Madness (14 page)

He sighed and shook his head. “You can’t save everyone, Gabrielle. Your months at the clinic should have taught you that by now.”

“By the time they ever reach us, many of them have no chance. This man does, I'm sure of it. Please, help me help him?”

He hesitated for a moment more, then nodded. “All right, I will.”

“Tell me all the things I am going to have to look out for.”

Antony sighed. “It’s going to be pretty ugly. They include uneasiness, diarrhea, abdominal cramps, chills, sweating, nausea, runny nose and eyes, irritability, weakness, tremors and insomnia. He can also do a great deal of sneezing and yawning.

"These symptoms are usually strongest one to three days after the drug has been withdrawn. They can persist for seven to ten days. His confusion and lassitude can persist for several months even after all the other symptoms have disappeared.”

“Damn! I had no idea.”

“No reason for you to.”

“Those bastards.”

Antony didn't even bother to remonstrate about her language.
 
“I can give you some laudanum to have on hand just to make it easier for you, so you can prepare yourself for what’s to come, but-”

She shook her head, determination etched in every line of her face.
 
She sat back in her seat and crossed her arms over her chest. “No! I’m not going to give the man more poison while I come to terms with his desperate state. I would never give it to him for my sake.

"But he needs to get a bit stronger. He needs food, water, broth or beef tea would be ideal. At least we have water. If the er, dehydration I think you called it, is as bad as you say, we can do something about it.”

“I can check his urine, see what he is producing, how much, how dark it is. Those are usually indications that the body is in trouble. I had one teacher at medical college who swore by urine.”

“I’m sure,” Gabrielle said, lifting one corner of her mouth into a smile at Antony’s small attempt at levity.

“Any other diseases? Er, venereal?”

“I checked him again and found he was sweating and shivering, but there was no sign of any physical illness that I could see.”

“All right, that sounds promising.”

“Always the optimist.”

She shot him an irritated look. “Better than being a pessimist all the time. He needs our help, and I’m not going to let him down.”

But when they got back to Bedlam, there was no sign of Simon anywhere, and no amount of inquiries could yield any information as to his location or condition.

Finally her cousin pulled her over to one side and advised her in a low tone, “The harder you push, the less likely they are to tell you what you need to know. So just leave it for now. When they have less to fear, less on their minds, we’ll find him.”

“If he isn’t already dead," she shot back, her skin crawling. "Not to mention the fact that he will be going through all those withdrawal symptoms you’ve described all alone. I can’t bear the thought of—”

“You'll have to for now. If I find him I can give him some laudanum to help him temporarily. Just calm down. Find your sister and help her, and leave Simon to me.”

“Are you sure—”

“I will get some answers, I swear. I'm not a Rakehell for nothing, you know.”

She nodded and smiled slightly at the mention of their set of bold Radical friends. “All right. But if you do find him, well, tell him we’re thinking about him.”

Antony gave her a long look and suppressed a sudden fit of jealousy. Her lovely cousin and a madman? It was unthinkable...

But he had promised, and he was a doctor. He would find the mysterious inmate called Simon. But just how far they would help would depend very much on what he discovered about the man, and just how dangerous he could really be.

Antony had little time to worry about his promise to find Simon in view of the huge number of injuries they were confronted with once they arrived back at Bedlam.

Once he had found Lucinda and seen she was in no serious danger, he had come back down and set to work with a will.

There were so many in need of urgent care that Gabrielle even had to help with the stitching herself while Antony and Oliver tended to the more seriously injured. Very few of the Bedlam doctors were on site, a fact that they all found shocking. There had ben a riot--why was the hospital’s own staff not in attendance?

But when he asked the question, the few nurses each shrugged.

“Took the day off, I expect,” one of them said.

“What,
all
of them? Do they not have a duty roster?” Antony demanded.

“We did do, but it sort of got changed this week. We were given a half-day yesterday out of the blue.”

Antony and Gabrielle looked at each other. It was all so strange, but for the life of them they couldn’t grasp why anyone would want the whole common ward to go mad and kill each other.

Unless....

Gabrielle shoved the thought to one side. No, it was just too horrible. Perhaps what Simon had said was right, the doctors experimenting with the patients, and that was bad enough. But her own suspicions that it would be easy to hide one dead body amongst many was just too gruesome to contemplate.

