Promises to Keep (2 page)

The bubble burst, but she allowed none of her disappointment to show. She suspected that Dr. Ziegler derived some kind of perverted pleasure from encouraging her to hope, only to shatter that hope once again. During her stay at the hospital she had learned that he was a self-styled proponent of Freudian theories and from her own sessions with him she knew he tended to ascribe sexual motives to any and every type of behavior, not because of any profound scientific persuasion but because he had a remarkably smutty mind.

With his carefully cultivated Vandyke and close-cropped hair, he even tried to resemble Freud. But for all this emulation of his idol, she thought he looked like nothing more than a distinctly unsavory cartoon character plucked straight from the pages of
MAD
magazine.

"At any rate," he added grudgingly, "the mystery of your identity may soon be solved, despite your lack of cooperation with me. The police believe they have located your relatives."

Though she pleaded with him to give her more details about this exhilarating possibility, he refused to do so.

Even with this rather cryptic warning, she experienced not the slightest flicker of recognition when she first saw Garth Falconer. He and Dr. Ziegler were on the far side of the solarium talking with Miss McKenna, the day nurse. Miss McKenna's cool blond prettiness was enlivened by uncharacteristic animation as she sparkled up at him, and her only reactions were curiosity and mild amusement over the nurse's openly flirtatious manner with the stranger.

He was perhaps a little less than six feet in height, but he was so slender that he appeared to be much taller than this. From the width of his shoulders beneath the expensive cut of the sport jacket he was wearing, she decided his leanness was deceptive and that he was probably quite muscular in a lithe, wiry way—like a dancer or a marathon runner. Even from a distance she could sense the raw vitality he exuded. It set him apart and made him seem glaringly out of place in the environment of the hospital.

His thick, springy hair was the rich color of mahogany and though she could not see what color they were, his eyes were large and wide-spaced beneath well-marked brows. There was an austerity about his cleanly chiseled features, and a self-confidence bordering on arrogance that stamped his patrician good looks with an air of unrelenting pride and authority. If he'd lived a few centuries ago, he might have been a crusader—or a conquistador. She could envision his eyes, whatever their color, burning with passionate conviction and she could easily imagine him choosing death before dishonor.

For some reason this idea caused her a vague uneasiness, but she shrugged it off, telling herself that the man was only a stranger after all, and his personal brand of ethics was no concern of hers. The warning ignored, she returned her straying attention to the elderly woman seated nearby.

"Now don't that beat all!" Mrs. Jenkins remarked as she, too, gazed in the direction of the nurse and the men with her. "Who'd have thought that young woman could ever so much as crack a smile? She can't be bothered to look halfway pleasant for the sake of the patients around here." She shook her head and pursed her lips thoughtfully. "It's such a shame," she lamented. "Miss McKenna is real pretty when she doesn't look like she just swallowed a mouthful of vinegar."

Mrs. Jenkins beckoned her to move closer and lowered her voice to a whisper. "You know who the younger man with her is, don't you? It's Garth Falconer. He used to be something of a celebrity on, the racing circuit. I recollect reading that his father died, and he left auto racing to take over the family business. As I recall, it had to do with heavy construction."

"Tsk, tsk! Gossiping
again
, Mrs. Jenkins?" Her doctor, a portly, well-barbered man who had just joined them, scolded her mockingly. Though he was wagging his head reproachfully, he smiled at the object of his teasing as she patted her blue-rinsed hair, assuring herself her marcelled waves were tucked into her hairnet. The lively octogenarian was recovering from surgery to repair a broken hip. She was something of a pet with the hospital staff and Dr. Forsythe was not immune to her appeal.

"Don't get on your high horse with me, Doc!" Mrs. Jenkins's currant-dark eyes twinkled coquettishly. "I was just thinking that for all their carrying on, youngsters nowadays don't know beans about enjoying themselves. If you ask me, things are backward to what they ought to be. Folks should start out as senior citizens and get younger every year. As it is, by the time a body learns how to have a good time, they're too old to put what they've learned into practice!"

