Modean Moon - Forgotten Vows

She tightened her hand in his and reached with her other hand to grip his arm. “Before?”

“Yes,” he said, knowing instinctively that she meant before whatever had brought her to Aval on. “Before.”

Tears trembled once again on her lashes, and her soft lower lip quivered slightly before she covered it with one fragile hand and closed her eyes against an emotion so strong, Edward felt it vibrate through her, and because of their joined hands, through him.

“Oh, thank God,” she said. “I thought—I was afraid no one would look for me.”

Edward heard a world of fear and loneliness in her words, far more than seemed possible in the pleasant surroundings of the vicarage garden.

“Who are you?” Jennie asked him, once again grasping his arm. “Who am I?”

Edward covered her hand with his, marveling as always at the contrast between her soft, fair, almost translucent skin and his rougher, darker, almost swarthy coloring. He didn’t know which of them was trembling; it didn’t seem to matter. What mattered was the emotion that gathered in his throat, making speech all but impossible. What mattered was this fragile, delicate woman who was looking up at him with such hope. How could he tell her who she was and what she had done? How could he even believe it himself?

Why had Jennie left him? Not for money. He’d bet his life on that. Now. How—why—had he ever thought her capable of that?

His arms ached with his need to pull her close, to hold her against his heart, to fill his senses with her light perfume, to take the comfort her arms, to feel the passion her sweet body had always brought him. Instead, he restrained himself, limiting himself to smoothing his hand over hers one more time before taking a step away, still holding her hand. A lifeline, he thought, looking at their entwined fingers. But for her? Or for himself?

“I think—” Remarkable. His voice almost worked. But what could he tell her? “I think before either of us says much more, we need to talk with Reverend Winthrop.”

A second man was waiting in the parlor with Reverend Winthrop. He studied Edward critically and narrowed his eyes when he saw what Edward only now noticed: Jennie’s scraped knees and the small tear in her skirt. At about six foot two, the man stood eye to eye with Edward, although he probably carried a few more well-muscled pounds than Edward. He had the look of a battered warrior, in his eyes and in the lines of his face. Edward had no doubt that somewhere on his person, this man carried a badge of some sort—a fact that was quickly confirmed.

“Good afternoon, Miss Jennie,” he said in a gravelly voice that carried the remnants of a soft southern drawl.

Jennie smiled toward him. “Good afternoon, Sheriff Lambert. Isn’t it wonderful? This man knows me.”

“Might be, Miss Jennie. Might be. You hurt yourself?”

Jennie grimaced and sighed. “Am I a mess? I fell. It was stupid, I know. To fall, I mean. I was trying to walk in the garden alone. But, Sheriff Lambert, this man knows who I am. He said he wouldn’t tell me until we came back to the house. Ask him. Please ask him.”

Lambert put both his hands on Jennie’s shoulders, with the familiarity of someone who had done so many times before, and Edward forced himself to deny the tension that tightened in him.

“I will, Miss Jennie. But now I want you to go upstairs with Mrs. Higgins and take care of your lovely knees.”

Jennie straightened her small shoulders, and Edward recognized the defiant lift of her chin. “Sheriff Lambert,” she said in the same gentle voice Edward had once heard her use on a gallery owner who had made the mistake of thinking he could lie to her about sales of her work, “in spite of appearances and circumstances, I am a mature adult. I will not be sent to my room like a child.”

“No, Miss Jennie, and I wouldn’t do that to you, either. But I’m going to talk to this man and find out who he is before I let him try to tell me who you are. When I’m satisfied, we’ll all talk together. And that’s a promise. Until then, you just don’t go getting your emotions in a lather.

“You’ve been hurt enough, and none of us,” he continued, giving her shoulders a little shake, “none of us is going to let you be hurt again. Understand?”

After Jennie and a woman introduced as Mrs. Higgins left the parlor, Edward walked to the fireplace and looked again at the framed watercolor. His ship, the Lady B, named by his father years earlier, created the visual focus for the painting. Even at rest, bare-masted, with no sign of a crew, she seemed to dance in the water, to shimmer across the misty canvas.

He bowed his head in his hand. What now? How had Jennie come to Avalon? Why had she come to Avalon? And how had she been hurt? He straightened his shoulders, drawing his strength around him, and turned. Wilbur Winthrop was still standing near the door to the hallway. Edward pierced him with an accusing glare.

“You didn’t tell me she was blind.”

The two other men exchanged a long, measuring look, but it was Lambert who spoke. “Well, now, that answers one question, but it sure does raise up a host of others.”

“I’ll need to use your telephone,” Edward told the minister. “I have to call my assistant, arrange to have my plane flown here, put a—a what?—a neurologist? on standby, have someone get my apartment ready for Jennie—”

“I don’t think so.”

The quiet determination in Lambert’s voice put an abrupt end to Edward’s disjointed planning.

“You don’t think so? Sheriff, I have every right to take my wife home.” Edward heard the words spilling from his mouth.

Where had those words come from? He had fully intended to leave her to her own devices, with her greed to keep her company. Greed? Jennie?

He felt a hand on his arm and dimly realized Winthrop had led him across the room, was pushing him down into the chintz-covered chair, was once again wrapping his fingers around a squat, heavy glass. “Drink,” Winthrop insisted. “You look like the walking wounded.”

Edward did as he was told. He laid his head back against the chair and drew deep, even breaths, at first barely aware of what he was doing, then gradually recognizing what was happening to him. He began fighting the shock, fighting the fear and anger that had waited just below his conscriousness to claim him. Gradually, he summoned the strength of will that had sustained him over the years.

He couldn’t come apart now; he hadn’t since his parents’ deaths, and he’d been only ten at the time. He was an adult now, a grown man who could face any problem.

He became aware of the force with which he grasped the chair’s arms, of the silence in the room broken only by the ticking of a clock, of his own breathing. He became aware of Lambert watching him. Slowly, he released his grip on the chair, eased his breathing and met Sheriff Lambert’s steady gaze. Instead of the derision or pity he expected to find in the sheriff’s eyes, Edward found a grudging respect, as well as a wariness he felt sure this battle-weary warrior showed everyone.

“I have some questions for you, Mr. Carlton,” Lambert said, taking a small notebook from his suit coat and making no reference to what had just passed. “Let’s start with Jennie’s full name.”

“Allison Jennifer Carlton,” Edward told him in the same dispassionate tone of voice the sheriff used. Then, realizing Jennie had claimed the name Carlton for only a few hours before she disappeared, he added, a little too loudly in the waiting silence of the room. “Long. Her maiden name was Long.”

He saw Winthrop’s head jerk up, saw the horrified questioning glance the minister shot at the watercolor he so prized.