Maeve peered over the ledge. "I don't think so. It's only a few inches of water."
Selena came up, flipping her soggy hair away from her face like some ancient mermaid. For a split second, he saw her profile, then the curtain of her hair descended again. Sparkling droplets flew behind her in a shimmering, sunlight-brightened veil.
She collected an armful of trinkets and shells, then looped a thick, slimy strand of kelp around her neck and turned toward the beach.
She splashed through the ice-cold Atlantic water as if it were the sun-drenched Caribbean Sea. With one hand, she shoved the tangled brown hair from her face.
For the first time in his life, Ian's knees went weak at the sight of a woman. She was exquisitely, unexpectedly beautiful. Long, mahogany-hued hair cascaded over her arms, dripping plump, silvery tears down the white lawn of her shirt. Her face was a pale oval, dominated by the largest, most liquid brown eyes Ian had ever seen. Her full lips looked ready to smile at any second.
She moved like the goddess he'd named her for, in flowing, graceful steps that seemed in rhythm with the
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movement of the tides. Her hips swayed in a gentle, feminine motion that mesmerized him.
When she reached the beach, she hitched up the baggy pants and skipped barefooted across the cold outcropping of stone to the spot where her stockings and half boots lay discarded. Setting down her treasures, she bent to put on her shoes.
Ian's heart was pounding so fast, he was certain she could hear it. He thought suddenly-irrationally-that God had answered his prayers, given him a seductive, beautiful woman steeped in mystery.
But it wasn't possible. She had to be damaged inside, she had to be. No brain could come through such a trauma unscathed. There was no hope that she could be normal. No real hope.
He thought of Elizabeth, sitting in the chair by the window, still beautiful... still broken and childlike and damaged.
Look at her, his mind taunted him with insidious, killing hope. Believe what you see.
But too many years of despair made such belief impossible. He couldn't believe in something without proof that it was real.
Regathering her shells and seaweed, she turned toward Maeve and Lara. She took one step, then stopped.
The rock was empty except for the easel. Maeve and Lara were gone. He saw the panic move across her face, fill her eyes. She bit down on her lower lip in a childlike expression of fear.
"Maeve?" Her full, throaty voice vibrated. "Maeve? Lara?"
He stared at her, a dozen questions circling through his mind. He tried not to care, tried not to have any expectations at all.
He stepped forward. "I'm here, Selena." She spun toward him. The shells and pebbles she'd collected fell to the rocks with a clatter.
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"Ian?" She said his name on a whisper, as if she weren't sure he was there at all.
"Hello there, Selena."
Her face split in a wide grin and she ran for him. Just in front of him, she skidded to a stop and fell into a deep curtsy. Rising slowly, her gaze fastened on his, she extended her hand.
He felt a moment's hesitation to touch her, then cautiously reached out. Their fingers brushed, twined. Her hand felt small and soft in his. No visions came to him, no images slammed through his mind. As before, there was nothing in her mind for him to see.
"I suppose the queen taught you to curtsy."
She positively beamed at him. "Yes."
"You do it very well."
"Thank you."
"You're welcome."
He couldn't take his eyes off her face, the way her full pink lips quirked in a smile, the brightness in her gaze. She was gloriously alive, so vibrantly animated.
It was a miracle.
No, not a miracle. A scientific phenomenon.
The old excitement moved through him. He understood all at once the implications of her recovery and what it meant to him. Just standing here, smiling at him in defiance of the odds, of science, she gave him everything. The fantasy came rushing back.
He could study her, begin to understand what no doctors before him had ever truly understood.
He could be a god again.
He grinned, letting the questions wash through him, exhilarate him. How was her mind? How far had she recovered? Could she think, understand, reason? Her mind was impaired-it had to be-but how much? What lobes were damaged and what behavior did the damage impact?
Jesus, he couldn't wait to study her. "You are pleased with my face," she said.
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He touched her cheek, felt the silkiness of her skin against his roughened fingertip. "You're beautiful."
"I see in the miner that it is much butter. Better. Now you will stay 'with me?" "I don't understand." "Now I am not so ugly."
