His Saving Grace Read online

  “He has seen doctors,” Tarik said as he ushered her out of the room. “Many doctors. They can’t help.”

  The door closed behind her. Once again she was locked out of Michael’s room and his life.

  Stunned and scared she slid down the wall and sat with her knees bunched up to her chest and tried to control her frantic breathing.

  Chapter Six

  Grace lay on her side and memorized her husband’s face. The green eyes so full of love, the black hair, the noble nose and sharp cheekbones. She pressed her hand against his chest to feel the beat of his heart.

  “Promise to come back to me,” she said. There had been two other times he had left her to attend to his duties as an officer in the First Royal Dragoons, but this was different. Tomorrow he would be heading off to war.

  War.

  Grace could not even fathom what that meant. Oh, she knew about war, had read about it in the newspapers, but it had never affected her this closely, and it scared her.

  With the same devastating smile that had melted her heart all those years ago, Michael lifted her hand from his heart and kissed her fingers. “I promise.”

  She wasn’t naive. She knew he could never promise such a thing, but it still made her feel better to hear it from him. “I don’t know what I’m going to do without you.”

  “You will attend your committee meetings and you will have tea with Sara and you will dig in your flower beds.”

  “And I will miss you terribly.” Her heart clenched. They had never been apart for this long.

  “And I will miss you as well.” He kissed her, a soft kiss that led to a deeper kiss. Michael groaned in the way that told her he wanted her. He rolled her beneath him, his body weighing hers down. It made her feel loved and cherished and wanted. They had just made love not an hour before, but she was ready for him, her body arching toward his in anticipation of the invasion. It was always like this between them, an insatiable need that consumed them both. He entered her and she cried out, her body opening up, accepting him. It brought shivers up her spine. He looked down upon her as he moved inside her, his laughing eyes serious as he stared at her. It was as if he were memorizing her for the time when they would be apart.

  She tried not to think about that. Instead, she immersed herself in the moment, allowing her body to take over, the emotions to seep into her, and the blissful feeling to take her to a place where she soared. She clutched him tightly, her body moving with his in a synchronization that told her they were made for each other. Her release came too quickly and she was arching her back, crying out, at the same time Michael thrust more deeply. She felt the warm wetness inside her and hoped and prayed that, with any luck, she would surprise him with a son when he returned.

  Grace rested her chin on her drawn-up knees and stared at Michael’s door. She had not moved all night and the sun was rising. Fear kept her immobile. A terror that far outweighed her shattered hopes of a child that never was. She had been so naive, believing that her life was over if she could not become a mother. And she had been so selfish, wondering what she would do with her time, when Michael had been facing far more terrifying things.

  All of that was nothing compared to being told that her husband had been killed.

  Nothing compared to having your dead husband return only to tell you he did not want you.

  And that was definitely nothing compared to the paralyzing fear of sitting outside your husband’s door, convinced he was dying and not being allowed entrance.

  Michael is dying.

  She breathed deep, her eyes dry. Tears could not even begin to touch her rampant fear.

  It had been quiet on the other side of the door for a few hours. She pulled her legs closer so that she was sitting in a tight ball, holding herself together by sheer force of will.

  When the door creaked open, Grace simply stared at it, too numb to comprehend that Tarik was stepping out. He paused when he saw her sitting there. She had no feeling in her legs to rise; nor did she care. She looked up at this man Michael had brought home with him who knew more about her husband than she did.

  The question she wanted to ask refused to be voiced. It was far too terrifying.

  “He is resting,” Tarik said.

  She leaned her head against the wall and closed her eyes. Her body felt heavy, cumbersome.

  He’s alive.

  Tarik surprised her by sliding down the wall and sitting next to her. He looked as exhausted as she felt.

  “Is he dying?” Somewhere she found the courage to voice her fear.

  For a long moment Tarik didn’t answer, and in those many beats of silence, Grace lived and died a thousand times.

  “No,” he finally said.

  No. She let the fear seep out of her, but it wouldn’t fully release its grip.

  “Tell me what is wrong with him,” she whispered up at the ceiling she was staring at.

  “His story is not mine to tell.”

  She rubbed her eyes with the pads of her thumbs, too weary to argue with this man. “Give me your word that he is not dying.”

  “I give you my word. He is not dying.”

  “Does he suffer like this often?”

  Again he hesitated, seeming to weigh his words before he spoke. “Often enough.”

  “Is this the result of his war injury?”

  “I have said enough. It is up to him to tell you more.”

  “I want to help him, Tarik, but I don’t know how.”

  “You can’t help him unless he wants you to, and right now he doesn’t want you to.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s not—”

  “—your story to tell.”

  “Exactly.” He smiled, and for the first time he looked somewhat friendly. At least less frightening.

  “Will he ever tell me, do you think?”

  Tarik raised his knees and rested his elbows on them. “I think he would be a fool not to.”

  She had the feeling that Tarik was on her side. In this, at least. But she wasn’t going to trust that feeling just yet.

  “So what happens now? He rests?”

