Mortal Arts (A Lady Darby Mystery) (9 page)

I worried my lower lip between my teeth. Unless the physician had told Michael to return his brother to the asylum. That seemed to be the answer for anything that baffled a medical man, and the more arrogant the man, the more adamant his protestations that nothing could be done. At least, that had been my experience. And as Sir Anthony’s wife, I’d had plenty of opportunities to witness prideful displays from him and his colleagues.

In any case, Michael had told us his brother had improved significantly in the nine months since his release, so continuing on the present course must be better than sending him back. Perhaps all Will needed was more time and everyone’s patience, and his mind would heal itself. If he was sketching those frightening images on spare sheets of paper and his walls to purge his mind of them, then maybe he was already making great strides to mend himself. Maybe if I encouraged his efforts, let him know I understood, he could rid himself of those haunting memories once and for all.

I rubbed my fingers against my right temple, knowing full and well it wasn’t quite so simple. Was I not still plagued by the images from my past? Pacing the floors of my room on some nights, unable to sleep?

My fingers tightened their grip around the drapes, wrinkling the costly velvet.

But surely it was better to at least try. Maybe Will would never be completely rid of his nightmares—maybe no one ever was—but he could at least fight them. What other option did he have? Giving up, giving in was intolerable.

Struggling as I was with such dark thoughts, I nearly missed the soft click of the door opening and closing behind me. It was latched with care not to disturb those in the other rooms nearby.

I knew better than to suppose Lucy had forgotten something and come back to fetch it. Or that my sister was ready for a chat, when fatigue from her recent illness had marked her steps as she exited the drawing room after dinner. No one else should have been so presumptuous as to visit my room in the middle of the night, or to enter it without even knocking, but I knew who it was without turning. And somehow I felt I should have been expecting it.

The anger I had only recently dampened flared back to life, sweeping swift and hot through my veins. I almost felt grateful for the chance to vent my spleen, especially on the man who was my intruder.

Dropping the drapes, I whirled around to glare at him. “This is becoming rather a bad habit, isn’t it?”

CHAPTER NINE

G
age was not the least intimidated by my angry stare. In fact, despite his casual pose, leaning back against the doorjamb with his ankles and arms crossed, I could feel the full force of his displeasure across the twenty-foot room that separated us. It only served to enrage me further.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded.

He lifted one shoulder in the semblance of a careless shrug, but his posture was too stiff. “I thought we needed to talk.”

“At midnight in my bedchamber?” I could hear my voice rising with my temper and made an effort to check it.

“It was the only time and place where I knew we would have some privacy.”

I narrowed my eyes, uncertain whether there was a hidden barb in there somewhere. “You are aware that just because I gave you leave to enter my chamber twice during your visit to Gairloch does
not
give you permission to do so now.”

“Three times.”

I had sucked in breath to offer him a set-down when his words caught me off guard. “What?” I snapped, shaking my head in agitation.

“I entered your chamber three times,” he clarified. He pushed away from the door, stalking across the room toward me as he ticked off the encounters on his fingers. I stumbled back a step, but then planted my feet, refusing to give him the satisfaction of watching me retreat. “Once after Lord Westlock coshed you over the head, once when I brought champagne to celebrate Lady Stratford’s detainment, and once while Sir Graham Fraser questioned you after the ordeal in the boat.”

The ordeal in the boat?
That certainly wasn’t how I thought of it. And I was surprised Gage could refer to it in such mundane terms. “You mean when I almost
died
?”

He stiffened, his steps faltering to a stop a few feet from me. “Yes. I well remember the more serious implications of that struggle,” he replied in a measured voice. He turned his face to the side and I could see the muscles in his throat working before he added in a huskier undertone, “I will never be able to forget them.”

My cheeks flushed with heat and my eyes dropped to his cravat and the sapphire stickpin glistening among its snowy white folds. Of course he remembered. He had saved my life, at no small risk to his own. And how did I repay his discretion, his avoidance in bringing up such a sensitive subject, but by chastising him like a resentful harpy? What was it about this man that so riled me that I could forget all prudence and decency?

“I . . . I’m sorry,” I murmured, stumbling over an apology. “Of course you remember.”

He shifted uncomfortably and cleared his throat. “Yes, well . . .”

