It came to him through a thick, impenetrable haze that, though seldom one to be in his cups, he must have dipped rather deeply the night before. Indeed, considering the size of the headache pounding in his skull, not to mention the dryness of his mouth, which suggested an advanced state of dehydration, he must have been rather more than just three sheets to the wind. He must have bloody well spliced the main brace!
     A low groan burst through his lips. The devil, he thought. A drunken spree might explain his nagging headache and the nausea in his stomach, but hardly the extreme pressure on his chest, like a great weight pressing him down against the bed, making movement impossible and breathing a matter of great effort.
     He was aware of a rising sense of panic engendered by the dread suspicion that, in a state of extreme inebriation, he must have sustained some sort of paralytic injury, when his senses were assaulted by a decidedly unpleasant aroma, like stale breath in the face, followed almost immediately by the indignity of a wet, slurping tongue applied in an upward motion encompassing his nose to the center of his forehead--which served at last to bring him wholly and irrevocably awake.
     His eyes flew open, and he found himself staring in stunned disbelief into the unlovely aspect of a pink tongue draped over large, ivory canine teeth amidst an impenetrable mop of thick white hair in which there appeared an unnerving lack of discernible eyes--all at exceedingly close range.
     The dog, for so it was (something of a cross between an Old English Sheep Dog and a Great Dane, speculated its hapless victim, dragging in a belabored breath), gave every impression of exultation at discovering the human returned to the land of the living, a sentiment it immediately expressed in a resounding yelp of appreciation, which did little to alleviate the man’s pounding headache.
     “Yes, no doubt I am happy to see you, too,” agreed that worthy in exceedingly dry accents. “I might point out, however, that it is bad manners to perch on the chest of an acquaintance you have only just met, let alone pin him to the bed by the shoulders. If you wish a burgeoning friendship, I suggest you remove yourself from my person immediately.”
     The dog, far from demonstrating any noticeable inclination to adhere to that well-meant advice, instead gave vent to a lengthy and vociferous rebuttal, which had the immediate effect of eliciting a hurried tattoo of footsteps along the corridor beyond the open door.
     “Goliath!” pronounced a horrified feminine voice from the doorway. “You wicked dog! Get down from there at once!”
     The newcomer, sweeping into the room, gave the immediate impression of youthful energy coupled with grim determination, as she grabbed the dog by the scruff of the neck and attempted to haul the creature bodily to the floor--to little effect.
     Goliath, apparently overjoyed at what he perceived as a glorious new game, gave a bark of delight and, in an attempt to further express his pleasure with an ecstatic wagging of his practically nonexistent tail, set his entire hind end to shaking—-to the detriment of the human beneath him.
     “You dreadful creature, enough!” declared the determined beauty, bracing her heels and giving a mighty tug, which brought the dog, sliding and scrambling, at last off the bed, not to mention off the sorely beset man in it. “Do not expect any rabbit stew for you tonight, you bad dog.” An imperative arm shot out, a stern index finger indicating the open exit. “Out, before I have Chester tether you in the stables.
     Goliath, convinced at last of his own perfidy and taking advantage of the opportunity to escape his mistress’s unmistakable displeasure, gave a gleeful bound through the door and, skidding around the corner, vanished. In the sudden silence of the room, the dog’s thumping footfalls could be heard retreating down the hall and presumably down the stairs as well.
     “My lord, I do beg your pardon for Goliath,” exclaimed the beauty, crossing directly to the bedside. “He is actually a sweet, lovable creature when one gets to know him. As it happens, this has always been Bertie’s room, and I daresay Goliath stole up here thinking to find his old master. I pray he did you no injury.”
     “Only to my dignity,” replied his lordship, suffering a peculiar lightheadedness as he looked up into the breathtakingly lovely face bent solicitously over his.
     “Where am I? Have I died and gone to heaven?”
     His inquiry, the product of his sudden flightiness, elicited a wry gleam of a smile from lips that, full and enticingly sweet, seemed most distractingly designed for kissing.
     “Hardly, my lord, though it was a near thing. Pray lie still,” added his angelic benefactor, firmly pressing him back against the pillows as he made ineffectually to shove himself up into a sitting position. “You have been quite ill and must not try yet to exert yourself.”
