All Through the Night (27 page)

“And so we will,” he murmured, and, unable to resist, he sat down on the sofa by her side and brushed the silky hair from her temples.

Her eyes opened. She reached up and cupped his jaw in her warm palm. There was no hesitation in the gesture. It was altogether unselfconscious. Her thumb lightly brushed his lower lip. “Jack, I do so—”

A sudden disturbance in the outer hall interrupted her. Jack’s head snapped around and he listened. Griffin had probably fallen over pressing his ear to the door.

“Grif?”

“Aye!”

Damn the man. He carried loyalty to extremes. Jack surged to his feet, strode to the door, and threw it open.

Ronald Frost stood in the doorway, his eyes red and glittering, his jaw clenched with fury, the primed pistol in his hand aimed straight at Jack’s heart.

Who will take care of Anne?
Jack thought in despair as he stared at the weapon. Who would guard her when he was dead?

“Now you’ll see how it feels to have your own taken from you!”

The meaning of Frost’s words penetrated Jack’s brain as the gun barrel swept by his chest and toward the couch.

“No!” He leapt forward. The ball caught him in the head, knocking him back. Pain and light erupted in his temple. And then darkness.

The explosion catapulted Anne fully awake. Her eyes flew open as the cat streaked away. A shadow moved in the hall. Her head snapped up. Jack lay on his back on the floor.

She scrambled from the couch and dashed across the room to his prone figure, dropping to her knees beside him.

“Jack?” Blood masked half his face, flowing thickly and pooling beneath his head.

“Jack!” She slipped her hands beneath his head, cradling him. He did not move.

“Griffin!”

She crouched over him and pressed her ear to his chest. He still breathed. His heart still pumped. Tears sprang to her eyes and ran down her cheeks. She tore the lace inset from her bodice.

“Griffin!”

Footsteps pounded on the floorboards overhead. Anxiously she swiped the blood from his eye. He groaned, twisting about.

“Dear God, please, Jack—”

The door burst open and Griffin hurdled in, swinging the pistol in his hand around the room. When he saw Jack, a muffled curse sprang to his lip. He hastened over and knelt down. Snatching the blood-soaked lace from her trembling fingers, he began efficiently clearing the bloody sheath from Jack’s face.

“Who did this?”

“I don’t know. I was just waking and I heard Jack say ‘Frost’ and then ‘no’ and then—” She bowed over Jack’s form.

Once more Griffin swore. “Burke told him Frost was nearly mad with rage. Why wouldn’t he listen?”

Anne did not understand. “Why would Frost want to hurt Jack?”

Griffin pressed the red wad to Jack’s temple and glowered at her. “Because he holds the colonel responsible for his son’s death,” he said. “But then people are always placing blame at the colonel’s feet, so they don’t have to trip over it themselves.” He looked down. “The bloody fool. He should have taken measures to control the man. And he would have”—he speared her with a look of condemnation—“if he hadn’t been distracted by you. Get out of my way.”

He slid his arm under Jack, shoved his shoulder beneath the colonel’s arm, and then, with a grunt, struggled upright. Jack flopped over his shoulder like a barley sack. Griffin lurched unsteadily across the room.

With another grunt, he heaved Jack from his shoulder onto the sofa. Jack fell like dead weight and lay motionless. Griffin turned the wick up on the lantern and lifted it high above the unconscious man. With his free hand, he probed some unseen wound.

“Will he be all right?” Anne asked, her voice quavering.

Griffin speared her with a contemptuous look. She didn’t care what he thought of her, she had to know.

“Will he live?” she demanded hoarsely. He
had
to live. She’d give anything—

“I’m no bleedin‘ leech.” He set the lantern down and turned toward the door. “Spawling!” he bellowed.

“What can I do?” she asked helplessly. The contrast between dark blood and white skin scared her. Jack had never been a pale man. Right now he looked like alabaster.

“Haven’t you done enough?” Griffin spat out with controlled ferocity. “The colonel’s always been awake on every suit. Until you. Were it not for you he’d be breathing easy now and not lying unconscious and God knows what else. Get out! That’s what you can do.”