His smile slowly faded. He considered the selfishness of his departure and was ashamed. "I did not leave because you were ugly, Selena. I left because I was ugly." She stepped closer, turned her face up to him. A slow, stunning smile crept across her face. "You are beautiful, Ian."
It was surprising, the warmth her naive words caused. "Women are beautiful, Selena. Men are handsome."
She frowned briefly. "Oh." Then her smile came back full force. "You will test me again?" He nodded. "If you'll let me." She laughed. It was a low, throaty purr that didn't match her angelic face at all. A whore's laugh, whiskey-soft and seductive. "I shall let you do anything you wish to me, Ian. I have been waiting for you."
Such simplicity, such innocence. She clearly had no idea of the sexual innuendo of her words. He wondered what level her mind operated at-was she like Lara, a child in a woman's body, or was she still amnesiac?
"And I have been waiting for you, Selena," he said softly, realizing how true the words were. For six long years he'd been waiting for a patient, someone who needed him, someone who could give him back the promise of his past. And she was here, at Lethe House, smiling up at him with the guileless joy of a child. Understanding her would change medical history.
"I am pleased at the thought of more tests. I shall pass this time most certainly."
He smiled and offered her his arm. Together they strolled through the forest back toward the house.
For the first time in years, he couldn't wait for the next minute to take place, the next moment.
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The medical mystery was inside her, waiting for him to discover. Him and him alone.
Selena sat on the edge of the overstuffed settee, her small feet pressed tightly together, her hands in her lap. She clamped her fingers together in a damp, sweaty ball to keep from fidgeting. Fidgeting was not ladylike, and she wanted desperately to be a lady for Ian. Rules circled through her head in an endless, mushy litany. Sit still ... don't speak until spoken to . .. don't fidget... crying is for babies and ye're no baby, Selena ... eat like a bird ...
Selena tried to remember the rest, but Edith's words drifted in and out of her mind. Sometimes she remembered and sometimes she didn't. Sometimes she couldn't even remember what she was trying to remember.
"Would you like something to drink?"
Selena's head snapped up, her heart raced. He'd said something to her, asked a question, perhaps. She wasn't sure, couldn't remember. She tried to recall the appropriate word to express her confusion, but nothing came to mind. She gazed up at him, her mind an utter blank.
Tears burned behind her eyes. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. She wanted to impress him. She'd been practicing for weeks now, every day, pushing herself to the very limit to improve. And for what? So that she could blink up at her god like a dead fish and breathe too quickly?
He motioned to the china teapot on the ornate silver tray. "Would you like a drink, Selena?"
Drink. Tea. He was offering her something to drink. She grinned in relief. "I am most thirsty. Yes, thank you, I would enjoy to drink tea."
He gazed at her a second longer than she expected, his eyes narrowed and assessing. "Good." Turning, he poured her a cup of steaming tea and offered
it to her.
She smiled. "Hot," she said, proving to him once again that she was smart.
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"Yes, it is hot. Do you take cream or sugar?"
"Where?"
"What?"
"Do I take them where?"
He laughed, a quiet, happy sound that made her feel like floating. "In your tea."
His laughter was contagious. "Oh," she giggled. "It does not matter to me, such things as cream and sugar and salt and pepper. I have no taste."
His smile died. Very slowly, he placed his teacup on the frilly piecrust table beside the settee and reached inside his coat pocket for a small book. Pulling the thin, leather-bound volume from his pocket, he slipped his spectacles on. "What do you mean you have no taste?" She tried to marshal the words necessary to make her point. Finally she saw the salt shaker on the tray beside the watercress sandwiches. Grabbing it, she tilted her head back and poured a huge amount of the granules on her tongue. Then she swallowed and smiled at him. "No taste."
His eyes lit up. "You can't taste anything?"
"Nothing."
"How did you first notice this?"
"When I ate."
He smiled. "Let me rephrase that. How did you come to understand that you were different than other people?"
"Johann caught me drinking seawater."
He wrote furiously for several moments, then looked up again, an expectant light in his eyes. "And what about memories? Have you gotten any of them back?"
"No."