     “Egad,” he groaned, glad enough to collapse in the bed. He clenched his eyes against the spinning of the room. “I am weak as a bloody kitten. How long--?”
     His eyes flew open in horrified disbelief at the answer.
     “Six days, my lord, and as many nights. Indeed, you lay so long in insensibility, we quite feared for your recovery.”
     “Six days--?” gasped his sorely beset lordship, too stunned by that revelation to voice any other questions for the moment, a circumstance which seemed to afford the vision of beauty some little relief. The crease that had etched itself between her eyebrows at discovering her patient besieged by Goliath smoothed away as it became clear to her his lordship did not appear on the verge of a sharp decline because of the unfortunate mishap.
     “It is a wonder you are alive at all,” his ministering angel pointed out with an odd hardening of the lips, which had a curiously chastening effect his lordship found less than gratifying.
     Indeed, his lordship’s temper, not to mention the persistent throbbing in his skull, had hardly been improved by the discovery that he had no memory of how he came to be in such unprepossessing surrounds. Not that the room was unpleasant, with its lace curtains floating on a gentle breeze issuing from an open window or with the scent of lilacs wafting from a freshly picked bouquet set on a stand by his bedside, for it was not. Certainly there was no denying the sudden appearance of the young beauty with glorious brown hair and lovely eyes, made singularly arresting by a glow of concern in their golden brown depths, had served to lend to the simplicity of the chamber an elegance it previously lacked.
     But who the devil was she? And how had he come to be in what had once been “Bertie’s” bedroom? he could not but wonder as the intriguing female sat on the edge of the bed and laid the back of her hand against the side of his face with what would seem a total lack of self-consciousness that bordered on the familiar.
     “Thank heavens the shock of Goliath’s assault has not brought on a return of the fever,” she observed with seeming heartfelt relief, “and the wound appears not to have suffered from the experience, though perhaps I should have a look at it. How do you feel, my lord?”
     “As if I have a thousand toothaches in my skull,” growled his lordship, tinglingly aware of her nimble fingers reaching to undo the bandage that he only then became aware was bound about his forehead. It was on the tip of his tongue to demand to know the nature of the wound to which she had referred and which obviously had more than a little to do with not a few of his persistent discomforts. Only, her infinitely gentle touch served quite thoroughly to distract him.
     “Thank heaven,” breathed his ministering angel some moments later with a great deal of satisfaction, “the wound is none the worse for your ordeal with Goliath. No doubt you will be glad to know it is well on the mend. I daresay the scar will hardly be noticeable. It will, at any rate, be easily concealed beneath your hair.”
     “Excellent. It would seem I have a great deal for which to be grateful,” murmured his lordship, who, lost in the spell of her nearness and her fingers moving over his temple, as tenderly she cleansed the wound and re-bound it in fresh bandages kept for that purpose on the bedstand, could not bring himself to do more than lie quiescent while he watched her from beneath heavily drooping eyelids.
     Dressed in a morning gown of rose-colored sarcenet, she was a remarkably beautiful woman, who, past the first blush of youth, perhaps (beyond the age of coming out, but no more than four and twenty, surely, he thought), yet exuded a youthful glow and vibrant energy that really was quite captivating. Of average height, she was hardly in the current fashion of the petite, pleasingly plump blond beauty who gave the impression of helplessness and fragility. Quite the contrary, not only was she slender, with a willowy waist and small, but well-rounded bosom, all of which he found strangely appealing, but, as she leaned over him, intent upon her task, he could not but note the slender arms, emerging from beneath short puffed sleeves, were pleasingly firm and that the small, shapely hands were infinitely capable. In spite of the ivory perfection of her skin, which showed an imperviousness to the sun’s harmful influence, she was obviously a female given to athletic pursuits.
     Her rich, brown hair, shot through with golden highlights, was worn in short curls, which framed a heart-shaped face made distinctive by the wide, full mouth given to laughter, the delightful flash of a dimple in either cheek, and a long, straight nose and prominent cheekbones.
     She was a veritable angel of perfection, he decided, inhaling the sweet scent of her--lavender, he thought, and rosemary. Indeed, her tender ministrations were having a decidedly salubrious effect on his ruffled temper, not to mention the pounding of his headache. He was, in fact, acutely aware of being lulled into a delicious state of torpid contentment attended by a daydream in which his angel fitted herself neatly into his arms and offered up her tantalizing lips to receive his kiss--when suddenly the mood was shattered.
