The Truest Heart by Samantha James

easy to see how a vessel might be carried helplessly straight into the massive rocks that lurked beneath. Even now, a wave crested and rolled. With a thunderous roar, it crashed against the rocks. Mist sprayed high and foam surged and swirled, a churning, deadly current at the base of the rocks.
    He was aware of Gillian watching him closely. “Is there anything?” she asked quietly.
    Cursing silently, he shook his head. Whatever it was that had brought him aboard this illfated vessel was lost. Questions resounded in the cavern of his mind, the questions he’d examined a hundred times; as before, all that resulted was an echoing well of emptiness.
    His body was mending.
    His mind was not.
    Oh, on occasion, a jumbled assortment of images paraded through his consciousness. But they were all fleeting, and little else accompanied them. They vanished almost before he was aware of it—a castle that raised twin towers aloft in majestic splendor. The shoulders of a forest richly green and verdan….
    But there were many such castles throughout the country. And England was covered with forest land.
    And Gillian had been so convinced he’d dreamed of a woman from his past. A woman with golden hair. A woman with hair like summer sunshine. She’d said he whispered how he missed her. Again and again, he struggled to remember a face. A form.
    But the only face he could see was Gillian’s, her features dainty and fine, framed by soft, rich waves of darkest midnight. He could only conclude it was just as he’d said …
    Just a dream.
    I am Gareth. Gareth … Again he chased the elusive sensation that there was something more, that he was on the verge of something momentous. Something critical that he should have remembered, that would unlock the clouded blur of his past.
    “The others,” he said. “How many were there?”
    “There were five.”
    Who were they? Gareth wondered. Captain? Crew? Friends? Reason warred with guilt. He regretted their tragic end, but he would not burden himself with guilt. For God above, he was suddenly heartily glad that he was not among them—that he’d been spared.
    He was lucky to be alive. Lucky to have survived. But so very, very glad he had lived.
    “Where are their bodies?”
    “Brother Baldric saw to it that they were buried in the village churchyard.”
    He nodded. “They were given a proper burial then. That is good.”
    “Aye. ‘Tis important to-to have a Christian burial.”
    There was a faint bitterness etched in her tone, a sudden darkening of her eyes that brought a shadow to her expression. Once again Gareth was struck by the sensation that while he was unable to remember, there was something she wasn’t telling him, something she did not divulge.
    Sometimes I think it is better not to remember.
    What had she meant? Was it Osgood? Her possessions were few—he’d already noted she had but two gowns. But he could not put aside the incongruity of her clothing and the wretched starkness of the cottage. Brother Baldric had stated she’d been brought here to heal, but he couldn’t help but wonder if there was another reason.
    It bothered him that she had asked if he was a man of honor and truth. He could have sworn she was almost frightened of him … He’d given her no cause to fear him, had he? No cause for distrust?
    No cause? a part of him scoffed. She was a woman alone. He was a man, a stranger who had washed ashore with naught but the clothes on his back—nay, not even that! A man who knew not from whence he had come, where he journeyed, or even why. No cause, indeed!
    But he wanted her to trust in him. He wanted her to confide in him, to tell him what was wrong, if anything.
    And so he waited, hoping she might offer more explanation. But she did not, and he would not demand it.
    They did not linger at the site, but left the somber scene behind. Further inland, the wintry winds did not bluster so fiercely. Indeed, the sky above was a brilliant blue dotted with fluffy white