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"Oh aye, I suppose," Edith said on a sigh and stopped fighting him.
"Good," Aulay muttered and walked her the rest of the way down the stairs and to the trestle tables. "Sit here with Dougall, Cam and Greer and I will just . . ."
He didn't bother finishing his sentence. He just had to get away from everyone for a minute. The scene he'd just witnessed upstairs was replaying itself in his head over and over. "He is a monster with that scar. It turns my stomach just to look at him. I could not bear his touching me. No woman would. Every time I see his face I think someone should kill him while he sleeps."
The words were like razor-sharp blades shredding his soul. To think Jetta, his Jetta, the woman he loved and whom he'd thought loved him felt that way . . . It was Adaira all over again. Only worse this time. Because he hadn't loved Adaira. He'd thought he had, but the pain he'd experienced when she rejected him was nothing compared to the agony ripping him apart now.
Aulay just didn't understand it. Jetta had never once visibly flinched from his scar. Not that he'd seen anyway, he thought, and then recalled that he had been asleep when she first woke up, and he had no idea how long she'd been awake before he'd opened his eyes. Perhaps she'd shown her revulsion then when he couldn't see it, and had managed to hide it afterward.
If so, what else had she hidden? Did she really not remember anything? Or had that been a lie too? Even her fear could be a lie, he supposed. Perhaps it all was. Perhaps it had all been lies and pretending to love him to hide at Buchanan from whatever truth she wasn't telling them.
And dear God, she was a good liar. He could still hear her sweet declarations of love in his head. Those and her fake moans of pleasure tortured him as he thought on how she'd pretended to pant for him, and feigned such an eager response to his kisses and touch. All lies. The woman was--
"M'laird?"
Aulay turned sharply and stared when he saw Cullen hurrying toward him. This was the man who should have been guarding his wife. If he had been, Aulay never would have witnessed that scene in the room, and would still happily believe his wife really loved him. His life would not now be turning to ashes around him.
"Where the hell were ye? Ye were to be guarding me wife!" he roared, furiously, taking out his pain and anger on the man. If he'd done his job, he would still be blissfully ignorant of Jetta's true nature, and if she'd killed him in his sleep as she'd threatened, at least he'd have died happy, thinking himself loved and cared for. Not destroyed by the knowledge that she had never wanted or loved him, and no one ever could or would. Thanks to this man, he'd die a lonely and bitter old man with no one at his side.
"I am. I mean I was," Cullen said with confusion. "And the men are with her still. Well, they're back out in the hall now and no' in the bedchamber with her as we ha'e been fer the past hour since we escorted her back to yer bedchamber. But they're there, guardin' her as we were ordered, and I would be too, only she sent me to fetch ye back."
Aulay stared at him blankly, trying to absorb his words. "What?"
"Shortly after she retired to yer chamber, she opened the door, poked her head out and asked would we help her move the bed," Cullen explained. "Well, o' course we said aye. But it was no' just the bed. She wanted rearranging o' the whole room, m'laird, and the room next to it too. We've done now and she sent me to fetch ye to see if ye like it." Grimacing, he added, "And I'm sure enough hopin' ye do. I do no' relish movin' everything back again if ye don't."
Aulay stared at him blankly for a moment, and then strode past him toward the keep. His mind was spinning. Nothing made sense. He'd seen Jetta in Niels and Edith's room with his own eyes. He'd heard her say those things. Yet Cullen was claiming he and the others had been up in the bedchamber with her since she'd gone above stairs? Maybe she'd slipped out while the men were busy, he thought. But that didn't seem likely. If there had only been two men, she might have managed to slip away, but four?
Ignoring the people at the table, Aulay strode straight upstairs and to his room. The other three guards were there now, positioned one on either side of the door and one against the opposite wall, facing the door. Aulay ignored them as well and stepped into his bedchamber and then paused abruptly when he saw Jetta standing on a wobbly chair next to the bed, fiddling with the drapes hanging from the canopy overhead. The bed, however, was now closer to the window. In fact, everything in the room had been moved as Cullen had said.
For a moment, all Aulay could do was stare as his mind tried to make sense of this morning's events . . . and then it occurred to him that Jetta was wearing a different gown. It was the same gown he'd helped her don in this room and at the loch this morning, but not the gown she'd been wearing in Niels's room, he realized. That one had been silver.
Jetta also didn't quite fill out her dress as well as the other Jetta had filled out the silver dress. That Jetta's clothes had fit snugly, this one's did not. The gown was a size or so too large at present, because she was underweight from her illness.
