Lost And Found Bride

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“You have the answers, Lexi. Whatever they are, you have to discover them for yourself.”

Three

The sound of rain hitting against the windows in irregular, rapid bursts dragged Lexi from sleep. Through partially opened eyes, she noted the dim light in the strangely familiar room and snuggled back into the down pillows with a sense of sleepy satisfaction. It was morning. She had slept the night through, unawakened by disturbing dreams or nightmares that refused to stay in her memory, unawakened by the vague yet demanding longings that sometimes gripped her and held her for sleepless hours.

“Of all the months of the year, I think January must have the most miserable weather.”

Lexi’s eyes flew open. Between the bed and the French doors stood a slender woman with stylish, short silver hair. The woman wore a dark green velvet dressing gown and looked completely at home in Lexi’s bedroom.

“It’s later than it seems,” the woman continued reflectively. “The storm has darkened the sky. Without a doubt the rain will turn to ice before noon.”

Lexi, fully awake now, scooted up against the rosewood headboard, pulling the blanket with her. The hall door was locked. She had watched Richard turn the key the night before. She glanced across the room. Richard’s door stood open.

“Oh, he’s downstairs writing in his office,” the woman said. “He has been for hours. He spent half his childhood telling his little stories. It is so nice he finally found an outlet for his obsession.”

She walked to the bed and seated herself on the edge of it. “I wanted to visit with you while he was busy. He was in such a foul mood when he telephoned weeks ago from Boston. I wanted to resolve at least one thing before I saw him again.”

The woman was much older than Lexi had first thought. Though she wore carefully applied, tasteful makeup, she had been unable to hide the network of deep lines fanning out from her dark brown eyes or from her thin, rose-glossed lips.

“I truly wanted to like you, Alexandra. You bear such a stunning resemblance to my niece.”

Lexi submitted to the woman’s brief, intense scrutiny with growing irritation. She was an amnesiac, not a laboratory animal who had no feelings. She could have—would have—demanded that a stranger leave her room, but who in this house was a stranger? And who had been given the right to come and go at will?

“You really don’t remember, do you?”

Had there ever been any doubt of that? Lexi wondered, but a stubbornness she had not realized she possessed refused to let her answer the woman’s question, just as it refused to let her ask the woman’s identity.

“Oh, well,” the woman said, rising gracefully from the bed. “Perhaps it’s for the best, after all.”

She crossed to a small table and opened its one drawer. “Richard seemed to think that I knew something about these,” she said. “Naturally I was disturbed by his unfounded accusations, disturbed enough that I had to do something. And where better to look than where it all began?”

She closed her fist over something she took from the drawer and walked back to the side of the bed. Lexi watched silently, willing the woman to end her cryptic comments and tell her, straight out, whatever she had come to say.

“They weren’t hard to find, not once I decided where to search. They were just stuffed in the back of a drawer, where any thief could have found them.

“If I were you, I wouldn’t tell Richard how careless you were with them,” she said, taking Lexi’s hand and pressing two rings into her palm.

Lexi stared at the wide, filigreed gold band and the sapphire and diamonds in an antique setting that complemented it When she raised her head with a question already forming on her lips, she found that the woman had crossed the room.

Standing in the doorway to Richard’s adjoining room, she lifted one delicately arched eyebrow. “And, Alexandra,” she said with a trace of condescension in her well-modulated voice, “welcome home.”

The night before, the rose-colored bathroom with its marble fixtures had seemed just another indication of the oppressiveness of the house. After a night’s sleep, however, Lexi was able to look at the room with new eyes, able to see the beauty in it, and able to wonder, Had she been accustomed to such wealth?

But the clothes in the vast closets, although too large, seemed suited to her. Just as the rings—although she found them, too, a little large once she was no longer able to resist slipping them onto her finger—seemed to belong on her hand.