The sob caught in her throat and she choked it down. She rose to her feet. Her vision swam as she made her way unsteadily to the door. She met Spawling halfway up the stairs.

“What ever is the—good God,” Spawling said. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

“Griffin needs you. Bandages. Water. Get them.” She climbed by the maid. Each step felt as if she was being sucked down toward hell. “The colonel has been shot.”

Griffin had stayed by Jack’s side, tending him with an efficiency and expertise Anne could in no way emulate. He was there now, dribbling liquid from a spoon into Jack’s slack mouth.

A light blanket had been spread over Jack and a white bandage encircled his brow. But he hadn’t woken and to her eyes his flesh looked nearly as white as the linen. She left without making herself known.

Later in the afternoon she ventured from her room once more, drawn by the notion that she might be of some use, some comfort to Jack. She entered. Griffin was asleep in the chair, his head resting on his chest. She picked her way silently to Jack’s side and looked down.

His breath came in shallow pants. A fine mist of sweat sheathed his skin. She looked around for a cloth with which to sponge his skin. Beside the sofa sat a tray containing a pitcher of water, bandages, and a corked half-empty brown bottle. She’d no idea what form of medicine Griffin was giving Jack, and she doubted he’d tell her.

The Scotsman came awake suddenly. Seeing her there, he clambered to his feet and began stalking from the room.

“Wait!” she whispered. He stopped, eyeing her with intense dislike. She couldn’t do anything for Jack but Griffin could. She wouldn’t let pride or personal desire interfere with Jack’s welfare. “Stay. I’ll leave.”

She’d returned to her room and a book she couldn’t see and a pain that would not ease. Her fear grew with each hour. Finally she gave up trying to concentrate on the book and stared outside. The sun hung above the horizon like a yellow pearl pendant on evening’s throat.

Please, Lord. Let Jack live.

A light tap sounded on her door. “Ma’am? There’s a gentleman to see you,” Spawling whispered urgently.

“Who is it?”

“He says he’s the colonel’s dad. A Mr. Jamison.”

Jamison.
Come to finish the task himself? Anne wondered bitterly.

She doubted he would come openly to murder her. Besides, if the man was willing to kill her by his own hand in Jack’s own house, a simple “go away” wasn’t bloody likely to stop him, was it? And if Jack died, well then she didn’t have anything to lose by finding out if he would.

“Show him up.”

“The maid tells me Jack has been shot,” Jamison said, entering the room.

“Didn’t you know?” she said tightly, coming to stand in front of him. “I thought you were responsible for it.”

“I?” he queried evenly. He placed his walking stick across the table and began withdrawing his gloves. He frowned as if scouring his memory. “No. I assure you, my good woman, there are plenty of people who seek Jack’s death with no encouragement from me.”

The cold gray light made a silhouette of his bony face. In the British Museum she’d once seen an ancient gold coin bearing an elderly Caesar’s profile. His skeletal face had been disdainful and exalted. Jamison could have posed for it.

“So you are Jack’s bride.” He studied her with an impersonal gaze. “Do you know the weapon you’ve wed, young lady?”

There was nothing in him warm or humane. He’d come here and it could be for only one purpose, to push forth his own hidden agenda. She needed to know what it was. This, at least, she could do for Jack.

“Of course you don’t,” he said. “But I do. I fashioned it, I cultivated it, I polished and honed it.”

“It?”

His smile conceded her points. “Seward then. He’s my creation and you’ve stolen him from me. I do not easily give things up. Particularly the creation of a lifetime.”

“He’s not a weapon; he’s a man.” Restlessly she paced the floor in front of him.

“Please, have a seat.” Her movements, her lack of focused attention on him, on his words, annoyed and irked him.

“No.” She circled the sofa and stopped.

Jamison sighed. “I am well aware Seward is human. It is what makes him so deadly. A weapon does not see the shadows behind the target. Seward does. He knows shadows intimately. He’s lived with them all his life.”

“You’ve seen to that, haven’t you?” She refused to back down from this man’s mocking hauteur. She began circling the room again.

