The Second Mrs. Adams

As Morgana had pointed out, no one could keep up the innocent act forever.

He just wished to hell he knew who this was, seated beside him. This Joanna wasn’t the woman he’d married nor the one he was divorcing. Everything about her was so familiar… And so unfamiliar. He’d known it ever since she’d regained consciousness after the accident, but he was uncomfortably aware of it today, starting with the minute she’d walked to the Jag to start the trip home.

He’d waited for her to make a face and ask where the Bentley was but she hadn’t. Well, why would she? he’d reminded himself; she didn’t remember how she’d felt about either car.

What he hadn’t expected was the way she’d smiled when she’d settled in beside him, how she’d asked if the car really could go as fast as it looked. And then all those musings about how he probably never let anyone but him work on it.

That had struck too close to home. The Jag had been their project. They’d bought it together, tackled its restoration together, Joanna learning as fast as he could teach her until she was damned near as good at puttering under the hood as he was.

A bittersweet memory sprang into his head. They’d spent the week in Connecticut. He’d been called back to the city on business that he’d disposed of in record time and he’d gotten back to the house early, to find Joanna bent over the Jag’s engine with her coverall-clad bottom in the air.

“Oh, David,” she’d said, laughing as he’d grabbed her and whirled her around, “I was going to surprise you with this new—”

He’d never let her finish the sentence. He’d kissed her instead, and swung her up into his arms and carried her to their bedroom where he’d stripped away the bulky coverall to find her wearing nothing underneath but a tiny pair of white lace panties that he’d eased down her long, lovely legs…

He glanced over at those legs now. Her skirt had climbed up during the drive so that it was mid-thigh. She hadn’t thought to adjust it. She hadn’t thought to adjust her hair, either; the wind had tugged several strands loose from their moorings of pins and lacquer so that dark wisps curled sexily against her throat. David’s gaze drifted lower. The quick burst of raindrops had dampened her silk blouse, the chill kiss of it tightening her nipples so they thrust against the fabric.

The Joanna he knew would have surely been aware of that. She would have fixed her hair, tugged down her skirt, crossed her arms over her breasts if she’d had to, done whatever it took to keep him from noticing that she was female, that she had sexual reactions if not sexual instincts.

David forced all his powers of concentration back to the rain-slicked road.

He had to stop thinking of Joanna as if she weren’t Joanna. She had lost her memory but he had not lost his. He knew her. He knew the real woman.

And he had the increasingly uncomfortable feeling that he should have left her back at Bright Meadows, where she belonged.

* * *

The city glittered beneath the rain. It was beautiful, Joanna thought, and there was a vague familiarity to it the way there is to a place you’ve never visited but only seen in photographs.

David gave her a comforting smile.

“Just another couple of blocks,” he said.

She nodded. Her hands lay in her lap, so tightly clasped that she could feel her nails digging into her flesh.

Would she recognize something? Would there be a moment when her memory would come rushing back?

In a movie, perhaps. But this was the real world, not one played out on the silver screen. The car made its way through clots of heavy traffic, turned onto Fifth Avenue, then down a side street. It was quiet here, the curb lined with plane trees in leaf, the town houses shouldering against each other in a way that spoke of money, power and elegant antiquity.

David pulled the car to the curb and shut off the engine. Joanna stared blankly at a building she had never seen before.

She’d asked him to tell her about their house when they’d first set out from Bright Meadows. Now, she could see that he’d described the place right down to the last detail. There was the gray stone facade and the windows with their black shutters; there were the black wrought-iron banisters and the stone steps leading to the front door.

Her stomach knotted in panic. “David,” she said, swinging toward him…

But he’d already opened the car door and stepped out into the pouring rain.

“Stay put,” he said, raising his voice over the deluge. “I’ll go inside and get an umbrella and then I’ll put the car away.”

She flung her door open and got out. “No. No, wait…”

Her voice died away and she stood staring at the house, oblivious to the cold beat of the rain.

This is our home, she thought, mine and David’s.

Her stomach twisted tighter. I want to go back to Bright Meadows, she thought desperately, oh, please…

“Dammit, Jo, what are you doing?”

David’s voice broke through her frantic thoughts. He put his arm around her waist and began urging her forward.

“Come inside,” he growled, “before you’re soaked to the skin!”

She shook her head and pulled back against the tug of his arm. She didn’t want to go into that house. She hated this place, hated it!