She wore the rings, testing the feel of them but refusing to give in to the speculation they aroused in her, while she pondered the question of what one wore to breakfast when one lived in a museum. Not one of the several pairs of jeans she found neatly folded in a drawer, she was at enough of a disadvantage already, and not a dress—not for breakfast at home no matter how unhumble home was. She compromised with a pair of softly tailored peach-colored wool slacks, a coordinated mohair sweater and comfortable low-heeled shoes.

She felt somewhat like a little girl playing dress-up, but the three-way, full-length mirrors dispelled that image. Her size and the strangely disturbing short, curling hairstyle she now wore conspired to give her the appearance of a gamine. But her eyes held secrets that gave lie to that impression—secrets they wouldn’t reveal, even to her.

She was a stranger to herself. As everyone she had met was a stranger to her. As everyone she would meet until this mental blackout was ended would be a stranger to her. And it was a mental blackout. Melissa had made sure she understood that there was no physical reason, now, for her not to remember.

She found herself twisting the rings on her finger and reluctantly, knowing it was only partially for their protection, drew them from her hand and tucked them into a deep pocket of the slacks.

Realizing she was only postponing the inevitable, Lexi lifted her chin and straightened her shoulders. If this was her home, she wouldn’t hide in the bedroom; if this was her family, she wouldn’t cower from them, no matter how foreboding they might seem.

Maybe.

Heading downstairs, Lexi sighed with relief when she found the breakfast room. Here, as in her bedroom, someone had banished the gloom. Sheer Austrian curtains covered floor-to-ceiling windows against which the rain spat, but even the foul weather couldn’t dispel the charm of the graceful furnishings and the delicate marble fountain set in the bow of one windowed wall. Maybe this house could be—had been—a home, after all.

She pushed through a heavy door and entered an institution-size kitchen.

A fiftyish woman, with neat gray hair caught in a severe bun and wearing an equally neat gray dress over her stolid figure, raised her head from the recipe file on the table in front of her. Her look of surprise quickly turned to barely disguised dismay.

“Mrs. Jordan!”

Lexi stopped hesitantly just inside the doorway. Was this someone else she was supposed to know?

The woman rose from her chair. “Mr. Jordan said you would probably sleep quite late. He told me not to disturb you. But if you had rung me, I would have had your tray brought to you.”

Lexi felt a smile quirking her lips as well as a quick stab of frustration. “I’m afraid no one explained the system to me.”

“Oh.” The woman seemed nonplussed for a moment, and her glance darted around the kitchen before returning to Lexi’s face. “I’m sorry. We tend to forget. I—we—I’ll be happy to show you how it works. It’s tied in with the telephones.”

“Thank you,” Lexi said. “I would appreciate that.” She glanced at the pile of recipe cards and at the well-used oak kitchen table. “I wonder if I might have some coffee.”

“Of course.” The woman stacked the cards into a neat pile. “You just go on into the breakfast room, and I’ll bring it right out.”

A dismissal? As polite as it had been, the woman’s response had all the earmarks of a firm dismissal.

In only a matter of moments the woman came through the doorway into the breakfast room carrying a tray. Lexi turned from the window where she had been staring out into the rain.

“You can’t see the lake this morning because of all the rain,” the woman said, setting the tray on the cherry table that would seat ten comfortably. “But it’s sure to be roiling and peaking.”

Lexi released the curtain and let it drop back into place. “Can we usually see the lake from here?”

The woman looked at her curiously. “Of course.”

Was our home built near the lake?

Not exactly.

Why had Richard said that? She shook her head and walked to the table. A silver coffeepot and one delicate cup waited for her. No cream. No sugar. But then, she didn’t need cream and sugar. She looked up at the woman, who was watching her, almost anxiously, from a position by the door.

“I’m—I’m Eva Handly,” the woman said reluctantly. “My husband Jack—he met you at the landing strip last night—have worked for Mr. Jordan for years, here, and—and for you.”

Lexi sighed and nodded her head in acknowledgment of the introduction. “Thank you, Mrs. Handly,” she said softly. “I really do hate to have to ask.”

