The Highlander (3 page)

“I've warned you, only the truth will liberate you from your current state,” Rosenblatt reminded her.

The truth
. The truth was that her husband was as much a sadist as Dr. Rosenblatt. Gordon St. Vincent enthusiastically tried to figure out what made people cringe. What they truly feared. What they hated about themselves. And he exploited this information to his advantage.

It had started gradually, her hell within the St. Vincent household. And before long, when Gordon had thought her broken, when his jibes and torments no longer seemed to affect her, her husband became violent. Acts that would land a man in prison should he enact them out on the streets were all perfectly legal if he perpetrated them on his wife.

In the span of time and space, a quarter hour is nothing. A grain of sand on an endless beach. But in that tub, it became an eternity, stretching away from the warm rays of the sun. Until there was nothing but cold. Nothing but this white, white room and suffering.

After that, Mena lost the ability to see the arms on the clock. Her joints seized and her muscles contracted with such violent pain, she let out an involuntary wail.

Lord, but she truly did sound mad.

Her hands contorted into strange and painful angles against her chest, and odd convulsions seemed to rack her spine, even as she felt her heart slow to a plodding amble, nearly losing its rhythm.

She was tired. So tired.

It was then they dragged her from the bath, lifting her by the elbows drawn stiff enough to hold her weight. She'd become like the ice, truly frozen. She couldn't even summon the strength to care anymore as Dr. Rosenblatt and Mr. Burns watched while she was toweled dry and a rough cotton shift yanked over her head.

An alarming numbness had begun to spread from Mena's muscles and limbs inward to her organs. She'd never spent more than ten minutes in the ice baths before. She hardly noticed as a comb was jerked through her long hair. She tried to stumble away, but her knees refused to hold her as the cold had leached all strength from her muscles. Mr. Burns caught her in time to prevent injury, but she'd rather have fallen to the floor.

“She's too heavy for us to carry. You'll have to get her back to her rooms, Mr. Burns,” Nurse Schopf ordered.

“'Appy to, madam,” Mr. Burns said cheerfully.

“I'll assist. The bath has seemed to calm her hysteria, and she should be docile for quite some time.” Dr. Rosenblatt pushed away from the wall and snapped her file closed. “See that this gets back to my office, Nurse Schopf, and make certain that we aren't disturbed.”

Mena's useless feet made terrible noises on the long, uncarpteted floor as the two men “ushered” her down the corridor, scrubbed and painted with that peculiar whiteness that must be reserved for such institutions. Gas lamps spaced precisely between the doors did nothing to warm the glaring emptiness of the place. Even the beams and bolts and the padlocks on the iron doors had been whitewashed. Sterile, like their bedrooms, devoid of warmth, light, or color. Pure, like their nightgowns, high-necked, binding, and modest, but for the fact one could see the shape beneath.

Little shivering whimpers escaped Mena's chest and throat, unbidden and unwanted, but somehow she couldn't stop them. Her jaw ached from the clenching and clacking of her teeth. The asylum night noises grated on her skin. She felt each wail of insanity as though they were nails scoring her flesh. At the sound of heavy boots, some women pressed their faces against the three bars that comprised their tiny windows to the hall. Their stares pricked her like needles. Some were mad, mocking, and terrible. Others, like her, those who did not belong behind these walls, were full of pity and sometimes tears. Mena could acknowledge none of them. At the moment, she couldn't even manage to turn her neck.

“I like that she's clean and meek,” Mr. Burns stated. “But I don't relish the idea of sticking my prick into an ice block.”

His words speared a sharp clench of panic through Mena. She'd often wondered if rape was their aim. She knew that the doctor and the orderly had used Belle Glen as their own personal playground. She'd listened to the screams of more than one longtime resident as she'd given birth in the middle of the night. She'd cried with them, and thanked her stars for the first time in her life that she was too tall and too round to be considered truly desirable.

“She'll be warm enough on the inside,” the doctor replied shortly. “And the muscle convulsions will make things … more interesting.”

Dread seized hold of her with a grip tighter than either of their cruel, groping hands.