     “I do wish you would stop staring at me as if you had never seen me before,” declared his ministering angel with an unwonted sharpness. Bolting unexpectedly to her feet, she favored him with a glorious blaze of anger. “‘A great deal to be grateful for,’ my lord? Faith, what an understatement. You haven’t the least idea how fortunate you are. And you are far from being out of the briars yet. Oh, I should gladly beat some sense into that head of yours if I thought it would do the least good. How could you have placed yourself so foolishly at risk, and for what?” she demanded, leaving little doubt that she thought him a hopeless case. “What in the world possessed you to forget who and what you are for something that was not worth risking a single hair on your head?”
     It was only then, as he searched for a means of answering her, that he felt the world seem suddenly to tilt and turn. Indeed, he had the dreadful sensation that an abyss had opened up beneath him plunging him into a spinning void. Then, as from a very great distance, he heard someone call out to him and felt strong hands clasp his arms and bring him, reeling, back again.
     His angel’s face swam into focus, the brown orbs huge and dark against the sudden pallor of her complexion.
     “I fear, my dear girl,” he said slowly, his eyes mirroring the awful blankness he felt inside, “that I have indeed so thoroughly forgotten who and what I am that I not only cannot tell you ~y I should have done it, but I have not the least idea what it is that I have done. I beg your pardon if I have been staring at you in an uncivil manner. The truth is, however, I do not have the least idea who you are. Indeed, I cannot even recall my own name.”
     Felicity Talbot regarded her patient with no little astonishment. She knew perfectly well who he was. She, after all, had been hopelessly in love with him since she was ten. It was, in fact, the curse of her life that her brother Bertram had chosen to bring his closest friend home from school for the holidays when she had just entered that gawky stage her mama was used to call the age at which nobody loves one save for one’s own mama and papa. Certainly, that had been true in the case of her brother’s friend, who had promptly adopted her as a “kid” sister to add to his brood of four female siblings for whom he entertained an unshakable brotherly affection.
     It was as if he had never really looked at her again, she reflected ruefully. Certainly, he had never for a moment altered in his attitude of easy camaraderie toward her, any more than he had ceased to take her for granted, the way one was wont to take for granted a childhood pet for whom one has continued to entertain a sentimental attachment long after one has ceased, save for an occasional pat on the head, to pay any heed to it. And then, just when she might have caught his attention, something catastrophic had happened to forever blight her hopes.
     It had been the bitter drop in her cup that the year before her own come-out, just when she had grown most satisfactorily into her arms and legs, he had met and instantly lost his heart to her Cousin Zenoria, who a year older than Felicity, had ever been as fickle as she was petite,
     He was William Powell, Viscount Lethride, heir to the Earl of Bancroft; and less than a se’ennight ago he had wounded the Marquess of Shelby, perhaps mortally, in a duel over the Lady Zenoria.
     The insane fool! she thought, a lump rising to her throat at the thought of what he had risked for the honor of a woman who did not even know the meaning of the word.
     A mist clouded her vision at sight of the hopelessly blank expression in his eyes. Damn him! Even as a youth of seventeen, he had been marvelous to look upon with his crisp blond hair, laughing blue eyes, and the boyish lop-sided grin that had had the peculiar effect of making her feel wondrously warm inside. To her chagrin, she discovered his mature aspect, in spite of, or perhaps because of, its lean, hard masculinity made even more so by its six-day growth of beard, was a deal more disturbing to her physical and emotional well-being than had been that of the youth who had captured her heart thirteen years before.
     Inexplicably, she suffered a pang at sight of the lines about the stern, handsome lips. The lines had not been there two years ago when last she had seen him, though the marvelous eyes had already even then taken on the flinty aspect that served as an impenetrable shield behind which her dear Will, once so open and full of fun, had learned to conceal his innermost feelings and thoughts. That fine, noble-hearted youth must surely be gone forever.
     Now there would ever be Lethridge, a man with a reputation for being dangerous, a man who had fought a duel with a hardened rakeshame over a woman and won.
     Zenoria had done that to him, Felicity mused darkly. Zenoria and her vain, fickle heart, which, not satisfied with the love of one true man, must make a conquest of every male who had the misfortune to come into her sphere of influence.
