1919
"Are you all right?"
Startled as if she'd been caught stealing sweeties, Saoirse snapped the notebook shut in the same instant her head snapped up. Sorley strolled into the study and sat opposite her at the visitor's end of the desk.
"Yes." She smiled. "Why wouldn't I be?"
"Usually..." He stretched his arm across the desk to reach for her hand. "When you leave bed early, you are not."
The electric lamp flickered, making her ring glint in the light. A frown creased into her smile.
"How do you know?"
"I just... do." His fingers moved to entwine with hers. "I did not... hurt you, did I?"
"No!" Saoirse snickered. "No, far from it."
"But you were crying."
That made her laugh out loud. "Yes, happy tears, for once!"
Standing up, she rounded the desk without letting go of him. He straightened up in his chair, inviting her to sit on his lap. She bit her lip as she perched herself on his bare thighs and rested one arm around his shoulders. He encircled her waist. Her robe now hung loose and he dipped his head to plant a kiss on her exposed collarbone.
"What were you saying, earlier?" she asked him as his ear came level with her mouth.
"Hmm?"
"Earlier, in bed, you were... mumbling something. It... sounded like Gaelic, almost."
He frowned. "I don't know. I don't remember."
"But you remembered me." She pecked his forehead. "My picture. How?"
She brushed the hair from his eyes. He grabbed that hand and kissed it.
"My Saoirse... I do not know. But if you weren't there before... if this life that I cannot remember is without you... then why should I remember it?"
Her heart skipped a beat.
"Why should I remember a life without my Saoirse when you are right here with me now?"
Tears sprung to her eyes.
"Oh, no..." His fingers hurried to wipe at her cheeks. "No, don't cry, my Saoirse."
She nestled at his chest and let him engulf her in a comforting embrace.
In that moment, for the first time in her life, Saoirse knew envy. She envied Sorley, oblivious to his past suffering, aware only of his present happiness. She wished she could forget everything that had come before Sorley, too. Erase the war and the loss, all that death and the grief. Keep the love growing in her heart, the warmth seeping into her soul.
Raising her head, she cupped his face and caressed his cheeks, kissed him on the lips, his soft, plump lips, his delicious lips, while his hands, oh, his mischievous hands... they roamed under her robe, sought her skin, dug into her flesh, dived between her legs, and she clamped down on his wrist.
He grunted into her mouth, then hooked his arm under her knees and stood up, carrying her back to bed. She wouldn't be leaving it so soon this time.
*
It was again Queenie's hunger that tore Saoirse awake. With the windows unshuttered, her barking resounded louder and morning light flooded the bedroom. Saoirse yawned as consciousness began to spread through her limbs.
Briefly, she thought it too bright to still be morning. Then she felt the weight of the arm on her waist and didn't care what time it was. She spun to face Sorley, who smiled in his sleep, pulling her closer still.
"Good morning," she whispered and kissed the tip of his nose.
Sorley opened his eyes. Queenie continued to bark in the background.
"I must go see to the dogs," Saoirse said, but he held her tighter. "Sorley..."
His eyes closed as he kissed her. His hand travelled down her back, squeezing her buttock before hooking her leg over his hip. Saoirse gasped. The reluctant gentle giant had become bold overnight.
"Sorley..."
Saoirse sighed as he pushed her on her back and hovered above her.
"Oh..."
He trailed kisses down her neck, to her breasts and her stomach. She arched her back into his mouth when it arrived between her thighs and he paused, considering. She almost begged him to do it again, but she didn't have to.
He rejoiced in her pleasure, devoured it even, and when their bodies merged as one, when his heat became her own and overfilled her senses, then the world fell apart around them, shattered into pieces, time lost its meaning and –
I love you.
Catching her breath, Saoirse blinked into reality and turned to the man heaving beside her. "What?"
"My Saoirse..." He huffed and reached up to stroke her hair. "Tá mé i ngrá leat."
"Sorley..."
His brow furrowed. "What is it, my Saoirse?"
"You just... do you know what you just said?"
His bewilderment deepened. She repeated the phrase in Irish and his eyes brightened with understanding.
"My Saoirse..."
His fingers traced a prickled pattern across the length of her arm to her wrist and lifted her right hand to his face. The Claddagh ring there still showed that she was looking for love, but he worked it off her finger, flipped it round and put it back on. This now meant that she had found love. It made her tremble.
"How... Oh, Sorley... you remember? W-what do you remember? I – How did you... know? And... you... you speak Irish, I don't – "
He stopped her stream of questions with a passionate kiss that nearly set her ablaze again.
"I love you," Sorley said. "I do. I do not know the answers to any of your other questions, my Saoirse, but I do know that I love you. And I feel like I have for a very long time. I... I just want – "
His eyes twitched with the pained grimace that overtook his countenance. Another lost memory flashing to the forefront?
"Sorley? Sorley, are you all right?"
He whimpered like a wounded animal, his whole body clenched in a coil. His breathing quickened and his veins swelled along his reddened skin. It frightened her.
"Sorley!"
He snarled and howled, his bloodshot eyes bulging in their sockets. Saoirse scrambled out of bed, overrun with worry and terror. He lunged for her, his fingers crooked like claws. Saoirse screamed. Unable to hold himself upright, he collapsed on the carpet at her feet and seemed to pass out there.
Saoirse crouched to check his pulse. Fast, yet steadying from erratic into regular, and gradually slowing as a minute, then two, then three elapsed. Sweat trickled down his temples. She dragged the duvet off the bed to drape it over his body and shoved a pillow under his head.
Dressed in old trousers of her husband's and a yellowed cotton shirt, Saoirse left the room and locked the door behind her. Tending to the animals helped put her at ease while it kept her out of the house. Once she had to go back in, the fear resurfaced.
She wasn't afraid of Sorley. She was afraid of what he couldn't remember. Many a soldier had returned broken from the war and couldn't quite piece themselves back together. In their minds, they were still in the trenches, so it often happened that they mistook their families for the enemy.
Had Sorley been to war? Had he lost his memories in a fight rather than an accident? Was he still fighting his demons in those dark crevices of his brain that he couldn't reach? She glanced at the Claddagh ring on her right hand, now showing her heart had been 'captured'.
Sniffling with restrained tears, Saoirse cleared her throat and picked up the telephone. She asked for the residence of Sir Alexander Mortimer in Edinburgh and was connected to one of the housemaids.
"Yes, hello, I'd like to talk to Dr James Mortimer, please. Me? Oh, um... Sister Quinn. Saoirse Quinn, of Seacliff Lodge. Yes, please. Yes, I'll wait. Thank you."