Aidan scratched a line on the cave wall with a charred stick, adding a mark to a long line of hash marks. ‘What month is it?’ Fortis asked from his pine-bough pallet near the fire. He was paler, weaker.
‘February.’ They’d been in the cave for three months and there’d been no progress. Saving his comrade had become an exercise in both hope and futility. Reality told him hope was useless. The ribs were not healing. Fortis was only without pain when he lay still. The man could not risk moving, let alone walking to wherever the British army was camped now.
‘February? Even as short a month as it is, I won’t see the end of it.’ There was a pause. ‘You’re free to go, you know. I’ve kept you here long enough and for no reason. I will die whether you stay or not. Build up the fire one last time so I might have some light and heat by which to face my end and when it dies, I will die. I will just move and it will be over. Or you can leave a shot.’
‘I will not hear such gruesome talk. I am staying with you and you will get better. You’ve made it this long.’ He took his friend’s hand and smiled in reassurance, but he feared the reassurance was a lie. Yesterday, Fortis had begun to cough up blood, the last piece of proof both of them needed to confirm the worst: Fortis had a broken rib and finally that rib had punctured something vital. It wouldn’t, couldn’t be long now. The knowledge of it tore at Aidan. He could not lose Fortis. Fortis had become his friend. Aidan could count on one hand how many people in his twenty-eight years could lay claim to the title of friend.
Fortis returned his smile weakly. ‘You’re a good friend, Aidan. You’ve given me months I wouldn’t have had, time in which to make peace with myself. I am nearly ready to go, there’s just one more thing that needs doing. Do you remember I told you about my wife? Would you get her miniature out for me?’
Aidan fumbled in Fortis’s coat pocket for the miniature and opened it for him. ‘She’s still beautiful. You are a lucky man.’ He kept up the pretence of a future.
‘I am not lucky. I will not see her again, I will not have a second chance with her. I need to ask you one more time, Aidan. Do you have a wife? A woman waiting for you? Someone who compels your heart?’
‘No, you know that I don’t.’ Aidan pressed a hand to Fortis’s forehead, worried his friend was delirious. They had discussed this before.
‘I need you to do something for me, you must promise.’ Fortis gripped his wrist to stall any protest. ‘We have to stop pretending I’m going to get up and walk out of here. I will be dead very soon, tonight or tomorrow. I’ve asked so much of you, but I want to ask one more thing.’
‘Anything, you know that,’ Aidan promised desperately as if promises could keep his friend alive.
Fortis nodded. ‘I want you to go to her after I’m gone.’
‘Fortis, this is nonsense.’ But it wasn’t. Very soon Fortis would be gone. Already, he seemed to fade before Aidan’s eyes. To pretend otherwise would be to lie, to waste what time was indeed left. ‘I will. I’ll go to her and tell her everything, how much you wanted to try again, how much you regret not being there in person.’
Fortis shook his head. ‘No, not like that. She married me to protect herself and her land from Tobin Hayworth. She needs my name. She needs me. I am no good to her dead.’ He coughed, winded from the anxious speed of his words, blood staining the rag Aidan held to his lips. It was a long while before he was able to continue, panic rising in his eyes as he realised time was truly running out and his plans were not set. ‘I want to give you my life, Aidan. Listen to me, carefully. We are of similar height and bearing, dark hair with blue eyes. Blue eyes are rare and to have the same shade, it’s almost as if this was meant to be, Aidan. I’ve told you of my family, who they are, where to find them. I’ve told you stories of my childhood with my brothers. You can use them as proof. Who else would know the three of us locked our Latin tutor in his room one afternoon to escape lessons? And you know other stories besides. Whatever you don’t remember, claim battle trauma, say your memory has been affected.’
This plan of his was crazy in its thoroughness. ‘How long have you been plotting this?’ Aidan asked quietly.
‘Since I was sure this was the end for me,’ Fortis answered honestly. ‘My family will want me back so badly they’ll want to believe you.’
‘And Avaline? Will your wife welcome back her husband?’
‘If she does not, convince her otherwise. You’re a handsome man, I am sure you can be quite charming. No doubt you’ll be a better husband than I was. I’m counting on it, Aidan. Avaline is sweet and kind, but she has backbone. She wanted a family, she had such dreams for us and I did not value them. I had only dreams for me: glory and battlefield promotions. She was just an ornament on my arm, sometimes a shackle, albeit a pretty one, that came with land my father had acquired for me, when I bothered to notice her at all. I regret I will not be able to make it up to her in person. I would have liked to try again.’
‘Impersonation is a crime,’ Aidan hedged. The request was as enormous as it was tempting. ‘What makes you think I’ll do any better as a husband? I’m a former thief.’