     Lethridge, who had always been admired and respected by his peers as a right ‘un, a bruising rider and top of the trees sawyer, a man as handy with a pair of fives as he was with a pistol and sword, a Corinthian, was hardly blind to the faults of the woman who had long ago won his heart. More was the pity, Felicity thought. No matter how often Zenoria flung her suitors in his face, no matter how blatantly she demonstrated her unwillingness to commit herself to marriage, Lethridge never failed to come to her rescue whenever she found herself in the lurch. It was as if he could not help himself.
     A plague on the man! she thought uncharitably, feeling her heart beating beneath her breast with alarming velocity. As the only daughter of the Duke of Breverton, she had dreamed of one day winning Lethridge away from her cousin. Foolishly, she had even refused several advantageous offers of marriage while she waited for the maddening nobleman to take notice that she had grown into a woman considered by some to be a beauty in her own right. But no more, she told herself. As a confirmed spinster of three and twenty, she had long since given over any such vain, foolish hopes. And if occasionally she felt her life was just a trifle empty, she quickly reminded herself that she had espoused a worthy cause peculiarly suited to her unique position. possessed of a more than moderate competence and the independence enjoyed by few of her female contemporaries, she had found fulfillment, even a measure of contentment, working to improve the lives of destitute women. She had, in fact, almost succeeded in putting Lethridge entirely out of her mind, if not out of her heart.
     Oh, why had her brother Bertrand to ruin everything by showing up on the doorstep of her country cottage in Kent with the wounded and unconscious viscount in tow? she wondered irritably. She could hardly have turned them away, she told herself defensively, not when Lethridge had appeared so alarmingly pale and uncharacteristically vulnerable. Faith, whom was she trying to fool? she thought wryly. She had never before known such fear as swept over her at sight of William Powell, unconscious, a bloodied bandage tied about his head. She had not hesitated to take him in, nor had she spared herself nursing him through six days and nights of fever and delirium. Mrs. Morseby, her housekeeper of long-standing, had finally been brought to remonstrate with Felicity, saying her mistress would be of no use to anyone, let alone his lordship, if she wore herself to a state of collapse.
     It was only with a deal of reluctance that Felicity had at last been prevailed upon to allow the housekeeper and, occasionally, Annabel Jones, the young guest at Primrose Cottage, to relieve her in the sickroom for a few hours at a time. She had slept the sleep of exhaustion, only to awaken each day with the fear word would arrive that Shelby had perished of his wounds. The marquess’s death would mean exile for Lethridge and heartbreak for his remarkable family, but most especially for his youngest sister Josephine, who had become in recent years particularly dear to Felicity. However, word had not arrived, and now Lethridge was awake, his memory erased by the bullet that had creased his head.
     The devil take him! she fumed, well aware that once he was in possession of all the facts, he would undoubtedly do something infinitely foolish, like bolt from his bed and out of her house out of some mistaken notion of honor. It would be just like him to insist on returning to London when he had hardly the strength to lift his head let alone withstand a carriage ride that would very likely bring on a recurrence of the fever or worse. She had not worried over him and tended to his most intimate needs day and night for nearly a se’ennight only to have him fling her efforts all away on some stupid sense of pride or, more unpalatable still, out of the compulsion to see the woman who had been the cause of his present difficulties.
     It simply was not to be thought of, even had it not been imperative to keep him hidden away until Bertie returned with news of Shelby’s fate. She must keep Lethridge in the dark, and yet she must tell him something. She really could not bear to see him in his present anguish.
     “I daresay it is little wonder that you have lost your memory,” she said somewhat tartly at last, compelled to ease the terrible blankness from his eyes. “After all, you received a crease to the skull that must have jumbled what few brains you have. As it happens, I am Lady Felicity Talbot, and you are William Powell, Viscount Lethride--my cousin,” she added, turning away to hide the telltale blush that stung her cheeks at that final utterance, a patent lie meant to give the semblance of propriety to what could only be considered a compromising situation.
     “William Powell,” repeated his lordship, a deep furrow etching itself between his eyebrows. “Viscount Lethridge.” With a hint of impatience, he shook his head. “It does not ring a bell, I fear. And you say I am your cousin?”
