Page 108 of In Bed with the Earl

Lawn bowling forgotten, Malcom brightened. “Can I have a crown and be her prince ... ?”

Malcom slowly opened his eyes, squinting at the bright flood of sunshine. He braced for the headache that accompanied such realizations—which this time did not come. The memory had been so vivid. So real. And letting it in this time hadn’t crippled him with weakness.

He felt Verity’s stare before he caught it, and glanced over. She’d dragged her knees against her chest, rested her chin atop them, and studied Malcom.

“You remembered something, didn’t you?” she asked quietly, and where that query would have once set him off in a fury at her probing into his life, now he nodded.

“Aye.” Scooping up a handful of debris at the edge of the blanket, he sifted through it. Settling for a small, smooth, flat stone, he sent it expertly skipping across the smooth surface of the Serpentine. The projectile bounced five times and then sank under the surface. “Sometimes that will happen. I’ll see something or hear a word, and it ... triggers a remembrance. But it’s almost as if they aren’t real to me. As if they happened to someone else. As if they are a dream.”

Verity covered his hand. “But they aren’t a dream, Malcom,” she said gently.

Nay, they weren’t a dream. She was correct on that score. His throat moved painfully around an uncomfortable ball that had lodged there. They were his life.

“Every morning, my mother would rise early.”

He blinked at the sudden shift.

“Our cottage was small and I’d hear her, but I knew she loved her mornings. The quiet time before the world awoke. And I would lie there. I’d listen as she went through her morning routine. As she prepared water to make her tea. And every morn, she’d sing. It was an old Scottish folk song.” Verity’s gaze grew distant, and a smile played about her lips as she softly sang.

I’ve seen the smiling

Of fortune beguiling,

I’ve tasted her pleasures

And felt her decay;

Riveted, Malcom stared on. Unable to tear his gaze from her fulsome lips as she sang. This was how those sailors on their galleons were dragged out to sea. Lured by the soft, slightly off-key medley, made all the more mesmerizing for the discordancy.

Sweet is her blessing,

And kind her caressing,

But now they are fled

And fled far away.

“It is lovely,” he said hoarsely when she’d finished and her low contralto had drifted into nothing.

“Aye.” Verity flipped onto her side so that they faced one another. “When my mum died, I’d wake up nearly the same time every morn that I had when she was living. I’d drag my pillow over my head and hold it tight. So I couldn’t hear anything. Because if I couldn’t hear the silence, then it wasn’t real. What had happened to my mum, and the truth that I’d never, ever see her again, wasn’t real. In those moments before I removed that pillow, I was in control.”

He froze, her meaning clear.

He’d been a master at keeping all the memories at bay. At forgetting the parents he’d known too briefly. Of the happiness they’d had together. But keeping thoughts of them buried didn’t erase those moments in time. It hadn’t. Nor would it ever.

“I’ve been here, too,” he said quietly, staring past her. Through her. Off to the foreign gaggle of white pelicans. Several of the enormous white fowl basked on the rocks in the sun.

Just then, a lone bird sauntered too close to their blanket. It had a peculiar protuberance from its long, narrow beak.

“I was here. In this place. With these birds.”

A sheen of moisture popped up on his brow, and he briefly closed his eyes. Willing that creature gone. Willing the buzzing at the back of his head gone. But it didn’t leave. It remained, and grew increasingly incessant. The all-too-familiar pain knocked around at his temples. And this time, he fought it off and welcomed in the memory.

“Mama, Mama! That duck has a horn! I want to touch him ... They are magnif—”

“They are magnificent, aren’t they?” Verity asked, startling him from that memory.

Blankly, he looked over at the woman beside him whose echoed praise of some other boy, in some other lifetime ago, wrenched him back to the moment.

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