The Second Mrs. Adams

“You’re all right,” he said gently. “You fainted, that’s all.”

“Fainted.” She made a sound he supposed was a laugh. God, her face was as pale as the pillow sham. “I couldn’t have fainted. It’s—it’s so Victorian.”

“Sir?” David looked around. Ellen was standing in the doorway, her eyes wide, with a basin of ice and a towel.

“That’s fine, Ellen. Just bring that to me—thank you. And shut the door after you when you leave.”

Joanna stared up at him, her face still pale. “I can’t believe I fainted.”

“Well, you did. You overdid,” he said grimly. “Too much, too soon, that’s all. Can you turn your head a bit? That’s the way.”

“My head hurts,” she said, and winced. “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m getting you out of this dress.”

She caught his hand but he shrugged her off and went on opening the tiny jet buttons that ran down the front of the black silk dress.

“David, don’t. I’m OK. I can—”

“You can’t,” he said, even more grimly, “and you won’t. Dammit, woman, how can a dress be tight enough at the throat to cut off your air and so loose everyplace else that it turns you into a sack of potatoes?”

“A sack of…” Joanna flushed. “You don’t like this dress?”

“I don’t like flour sacks. What man does? And what the hell does what I like or not like have to do with what you Wear? Sit up a little. That’s it. Now lift your arm…the other one. Good girl.”

She stared at him as he tossed the dress aside. “But I thought…I assumed…” She thought of the closetful of ugly clothes, of the awful furniture in the room, of the servants David had so pointedly said were hers, and her mouth began to tremble.

“I don’t understand,” she whispered.

“Turn on your side.”

She obeyed without thinking. His voice was toneless, his touch as impersonal as a physician’s. She felt his hands at the nape of her neck, and then her hair came tumbling down over her shoulders.

“There,” he said, “that’s better. No wonder your head hurts. You’ve got enough pins stuck into your scalp to…to…”

His angry, rushed words ground to a halt. He had turned her toward him again and as he looked down at her, his heart seemed to constrict within his chest.

She was so beautiful. So much the woman he still remembered, the woman he’d never been able to get out of his mind. Stripped of the ugly dress, her hair flowing down over her creamy shoulders, her eyes wide and fixed on his, she was everything he remembered, everything he’d ever wanted, and the name he’d once called her whispered from his lips.

“Gypsy,” he said huskily.

Who? Joanna thought, who? It wasn’t her name, surely… and yet, as she looked up in David’s eyes and saw the way he was looking at her, she felt as if she were falling back to another time and place.

Gypsy, she thought, oh, yes, she would be his Gypsy, if that was what he wanted, she would dance for him by firelight, she would whirl around him in an ever-tightening circle until she fell into his waiting arms. She would do whatever he asked of her, she would love him forever…

“Joanna,” he whispered.

He bent toward her, then hesitated. Joanna didn’t think, she simply reached up, clasped his face and brought him to her.

His mouth closed over hers.

His kiss was gentle, soft and sweet. But she could feel him trembling and she knew what was happening, that he was fighting to control what was raging through him, the need to plunder her mouth, to ravage her until she cried out with need. She knew, because it was raging through her, too.

“David,” she sighed.

He groaned and his arms swept around her as he came down on the bed beside her. Her body was soft as silk and hot as the sun against his; his hand swept up and cupped her breast; she moaned and he felt her nipple spring to life beneath the silk of her slip and press against his palm…

“Mr. Adams?”

He raised his head and stared blindly at the closed door. Someone was knocking on it and calling his name.

“Mr. Adams? It’s Ellen, sir. Dr. Corbett’s arrived. Shall I send him up?”

David looked down at Joanna. Her face was flushed with color, her eyes were dark as the night. Her mouth was softly swollen and pink from his kisses….

But it meant nothing. Nothing. If he valued his own sanity, he had to keep remembering that.