     “My cousin once removed, as it were,” Felicity confirmed, crossing her fingers behind her back. “We have been the very best of friends since we were children. I should even go so far as to say you and Bertie are as close as brothers, of which you possess two, Timothy and Thomas. Your father, as it happens, is the Earl of Bancroft. Your home is Greensward in the North Yorks. Surely you must remember Greensward?”
     Helplessly, Lethridge shook his head, his blue eyes rueful. “No, absurd is it not? I cannot seem to recall anything before I awakened to Goliath’s tender ministrations only a few moments ago.” He lifted his gaze to Felicity’s. “You still have not told me how I came to be here, or where here is, for that matter.”
     “My poor Will,” exclaimed Felicity, reverting to the familiar address she had been used to employ in an earlier time when the youthful Viscount Lethridge had taught her how to bait a hook and cast a fishing line. Impulsively, she sat on the edge of the bed. “You are in a bad way if you cannot remember Greensward, or Primrose Cottage, for that matter. You are in Kent, near Faversham. As a boy, you were used to come here often over the holidays to hunt pheasant with Bertie. You were, in fact, on your way to spend a day or two with us, when you had the misfortune to be held up by highwaymen. With your usual reckless abandon, you resisted; and, though you managed to drive off the blackguards, you were wounded.”
     “Ah, yes, the wound,” murmured Lethridge, gingerly touching his fingers to the bandage. “And--er---Bertie, where is he? Surely, he did not suffer at the hands of the villains.
     “Fortunately, Bertie was here with me,” Felicity answered, wondering at the depths of her newfound depravity. Faith, how easily the lies poured from her lips! “When you failed to put in an appearance with your usual punctuality, Bertie went out to look for you. He found you, lying in a crumpled heap by the road, your curricle and team a short distance away. He brought you home, and now he has gone to Greensward to inform your mama and papa what has happened and to reassure them that you are receiving the best of care. And that is all there is to it,” Felicity ended, her unaccustomed flight of fancy having come up hard against her eminently practical nature, which warned that too many lies, besides being difficult to remember, must inevitably become hopelessly entangled. “Now you should rest, while I go and fetch your broth to you."
     All there was to it? thought William, who had and entire lifetime to fill in, not to mention and aching sense of emptiness, which the young beauty, his self-avowed kinswoman, seemed curiously able to hold at bay.
     “No, wait.” Lethridge’s hand curled about her wrist, preventing her from rising. “I have not the least desire for broth, and, as it happens, there is a great deal more I should like to know. Pray do not go just yet.”
     Felicity, who was hard put to conceal the involuntary leap of her pulse beneath his touch, indeed, who felt she must escape the viscount’s unsettling proximity very soon if she wished not to betray herself to him, steeled herself to meet his gaze with a calm composure she was far from feeling.
     “I fear it will have to wait, my dearest Will,” she said, gently, but firmly, disengaging her hand. “You are far from recovered from the fever, let alone your wound. If you are to re-build your strength, you must have nourishment.”
     “And I suppose you do not intend to indulge me until I have drunk all your demmed broth, is that it?” demanded her patient with a wry twist of his handsome lips.
     “I do not,” Felicity confirmed, withdrawing to the door. There she paused to look back at him. “Try not to fret, Will. No doubt, with rest, everything will come back to you. In the meantime, you must concentrate merely on getting well again. You might try to think of this as a holiday.”
     His angel of mercy gave him a last, fleeting smile before whisking around the corner and out of sight.
     “A holiday, good God,” he groaned, sinking back against the pillows. A holiday from what? he wondered, trying to force himself to remember. But no matter how hard he tried, he simply could not break through the blank wall that separated his present reality from a past that eluded him.
     At last, his head pounding with the effort to make some sense of the thing that had happened to him, he shoved himself up and, flinging aside the bedcovers, swung his legs over the side of the bed. It required all of his strength, not to mention his considerable will power, to push himself to his feet. For a seeming eternity, he stood, his head reeling and sweat pouring over his body under the borrowed nightshirt that was too small for his tall frame, before at last he staggered across the room to the dressing table. Leaning his hands against the edge of the table, he peered in perplexity at his image in the lookingglass.
