of impatience with his recalcitrant mind drove him down to the kitchen. Mayhap Lottie could help him.
    He found her with the sleeves of her blue merino dress rolled up to her elbows, and she was covered with flour. It flew around her plump hands as she kneaded bread dough, it clung in a white film to her heaving bosom, and specks of it dotted her rosy cheeks.
    “Lottie, where has Mary gone off to?” Propping one shoulder against the small fireplace mantel, he watched with tightly reined impatience as she stared up at him, her rosebud mouth uncharacteristically drooping.
    “She’s off to the pond,” she answered slowly, wiping her hands on a fluffy blue cloth. “Why are you asking?”
    “I thought I’d join her and bring a picnic. Can you help me?”
    For an instant he saw a kind of panic on her face. Then her kind eyes softened, and her lips curled up in their usual response. “Yes, I’ll help you.”
    She flew around the kitchen, filling a basket with leftovers from yesterday’s luncheon and, seeing his longing look, two still-warm apple tarts.
    She hummed while she worked, an odd, off-key, tuneless humming, that nonetheless cheered him. It stopped abruptly when he picked up the basket to go.
    “Richard, Mary’s a good girl. Truly she is.”
    He paused, and gave her a smile of rare compassion. “Mary is quite safe with me, I promise you.”
    It dawned on him, as he rode away on Wildfire, the basket carefully balanced in front of him, how odd Lottie’s choice of words had been. He might have lost his memory, but there still existed a code of honor which dictated that one did not ravish his intended. He certainly had no intention of forcing himself upon his future bride. He simply needed to understand her and their relationship more clearly to pick his way through the darkness. Today was a day for beginnings. A greater understanding would grow between him and Mary, and that would lead to his answers. Then he could forge a new path.
    He found Mary on a lovely sloping bank above a clear waterfall splashing over the rocks strewn in its bed, which formed the pool about ten feet below. A willow tree rustled in the wind, bending its long branches in a curtain around her. Instinctively he knew that this was a secret sacred childhood place.
    She’d taken her boots off and now sat with her arms wrapped around her bent knees and her rich heavy hair hiding her face.
    “Mary.”
    At the sound of her name she sprang up. When she recognized him, the shock in her wide fawn eyes shifted to something that suddenly made the sun too warm upon his skin.
    “Richard, what are you doing here?”
    “Bringing you a picnic.”
    He delighted in the rush of color washing her translucent cheeks and the lights of pleasure shooting through her cornflower eyes. He would always be able to gauge his betrothed’s moods by her enchanting blush. As enticing as Mary appeared, as the sunbeams coming through the overhanging tree