"Ah, Mrs. Jenkins," Dr. Forsythe responded with a show of regretful gallantry, "if only I were twenty years older, I'd be very tempted to show you how wrong you are."

"Hogwash! If you were twenty years older, you young whippersnapper, you'd be too old for me!"

The doctor laughed heartily. "Since you prefaced your comment by calling me 'young,' I'll forgive you for the rest of that sentiment, Mrs. J." He surveyed her silently for a moment and nodded his approval. "I can tell by your sharp tongue and sharper wit that you're feeling much improved today. As a matter of fact, I think it's safe to predict you'll be ready to go home soon, but for the time being, how about coming back to your room so I can check you over?"

His manner was courtly as he helped his patient to her feet and offered his arm for her to lean on.

"See you later, kiddo," Mrs. Jenkins called back as the doctor escorted her from the room. "Keep your fingers crossed that I'll pass the physical so my grandson can spring me from this god-awful place tomorrow. As I always say, a hospital is no place for sick people!"

Smiling at the appearance the two of them presented—Dr. Forsythe so nattily dressed and stockily built, Mrs. Jenkins shrunken and birdlike, wearing a rumpsprung housecoat of faded blue chenille—she watched their slow departure from the solarium. Her preoccupation with this prevented her from detecting Garth Falconer's approach until he stood directly in front of her.

"Hello, Julie," he said softly.

She looked up at him slowly. If he'd been impressive seen from a distance, at this range his virile good looks were intimidating. Now that he was close, she could see that his eyes were a changeable gray-green with tawny flecks of gold that might sometimes warm their cool depths.

"I'm sorry," she apologized stiltedly after a tense silence had spun out between them. "Do I know you?"

"So it's true," he said grimly, apparently having decided she honestly had no recollection of ever having met him. "You really do have amnesia."

"I'm sorry," she repeated gently. "Do we know each other well?"

"Before you took off without bothering to say 'so long,' there was a time when I
thought
we did." He laughed and the quality of his laughter was ironical and mirthless. "You're my wife."

Her eyes widened incredulously as she studied his face, searching for a clue that this was some sort of practical joke, but his expression was totally serious. The only emotion he displayed was anger when a muscle leaped along the angle of his jaw.

She glanced swiftly down at her hands. They were fine-boned and narrow, with slender graceful fingers that at the moment were nervously clutching the rough folds of her hospital robe. She was wearing no rings; no jewelry of any kind.

The upholstery of the sofa gave beneath his weight as he sat beside her and she raised her eyes to see that he was holding one hand extended toward her. A broad wedding band with an antique filigree design lay in the palm of his hand.

"Take it," he directed harshly. "It's yours."

The ring seemed to swim before her eyes and all at once she felt disoriented and dizzy. The room tilted crazily about her and when she closed her eyes to try to stem the attack of vertigo, it increased in severity until she swayed weakly and her sense of equilibrium deserted her completely.

His hands were strong and sure as they forced her head down into the hard yet strangely comforting hollow of his shoulder. He held her there while the room gradually righted itself and the earth settled on its axis once again.

"There must be some mistake," she protested in a small voice that was further muffled by the nubby fabric of his jacket. "I
couldn't
have forgotten such an important thing as being married."

"There's no mistake," he said evenly. "The authorities have been extremely careful to make a positive identification."

"But how—"

"They've checked your fingerprints against those on your driver's license."

"So it's true," she whispered.

A soft sigh escaped her as she moved away from him. He made no attempt to hold her against her will but allowed her to put some distance between them. She glanced up at him but found she was not pre-pared to confront the battery of his eyes and hurriedly averted her face. Concentrating on her hands, which were now clasped tightly in her lap, she sought to regain a semblance of composure.

"Your name is Julie Falconer," he said. "Your maiden name was Hastings. And I'm Garth Falconer."

"I know," she acknowledged flatly. "One of the patients recognized you and pointed you out to me."

She felt acutely self-conscious and raising one shaky hand, she pressed it to her temple to form a facsimile of a blinder to conceal herself from his view.

"Do you remember anything?" asked Garth.