“P-please. Don't,” she stuttered, before her jaw clenched shut on another wave of chills. If only she could struggle. It wouldn't help her, she knew that, but at least she wouldn't have this feeling of being bound by her own sinew and skin. Of all the hopeless anger she felt at the moment, most of it was directed at her own useless limbs.

“That's right, milady, we'll be making ya beg for it,” Mr. Burns said with apparent relish before addressing the doctor on the other side of her. “I've been wanting to get me 'ands on those tits for months, why'd you make us wait so long?”

“This is no government-run institution, Burns, with poor oversight and crowding. Also, this isn't just any woman. She's a viscountess. I had to make certain her family wouldn't make a fuss about her. That they wouldn't soften or change their minds and take her home. But the Viscount Benchley has just recently assured me that she's well and truly abandoned to our tender mercies.”

Mr. Burns made a noise of anticipation that roiled what little food Mena had in her belly. There had been a spider baked into her bread that evening for dinner, so she'd only drunk the rancid broth.

“Never shagged nobili'iy before,” he observed.

“Indeed.” Dr. Rosenblatt turned to address Mena. “It may please you to know, Lady Benchley, that your husband has parceled off Birch Haven Place and sold it to make a generous contribution to the institution here at Belle Glen. You'll be a guest here … indefinitely.”

At that terrible news, a sob escaped her, though, sadly, tears never came. It was as though she were incapable of producing any.

Birch Haven Place had been her
home
. Her only refuge. And now she'd well and truly lost everything.

The portly Dr. Rosenblatt was audibly short of breath by the time they reached her room, and her weight was primarily supported by the orderly.

“Not a dainty bird, are ya?” Burns remarked. “Well, that's awright, I s'pose. You're not like to see tits like those 'uns on a delicate lady.”

The jangle of the keys the doctor pulled from the pocket of his overcoat finally produced a spurt of panic strong enough to slam her heart against her ribs. A trickle of fire started in her scalp and dripped down her spine until her entire body seemed dipped in acid.

Dr. Rosenblatt's fat fingers seemed clumsy with excitement, his cheeks flushed beneath his gray beard. “I'm going to go first,” he said. “I don't know where else you've put that dirty cod.”

“And ya don't want to know, neither,” Burns joked, and they shared a masculine chuckle.

Hot tears finally managed to gather behind her eyes and they felt more substantial than the rough hands clamped about her numb arms and waist. Mena wished that she had led the kind of life in which their vulgarity still shocked her. That she'd never known what it was to have a man inside her after she'd said no. Or while she'd cried. Or while she'd struggled and fought. Her husband had taken care of that, hadn't he?

By the time the heavy door to her room swung open, Mena was able to twitch her fingers. Her strength and blood flow was returning in terrible increments.

Which meant she might be able to struggle—but could she fend them both off?

She doubted it. They were brutes. Two men who mocked her for her height and size when Mr. Burns's muscle was covered with a layer of softness and Dr. Rosenblatt was simply fat.

They would win, they would overpower her, and then—a gag she was unable to suppress stole her breath.

“Dr. Rosenblatt!” Nurse Schopf's voice echoed down the hallway like a cannon blast. “Doctor, you must come now!”

A cacophony of madness erupted as other patients were roused, the more unstable of them screeching and making their horrid noises.

“We are being invaded!” the nurse screeched.

“Invaded?” Dr. Rosenblatt visibly blanched. “By whom?”

“The police!”

Lip curling in disgust, Rosenblatt made a nasty comment and then tossed the keys to Mr. Burns. “Put this one in her quarters and use the restraints while I deal with this.”

“With pleasure!” Burns gathered Mena to him and forced her into the unlocked room that had become the stage for her nightly battles with the abyss.

“Not the restraints,” she rasped out, desperation helping her to regain her voice somewhat. “You don't have to do this. Please just leave me be.” There was a special kind of fear in not being able to move one's limbs in the night; the fear created its own sort of lunacy as the mind worked while the body could not. Mena imagined all sorts of horrors to combat the chill of being manacled, spread-eagled, on her hard plank bed. An errant fire that she could do nothing about but lie in wait until it consumed her slowly, or London rats chewing on her feet, or spiders crawling on her with no way to brush them off.