I regained the courage to look him in the eye, noticing the faint lines at the corners of them. His finely sculpted cheekbones seemed tanner, as if he had been spending a great deal of time outdoors since last I saw him. If possible, I thought it made his already devilish good looks even more arresting, even at this late hour, with nary a stray beam of sunshine to highlight his golden hair. I had decided a portrait of Gage was best painted in the daylight, but now I wasn’t so sure. Here in the flickering shadows, his features might actually be more interesting.

“You look well,” he said meaningfully, and I realized that even as I had been standing there studying him, he had been doing the same to me.

I wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly self-conscious. Especially when I realized I was wearing naught but a thin night rail and my wrapper. When Gage had visited my chamber in the past I had always been properly attired in an evening gown or a morning dress, not bedclothes. “Thank you,” I murmured, praying he would not mention my state of dishabille.

“Cromarty told me you’ve suffered no lasting effects from your injuries.”

“Ah . . . no,” I told him. “Just a tiny scar.”

“Good.”

I pivoted to the side, fiddling with the long rope of my braid where it lay over my shoulder. “And you?” I asked, glancing at him out of the corner of my eye. “Are you well?”

“Yes. Yes, I am. Thank you for asking.”

I nodded, wondering if we could possibly have become more staid or polite. Either we seemed to argue with one another or we turned to stilted small talk. And I wasn’t certain I didn’t prefer the arguing. At least it didn’t leave me standing here feeling foolish and uncertain, wondering what Gage was thinking.

“You said you wanted to talk,” I prodded, unable to stand the awkward silence a moment longer.

“Uh . . . yes.” But he hesitated to say more, his gaze turning cautious, as if he wasn’t certain how to voice his next words. Or he was wary of how I would react to them.

I tilted my head, considering him. Beyond his ruffled hair, which I knew he was prone to comb his fingers through when he was frustrated or impatient, he was still impeccably turned out in his evening kit. Even his cravat had not become rumpled through the evening’s events. I suspected he had been planning to make this midnight visit before we even parted company, and he had been pacing his room, biding his time, until he knew he could steal into my chamber without being seen. I had but one guess as to why he was so eager to speak with me, and it made sense he would be cautious in bringing it up.

“This is about William Dalmay, isn’t it?”

Gage did not try to insult my intelligence by denying it or couching it in gentler terms.

I sighed in frustration, knowing what he was going to say. “I have no intention of discussing him with you.”

“Be reasonable,” he said, an edge returning to his voice. “I’m concerned for your well-being. The man is simply not safe.”

I glared over my shoulder at him. “Says who? You?”

His mouth tightened into a thin line.

“You have no right to speak to me on this matter. I think I know William just a little bit better than you do.”

“Perhaps you
did
,” he replied, emphasizing the past tense of the word. “But he’s not the same man he was before he went into the asylum. You can see that.”

“And what do you know of the matter? You were in London or Greece . . .” I gestured with my hand “. . . or wherever you were when he was locked away. And you’ve been here at Dalmay House all of—what? A week? How does that make you an authority on William Dalmay?”

“It doesn’t. But I would wager I know far more than you about the inmates of lunatic asylums and just what they’re capable of.”

“Will isn’t just some nameless
inmate
,” I snapped, hating that detestable word. “He’s my friend. And I am not going to let you scare me or turn me against him. He needs our help, not our condemnation.” I turned to walk away from him, but Gage’s hand shot out to grip my upper arm.

“I’m only asking you to be sensible,” he growled, his face tight with frustration. “The man is, at the very least, unpredictable. And I don’t like erratic, potentially volatile men.”

“Will is not volatile.” I stared up into Gage’s angry gaze, trying to make him understand. “I
know
him. He would never hurt me.”

Gage’s eyes searched mine and in my gaze I pleaded with him to listen to me, to stop this ridiculous campaign to keep us apart. His hand pulled me closer to him, tightening almost painfully around my arm, and then loosened, though he still did not release me. “Who is William Dalmay to you?” he surprised me by asking.

I blinked up at him in confusion.

“Was there really nothing between you?”

Heat blossomed in my cheeks as I realized what he meant. “No. I already told everyone we were just friends. He would never have behaved so dishonorably.”

Gage’s gaze sharpened beneath his furrowed brow. I wanted to turn away, to hide from his all-too-knowing eyes. “But you wished he would?”

My heart squeezed sharply, whether from the remembered heartache of my adolescent self or my current mortification, I wasn’t certain. Either way, I could not maintain eye contact with the man in front of me. “I was fifteen,” I offered by way of explanation. “And he was a handsome war hero.”

