Page 49 of Duke with a Deception
The day had been a disaster, so it came as no surprise that dinner was as well. They finished in stilted silence, and she couldn’t help but feel she had displeased him. However, she was equally unhappy with King for the way he continued to keep her at a distance.
By the dessert course, she was struggling not to allow the tears burning in her eyes to fall. She didn’t know why she was being so excessively maudlin. Perhaps it was the culmination ofall that had happened over the past few days. She’d married the man she loved, experienced the dizzying heights of pleasure, and then she had plummeted to the depths of despondency, fearing something had happened to Emma. Then there had been King’s revelation about his own child and his subsequent defection. It was almost impossible to believe that, where everything had seemed right in her world and filled with endless possibilities and promise, she now found herself so swiftly facing an uncertain future.
If King never entrusted this part of himself to her, how would their marriage succeed? Did he return her love? Why could she not remember him saying the words?
Did the words matter? Surely he had shown her.
Yes, of course he had.
Hadn’t he?
Why could she not remember? And why had her lack of memory in regard to those three words not bothered her before? Frustration built inside her, along with a new, bitter resentment. What had she done to deserve this painful lack of memory? It was as if half of her was missing. As if she were a stranger to herself.
“You look as if you are about to send your cream ice to the guillotine,” King drawled wryly, shaking her from her thoughts.
“MonsieurBarreau would never forgive me if I did something so outrageous to his cream ice, I have no doubt,” she parried, trying to cling to a lightness that she didn’t feel.
Her husband regarded her with an inscrutable expression, using his spoon to scoop up a bite. “Do you like it?”
She watched as he ate the dessert sinfully, his tongue flicking out against the spoon. “Yes, of course. It’s delicious.”
“You haven’t taken a bite,” he pointed out.
And to her dismay, she realized that he wasn’t wrong. She hadn’t. It was delightfully plated, laden with chopped pistachios and chocolate. But her stomach was too unsettled.
Shewas too unsettled.
Verity lifted a spoonful of cream ice to her lips and froze. A memory seized her, jolting her as suddenly as when she woke from a dream to the feeling she was falling. The flavor and coldness on her tongue triggered a reminder.
A summer afternoon at Riverdale Abbey. A picnic. Laughter. Sitting on a blanket that had been spread on rough ground, her skirts draping over the long leg of the man seated next to her. The brim of his hat shaded his face.
I thought you might enjoy a treat from Mrs. Hockenhall, he had said.
“Verity?” King prodded. “Is something amiss?”
“Have you ever had a cook named Mrs. Hockenhall?” she asked, trying to place the name, to understand why the fragmented shards returning to her seemed not to fit together.
It was as if she had been handed the pages of a book, but they had been cast about a room and, in the absence of page numbers, she was left to assemble them into their proper order by inference and guesswork alone.
King considered her, his expression inscrutable. “No. I have not. Why do you ask?”
“It’s nothing,” she answered, shaking her head as she attempted to consume her dessert with renewed vigor.
Or was it truly nothing? The traces of the memory remained, persistent yet incomplete.
“Do you remember something?”
Her husband’s perceptive query sliced through Verity’s thoughts. She glanced up to find his dark, probing gaze upon her. He was unsmiling yet elegant, a careful shave from his valet,a change of clothes, and a bath having rendered him every bit as perfect as she was accustomed to seeing him.
Why did it suddenly feel as if she didn’t know King? Why did she experience a mysterious, aching pang in her chest?
“I don’t know if I do or not,” she struggled to answer. “Everything in my mind is a confused hodgepodge at the moment.”
“Perhaps we should finish our meal for the evening,” he suggested. “The night air isn’t as chilled and damp as it has been of late. We could take a turn in the garden if you like.”
Yes, that was just what she needed. A change of scenery. Some air. Anything to dash away the frustration and the nagging sense that she was missing something important from her troubled mind. The cream ice, however delectable it may have been, no longer held any appeal.
“That would be lovely,” she agreed.
