Valor Under Siege (The Honorables) (4 page)

“Sheri,” said Arcadia, coming to stand beside her husband. “Her ladyship is tired. Perhaps we should come back another—”

“No,” came another voice from the door.

Norman Wynford-Scott entered, his long legs eating the distance from the door to the foot of her bed in three hungry strides. He was absolutely tremendous, the tallest man she’d ever known. It was his height that distinguished him, of course, for his face was nothing remarkable, pleasing but not strikingly handsome. Wavy brown hair of a regular, middling hue shagged around his ears and flopped across his forehead. His eyes were ... well, Elsa didn’t know for sure. She’d never paid much attention to them. His lips were full in a masculine way; on another man, they would be good for kissing, but Mr. Wynford-Scott was such a dull humdrum, preferring his studies to livelier pursuits.

If possible, he seemed larger just now than he usually did. His jaw was tense, bracketing those wasted, sensual lips in hard lines.

Those lips.

It came to her then, all at once. The carriage. She’d kissed him. Tried to lure him to bed.

He slashed a look of accusation at her, and she realized why he seemed larger than normal. Mr. Wynford-Scott had quiet, gentle manners. He was good-natured and soft-spoken. Even at full volume, his rich voice was sonorous and even, a trait cultivated, she assumed, to carry throughout a cavernous courtroom in a dignified fashion.

But now, even in his stillness, she could see agitation frothing just below the surface of his skin. He wasn’t merely angry; he was hurt. Justifiably so. She’d spoiled the revels and kissed him and—

He had told Sheri, of course. Why did she only now realize it? After leaving her last night, he’d gone to Sheri, tattled on Elsa as though she was an ill-behaved child. But had he told all? Did Sheri know that Elsa had tried (and failed) to seduce one of his closest friends?

And where was Foster with that kidney pie? It dawned on Elsa that she’d been set up. Even her maid was involved in orchestrating this gathering.

The teacup shook in her hand, spilling tawny liquid onto her coverlet. She cut a glance at her adjoining dressing room. Carelessly dropping the china cup onto the tray, she hurled herself out of bed. “I’m going to be sick,” she blurted. Sheri made a grab for her; she gripped his sleeve and pushed him away. “Go,” she begged, darting past a stunned Arcadia and lacking the courage to assess Mr. Wynford-Scott’s expression.

She slammed the dressing room door behind her and yanked open the vanity drawer. With shaking hands, she sifted through jars of powder and pots of rouge. She dropped to her knees and pulled the drawer out, upending its contents onto the floor, scattering small brushes and rabbit fur poufs across the light blue carpet.

“Where?” she gasped. “Where?” Her eyes darted about the space while she crawled on hands and knees, desperate for a glimpse of the silver flask with its beautiful mother-of-pearl inlay.

“You’ll not find it,” said Mr. Wynford-Scott. When had he entered the dressing room? She’d not heard the door open. He filled the small room with his immense size and the force of his presence. She backed away, her eyes trained on his glowering face, until her bare heels touched the leg of the settee.

“Where?” she repeated.

From the pocket of his somber brown coat, he withdrew her flask, clasped in his long, thick fingers.

Her nostrils flared, as if scenting the juniper fumes of the gin inside. She lunged. He raised his arm, easily keeping it beyond reach. “Give it to me,” she demanded, clutching his lapel with one hand and grasping the sleeve of his raised arm with the other. Even on tiptoe, extending to her full length, she couldn’t touch his elbow. “That isn’t yours. You’ve no right.” She clawed and grappled. When that didn’t work, she grabbed his arm with both hands and let herself drop, in a play to pull him off-balance.

He remained stubbornly vertical.

Her breath came in pained, sobbing gasps, and her stomach heaved in earnest. Releasing his arm, she stumbled around him and returned to her bedchamber, catching a glimpse of Sheri’s pained, pitying face as she dropped to her knees before the chamber pot.

As she vomited and cried, she sensed the three of them closing around her, not even granting her privacy in this low moment. Every contraction of her abdomen was compounded by the mortification of their presence. Animal noises escaped her as her body made a valiant attempt to turn itself inside out.

After, she slumped over the pot, too weak to move. She imagined how she must look to her pitying friends: a woman undone, sick and deranged for want of drink. It wasn’t as though Elsa didn’t know she drank too much. No other ladies of her acquaintance tipped gin into their morning tea or put away neat scotch with Elsa’s practiced ease.