  “He will sleep for a few hours, and when he awakens, he will be hungry. It’s how this always works.”

  How many times had this happened? “Then I will tell Ida to make a large breakfast.” If she couldn’t do anything else, at least she could feed him.

  She stood on wobbly legs. The long hours of sitting on the floor had taken their toll. She hobbled back to her room on feet that felt like they were stuck with pins, but when she shut the door behind her, she simply stood there, looking at her bed and the rumpled bedclothes. She was so exhausted that any sort of thought escaped her. She couldn’t even command her body to move.

  Michael wasn’t dying.

  She swayed, whether from fatigue or relief, she couldn’t say.

  Not dying.

  She closed her eyes and let that thought settle within her. She hadn’t realized how much she’d feared that Tarik would walk out of the room and tell her that Michael was dead. Again.

  —

  Again Michael found himself standing at the door to the conservatory, watching his wife. Tarik had told him that she’d held an all-night vigil for him on the floor outside his room.

  A vigil he didn’t deserve.

  Michael made his way to her and touched the gardening implement sitting on the workbench. “You always did love your plants,” he said.

  She placed more soil in the pot, spreading it until the roots were covered. Her back was tense, her shoulders rigid. He remembered enough to know she was angry right now.

  “Gracie—”

  “Ida said you ate breakfast.”

  He sighed. “I did. She’s an excellent cook.”

  “She likes feeding people.”

  Grace turned the pot around, inspecting the soil, patting it here and there.

  “I’m sorry, Gracie.”

  “For what?” She picked up the pot and carried it to an empty spac
e on a shelf, where she carefully put it down.

  “I didn’t want you to see me like that.”

  She wiped her hands on an old rag, but she wouldn’t look at him. “I’m your wife, Michael. I’m supposed to help you. Not some strange man.”

  He touched the implement again, wishing he could remember the name of the tool. Wishing a lot of things. “Tarik has been with me a long time. He understands what I need.”

  She slammed her hand down on the workbench, startling him enough that he looked up at her. Her eyes were like blue flames, narrowed at him in a fury he could not remember seeing before. Her color was high, and, God help him, he was pulled toward her. She’d never looked so beautiful to him, and for the first time in a very long time, his body stirred in ways that were entirely inappropriate for the circumstances.

  “Why did you come back?” she asked. Her calm tone did not ease his apprehension, but it cooled his ardor, for it belied her fury. “If Tarik understands you better than I do, why did you return to me?” She emphasized the last word by throwing her rag on the workbench.

  Michael rested his hands on top of his cane and stared at the crumpled and mud-caked rag. There were so many answers he could choose from, but he chose the best, most honest answer. “Because I missed you.”

  Her laugh was laced with disbelief. “You missed me? You barely speak to me. You’re locked in a room with that man most of the time. You tell me you don’t want anyone to know you returned. Last night you were in so much pain, I thought you were dying. I sat outside your door all night, holding my breath and praying that Tarik would not walk out of that room and tell me you were gone.”

  He winced at the raw pain in her voice. There was nothing to say in his own defense. She was correct. He didn’t let her in—to his bedroom, his thoughts, his life. There was a reason for that. However, both Grace and Tarik had a very valid point. If he wasn’t willing to be forthcoming with her, then why had he returned?

  Because he missed her.

  Because he ached for her presence.

  Because for an entire year he had single-mindedly, selfishly, thought of nothing but returning home, ignoring the implications of his return and what it would do to Grace and a whole host of other people whose lives he was about to upturn.

  “I apologize.”

  “I don’t want your apologies, Michael. I want to help you. That’s what loving someone is all about—we help each other. But you push me away, and you refuse to let me help. What in the world is happening?”

  In his delirium over the past months, in his quest to regain the portion of himself that he’d lost, he’d foolishly believed that returning home would solve all of his problems. He’d thought that if he returned to the one place where he had been whole, he would become whole again.

  “I’m unsure,” he admitted.

  She rolled her eyes and turned away from him to grab an empty pot. “Fine. Don’t tell me.”

  For one harrowing moment, he feared Grace would chuck the pot at his head. But that wasn’t his Grace. She may be furious, but she was never violent.

  “I’m being honest, Grace. I don’t know exactly what is happening, but I can tell you what I do know.”

  She put the pot down and faced him. He hated seeing the distrust in her expression, hated the distance between them. A distance he had created and didn’t know how to bridge.

  “The last battle was horrific,” he began. “A terrible mess. We never should have attacked that day, but that’s what our orders were. I don’t remember much. Just the orders to attack and then…” He shook his head. Forcing the memories didn’t help and only led to an aching head. Doctors had told him he would probably never remember the events leading up to his injury, so he’d stopped trying. Sometimes he thought that was for the best. “I don’t remember anything after that until I woke up in Tarik’s camp.”

  “You were wounded.”

  “Yes.”

  “Your leg?”