She laughed and was startled by the bitter tone of it. "I remember many things—all of them impersonal. It's people and places I can't recall. I didn't even know my own name. They've been calling me Jane Smith here at the hospital."

"Do you remember the accident?"

The bluntness of the question took her breath away. She was stunned, and her eyes were shadowed and haunted when she turned toward him.

"Oh, yes," she replied brokenly. "I only wish I didn't."

Even speaking of it in passing, she relived the horror. One moment the bus had been moving powerfully up the steep stretch of highway toward the mountain pass, and the next a huge boulder had plummeted down on it from above. At first it had appeared relatively harmless, bouncing across the macadam surface as lightly as if it were only a stage prop. There had been the squeal of brakes and a few screams as the bus gave a sickening lurch. Its wheels slipped and spun, striving to find a safe purchase on the shoulder of the roadway. Then had come the awful grinding of metal as it lost the battle with gravity and rolled. The passengers were white-faced, their mouths stretched wide in silent terror.

She'd been thrown clear when the emergency exit by her seat gave way and a stunted pine tree near the top of the ravine had broken her fall. Helplessly she had watched while the bus rolled again and again, like some gigantic beast in its death throes, until finally it was suspended in space, disappearing over the brink of the precipice to fall smoothly away into nothingness.

When she heard the final agonizing crash—mindless of pain, stumbling and sliding, sometimes clawing for handholds—she worked her way down to the edge of the cliff. She had seen the bright flames blossom until they enveloped the silver metal and when at last the fire had consumed itself, there was no sign of life about the charred, twisted hulk that was all that remained of the bus.

For a long time she'd stared down at the wreckage, praying that there were other survivors, praying for the impossible. Unable to encompass the loss of over thirty lives, her grief had centered on the girl who'd been seated across the aisle from her. She'd overheard enough of her conversation to know she was on her way to Laramie to enroll in classes at the University of Wyoming. How old was she? Julie had wondered. Seventeen, perhaps. Eighteen at the most.

Julie wished she'd been more receptive to the girl's overtures toward conversation. She wished she'd known the girl's name. Her face, beautiful in its youthful intensity, glowing with hope and promise, had floated before Julie's eyes, and it was more than she could bear: to think of that hope going unrewarded, the promise denied, the girl dying before she'd ever had a chance to live.

Anguishing because she was alive when so many were dead, she had questioned why she should have been the one to survive.

"Why?" she whispered. She'd turned away from the still-smoking ruin at the bottom of the gorge to look up at the implacable heights that had spawned the boulder. Near hysteria, she screamed, "
Why
?"

A starburst of pain had exploded inside her head and, for a time, there had been blessed oblivion.

"Are you all right?" Garth Falconer asked, calling her back to the present.

She stared at him as if she were seeing him for the first time. His brows were drawn and the bones of his face seemed more prominent, as if they were carved from granite. It was some time before she realized he'd taken her hand in order to slip the ring on her finger. She was still holding his hand, gripping it so tightly that her fingers felt numb and bloodless.

Still shivering slightly from the awful images he'd revived, she nodded and made a conscious effort to relax her grip on him. The ring, fit perfectly, but its dull gold luster looked out of place against her pale skin, and it was so heavy, it seemed to weigh her down. She jammed her left hand into the pocket of the robe and still she was painfully aware of the ring.

As if he'd read her mind, Garth explained, "We haven't been married very long."

"Did we have some kind of disagreement?"

"No," he replied tersely.

Her eyes were clouded with perplexity when they met his. "Then why did I leave?"

"I'm not sure." His expression was shuttered, giving her not the least indication of his emotions.

"And it took you until now to find me?"

He nodded. "Nearly four weeks," he said tonelessly.

And did you care at all? she wondered. Aloud she asked, "Have I other relatives?"

"Only an uncle, Rupert Hastings, and his wife and daughter. Your parents died when you were a child and after that you lived with your maternal grandmother. She died a little over a year ago."

Julie was silent as she assimilated this information. After a time Garth observed in a dry voice, "I gather none of these vital statistics spark any memories."