She’d tried to curtail her consumption. She’d tell herself she’d only have one flute of champagne at a ball or one glass of wine with supper. Sometimes she kept her promise, but more often, one drink had a way of turning into two. The line having been crossed, there seemed little point in stopping at just two.

Why is this so hard?
she’d silently wail.
Why is it harder for me than others?
All around her, ladies enjoyed their fair share of inebriating beverages without becoming disastrously drunk.

It isn’t harder for you
,
said Shame. Or Guilt. She could never tell those two harpies apart.
It’s just that you’re so much weaker than everyone else.

“I’m sorry,” she cried, lifting her head, strands of hair clinging to the mess of her face. “I can’t. I can’t.” Her lungs heaved fast and faster, her head growing giddy.

Arms were around her then. Not Sheri’s, as she’d have expected, but Mr. Wynford-Scott’s. Those great, long arms of his held her together when she should have fallen to pieces. He brought her to his chest without a hint of the anger or recrimination she could have expected from him, by all rights.

“I’ve tried to stop,” she confessed into the protective shield of his embrace. “I can’t. I can’t. There’s something wrong with me.”

The tears fell hot and fast now, beyond Guilt and Shame, as her darkest truth was brought to light. She was broken. Wrong. Weak. A failure as a wife and an embarrassment to her friends.

“You
can
do this.” Mr. Wynford-Scott’s lips murmured against her ear, the rumble of his voice a soothing vibration.

“Elsa.” It was Sheri speaking then. She opened her eyes as far as her tear-swollen lids would allow. Was surprised to find that Mr. Wynford-Scott had relocated to the window seat and that she was cradled in his lap.

Sheri’s hand rested lightly on his wife’s back. “We’ve taken the liberty of asking Mr. Dewhurst to join us.”

Elsa’s puffy eyes widened at the name of the surgeon, another of Sheri’s Honorables. “Why? No! I don’t ... Sheri, please send him away.” She didn’t notice she’d begun trembling until Norman’s hand rubbed soothing circles on her back.

“What could he do for me?” she pressed. “Send me to an asylum?” It had happened to one of Elsa’s older cousins, who had been sent away for unspecified “female trouble” and never returned. “No, Sheri, please. I ... I just want to go home, to Berrybrook. Some time in the country will do me good.”

Sheri and Arcadia exchanged a look. Elsa felt her temper start to rise. “Well, it isn’t your decision, is it? You can’t come into my home and start ordering me about, Sheridan Zouche.”

“We only want what’s best for you,” he insisted.

“And who’s to say what’s best for me, better than I?” she rejoined.

Eyes wide in an expression of disbelief, Sheri shook his head. “My dear, only moments ago, you behaved like a starving dog going after the world’s last cutlet, trying to get your hands on that flask. Elsa ...” He raised a hand, then let it fall uselessly to his side.

His silence said what words could not. She was not fit to make decisions regarding her own care. Maybe it was true. Shame—she was sure this time—raised her voice in agreement.

“Knock, knock,” a voice said, rather than did. “This seems an opportune moment to announce my unwanted presence.” Mr. Brandon Dewhurst smiled genially. “No one is ever happy to see the surgeon,” he explained. “Grimly relieved, perhaps, but never happy.”

“And have you brought along your wife, as well, Mr. Dewhurst?” Elsa asked testily. “My bedchamber is as busy as Bond Street.”

The dark-haired man set his leather satchel of horrors on the foot of her bed and drew off his gloves. “I’m afraid Lorna couldn’t join me today, as there was an emergency with a tenant out at Elmwood. But she sends her compliments, my lady.”

Elsa nodded once, her neck stiff. “My compliments to Mrs. Dewhurst,” she returned, chagrined by the gentle reminder of Lorna Dewhurst’s kindness. Elsa really was not in control of herself. Her manners had fled, along with her composure.

Foster chose that moment to reappear, probably wagering Elsa would not flay the maid for her defection in the presence of so many witnesses. Her arrival seemed to serve as a cue to Sheri and Arcadia to slip out of the room. With a final squeeze of reassurance, Norman slid Elsa from his lap to the window seat cushion and followed his friends, leaving only Elsa and Mr. Dewhurst behind, with Foster discreetly chaperoning from the dressing room, where she began gathering up the cosmetics Elsa had flung about.