“For god’s sake,” David muttered, and he swung her into his arms. Caught off balance, she had no choice but to fling her arms around his neck.

Time seemed to stand still. The wet street, the rain…everything faded to insignificance. She was aware only of the feel of her husband’s hard shoulders as she clutched them, the warmth of his powerful body against hers.

His eyes met hers; his arms tightened around her…

The door to the house swung open. “Sir,” a voice said, “we had no idea…”

The moment of awareness shattered. “No,” David said coolly, as he strode up the steps, “neither did I.”

A tall, spare man with thinning hair stood in the doorway. Joanna recognized him as the chauffeur who’d driven her to Bright Meadows. Now, seeing him at the entrance to the town house, her mouth fell open in surprise.

“That’s the limousine driver,” she whispered to David. “What’s he doing here?”

“His name is Hollister, Joanna. He lives here.”

“Lives here?” she repeated stupidly.

“Madam,” Hollister said, inclining his head as David moved past him, “welcome home.”

“Hollister,” David said, “is our chauffeur.”

“You mean…that huge car we took to Bright Meadows belongs to us?”

“It does. Hollister drives it.” He shot the man a wry smile. “And when he’s not driving the Bentley, he’s our butler.”

“Our butler?” Joanna said, even more stupidly, craning her neck for a last glimpse of Hollister’s bony, expressionless face. “David.” Her voice fell to a whisper. “David, please, put me—”

“How do you do, madam.”

A stern-faced woman in a dark dress stepped out of the gloomy darkness of the oak-paneled foyer.

“And this,” David said, “is Mrs. Timmons. Our housekeeper.”

A housekeeper, too? Joanna forced a smile to her lips.

“Hello, Mrs. Timmons.” She bent her head toward David and this time there was an urgency to her whispered words. “David, really, what will they think? If you’d just put me down—”

“And that,” David said, as he started up a flight of long stairs, “is Ellen.”

Joanna caught a flash of ruffled white apron, red hair and wide blue eyes.

“Madam,” a girlish voice said shyly.

“Ellen,” Joanna repeated numbly. She stared over David’s shoulder as Ellen smiled and bobbed a curtsy. A curtsy? Did people really still do such things?

“A butler? A housekeeper? And a maid?” she whispered incredulously as they reached the second floor hall. “Do all those people really work for us?”

David smiled tightly. “You might say that.”

“Wha

t do you mean, I might say…”

“Except for Mrs. Timmons, it’s probably more accurate to say that the staff is yours.” He shouldered open a door, stepped through it, and hit the light switch on the wall beside him with his elbow. “The staff,” he said, lowering her to her feet, “and this bedroom.”

Whatever questions Joanna had intended to ask flew out of her head as she stared in disbelief at her surroundings.

Last night she’d watched a program on television at Bright Meadows, something about Versailles or Fontainebleau; one of the glittering French palaces. Now, she wished she’d paid closer attention.

Whoever had designed this room must have taken their cue from a palace. The walls were covered with cream silk that matched the drapes at the windows and the coverings and hangings on the canopied bed. The floor was laid with richly patterned rugs. The furniture was white brushed with gold, except for a mirrored vanity table on the opposite wall. Its glass surface was covered with an assortment of stoppered bottles and jars, enough to stock a cosmetics shop.

The room was feminine and deeply sensual…and yet it wasn’t. It was like a stage set; Joanna had the feeling that if she looked behind the walls and the furniture, she’d find out they were made of painted canvas.

She turned toward David in bewilderment “This can’t be my room.”

He looked at her, his expression unreadable. “It is, I assure you. Now, get out of that wet dress while I go and get Ellen.”

“No. I mean, I’d rather you didn’t. I need a couple of minutes to…to…” She gave a hesitant laugh. “David, are you sure this room is…?”

He smiled sardonically. “It certainly isn’t mine. I’m afraid vanities and frills aren’t my style.”

“You mean, we don’t share a…”

She caught herself before the next word had tumbled out but it was too late. David’s expression changed; she saw it before he turned away.

“No,” he said. “We don’t.”

“Oh.”

Oh? she thought, staring after him as he went into the adjoining bathroom. She’d just found out that she slept in a room only Marie Antoinette would have envied, that she and her husband didn’t share a bedroom, and “Oh” was all she could manage?

Not that that part disappointed her. Sharing a room with a stranger wasn’t what she wanted at all, it was only that the news had caught her by surprise…

“I’ve started the water in the tub.”