You Only Love Twice by Elizabeth Thornton Page B

after what she’d done to her son.
    She swallowed a soft sound of distress. What kind of girl would do such a thing? Not the kind of girl she wanted to be. When she’d returned to Hawkshill, she hadn’t expected to be the most popular girl in town, but she hadn’t expected this, either. If she could travel back in time, she would give that girl a good shake.
    Or had Lucas exaggerated? She hoped he had exaggerated. She prayed he’d exaggerated. That was the trouble with losing your memory. Anyone could tell you anything and you wouldn’t know what to believe.
    Then why had she no friends? Was it just because it was early days yet, as the nuns said? One friend would be enough to satisfy her, a girl her own age, someone who would be glad to know she had returned.
    You disappeared the same night your father was murdered. No one knew where you were. For all anyone knows you could have murdered him .
    Lucas’s parting shot drummed inside her head. Did people really suspect that she had murdered her father? Is that why no one had come out to Hawkshill to welcome her back? Well, she knew she hadn’t murdered her father, but how could she explain about her Voice? She couldn’t, of course.
    With a shudder of apprehension, she turned her back on the Lodge and looked down along the bridle path. Hawkshill might not be familiar to her, but this shortcut into town was. She’d been here many times with her Voice. In fact, her Voice had given her a map to follow. She closed her eyes, trying to get her bearings.
    Behind her was a manor with a hawk soaring over it—that had to be Hawkshill. There was a rich man’s house on a hill. Lucas’s house? She didn’t think so. When her father was murdered Lucas wasn’t a rich man, and the Lodge was not grand enough for the impression she had been given. There was a castle off in the distance, Windsor Castle, of course. It was the most prominent landmark in the area.
    She opened her eyes and breathed deeply. She took one step, and another, then her pace quickened and she went forward as if propelled by an invisible force. She was vividly aware that each step took her closer to her destination, but she wasn’t afraid. Her mind and senses were finely honed, poised for the moment of recognition.
    The shadows were deepening as the sun slipped below the horizon. A branch whipped at her face, but she pushed it away and ran on. She could hear the stream now, rippling over rocks, just as she’d heard it from her Voice. Her heart was thundering. She was out of breath. This was exactly how her Voice had felt the night he’d lain in wait for her father. She was close, so very close …
    The muffled report of the pistol shot stopped her in her tracks. It took her a moment to realize that the sound came from inside her head. Blinking rapidly, one hand pressed to her heart, she looked around her. At this point, the trees were thinning, and the path leveled out. About twenty yards ahead, the vista opened up, and the clouds on the horizon, dappled with the purple haze from the setting sun, gave the impression of a range of mountains off in the distance.
    She turned to look back the way she had come. If Lucas was her Voice, he must have taken a different route to get here ahead of her father. Then he’d hidden behind a tree in this very spot, and when her father passed him, Lucas had shot him in the back.
    It was logical, but it was all wrong. It was all wrong because she didn’t want to believe it. She didn’t want Lucas Wilde to be the murderer.
    She was still staring along the bridle path, trying to remember every detail of the attack as her Voice had told it to her, when she became aware that she had unwittingly opened herself to him. He was there, at the very gates of her mind, thinking the same thoughts as she. Her body went as rigid as a length of iron. She stopped breathing. Every ounce of willpower went into erasing her own thoughts so that he wouldn’t detect her presence.
    He was puzzled.