  He huffed out a laugh. “No. My leg wasn’t wounded at all. It was my head. I think…I know…” He drew in a deep breath. The moment had arrived, and he wasn’t prepared for it, no matter how many times he’d rehearsed it. “I damaged my brain, Grace.” He let the words fall between them, knowing they would change things forever. Hating himself. Hating his injury. Hating war. Hating everything at the moment. Every moment of every day, he wished this hadn’t happened to him. He wished he could go back to that day and do something different, anything that would have changed the course of his life, even if that act had ended his life.

  “When I woke up, Tarik told me I’d been unconscious for days. Neither of us know how many. Things were confusing. The battle was bloody, and Tarik had to go into hiding. He took care of me as best he could while also protecting himself. If he was caught by the English army with an English officer, he would have been killed. We were fighting the Russians and while Tarik is a Cossack and doesn’t claim himself as a Russian, his people do fight for Russia.”

  He picked up the digging implement and stared at it because it was much easier to stare at than Grace’s disbelieving blue eyes. “When I awoke, I was in excruciating pain. My head felt as if it had been…” He squeezed his eyes shut. The words escaped him, just as they always did. He had no idea what he had been about to say. Frantically searching for his thoughts didn’t help. The harder he tried, the more they escaped him.

  “Michael?”

  He opened his eyes to see her looking at him in concern. “I can’t remember things, Grace. The words sometimes won’t come to me. Like the color of your hair. I can’t remember what to call the color of your hair.”

  “Blonde?”

  Blonde. Her hair was blonde. Such a beautiful blonde, too.

  He could see the fear creeping into her eyes, the affirmation that he wasn’t the man she married and that she had no idea who this new man really was.

  He didn’t know who he was, either. It was strange, living in the same body he’d lived in for nearly thirty years and yet not knowing himself. Not only had he lost part of his memory, he’d also lost part of himself. The thing that made him Michael John Ashworth. That thing that made him uniquely him. It was so difficult for him to describe and comprehend and nearly impossible to make Grace understand. All he knew was that prior to the battle, he was the same person he’d been for nearly twenty-eight years, and after the battle, he was not that person anymore. And no matter how hard he tried, he would never find that person again.

  Now he had to convince Grace to accept this new person. He would never expect her to fall in love with him. That was too much to ask, for he did not even like himself. How could he ask her to love him?

  “Yesterday at breakfast I couldn’t remember what a fork was called, but I can vividly remember the day I cut my wrist.” He lifted up his hand to display the scar that had convinced her he was truly her husband. “I remember exactly what we were talking about and the way the sun shone off your yellow hair as you scaled that fence. But some things escape me. Have you ever searched for a word, knowing it was on the tip of your tongue?”

  She nodded, her eyes wide, searching his.

  “When I search for the word, it’s like it was never in my brain to begin with, as if I’ve never spoken it before. Like the color of your hair.” He raised his fist and spread his fingers wide. “The word has simply disappeared.” His hand dropped to his side and he replaced the digging implement on the workbench. “Multiple conversations are difficult. If there are too many, my mind shuts down. And if you tell me something, don’t expect me to remember it.”

  The implications were far-reaching. How was he to run the earldom if he couldn’t remember the simplest things? How was he to attend social occasions if he couldn’t follow conversations? All of this was expected of an earl, and he didn’t know if he could do any of it.

  Grace turned her back to him, put her hands on the workbench, and leaned forward, taking deep breaths. “Tarik said you’ve been to doctors.”

  �
�Remember when I said that I came here via Italy and France? We were visiting different doctors, but none of them knew what to do with me. They all treated me as some sort of freak. They either wanted to bleed me or lock me up for fear that I would become a drooling idiot.”

  Her head whipped around to look at him. “You let them bleed you? You hate the sight of your own blood.”

  He smiled. The first time in a long time that he could remember spontaneously smiling, and not because it was expected of him. “When one goes to war, one becomes accustomed to the sight of blood.” His smile faded. “At the beginning, the headaches were unbearable, endless and excruciating. I was willing to do whatever it took to get rid of them, but even opium didn’t relieve them.” It was a new low, admitting to his wife that he’d tried such drastic measures. “Slowly, they’ve lessened, but I still get them. A dark room and no noise help.”

  “Have you tried doctors in London?”

  “I’m finished with doctors. Tarik has done more for me than any doctor has, and I will have to be content with that.”

  She straightened to face him. “What do you need me to do?”

  He wanted to hug her. Just hug her. Take her in his arms and feel her body next to his. They used to hug all the time. It had been one of the greatest joys of his life to hold his wife. He refrained. The old Michael would have done that, but the new Michael was still feeling his way and unsure of everything around him. “There is nothing you can do. My memory has not improved much, and I fear it won’t get any better than this. I return to you a broken man.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “Not broken. Just different.”

  “Different and broken. Do not believe that you can fix me, because you can’t. Doctors weren’t able to, and neither can you.”

  “You are not broken, Michael. You simply have a harder time remembering than others do. We can overcome that.”

  He was becoming frustrated, and when he became frustrated, he could not control his emotions as well. She was not understanding, or she was refusing to understand. He’d been like that, too, but time had been his teacher and now he knew that things would always be this way.