     “William Powell, Viscount Lethridge,” he murmured, recognizing the face staring back at him, but unable to attach the name to it. “Heir to the Earl of Bancroft, whose home is Greensward in the North Yorks.” Hellsfire, it meant nothino to him! None of it.
     Miss Talbot might have been talking about someone of whom he had never heard for all the impression it made on him. Indeed, she could be making it all up out of thin air, and he would not have known the difference.
     Almost instantly, the image of another face, one remarkable for the vivacity of its lovely features, not the least of which were golden brown eyes that had the disconcerting propensity to glow with compassion one moment only to sparkle gloriously with anger the next, obtruded itself into his reeling consciousness.
     He could not recall ever having seen a more fascinating woman. Hellsfire, she was the only woman he could recall at the moment, and what a woman she was! It seemed utterly inconceivable that he could ever have forgotten her or, indeed, that, having known her, he should have been contented with a relationship based solely on friendship. She was the sort of idealized woman a man dreamed of finding one day, but never really believed that he would.
     Besides being possessed of a singular beauty that must draw eyes wherever she went, she presented the arresting impression of a sweet, fiery nature of the sort to arouse a man’s primitive urges to possess and protect. More telling still, there lay beneath that delectably feminine exterior an unmistakable, quiet sort of strength that reminded him of someone, though, for the life of him, he could not think who it might be. Certainly, Miss Talbot was one of those rare creatures who would meet any sort of crisis with a characteristic calm capability. She had already demonstrated that much. After all, how many females of refinement would have taken in a wounded man and then cared for him as he lay, helpless and unaware, in his sickbed? He did not have to have command of his memory to know that was hardly the accepted thing for an unmarried female who laid claims to being the daughter of a duke. Indeed, in the norm it was not to be thought of for any gently born female.
     Why, then, had she done it? he wondered, finding a great deal about the young beauty that provoked his curiosity.
     He had not failed to detect a subtle change in his angel’s demeanor in the wake of the unnerving discovery that he was bereft of all sense of who he was. There had arisen an immediate tension in the air, which was attended by a nervousness in his angel’s demeanor, evidenced by a tendency to look away when she was speaking. This from a female, who previously had behaved toward him with a total lack of self-awareness that bordered on the familiar! he reflected, recalling the blaze of anger that had lent fire to her eyes only moments before his telling revelation. She had spoken to him in a manner that would be acceptable only between persons who enjoyed the intimacy of a long friendship. She had, after all, accused him of having a shortage of brains, he remembered with a wry twist of the lips.
     Afterwards, though she had not hesitated to refer to him as her “dearest Will” and despite the fact that she had evidenced toward him a sincere concern for his well-being, he could not be mistaken in thinking he detected a certain restraint in her manner toward him that had not been there before. Added to that was the matter of her curiously abrupt conclusion to the interview along with the sense that she wished nothing more than to remove herself from his presence.
     A highwayman’s bullet may have cost him his memory, but it had not served to impair either his instincts or his ability to reason; and both of these faculties told him that Lady Felicity Talbot was keeping something from him. Perhaps it was nothing more than the discomfort of a failed affair of the heart. It occurred to him that the beautiful Felicity might have rejected a suit from him, perhaps because she felt she could not feel for him anything other than a friendly affection. Certainly, that would explain her sudden reticence--the dread of having to re-live an uncomfortable scene of rejection. Strangely, the thought was not one conducive to comfort.
     If only he could remember, he thought, his glance, half-wild, searching for some clue, something to jog his memory. His eyes came to rest on a gentleman’s personal items laid neatly out on the dressing table--a well-healed leather purse, a penknife, a gold watch and fob, a solitaire diamond pin, all of which undoubtedly should have been familiar, but, maddeningly, were not.
     His attention was drawn to an exquisitely wrought walnut box, which would seem to evoke a dread fascination. It, alone of all the things on the dressing table, struck a strange chord of memory. Knowing what he would find within, he reached to open the lid.
     The brace of dueling pistols shone a dull blue against the red velvet lining. The checkered grips were plain, the octagonal barrels of exaggerated length designed to give the duelist the greatest possible advantage against the nervous jerk of an arm at the moment of firing. William knew without trying that the point would be true. He knew, too, the feel of the grip in the palm of the hand.
     Deliberately, he lifted his gaze to probe the eyes in the mirror. “William Powell,’ he said again. “Who the devil are you?”