Fortis chuckled and paid for it with a racking, bloody cough. ‘You’re the most noble thief I’ve ever known, nobler than most men I’ve known. You’ve taken care of me all these months, you put your safety aside for mine when you pulled me out from under Khan. You’ve kept us both alive on next to nothing when you could have left. You might be alone in the world, but you know what love is.’ Fortis coughed again, unable to catch his breath, gasping and choking. Aidan held him up, murmuring nonsense about things being fine. ‘Things’ were worse than ever.
The cough subsided at last, leaving Fortis exhausted. His eyes were closed as Aidan eased him back down, but Fortis’s grip was as tight as ever on his wrist. ‘Promise me, Aidan, you will go to her. There are more letters in my trunk at camp. Promise me, when I am gone, you will go to the British lines and tell them you’re Fortis Tresham, that you’ve been wandering in the wilderness, sick and alone, and disoriented. You have the scars to prove it. Tell them to send you home. There is no one to gainsay you. In one fell swoop, you can have all you’ve ever wanted.’ Temptation roared loud now. It could be done.
‘Don’t work yourself up, Fortis. Save your strength.’
‘For what?’ Fortis’s eyes opened, blue and steady. ‘I am waiting only for your promise and even then I don’t know how much longer I can wait.’ His breath rattled in his chest. A death rattle, some surgeons called it. Speech was hard now, his lungs filling fast for the last time.
‘Fortis.’ Aidan couldn’t keep the emotion from his voice. It couldn’t end like this. Was there something he should have done? Something that would have saved him? It was all happening so fast now. He wasn’t ready to let Fortis go.
‘Promise me, Aidan. I give you my life. I give you Avaline. No one will ever know. Promise?’ The man who asked for nothing had just posed a question. The end times most certainly.
Aidan took his dear friend’s hand and held his gaze, holding his own mad grief at bay. There would, unfortunately, be time for that. ‘I promise.’ He did not look away, did not let go, until the last spark of life faded from Fortis Tresham’s eyes. The first tear fell and Aidan let the madness come. Fortis Tresham was dead. Long live Fortis Tresham.
He was not Fortis Tresham. Fortis Tresham was dead. He’d died in the cave. It was all coming back to him in vivid, startling, reality-shattering clarity and the realisation was devastating. Aidan began to shake violently, his body trembling from the intensity of the flashback and the realisation that accompanied it. Someone was there, wrapping him in a blanket and soothing him with reassuring words. He guessed it was Ferris. His brother. His mind stopped him. Corrected him. No. Not his brother. He didn’t have a brother, or nephews or a father, certainly not a father who was a duke. Aidan Roswell had no one.
‘Fortis, open your eyes. I am here. You are safe.’ That voice belonged to Avaline. His wife, the mother of his unborn child. He had to correct himself once more. No. Not his wife. Fortis’s wife. But the mother of his child. Oh, God, the baby! An illegitimate bastard. Tainted, the poor thing, and it wasn’t even born yet. He groaned against the agony of the realisation. The facts and consequences of what he now knew were overwhelming.
How did he open his eyes? How did he go on from here? How did he tell Avaline? What would happen to them? To him? The flood threatened to wash him away. No. He had to be strong. Avaline was going to need him. He needed to protect her. He’d promised Fortis. He pushed the realisations back one by one and locked them in their cages. He would cope with this latest crisis the way he coped with battlefields: one step, one hurdle, one enemy at a time. He would focus on what was in front of him.
Aidan opened his eyes, slowly letting his senses take in the details of his surroundings. Ferris and Avaline knelt beside him on the floor of a small sitting room, the room Avaline used as her office. His shoulders lifted under the weight of the blanket. Avaline’s fingers laced through his in a reassuring touch. ‘Fortis.’ A soft smile played on her face. He should not let her call him that, but he couldn’t bring himself to disabuse of her that particular truth just yet. Not when there were other truths to acknowledge, too. And selfishly, he wanted to enjoy looking at her face when it shone with love for him. He would lose that when she knew the truth very soon. Surely, no one would begrudge him a few minutes more of that smile.
‘I’ve ruined your party.’ He managed to get the words out. Speaking seemed difficult, a monumental task to translate the rampaging thoughts in his head into simple words.
‘Don’t be silly. Our party will be the talk of the county for weeks.’ Avaline laughed. ‘I don’t care, Fortis. Truly. Hayworth provoked you. He came here to make trouble. He tried to sow seeds of doubt where none even existed. No one but him ever questioned who you were.’ Except himself. He’d questioned who he was at the Romani camp. Turned out, he’d been right to do so.
