“I can fix this,” he said quietly.
She reached out and put her hand against his cheek. He didn’t feel it, which was one of the more difficult things he’d had happen to him over a lifetime of difficult things—
He looked at her in surprise.
Because suddenly, he remembered.
He jumped to his feet and backed away, looking at her in ... again, horrorwasn’t the right word, neither was dismay because neither had anything to do with what he was feeling. Shock, yes. Profound surprise, yes to that as well.
He almost went down to his knees again for a far different reason.
“Oliver,” she said quietly.
He realized he was looking at her, yet not seeing her. He shook his head sharply, then dropped to his knees again right where he was because he wasn’t entirely certain he wouldn’t fall there anyway with the force of the realizations that were crashing over him like storm-propelled waves against the shore.
“You were there,” he whispered.
She smiled. “What do you mean, my love?”
“For me,” he said thickly. “My whole life, you’ve been there.”
She looked as if she might have been weeping, though she was still smiling. He didn’t want to ask, though he was ridiculously and no doubt inappropriately curious as to why he could see her.
Though he had in the past, as well.
Almost.
Memories layered themselves on top of each other, one by one, as relentless as those same waves of the sea. First was the memory of the first night his parents had dropped him off at boarding school when he’d been six. He’d had a special dispensation, of course, because his father was who he was andhis mother had been eager to get him out of the house and away from her other more tractable children.
“It’s more complicated than that,” Mairead said softly.
He looked at her in surprise. “Can you read my mind?”
She smiled. “I can see the thoughts crossing your face, but I’ve been looking at that face for years, so perhaps I know you better than anyone else. Your mother is a difficult woman.”
“And my father an utter arse.”
“Well,” she said, conceding the point with a nod, “aye. Your father is, however, a lord, which has perhaps left him a bit more arrogant than he might have been otherwise.”
“He’s only a viscount,” Oliver said, trying not to weep. “Hardly worth saving him a decent table at supper.”
His father’s title had been enough, though, to win him that early entrance to boarding school which had led to some unpleasant hazing from the older lads. If he had made especial note of those same lads whilst considering doing business with them—it was odd how those deals had always fallen through at the most inopportune moment—it was likely best to leave those memories behind that door in his mind where he locked his less palatable thoughts.
“A title you don’t want,” Mairead added.
He shook his head. He would have said more, but he was suddenly awash in more memories that he hadn’t thought about in years, memories he wondered if he hadn’thadbefore, yet somehow he now knew he’d possessed them the whole of his life. He looked at Mairead and wondered if the agony showed on his face.
“You were there,” he said hoarsely. “That first night at St. Margaret’s.”
She smiled faintly. “Was I?”
He would have glared at her, but he couldn’t bring himself to. “You sang me to sleep.” He paused, then shivered. “I can still hear the melody.”
She smiled in truth that time. “You have a good ear.”
“It makes pub crawls a misery.”
“Fortunate are you, then, that I can string along a proper tune. And aye, I was there when they dropped you off at St. Margaret’s and told you they’d be back for you in a few hours.” She smiled gravely. “I also sat with you all night after the first time you ran afoul of the headmaster’s birch switch.”