For a moment the woman seemed to warm toward her, but only for a moment. “I’ll have your breakfast out in a few minutes.”

“No,” Lexi said. “This is all I want.”

“Young Mrs. Knapp has already given me my orders,” Mrs. Handly said firmly before leaving the room.

Melissa’s idea of a suitable breakfast left a lot to be desired, Lexi thought later. It was suitable, she supposed for a farm hand or a laborer, but there was no way she could eat all of the beautifully prepared meal. There was no way she wanted to try.

Had Melissa always been so arbitrary? Maybe she had. Maybe only now was Lexi beginning to resent it. But surely the decision of whether she wanted breakfast was one she was capable of making for herself.

She was pushing the food around on her plate, wondering what she would do with the rest of the morning, when Richard walked into the room.

She started guiltily as she looked up at him, and abandoned her immediate halfhearted fight against the pleasure she felt at seeing him. He looked almost rested, and he was dressed casually in faded jeans and another of his innumerable long-sleeved turtleneck sweaters that set off the strength in his arms and shoulders and threw his dark features into harsh relief. He looked at home here, at ease with his surroundings, and although he gave her another of his wary smiles, he seemed almost happy to see her, too.

“Eva told me you were here,” he said in the comforting voice she had relied upon for so many days before she had begun to notice his detachment, that she still relied upon when he came to her in the long hours of the night. He drew out the chair next to her and seated himself. “Did you rest well?”

“Yes.” She dared a hesitant smile. “Did you?”

This time his smile was less wary. “Surprisingly well.” He glanced at the plate in front of her. “Don’t let me keep you from your breakfast.”

Lexi glanced at the mountain of food remaining and surrendered to a tiny grimace. “Please do.” She gestured toward the silver pot. “Would you like some coffee?”

He shook his head. “I’ve had more than I need already this morning.”

She poured a little more of the still steaming liquid into her cup and sipped at it tentatively. She hated to break the mood between them, but then, what was the mood?

“What now?” she asked.

He reached with his strong, long-fingered, unscarred hand and traced the path of a feathered curl against her cheek. Beneath his touch, her cheek seemed to tingle, to throb almost painfully as though too long denied the sustenance of blood, of life. Lexi caught her lower lip between her teeth as she watched his dark eyes follow the path of his hand and then look to hers questioningly.

“I thought I’d give you a tour of the house so that you won’t be completely lost,” he said at last. “If you would like.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, not wanting to be relegated back to the solitude of her room, and not wanting, yet, to be deprived of Richard’s company. “I’d like that very much.”

Richard started the tour with the adjacent room, a dining room that dwarfed the proportions of the breakfast room. Lexi seated herself on the arm of a chair and stared around it pensively.

The room was heavy. That was the only word for it. Heavy Spanish furnishings. Heavy drapes that blocked out all outside light. Flickering wall sconces, meant to represent candlelight, only added to the gloom.

She couldn’t hide her shiver as she felt the walls, the wooden-paneled ceiling and the furnishings all closing in on her.

Richard leaned against the sideboard with his long legs crossed casually, though he wasn’t at ease. Why did he think he had to pretend to be?

“Would it help if I told you your very first words to me over a year ago when I brought you to this house?”

Lexi felt her breath catch. Warily she turned to him.

“You said, ‘My God, do we live here?’”

“But that’s what I said—”

“Last night,” he finished for her. He abandoned his casual slouch against the sideboard and walked to her side, looking down at her. “You don’t like this room, Lexi. You never have. And you don’t have to worry about hurting my feelings by telling me. I don’t like it, either.”

“Does this mean—” She realized she had been holding her breath and expelled it slowly. “Does this mean you’ve decided to talk to me?”

“About some things,” he admitted. “You’ve got to understand that I know no more about how to help you than you do. When Mel said that we should tell you nothing, that we should let all your knowledge come from your subconscious, I had to agree with her. She is a doctor. She is trained in these matters. But I’ve given a lot of thought to what you said yesterday, and while I still agree with Mel, at least in part, I see no reason why you should be kept completely in the dark.”