‘Did he succeed?’ Aidan held her gaze. Was there doubt now? Was the word of a duke all that was holding those doubts at bay? In truth, he cared less about what a room full of strangers thought than what Avaline thought. What did she think? Did she believe anything Hayworth had said? She had fought so hard for him that night at the camp, down on her knees, holding his hands and now her fight had been betrayed. She’d fought for the wrong man although she didn’t know it yet.
‘He’s in with your father and Frederick right now. Between your father’s ducal rage and your fist, he’ll be sorry he showed up at all,’ Avaline tried to reassure him. But there was nothing she could say that would soothe him. He knew better. He’d hit a man for speaking the truth. He wasn’t Fortis Tresham. Of course, the man spouting the truth could have been more delicate about it if he’d truly cared. Hayworth’s intentions had been malicious, but no less true because of his malice. It was a bitter pill to swallow.
‘And the guests?’ His nerves were starting to calm.
‘Helena and Anne have seen them off. No need to worry.’ Avaline swallowed. ‘What happened, Fortis? What did you remember?’
‘I don’t know. I remember something shattered.’
‘Yes, the swan, the dishes,’ Avaline supplied, eyes bright and anxious.
‘Suddenly, I was back in the cave.’ He winced. Only in his mind, though. In reality, he’d never left the ballroom. Oh, Lord, what had he done? New fear swept him. ‘What did I do? Was anyone hurt? Was it awful?’ How might he have embarrassed her?
It was Ferris who answered. ‘Frederick and I pulled you off Hayworth and got you away. I don’t think anyone suspected it was more than just an angry temper.’ Aidan breathed a little easier, thankful for that small piece of mercy. Avaline would have to live among these people later, after...obstacles and issues rattled the bars of their cages. He shook his head to tamp them down. He couldn’t think about them now. Those were obstacles much further down the road.
‘Fortis, what did you remember about the cave?’ Avaline prompted, no doubt wondering what was left to remember.
He would have to tell her. It served no one except himself to delay the news that his memory was fully returned and, with it, certain key pieces of information. He glanced at Ferris and the man rose, understanding immediately his silent request.
‘I’ll let you talk in private. I’ll just be outside the door if you need anything.’ Ferris nodded to Avaline. Aidan knew what that meant, too. Ferris would be on hand in case he broke down again.
Aidan waited until Ferris had shut the door behind him. He gathered his thoughts in the moments that remained. How did he tell her he was a lie? That what she thought was true was all a fiction? Yet, if she gave him a chance, the one thing that mattered most was still true. ‘Avaline, I need to tell you some difficult things. You will not want to hear them any more than I want to say them. They will change many things, but not the most important thing. I love you. I love the child we made and I will fight for both of you with all that I have.’ Perhaps if she could hold on to that one truth it would help her hear the other truths. ‘After I have told you, we can decide what is best to do.’
‘Fortis, you’re frightening me. I’m afraid.’
His hands tightened around hers, wanting to give them both strength but he would not give her a lie, not another one. ‘You should be.’
‘Fortis, tell me. Let us face the cave together.’
‘Don’t call me that,’ he snapped. ‘I remembered everything tonight, Avaline. Most importantly, I remembered who I was. Unequivocally.’ That was the difference. Time seemed to suspend as he uttered the words, ‘I am not Fortis Tresham.’
‘How can that be? Of course you’re Fortis. You have my letters, my miniature, his uniform. His trunks. Your memories are jumbled, but you know why. You know you are mistaken, my love.’
My love. He savoured the words. It might be the last time she’d ever call him that. But even as he cherished the words, he heard the defeat in them. Her arguments were pro forma. He could see in her devastated eyes that even she didn’t believe them any more or perhaps she never fully had. Perhaps, like him, she, too, had had her doubts and bravely thrust them away for the sake of the new marriage they might make between them. They could hide from those truths no longer.
‘No, you must listen to me, Avaline. I am Aidan Roswell. The reason all my flashbacks were through his eyes was because that was me, it was no mind trick. Ferris was wrong. I pulled Fortis out from under his horse. I dragged him to safety.’ Just as he’d thought. The story poured out, the words coming fast as he made his case. She listened enrapt to the fantastical tale of their lives in the cave, how he—how Aidan—had kept Fortis alive.
‘He was sorry, Avaline, for the marriage. He regretted his behaviour. He wanted a second chance and when he knew he wouldn’t live, he asked me to come in his place. He knew you needed protection against Hayworth, that if he were dead he could not give you that protection.’ How did he make her understand he hadn’t wanted to deceive her? That this was what Fortis had wanted for her? To give her this last gift? An apology of sorts? ‘Please, Avaline, listen to me.’ Oh, God, what if she didn’t? He couldn’t lose her. He could lose all else, but not her. Not his anchor, the one thing that had kept him sane, yet he felt her hands tug inside his grip and, because he could deny her nothing, he let her go.