And here a new terror was introduced. A man, two men, with unadulterated access to her body and no way for her to struggle, or strain, or even shift to alleviate the pain that came with intercourse.

Some strength began to return to Mena's hips and shoulders, working its way slowly out from the torso. Everywhere he touched it felt like his skin was made of razors and hers of silk. The ripping sensation was almost audible.

Panic flared as mobility began to return, and Mena tugged against Mr. Burns's unyielding grip. She struggled to wrench and yank away from him, but knew her movements were weak. “Don't tie me up, I implore you!” When one of his arms released her to reach for the first buckled leather manacle, Mena's arm flailed out, her elbow catching him in the chin.

He bared his filthy teeth as he whirled her around and smashed the back of his ham-sized knuckles into her face. He released her as his blow connected, sending her crashing to the hard floor in a pile of weak limbs. Pain exploded into Mena's cheek and radiated to her eyes, ears, and down her neck, but she caught herself with trembling hands before her head cracked against the floor. The taste of brine and copper trickled into her mouth from where her teeth had cut into her cheek.

Mr. Burns crouched down, the pleasant, unassuming look fixed back on his unfortunate features. “Let me remind ya of something out of the kindness of me 'eart, Countess Fire Quim.” The foul stench of his breath assailed her, causing her already watering eyes to overflow. “Out there, you're a noble lady expecting everyone to lick your boots and kiss your arse. But in 'ere, you're nothing but another loony cunt, locked away because no one can stand ya. I'll tell ya what I tell the others here. If ya make me 'appy, I can make your life easier. If you're difficult, then life will be difficult, and no one will believe that the bruises I leave on ya weren't inflicted by your own self.”

All of the large muscles in Mena's body quivered and twitched with returning blood. Her skin burned, yet she was freezing. Despite all that, she was only aware of the raw black emotion swirling in her soul. Something dark and self-destructive, as though one of the many demons she'd fought in her lifetime had finally been set free.

“It's
Viscountess
Fire Quim, you hateful brute,” she snapped, surprising herself as much or more than Mr. Burns. “If you all insist on calling me that ridiculous moniker, the very least you can do is affix the correct title.” To seal her fate, she spat blood in his repulsive face.

He acted just like she'd expected him to, and his next vicious blow granted her the oblivion she craved.

*   *   *

To Mena, heaven was a difficult notion to comprehend. And, somehow, whenever she pictured it in her mind, she merely conjured an image of home. Her
real
home. Not Benchley Court, the stately, opulent mansion where she'd resided with her husband these five soul-crushing years. Nor Belle Glen Asylum, where she lay now on the stone floor in a puddle of her blood and grief.

But
home
. Birch Haven Place, an idyllic country baronetcy in Hampshire. A place as much a paradise as this asylum had become her purgatory.

Floating in the dark folds of her unconscious, Mena could feel the sunshine of southern England on her face. Could close her eyes and still see the light and shadow playing to her in the shade of her favorite copse of birch trees where she used to picnic and read of a summer's day. She'd gaze over the fields to where the manor house settled, a cozy Georgian structure, too big to be called a cottage and too small for a mansion, with red stone, white windows, and entirely too many chimneys. Her father had once told her he thought the roof rather cluttered. But Mena had loved each seemingly random gable and smokestack right where it was.

When she was growing up, the gardens had been her fairyland, a place to let her imagination roam. The stables, her adolescent refuge, as she was allowed to explore the countryside on horseback until the fields ran into the sea. The grand fireplace in the meager great hall was a warm corner of comfort, where she and her beloved father had huddled their heads together every winter over countless books and shut out the world.

Her father, lovely as he was, had been too low for high society, too gentle for the merchant class, too eccentric to fit in much of anywhere, but too wealthy to ignore. Her mother had died of scarlet fever before Mena could even walk, and Baron Phillip Houghton had protected and pampered his only daughter. Educated her like a man. Treated her like a treasure. And instilled a love of all things intellectual and agricultural.