Blake found Elizabeth in the Italian Garden ruins, staring up at the statue of Venus.
“Good morning, Elizabeth,” he said. “May I speak with you?”
Looking almost delirious, she turned to face him. In her hand, low at her side, she held a sheet of paper.
He looked down at it as cold dread flowed through him.
“Where did you get that?”
“In your room. I had no idea you were so gifted, Blake. It just goes to show how little we know of each other.”
He frowned. “You were in my room?”
“Yes. A short time ago, after I saw you beating my brother. I needed to know the truth. Now I do.”
“Elizabeth…”
She made a feeble attempt to smile. “No, please, don’t apologize. There is no need. She’s lovely, Blake. I thought so the first moment I saw her. She is your perfect match. It’s there in the way you look at each other. It’s as obvious as the sun in the sky.”
She stepped forward and held the sketch out to him. It was the first picture of Chelsea he had ever drawn—the one with the unusual emblem in the corner, the symbol he had never been able to connect with anything.
He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t want to hurt Elizabeth. That’s not why he came out here. He had come to ascertain if she knew what happened that night on the boat, and why John had tried to kill him.
“You don’t love me, do you?” she asked.
He met her wet, teary gaze, and decided there was no need to say the words aloud. She knew.
She turned toward the fountain and looked up at Venus’s face. “It’s all right, I’m not hurt. Well, I am, but only because I was forced to marry you, just like you were forced to marry me. It has all been very difficult.”
“We were forced?” he asked, a heightened frustration permeating his voice—a reaction to his persistent inability to remember all the things he needed to know. “By your brother? Or your father? Did I compromise you?”
She chuckled. “No, Blake, you are far too honorable for anything like that, which is why I hold such a high opinion of you. You were forced by your father. You had to marry someone to secure your inheritance, and my father wanted me to forget the young man I had fallen in love with.”
“The young man?”
So there was another. She was in love with someone else…
Blake looked up at the clear blue sky and felt a wave of calm move through him. He took in a breath of fresh air and let it out, then went to Elizabeth, took her by the hand and sat down beside her on the fountain wall. She seemed so young—too young to be his wife.
“You were brokenhearted on our wedding day?” he asked.
She nodded. “Yes. I missed him. I still miss him now.”
“Who is he?”
“He’s a solicitor, the son of a clerk. But a match between us is utterly hopeless. My father would kill me first.”
“I’m sure that’s not the case.”
“Oh, yes, it is. You don’t know my father.”
“Don’t I? Surely I do.”
She looked up at him with weepy eyes and laughed. “Poor Blake. You really need to recover your memories. You met him only once. That is all. On the day you asked for my hand.”
“Obviously I made a good enough impression.”
“Of course you did. You are a good man and a marvelous catch by any standards.”
“But you don’t love me,” he said.
Tears spilled out of her eyes onto her cheeks. “I like you a great deal. You were very good to me.”
For a long time he sat beside her on the fountain wall, holding her small hand in his and struggling to remember the night on the boat.
“After we were married,” he said, “what happened? I remember being asleep in my cabin when our boat collided with the other, but where were you? Forgive me for being blunt, Elizabeth, but did we consummate the marriage?”
She shifted uneasily. “No. I left our cabin and went to the supper room to try and forget what I was leaving behind. You merely thought I was nervous, or perhaps you suspected the truth. I don’t know. But you were very patient, and I was grateful for that.”
“And that’s when we collided with the other ship?”
“Yes. The storm was raging, and when we hit, we hit hard. Water came rushing into the supper room, and when I went back to our cabin to find you, you were gone. I didn’t know where you were. By the time I found my way up onto the deck, the boat was already turning over on its side, and before I knew it, I was swimming in the Channel. I don’t remember what happened after that. I woke up on the other ship.” She lowered her eyes. “You were not with us, and I was devastated. Truly I was.”
“You weren’t relieved to be rid of me?” he asked, hoping to make her smile.
She shook her head. “Of course not. I knew you were a good man, and I told myself that in time I would grow to love you. I’m sure I would have.”
“And I you,” he told her.
But they were living in the present, not the future, and they both loved other people.
“There is something else you must know,” he said. “It is the reason I came out here to speak with you.”
She looked up. “It has to do with my brother, doesn’t it?”
He paused to give her a moment to prepare herself for the news it seemed she expected, but would nevertheless not find easy to hear.
“Yes, it has to do with your brother. I remember what happened that night on the boat. I was not simply lost overboard during the accident.”
He watched her face go pale, and then her eyes revealed her understanding. “John tried to hurt you, didn’t he?”
“He stabbed me in the cabin.”
She stared at him in white-faced shock, then stood up. “He stabbed you?”
“Yes. And I am hoping you will be able to tell me why. I suspect it has something to do with the Horticultural Society and all the questions I was asking. And what is this emblem here?” He pointed at the sketch. “I drew it, but I cannot place it.”
Looking faint, she sat down again. “What do you remember? What do you know?”
“I remember that I was concerned about my father leaving his fortune to an operation that was run by some questionable characters, and was curious as to how the organization could have the funds to own a ship and travel to France once a month to bring back rare flowers. And honestly, your brother hardly seems like the type who would enjoy botany.”
“You are correct,” she replied. “He does not. There is only one kind of plant that holds any interest for him and my father, and that is—”
“The poppy,” he finished for her. He looked down at the emblem, and realized that’s what it was. “Your brother is importing opium.”
She stared up at him with shame. “Do you remember learning this? Did you have proof?”
“I don’t know. If I did, it’s lost now.”
Then suddenly he remembered all the opium dens John had taken him to in the early days of their acquaintance, and how John had gambled like a man with bottomless pockets.
That was why he befriended John. He’d been seeking the truth…
A great flood of dark and filthy memories rushed into his brain, and he remembered the effects of the drug. He remembered taking it in order to keep John from suspecting why he had befriended him.
Then the doctor in Jersey gave it to him…No wonder he’d been so enraged. He had never wanted to become an addict. Thank God he put a stop to it when he had.
“This symbol I drew…” he said. “It identifies your father’s activities, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” she replied. “He stamps it on all his correspondence, and his associates in France do the same. It is how they know a letter is legitimate.” She looked away. “John and my father must have known you discovered what they were doing. Although I believe at first they hoped you would join them. No doubt John realized eventually that you were too decent for that. He must have known you would blow a whistle, which is why he tried to harm you.”
“It all makes sense now.”
She stood and walked a short distance away. “I’ve had enough of my family’s corruption, Blake, and their overbearing ways. I can get the evidence to expose my father and brother, and I am going to do it. Finally, I am going to do it. I cannot live like this any longer.”
He stood up also. “It will cause a scandal.”
“I don’t care. I will have my solicitor to protect me. I know that he will. He is a good man, like you.”
Blake approached her. “What do you want to do, Elizabeth? About us.”
She looked him straight in the eye. “I want to do what is right, and what we both want. You are too much of a gentleman to say it, Blake, so I will be the one. I wish to seek an annulment. I want to be with the man I love.”
He took hold of her hand. “I am sorry for all this.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“I wish you every happiness,” he said. “If there is ever anything you need…”
“Thank you.” She covered his hand with her own and kissed it. “And I hardly need to wish you happiness,” she added with laughter, “for I suspect you already found yours.”
“Perhaps,” he replied, not entirely sure that his happiness would be an easy thing to recapture, for he had been cruel to Chelsea since that final night in Jersey, and she seemed determined to leave here today and go home to her family, to reconcile with her mother, and be there for the birth of her brother’s first child.