And with her soft musings, an image danced forward of a sprawling country estate. A high-walled garden with steps that led out to rolling hills.
“I wanted to play lawn bowling, Papa.” Malcom tugged at the hand in his. “You told Mama we would, but we’re not.”
His father stopped, and fell to a knee beside him. “Ah, yes, because I had to keep it a surprise.”
Malcom stared, unblinking. “A surprise?” he whispered.
“We are picking flowers to make your mama a crown so she might be queen.”
Lawn bowling forgotten, Malcom brightened. “Can I have a crown and be her prince . . . ?”
Malcom slowly opened his eyes, squinting at the bright flood of sunshine. He braced for the headache that accompanied such realizations—which this time did not come. The memory had been so vivid. So real. And letting it in this time hadn’t crippled him with weakness.
He felt Verity’s stare before he caught it, and glanced over. She’d dragged her knees against her chest, rested her chin atop them, and studied Malcom.
“You remembered something, didn’t you?” she asked quietly, and where that query would have once set him off in a fury at her probing into his life, now he nodded.
“Aye.” Scooping up a handful of debris at the edge of the blanket, he sifted through it. Settling for a small, smooth, flat stone, he sent it expertly skipping across the smooth surface of the Serpentine. The projectile bounced five times and then sank under the surface. “Sometimes that will happen. I’ll see something or hear a word, and it . . . triggers a remembrance. But it’s almost as if they aren’t real to me. As if they happened to someone else. As if they are a dream.”
Verity covered his hand. “But they aren’t a dream, Malcom,” she said gently.
Nay, they weren’t a dream. She was correct on that score. His throat moved painfully around an uncomfortable ball that had lodged there. They were his life.
“Every morning, my mother would rise early.”
He blinked at the sudden shift.
“Our cottage was small and I’d hear her, but I knew she loved her mornings. The quiet time before the world awoke. And I would lie there. I’d listen as she went through her morning routine. As she prepared water to make her tea. And every morn, she’d sing. It was an old Scottish folk song.” Verity’s gaze grew distant, and a smile played about her lips as she softly sang.
I’ve seen the smiling
Of fortune beguiling,
I’ve tasted her pleasures
And felt her decay;
Riveted, Malcom stared on. Unable to tear his gaze from her fulsome lips as she sang. This was how those sailors on their galleons were dragged out to sea. Lured by the soft, slightly off-key medley, made all the more mesmerizing for the discordancy.
Sweet is her blessing,
And kind her caressing,
But now they are fled
And fled far away.
“It is lovely,” he said hoarsely when she’d finished and her low contralto had drifted into nothing.
“Aye.” Verity flipped onto her side so that they faced one another. “When my mum died, I’d wake up nearly the same time every morn that I had when she was living. I’d drag my pillow over my head and hold it tight. So I couldn’t hear anything. Because if I couldn’t hear the silence, then it wasn’t real. What had happened to my mum, and the truth that I’d never, ever see her again, wasn’t real. In those moments before I removed that pillow, I was in control.”
He froze, her meaning clear.
He’d been a master at keeping all the memories at bay. At forgetting the parents he’d known too briefly. Of the happiness they’d had together. But keeping thoughts of them buried didn’t erase those moments in time. It hadn’t. Nor would it ever.
“I’ve been here, too,” he said quietly, staring past her. Through her. Off to the foreign gaggle of white pelicans. Several of the enormous white fowl basked on the rocks in the sun.
Just then, a lone bird sauntered too close to their blanket. It had a peculiar protuberance from its long, narrow beak.
“I was here. In this place. With these birds.”
A sheen of moisture popped up on his brow, and he briefly closed his eyes. Willing that creature gone. Willing the buzzing at the back of his head gone. But it didn’t leave. It remained, and grew increasingly incessant. The all-too-familiar pain knocked around at his temples. And this time, he fought it off and welcomed in the memory.
“Mama, Mama! That duck has a horn! I want to touch him . . . They are magnif—”
“They are magnificent, aren’t they?” Verity asked, startling him from that memory.
Blankly, he looked over at the woman beside him whose echoed praise of some other boy, in some other lifetime ago, wrenched him back to the moment.
“The pelicans,” Verity clarified.
“They’re peculiar.”
That was the only invitation to discussion Verity required. Gathering the forgotten parasol from the bench, she pointed the top of it toward the creatures in question. “Do you know how they came to be here?”
Malcom shook his head slowly.
Verity tossed aside the satin umbrella and scrambled closer. “Sometime in the early 1600s, James the First had this area drained and landscaped so that it might become a place for people to visit. He was responsible for the creation of a flower garden and a menagerie of wild animals.” She stared back with a brightness in her eyes, one that expected he should be as impressed by that revelation as she herself was to give it.
And by damn, if he wasn’t . . . but because of the woman in charge of the telling. Her enthusiasm was infectious. “Wild animals, you say?”
Verity nodded so enthusiastically her bonnet fell over her brow, concealing those bright eyes, and he mourned that small loss. “He had camels brought in. Crocodiles. Even an elephant, and the exotic waterfowl, of course.”
His lips twitched, that natural movement so foreign to him it strained the muscles, and yet, with it came a . . . peculiar lightness in his chest. “Of course,” he said, his expression deadpan.
Whether or not she heard the note of teasing infused in his words, she did not let it alter the rest of her telling.
“Charles the First continued to expand the pleasures at the park . . . until he was executed. Made his way there.” Taking him by the hand, she forced him to either join her as she turned or pull her down. In the end, he could no sooner stop himself from doing as she bid than he could happily end his tenure as a tosher. “Do you see there?” Squinting, she pointed over a slight rise. “That is where Charles was marched in the dead of winter, all bundled up lest onlookers see him shake and mistake that response for fear. He and his dog, Rogue, were marched over that rise, and . . .” Her expression became grim, and she shook her head. “I trust you know the rest.”
“Yes,” he said automatically. Something slipped in and then tumbled from his lips before he could call it back. “‘Sweetheart, now they will cut off thy father’s head. Mark, child, what I say: they will cut off my head, and perhaps make thee a king. But mark what I say: you must not be a king, so long as your brothers Charles and James do live,’” he murmured.
Sensing Verity’s eyes on him, he felt his cheeks flush with heat and color. “Or . . . I believe I recall he uttered something of that effect.”