He stared into her eyes with an intensity that would have stripped secrets from her soul, if she’d had any to share, and a chill claimed his features. “I want to know—have to know—the truth. And so do you. If this is the only way to learn what that truth is, so be it.”

Lexi shifted on the chair arm, away from this suddenly frightening stranger, and when she did, she felt the rings in her pocket pressing against her thigh. In a nervous gesture she was barely conscious of, she began massaging the base of her ring finger with her thumb as she remembered the cryptic words of the woman who had given them to her.

“Richard, does Melissa—do you...” Lexi fumbled for the words, not wanting to believe that he could think so, but knowing she had to ask. “Is there some doubt? Did you think that by not telling me anything, that I might, somehow, slip and prove that I really do remember?”

Richard captured her hand in both of his and stilled her nervous movement. “Why do you ask that?”

Lexi swallowed once and then met his eyes. “I had a visitor in my room when I woke up this morning.”

“Who?” The pressure of his hands tightened on hers.

“A woman. Silver hair. Very...stylish. She didn’t tell me who she was. I wouldn’t ask.”

Richard dropped her hand and twisted away, but not before she saw the flash of a pain so old, so deep, she wondered how he bore it. “Damn her!”

It wasn’t an answer, but Lexi sensed that it was the only answer she was going to get. Should she tell him about the rings? Maybe she should, she admitted, but she wasn’t ready to face a confrontation with this man about whether or not to wear the visible symbol that she belonged to him—or he to her, a small voice whispered—not when his face had tightened into a dark scowl that hid all the kindness she’d thought he possessed. Perhaps she could have found the courage to do so if that glimpse of his pain had remained. But now his black eyes reflected an even blacker anger.

“Your door was locked?”

“Yes. I checked it after she left. She left through your room.”

“I’m sorry.” He placed his hand on the side of her head, almost reluctantly caressing a wayward curl, and let it slide down until it rested on her shoulder. “It shouldn’t have happened. It won’t happen again.”

Lexi looked at his scarred hand resting against soft, peach-colored wool and felt the warmth of his touch seeping through to her. She fought the urge to rest her cheek against his hand and fought the urge to ask him about the scars. She looked up at him, but he had seen the direction of her gaze. He lifted his hand from her and stuffed it into the pocket of his jeans.

“Who was she, Richard?” Lexi asked, when she realized he was lost in bitter thoughts of his own.

He sighed. “My mother. You’ll see her again at lunch.”

The weather prevented them from going outside, so Richard confined their tour to the house. But even after they had passed through several rooms his mood did not lighten, only settled into one that was slightly less grim.

There were rooms they didn’t enter: Greg’s groundfloor bedroom next to the basement-to-attic antique elevator that had been restored to accommodate his wheelchair, the bedrooms occupied by Richard’s mother, Helene, and Melissa at the opposite end of the second floor and a locked door beyond Lexi’s suite that Richard explained was a sunroom undergoing renovation and not safe for her to enter.

There were places Lexi didn’t like, which she had suspected there would be: the reception hall, a massive game room on the ground floor with its walls hung with mounted trophies and its floor covered with the tanned hides of long-dead animals; and, surprisingly, the narrow service stairs leading from the second-floor servants’ quarters, down which she had to force herself to follow Richard.

There were also rooms she found delightfully inviting. Yet only in the conservatory, a glass-walled and roofed structure appended to the east wing of the house, did she feel she could be truly at home. But they only paused in the doorway, looking in at the heated pool and a virtual jungle of tropical plants before Richard led her away.

And throughout the tour, with a recital stripped of emotion or inflection, Richard told her of the history of the house. He had not lied to her about the lake, he told her eventually. The lake was a relative newcomer, only having been impounded forty years or so ago, while the house had sat on its mountaintop for half again that long. The house had been built by an oilman and land speculator for his mistress and her small daughter by a previous liaison. They had lived here until the oilman’s death in the crash of a private plane enroute to a west Texas oil field.