He considered my words while I contemplated the lapels of his frock coat. “And a tortured one.”

His insightful response drew my gaze back to his. “Yes,” I admitted.

Gage nodded.

“Didn’t you ever become infatuated at fifteen? Whether it was wise or not?”

His mouth quirked wryly and a glimmer of humor returned to his eyes. “The young women of Devon were never more safe than when I left for Cambridge.”

I arched my eyebrows.

Seeing the look in my eyes, he coughed. “But let’s not discuss my adolescence, shall we?”

I allowed the matter to drop, not certain I wanted to hear about Gage’s youthful conquests.

He studied me closely, and at such a close range I felt a little like an insect beneath a magnifying glass. I tugged against his hold and he released me, allowing me to move to a safe distance. His gaze dropped to my upper arm where I was rubbing the spot where he had gripped me, not so much because it hurt, but because it still tingled from his touch, even through the thick fabric of my wrapper.

“Did I hurt you?” His voice was concerned.

“No.”

He searched my face as if trying to decide whether I was lying. He must have decided I wasn’t, for he turned away, raking a hand back through his hair. After a moment’s contemplation, he spoke carefully. “You realize it’s probable William Dalmay will never fully recover from this.”

My eyes dropped to his feet. I wanted to deny it, but the pain twisting in my chest told me that I already knew this, even if I didn’t want to admit it even to myself.

I felt Gage’s worried gaze on me. “He will never return to the man he was. Too much has happened. Too much has changed.”

“Are any of us the same people we were ten years ago?” I asked.

It was meant as a rhetorical question, a feeble defense against the truth of his words, but from the ringing silence, I knew Gage had taken the query seriously.

I lifted my eyes to find him watching me, his pale blue gaze torn with indecision. He inhaled swiftly and parted his lips to speak, but then, as if he’d thought better of it, he stopped. The words died on his tongue and his mouth drifted shut in resignation.

I could almost feel the gravity in the air between us of whatever confession he had been about to make. Another secret unspoken. Another thought left unsaid.

Frustrated by his continued refusal to share, his determination to keep me off balance, I tried asking him myself. “What happened in Greece?”

His gaze turned stony. “I’m not going to talk about Greece.”

“Why? Did something happen there?”

“No.”

Irritated, I racked my brain trying to remember what might have been going on during that time period. “Were you caught up in the Greeks’ war for independence?” I asked, trying to recall when that conflict had actually begun. I knew very little about the Greek revolution, and those things I did know, I had read in the newspapers. I must admit I had not been very interested in following the events of a war so far from home, but now I wished I had paid more attention.

I knew I had hit on something of the truth when the muscle in his clamped jaw jumped. “I did not come here to discuss the Greeks’ struggle for independence from the Ottoman Empire.” He stabbed a finger at the middle of my chest. “You are attempting to distract me.”

I turned away with an aggravated huff. Why did the man insist on being so secretive? It seemed ludicrous that I could be so drawn to him when I really knew almost nothing about him except the few facts I had been able to glean from others. Certainly I felt I knew his character after all we had been through at Gairloch. I could even understand his desire for privacy—I myself prized it highly—but his stubborn refusal to share anything about his past upset me. I had shared so much of myself with him already—parts of my life that I discussed with no one—that it smacked of betrayal when he did not reciprocate.

Upon his departure from Gairloch, I had accepted his decision to remain quiet about his reasons for ignoring my doubts about the initial findings of the investigation we had conducted. If he had believed, as I did, that we might never see each other again, I could understand his unwillingness to share private information with someone who would return to being a stranger. I hadn’t liked it, but I could understand it. However, now that we had been thrown together again, for who knew how long, I could not comprehend his continued silence.

“I understand that you care for Dalmay,” Gage said in a calmer voice. “And I can understand that you wish to help him, but just stop and consider the matter for a moment.” He leaned closer and I looked up, reluctantly meeting his troubled gaze. “He is damaged. Even Dalmay himself would admit that.”

I scowled.

“He is not always himself, as we witnessed this evening.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but he cut me off.

“
Yes
, he did not harm anyone tonight. But that doesn’t mean he is incapable of it,” he added carefully.

I lifted my eyebrows, letting him know I was tired of hearing this same refrain.

He quickly came to the point. “How do you think Dalmay would feel if he emerged from one of his stupors to discover he had hurt you?”