Tied With a Bow

her. He was afraid to touch her, to remind her of Howard’s attack.
    So she went to him. Slipping her arms around his waist, she laid her head on his hard chest.
    His arms came around her. His hands moved down her back, stroking, comforting. With a little sigh, she squeezed her eyes shut. He was warm and solid, wrapped around her, and she nestled against his big body, absorbing his comfort. His strength.
    “Do not be afraid,” he murmured. “You are safe now.”
    A memory tickled, soft, dark, velvet. She opened her eyes in wonder, recognition unfurling inside her like a flower.
    “I know you.”
    His arms tensed. His breathing stilled.
    “I recognize you.” She lifted her head to study his features. Wide, clear brow. Long, straight nose. Firm, unsmiling mouth. His fair hair, long and untamed, an aureole of gold around his angel face.
    “You are overwrought,” he said carefully. “Under the circumstances, it is natural for you to imagine . . .”
    Her breath exploded, a puff of impatience with him, with herself. “I am upset. I am not stupid. I do not ignore the evidence of my senses.” Or the prompting of her heart. “It was you. In the prison.”
    It was you all along.
    He hesitated. “Yes.”
    “How?”
    “Aimée.” Just her name, like the whisper of leaves. His green eyes were full of shadows and secrets like a forest. She could get lost in those eyes.
    “Tell me,” she said fiercely.
    He sighed. “During the Terror, Amherst organized a secret ring to smuggle victims fleeing France across the channel. When I went to live with him, I . . . joined them.”
    When he was seventeen, he’d told her yesterday. Before that, he remembered nothing.
    Her blood drummed in her ears. Her mind boggled, teetered on the edge of comprehension. A great void opened at her feet.
    It was not possible. The man who had spirited her to safety seven years ago had been no youth of seventeen. He had appeared out of the darkness like the answer to a prayer, tearing her from her old life, setting her on a new course. The same man. This man, Lucien Hartfell. Her brain could not conceive it.
    She could not hear, she could not think, over the pounding in her head. She could not remember every word overheard eight years ago in the barn, in the dark. So she listened to her heart instead.
    “When you came to Moulton to court Julia, did you know you would find me here?” she asked.
    Lucien held himself as stiffly as a prisoner before the Tribunal, condemned before he opened his mouth. “No. I lost . . . track of things for a while.”
    An unexpected tenderness unfolded inside her, an aching pity, a sorrow for something she did not understand.
    When you lose your powers, your memory goes, too.
    Had she recalled those words? Or imagined them? It did not signify. What mattered was that Lucien was not invulnerable after all. In his own way, he was as lost, as confused, as she.
    “Then I must be grateful,” she said, “to God or the Fates, who brought you to me again when I was in need.”
    His gaze met hers, stunned.
    She smiled and stood on tiptoe to press her lips lightly to his. “I am grateful. For both times.”
    His marble face flushed. He made her a bow, oddly formal. “I am always here,” he said. “If you need me.”

Chapter Eight
     
    Everyone—from Sir Walter and Lady Basing in their separate rooms on the second floor to the hall boy on his pallet by the kitchen fire—was settled for the night.
    Aimée tossed on her narrow bed, unable to get comfortable. Her feet were too cold. Her sheets were too rough. An unfamiliar restlessness invaded her veins. She thanked God and Lucien that for the first time in weeks she could sleep without a chair jammed under her door, alone without fear.
    Except she no longer wanted to sleep alone.
    Aimée flopped onto her back and stared at the ceiling. She was a Frenchwoman. She must be practical. Lucien had rejected her once for what she was certain were very good reasons. She was not at all sure she had the courage to gamble her heart and risk her reputation only to be rejected a second time. She needed to think of her future.
    A future without love? Without passion? Without Lucien.
    She threw back the covers and reached for her dressing gown.
    Foolishness.
    Or very great wisdom.
    She found she did not care.
    She crept down the attic stairs. In the past, she had been grateful for each small telltale creak that might warn her of Howard climbing up the stairs. Now every betraying