Selena sat on the edge of the overstuffed settee, her small feet pressed tightly together, her hands in her lap. She clamped her fingers together in a damp, sweaty ball to keep from fidgeting. Fidgeting was not ladylike, and she wanted desperately to be a lady for Ian. Rules circled through her head in an endless, mushy litany. Sit still ... don't speak until spoken to . .. don't fidget... crying is for babies and ye're no baby, Selena ... eat like a bird ...
Selena tried to remember the rest, but Edith's words drifted in and out of her mind. Sometimes she remembered and sometimes she didn't. Sometimes she couldn't even remember what she was trying to remember.
"Would you like something to drink?"
Selena's head snapped up, her heart raced. He'd said something to her, asked a question, perhaps. She wasn't sure, couldn't remember. She tried to recall the appropriate word to express her confusion, but nothing came to mind. She gazed up at him, her mind an utter blank.
Tears burned behind her eyes. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. She wanted to impress him. She'd been practicing for weeks now, every day, pushing herself to the very limit to improve. And for what? So that she could blink up at her god like a dead fish and breathe too quickly?
He motioned to the china teapot on the ornate silver tray. "Would you like a drink, Selena?"
Drink. Tea. He was offering her something to drink. She grinned in relief. "I am most thirsty. Yes, thank you, I would enjoy to drink tea."
He gazed at her a second longer than she expected, his eyes narrowed and assessing. "Good." Turning, he poured her a cup of steaming tea and offered
it to her.
She smiled. "Hot," she said, proving to him once again that she was smart.
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"Yes, it is hot. Do you take cream or sugar?"
"Where?"
"What?"
"Do I take them where?"
He laughed, a quiet, happy sound that made her feel like floating. "In your tea."
His laughter was contagious. "Oh," she giggled. "It does not matter to me, such things as cream and sugar and salt and pepper. I have no taste."
His smile died. Very slowly, he placed his teacup on the frilly piecrust table beside the settee and reached inside his coat pocket for a small book. Pulling the thin, leather-bound volume from his pocket, he slipped his spectacles on. "What do you mean you have no taste?" She tried to marshal the words necessary to make her point. Finally she saw the salt shaker on the tray beside the watercress sandwiches. Grabbing it, she tilted her head back and poured a huge amount of the granules on her tongue. Then she swallowed and smiled at him. "No taste."
His eyes lit up. "You can't taste anything?"
"Nothing."
"How did you first notice this?"
"When I ate."
He smiled. "Let me rephrase that. How did you come to understand that you were different than other people?"
"Johann caught me drinking seawater."
He wrote furiously for several moments, then looked up again, an expectant light in his eyes. "And what about memories? Have you gotten any of them back?"
"No."
He frowned. His gaze burned into her with an intensity that made her vaguely uncomfortable. Then he started writing again. The quiet scratching of his pen on the paper seemed suddenly too loud. She started to shift her weight on the cushion, then froze. Don't fidget.
"You don't remember your name?"
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"No, but I do not think-"