He frowned. His gaze burned into her with an intensity that made her vaguely uncomfortable. Then he started writing again. The quiet scratching of his pen on the paper seemed suddenly too loud. She started to shift her weight on the cushion, then froze. Don't fidget.
"You don't remember your name?"
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"No, but I do not think-"
"Where you're from?"
She blinked in confusion at the sudden change of topic. He was going too quickly. Her mind could not keep up. "I do not know where I was from. Could you perhaps-"
"Family?"
"I do not know of them. It would help if-"
"How about opinions? Do you have any?"
"Edith puts them in her stew."
He frowned. "What?"
Opinions. Not onions. She tried to smile, but it was difficult. He was staring at her so intently, she felt sick inside, nervous and uncertain. "Opinions. You mean beliefs."
"Yes." His pen lowered again to the page, waiting.
"I believe . . ." Her words trailed off. Frantic to impress him, she tried to remember something-anything-that Johann had said, or Edith, or Maeve. Anything that might be an opinion. Ian expected her to have some; she could see the expectation in his gaze, feel it in the ebb and tide of his breathing. "I believe ..." Her shoulders sagged, her voice fell to a thick whisper. "I believe I have no opinions."
"Really?" He drew the word out, as if savoring it, as if he were glad that she was so empty in the head.
She scooted closer to him, though it wasn't ladylike, and tilted her face up. He was so close, she could see the dark flecks in his blue, blue eyes, so close, she could feel his breath against her face. "I believe in you,
Ian."
He laughed, only this time it was a harsh sound that made her feel stupid and small. "No opinions and no intelligence," he said, making a quick note in his journal.
"I am not stupid," she said in a quiet voice.
He looked surprised by her statement. "I never said you were."
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"But you just said-"
"Oh, that." He cut her off with a wave of his pen. "That's simply sarcasm. I was saying that anyone who believes in me has no intelligence. You see, it's a joke at my expense, not yours."
She nodded, pretending to understand. But she didn't understand at all. Why would someone make a remark designed to inflict pain?
"I ... I knew you would come back to me," she said, gazing up at him, waiting for him to reach out and touch her, to see her as something more than a patient to question.
"I wish I had sooner. This damned journal would be so much more complete if I'd documented every step of the recovery process." He got suddenly to his feet and went to the bookcase behind him. "Now, let's try some coordination and dexterity tests, shall we?"
Selena watched him. He turned, carried back an armful of board games and pictures.
Something was terribly wrong, and she had no idea what it was. She felt useless and stupid. And she'd tried so very hard.... He sat down next to her. Close, but not too close. Then he picked up the pen and poised it above the paper. "Let's see if you can put the square peg in the square opening this time."
For no reason at all, she felt like crying. She didn't understand her own reaction. She ought to be happy now, ought to be grinning at the prospect of this examination. She'd practiced it several times, so many that she could perform it in her sleep. For weeks, she'd looked forward to impressing him with her mastery of this very test.
But now, somehow, things were different. It felt as if passing wouldn't matter to him, wouldn't make him put down that pen and truly look at her.
She realized suddenly what the matter was. It came to her in a swift, breathless jab of pain.
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He didn't care about her.
Oh, he wanted to understand her, wanted to take her apart and test her and see how she'd survived whatever it was she'd survived. He wanted to write down her thoughts and feelings and reactions, wanted to understand why she couldn't remember her name and why she had no opinions, but he didn't want to know her.
He didn't believe there was a her inside all that missing information. Inside that broken brain.
"I am a patient to you, am I not?"
"Of course you are."
"You think you will repair me?"
He wrote very quickly, as if afraid of missing a single word. "I don't know precisely what's wrong with you yet. Except, of course, that you're brain-damaged." He gave her a brief, heartless smile, then resumed writing.
Selena bit down on her lower lip and looked away. The dreams she'd spun so easily in the last weeks began unraveling, separating like strands of old silk. He was backward, but she couldn't tell him so. How could someone like her-broken and inexperienced-tell a great man of science that he needed to search for what was right with her, not what was wrong?
She picked up the small wooden spike and put it in the square hole.
He drew in a sharp breath and grinned at her. "Good." Back to the writing.