Cursing, Jetta tilted her head at a different angle as she tried to see whatever it was she was doing, and Aulay's gaze was drawn to the caul Mavis had fixed in her hair after they'd returned from the loch. He'd watched the woman put it on for Jetta, and suspected it wouldn't normally be that complicated a piece to put the average woman's hair up in, but it was more so on Jetta. Mavis had had to draw hair from the top and sides, and then braid and curl the strands to cover the large spot where her hair was missing before pinning the caul in place. It was something he was quite sure Jetta couldn't manage on her own. Yet she'd had the caul on when she left the table, hadn't been wearing it in Niels and Edith's room, but was wearing it again now.
Not only had she not been wearing it in Niels and Edith's room, he realized suddenly as a picture of Niels tangling his hands in her hair to pull her away from him rose up in his mind. That Jetta had had long black hair . . . everywhere. There had been no bald spot from where they'd shaved her head. In fact, it was her long hair at the back that Niels had caught at to pull her away from him.
It hadn't been Jetta, Aulay realized with relief, and then frowned. If the woman hadn't been Jetta, then who was she?
Chapter 18
"Oh, husband! Cullen found you. Good. What do you think of the room?"
Aulay jerked out of his thoughts and focused on the woman who had spoken. His wife. Who apparently had a twin running about, trying to seduce his brothers and rip his heart out with both her words and act--
Aulay stopped abruptly as that thought ran through his mind. A twin. Jetta had remembered having a sister. Could she be a twin and the woman he'd seen in Niels and Edith's room? Other than having all of her hair, and a healthy weight, they had been identical.
No, he argued with himself. Even if Jetta did have a twin, the woman couldn't possibly know she was here. No one knew. He'd seen to that.
Still, what other explanation was there?
Frowning, Aulay opened his mouth, intending to ask her to try to remember if her sister was a twin, and then abruptly closed it again. Jetta never remembered anything when asked outright, and trying merely caused her pain. The only memories she'd regained to date had come to her "from the side," as Rory put it. He had to think of a way of getting the information without actually asking for it.
"Husband? Do you not like it?"
Aulay glanced toward her, a little distracted until he noted her expression. Jetta looked uncertain and even disappointed that he might not like what she had done, and he forced a smile and nod.
"Aye, 'tis nice," he assured her quickly.
"Oh good," she said with relief, and beamed at him before turning her attention back to what she was doing.
The moment she did, he turned his own attention back to trying to work out how to trick some memories out of her, or perhaps
into her. Keeping her distracted would probably help, he thought, and asked, "What are ye doing now?"
"Oh, I am just trying to sort out how these drapes affix to the canopy around the bed. I thought with all the fabric Jo gave us, it might be nice to use some to make new drapes. These ones are old and a bit frayed."
"Hmm," he murmured, and not thinking of anything better to try, said, "Ye did no' mention yer sister was yer twin. She seems much different than you."
"Oh aye," she muttered, distractedly. "We are twins in countenance, not character, as Mother used to say."
"So she is no' like ye?" he asked carefully.
"Oh nay," she said on a laugh, tipping her head farther back to look at the cloth. "We are like night and day. Cat was always chatty and charming while I was quiet and more reserved. Mother used to say Cat was a peacock, and I more a--oh," she said softly.
Jetta stilled suddenly, her hands upraised, but no longer moving. Unfortunately, Aulay couldn't see her expression anymore since she'd tilted her head back a moment earlier. It wasn't until she drew a hand down to rub at her forehead that he realized the natural memories had stopped and she was now trying to force them.
Aulay started to reach for her, intending to distract her, but stopped before touching her, the other Jetta's words echoing in his head. "He is a monster with that scar. It turns my stomach just to look at him. I could not bear his touching me. No woman would. Every time I see his face I think someone should kill him while he sleeps."
Retrieving his hands, he said, "Jetta?"
"Aye," she murmured, lowering her head and continuing to rub it. Her expression was a combination of concentration and pain.
"Jetta," Aulay repeated with a frown, clenching his hands into fists to keep from touching her. "Ye have to stop, lass."
"I just . . . There is something important on the tip of my . . . I just need to remember . . ."
"Nay, lass. Ye need to stop," Aulay growled, his concerned gaze sliding from her to the door. He'd left the fake Jetta with Niels, who hadn't been in great shape. He shouldn't have left him, and now he couldn't leave Jetta until she stopped trying to remember. Turning his head back to his wife, he said, "Please, Jetta, ye ha'e to stop--Jetta!"