“I couldn’t help but overhear your earlier discussion.” The surgeon pulled up a chair to sit facing her. “You’re right, madam, that leaving Town would be for the best.”

An anxious flutter buffeted her ribs. “Not an asylum?” she ventured.

He shook his head. “Your own home will be fine. Country air will do you good, and the quiet will be helpful. Rest, daily exercise, these things will see you through this crisis. As well as abstaining from any alcoholic beverage whatsoever, naturally.”

He made it sound ... pleasant, almost, as if she was just going to recuperate from a minor illness. “It cannot be that easy.”

His lips turned up in a humorless smile. “I said nothing about easy. The cure is simple, my lady, but never doubt that it is hard work—perhaps the most difficult undertaking of your life.” He leaned forward, resting elbows on his knees. “But hear me speak, Lady Fay: You are fighting for your life. Habitual drunkards are given to diseases of the liver and have trouble recovering from illnesses. Not to mention an alarming tendency to bleed to death. I shouldn’t like to think of you attempting childbirth in this state. How old are you, Lady Fay?”

“Nine-and-twenty,” she woodenly reported. “Assessing my risk of falling with child?”

He chuffed a laugh. “Rather considering the harm you may have already done your liver and the chances it has of recovering.”

Silence fell between them. There seemed little to say. Other than her womb, Elsa had never given much thought to the state of her inner organs. The only liver she had passing acquaintance with was whichever one appeared on her plate. She’d no knowledge of the function of the one inside her. To think: all the time she’d been chugging spirits with abandon, she’d been abusing the poor thing.

Guilt, this time, had the honor of twisting Elsa’s middle.

“This isn’t a moral failing, you know,” Mr. Dewhurst stated.

“Then why does it feel like one?”

He tilted his head. “I was in the Army. Spain. Saw too many good men fall prey to opium and the bottle to ever think such an affliction is a character flaw.”

“Then what is it?” she asked, shaking her head slowly.

Mr. Dewhurst lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “It’s a condition, Lady Fay. An affliction. Of the mind, I believe, though others of my colleagues hold differently.”

“Like madness, you mean?” she asked pointedly.

His lips tightened. “If you like, although not everything that afflicts the mind is madness. You’re coming back around to asylums, aren’t you?”

She was acutely aware of her wild appearance, of her bedraggled hair and bare feet and white night rail stained with tea and other, unmentionable fluids. She ached and sweat, and she wanted to sleep forever. Perhaps she belonged in an asylum, after all.

“Go home, Lady Fay,” the surgeon instructed. “Rest and recover your health, but keep yourself occupied. Reading, charity, gardening—whatever activities you prefer. It’s going to be difficult, the early days, especially. You will feel sick, and you will want to drink like you want your next breath, but you must resist the temptation.”

Even as he spoke of it, her throat dried and she felt the familiar impulse for a sip of something strong. She swept her tongue across her lips. “For how long must I persist? When shall I be cured?” It would be hard to abstain, but she could do it. A few months of convalescence, and by spring, she’d be back in Town and able to enjoy her claret like everyone else, like a sane person.

“Unfortunately, there is no known cure for drunkenness. The best way to avoid suffering a relapse of your condition is to avoid drinking for the rest of your life.”

Elsa’s heart stopped. The rest of her life? When Mr. Dewhurst had spoken of fresh air and exercise, it had sounded easy. When he brought up the terrible longing she’d have to confront, she felt daunted, but determined. But the rest of her life? She quailed at the prospect. How could she ever hope to succeed?

She must have spoken her fear aloud, for the surgeon took her hand and gave it a sympathetic squeeze. “It must be done day by day, my lady. Hour by hour, and sometimes minute by minute. It seems impossible now, but with time, you will become accustomed to a life of sobriety. When did you last imbibe?”

She swiped the back of her wrist at the corner of her eye, surprised to find her eyes wet again.
Hopeless
, Guilt and Shame wailed in unison.
You cannot do this impossible thing. Why even try?

Why, indeed. Foster may have confiscated all of Elsa’s liquor, but there was bound to be more in the kitchen. If not, any inn, tavern, public house, or apothecary could sell her what she needed.

Her mind already on procuring her next bottle, she shifted impatiently, willing the interview at an end. “About eleven o’clock last night, I believe.”

Mr. Dewhurst regarded his pocket watch. “Fifteen hours already without a drink. Can you make it twenty-four hours?”