She felt none of the triumph she'd prepared herself to feel, none of the exhilaration. Instead, she felt vaguely sick and lonely.
He reached for the stack of pictures beside him and picked one up. "Can you name this item?" "Moon," she said dully. "And this one? Do you know what it is?" Selena looked at the stylized painting of a heart. "Yes," she said in a soft voice. "I know what it is. Do you, Ian?" He looked up, startled. "Of course I know what it is."
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"And do you have one?"
"No body can function without it, Selena. Now, what is it?" "A heart."
He didn't look up from his journal, just kept writing. "Its function?"
"It is the storehouse of a person's emotions and dreams and desires. Johann says your heart is the dwelling of the soul."
"Don't listen to Johann. The heart is simply an organ, like your kidneys or your liver. It pumps blood throughout your body. Emotions stem from certain places in the brain."
"I am proof that you are wrong." Ian looked up. "What do you mean?" "I have forgotten my name, my place of birth, everything about the life I once lived. This is caused by the damage to my brain." He wrote furiously. "Uh-huh." "But I remember my feelings. I can laugh and cry and love. And I can be hurt."
He frowned at her. "So you're saying that your emotions do reside in the heart. Empirically, not figuratively." He tapped the pen against his lips and stared past her. "Interestin
g. Very sophisticated logic, too, I might add. Though you probably don't know what I mean."
She tried to smile. Her eyes met his, pled silently for understanding. He had missed the point entirely. "I mean I can be hurt, Ian."
He stared at her for a long time, saying nothing, not writing. Anticipation tingled in her blood. He was seeing her this time, she was certain of it. He wasn't analyzing or cataloging or diagramming her. She'd said something that touched him. A smile tugged at one corner of her mouth. She leaned toward him, a little out of breath.
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Very slowly, he brought his pen back to the paper. "Everyone can be hurt, Selena."
She felt him fade away from her again, felt the moment of possibility disappear.
Lethe House was curiously alive. Ian stood in his study, sipping a warm glass of port, listening to the incredible din of voices in the hallway. There was laughter, for God's sake. He couldn't remember the last time he'd heard such genuine camaraderie among the residents of this place.
Selena had obviously worked her magic on all of them. From the moment she'd first appeared here, battered and bloodied and nameless, she'd struck at the very heart of every person under this roof. He could feel the enchantment in the air, hear it in the muted strains of laughter. She was drawing the inmates together, making a family out of strangers, turning a collection of lost and lonely souls into friends.
Yesterday he mightn't have noticed.
Today he was a doctor again. A doctor who wanted to understand every facet of his patient. She'd shown a remarkable retention today, an ability to reason that surprised him. He had so many more questions to ask her. As soon as she'd eaten her supper, he wanted to test her again.
Someone knocked on the door.
"Come in."
The door swung open and Edith bustled in, her fleshy cheeks high with sweaty color. She wiped her hands on her flour-streaked apron and cocked a thumb toward the door. "Supper is ready, sir."
He drained the last of his drink and set the empty glass down on the mantel. "Good."
Edith didn't move. Nervously she pushed a straggly strand of hair back into her white cap. "Selena wanted you to join us."
"Us?"
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A slow, sheepish grin pushed through the wrinkles. "She's a force to be reckoned with, that she is, sir. Why, from the moment she began speakin', I haven't found a wee moment's peace. She wants to change every rule and custom to fit her curious brand o' logic. Said she'd run round naked if we didn't let her wear pants." She grinned. "Pants."
"What in God's name are you babbling about, Edith?"
"Selena, sir. She refused to eat unless we made an event out of it. Starved herself for two days, she did, until we agreed to serve supper in the dining room." "The residents eat together!"
" Tisn't half-bad, I must admit. There's a wee bit of food tossin' sometimes, but other than that ..."
Maeve floated into the study, her long white skirts trailing behind her. "What's taking so long, Edith?" She stopped beside Ian and cocked her head up. "Are you coming?"
He stared at his mother. "Are you suggesting I eat with the inmates?"
Maeve frowned and picked at the pale pink ribbon at her throat. "I'm ... demanding it."