His wife, his beautiful, lying wife, was unexcelled at this game. Her body still remembered how to play, even if her mind did not.

“David?”

Her voice was as soft as it always was. It was her heart that was hard.

“David,” she said again, and he stood up, took her robe from where it lay at the foot of the bed, and tossed it to her.

“Cover yourself,” he said coldly, and then he turned his back on his wife and on temptation.

CHAPTER SIX

JOANNA was stunned by the tone of cold command in her husband’s voice.

“What?”

“You heard me,” he growled. “Cover yourself—unless you don’t object to Corbett knowing what you were up to a minute ago.”

She felt the blood drain from her face. “What I was up to?”

“All right. What we were up to. Does that make you feel better?”

She grabbed the robe he’d tossed to her and shoved her arms through the sleeves. She was trembling, not with the aftermath of desire but with the fury of humiliation.

“Nothing could make me feel better,” she said shakily, “except being able to start my life beginning the day before I met you.”

“My sentiments exactly. The sooner you get your memory back, the better it will be for the both of us.”

Joanna swung her legs to the floor and stood up, stumbling a little as she did. David reached out to help her but she swatted his hands away.

“Don’t touch me. Don’t you ever touch me again. Do you understand?”

David stared at his wife. Her eyes blazed black in her face. Suddenly, he was overcome with guilt. What had just happened was as much his fault as hers. Hell, who was he kidding? It was all his fault. She had no memory but he—he remembered everything. And she was right. She hadn’t started this ugly scene, he had.

“Joanna,” he said, “listen—”

“Get out of my room.”

“Jo, please, I’m trying to apolo—”

She snatched a perfume bottle from the vanity and hurled it at him. He ducked and it whizzed by his head and shattered against the wall just as the door banged open.

Doctor Corbett paused in the doorway. He looked at the shards of glass that glittered against the carpet, then cleared his throat and raised a politely inquisitive face to David and Joanna.

“Excuse me,” he said, “is there a problem here?”

“Yes!” Joanna glared at David. “I want this man out of my room!”

Corbett turned to David. “Mr. Adams,” he said gently, “perhaps you’ll give me a few moments alone with your…”

“Be my guest, Doctor. Take a few years, if you like,” David snarled.

The door slammed shut after him. The doctor waited and then cleared his throat again.

“Well, Mrs. Adams,” he said briskly, “why don’t you tell me what’s going on here?”

Joanna swung toward him. “I’ll tell you what’s going on,” she said furiously. “I’ll tell you what’s…what’s…” Her shoulders slumped. She felt the rage that had been driving her draining from her system. “Oh, hell,” she muttered, “hell!” She sank down on the edge of her bed and wiped her sleeve across suddenly damp eyes. “I want my memory back,” she said in a choked whisper. “Is that asking so much?”

“My dear Mrs. Adams—”

“Don’t call me that!” Joanna’s head snapped up, her eyes gleaming once again with anger. “It’s bad enough I’m married to that—that cold-blooded Neanderth

al! I certainly don’t need to be reminded of it all the time.”

Corbett sighed. Then he pulled a Kleenex from a box on the table beside Joanna’s bed and handed it to her.

“Suppose you tell me what happened tonight,” he said quietly. “All I really know is that your housekeeper phoned my service and said you’d collapsed.”

“I didn’t collapse!” Joanna dabbed at her eyes, wiped her nose, then balled up the tissue and threw it into a wicker wastebasket. “David blew what happened out of all proportion. I just felt woozy for a minute, that’s all.”

“Woozy,” Corbett repeated.

“Yes. I know it’s not the sort of fancy medical term you use, but…” She stopped, bit her lip, and looked at him. “I’m sorry, Doctor. I don’t know why I’m letting my anger out on you.”

“That’s all right.”

“No, it isn’t. It’s myself I’m angry at.”

“For what?”

“What do you mean, for what?” She threw her arms wide. “For everything! For having something as stupid as amnesia, that’s for what!”