She asked quietly for Simon whenever she got the chance, but they all stared at her blankly.

In the end she gave up and asked for directions to Lucinda’s new room. Once there, she was relieved to see that her sister's color was better. She got her cleaned and changed, and checked her linens.

Everything seemed to have settled down with her pregnancy. There appeared to be no fresh blood on the wadding, and she was sleeping peacefullly. Once she was sure that her sister was resting comfortably, Gabrielle looked around the small cell.

A private room. It was almost a small miracle. She couldn’t leave anything valuable in it, but at least she could be certain that no one but the staff would come in or out and bother the mainly unconscious Lucinda.

She rubbed her shoulder and side where the violent man had injured her. Funny how she hadn’t noticed them aching when she had been with Simon.

She longed to feel his heart beating against her, his long length pressed up along the whole of her body. She wondered again what might have happened if they had not been interrupted by the men all charging in trying to come to their rescue. Ironically, that was the last thing she had wanted.

But Simon had been right about one thing. It would have been extremely risky to go through with the act and then have to worry about pregnancy.

She had certainly learnt enough about preventing conception at the clinic. When she took a lover, it would simply be a case of getting some sponges and vinegar or lemon juice. Or some of the sheepkin prophylactics which also prevented disease.

And Simon would not be shocked. After all, he had said he lived in a brothel....

Then she shook her head. Listen to her, planning for her own seduction at the hands of a madman with all of the finesse of an army general. A French army general, she thought with a giggle.

For the French were reputed to be superb lovers, and she was sure Simon had to be at least partly French from his musical accent.
 

What she had seen of Simon had certainly more than confirmed the magnificent lover part. His every touch and kiss had been a devastating onslaught, even though he had been doing his best to hold back.

Curiously, he didn’t even seem to be aware of his own power. In fact, he seemed to think that
she
was the one who was bewitching
him
. Even her slightest brushing against his loins had rendered him unable to hold back his... What was it he had called it? Orgasm? Pinnacle.

She suddenly understood a few things that had puzzled her in the past. It had to be what she had overheard the girls at the clinic calling ‘coming.’ It was something they tried to get their clients to do as quickly as possible so they could move on to the next customer.

She also knew some men couldn’t contain themselves, while others couldn’t manage at all. And a couple of the women had even said something about stopping the men from doing it at all so the woman could catch up.

Gabrielle had tried not to listen, for indeed relations between men and women had seemed so far removed from her own life, worried as she was about her sister, that it had not mattered. She had certainly never imagined herself having a lover.

Lover
. She hugged the word to her like a warm blanket as she went about her chores back down in the common ward, cleaning wounds, stitching, bandaging.

She had always been afraid of the word. But the reality had been so incredible. How could she fear something that had felt so perfect despite all of the appalling circumstances?

But she knew what Antony would say. And she had to acknowledge that he was right to a certain extent. Lucinda had believed she'd known Oxnard well, that he would be a wonderful lover and husband, and look how she had ended up.

What did she really know about Simon apart from the fact that he was in Bedlam, epileptic, and absolutely huge in every sense of the word? He was certainly large enough to be dangerous if he ever turned violent.

But then, Oxnard was not a large man and she had seen Lucinda shrink from his touch as though he were a plague-carrier.

No, Simon had seemed, gentle, kind, and certainly not selfish in any way. He had gone out of his way to help two perfect strangers, and done everything he could to protect them. Except they were not strangers after all… He remembered them even if she couldn't recall him as of yet.

Perhaps that was why she had felt so safe with him, and yet thrilled, excited too. He was from her past, her happier times. Only
 
now, there had been a certain tension between them, a half-knowing, a little
frisson
of fear...

Or was it just nerves, a bit of reserve such as existed between a man and a woman who were aware of each other as such? It was not exactly flirtatious, more like a consciousness of each other’s every move. A sort of instinct, a special connection with the other person’s breathing, thoughts, posture and movement. Like leaning into each other to speak so only that person could hear. A certain intimacy.

Yes,
that
was it. She had never encountered such a feeling herself before, but she had seen it in her married cousins Michael and Randall, though certainly not between Lucinda and Oxnard. If she was being brutally honest, she and her sister had envied their dashing cousins and their wives with all their hearts.