Peevishness marred his regal countenance. “I really wish you would stay put and, yes, I have. To provide myself with a weapon. A dutiful son must be willing to sacrifice himself for his sire, don’t you think? And Seward has ever been dutiful. You won’t mind if I sit, will you?”

She flung her hand mockingly at the couch. “By all means.”

“So gracious,” Jamison purred. His gaze grew flat and reptilian. He settled himself delicately on the cushion. “But you are not, it would seem, without your own talents. Tell me, are you willing to barter your soul to save your husband’s life? His soul, I’m afraid, is already spoken for.”

“What do you mean?”

“No matter.” A fractional lift of his shoulder bespoke his boredom with her query.

“Explain yourself, sir. How has Jack bartered his soul?” Jack had told her of the choice he’d made in that workhouse and she’d seen the horrible, nearly fatal wound it had caused him. It had healed—God alone knew how—but the scar it had left was soul-deep and hurtful. But she was sure there was more to the story than Jack had related. Perhaps more than he knew.

Jamison folded his hands in his lap. “Won’t you sit down?”

It was an order. The first obedience lesson. She had graver matters at stake than pride. She sat.

He smiled with great pleasure. “Let’s see now. What would make a man like Seward cleave to a man like me? Have you never wondered what happened that made him so finely tuned to pain, so delectable an object of torment?”

She stared at him in horror. “You
are
a monster.”

“Oh, dear me, no,” he said in genuine dismay. “I am a genius. A genius of human nature. You see, dear young woman, we all seek pain. We pursue it from the moment we open our mouths to draw breath. You yourself, have you not been pursuing death for many months now?”

She flinched in pain and surprise. His blank cold stare seemed to draw the warmth from the room, the secrets from her soul.

“I see I am correct,” he mused, and then shrugged. “Matthew Wilder was apparently a genius in his own right. Look what he did to you.”

She would not give him the satisfaction of a response.

“But we were speaking of
my
talent. I have spent a lifetime learning exactly what tender places in the soul and psyche to bruise, which pain to”—he paused, held up his hands as he sought his words—“administer and which pain to allow a man to inflict upon himself. It is a science, my dear. And I am its progenitor.”

“What did you do to him?” she demanded, clutching the arms of the chair and leaning forward.

“You underestimate your husband, child. He wounded himself far better than I or anyone else ever could, except perhaps you.” Once more his gaze grew speculative.

“Tell me.”

“Delighted,” he said with a bow of his head. “You see, I have a flaw.” His smile told her he knew how monstrous such a coy admission seemed, and it amused him. “In my thirtieth year I was rendered infertile by a disease. The same disease that rendered me sterile also killed my heir and its mother.”

Its?
she wondered in horror.

If Jamison read the revulsion in her expression he gave no indication. “Some years earlier a former maid had named me the father of her unborn babe. Since I deflowered her, I had little reason to doubt her claim.”

“Jack,” she said.

“You get ahead of yourself,” he chided. “I’d received a letter from her posted from Edinburgh. She informed me that she’d birthed a son and named him after me, Henry, and that she was ailing and most unlikely to live.”

He picked up his cane and began running his long, bony fingers over the carved silver head. “I suppose she thought that naming him Henry would be inducement enough for me to come after the brat. It wasn’t. So that was that.”

Anne closed her eyes. “Monster” was too fine a term for him.

“Until”—he waggled his finger playfully—“until I found myself barren and without an heir. I remembered the name of the Edinburgh workhouse where she’d gone to breed and went there. The man running the place could scarce recall his own name let alone those of his countless denizens. But I was not to be thwarted. I’d come for a son and I’d leave with one. I had the man bring in all the lads of a certain age and line them up for my inspection.

“There were perhaps a dozen. I noted Seward immediately. There was violence in his carriage, antipathy in his stare, and desperation—a wonderful soul-corroding desperation—about him.”

For the first time his voice carried a tinge of real emotion. Anne stared, riveted, her hands clutched tightly in her lap.

“All the lads looked up to him.” He spoke with something like pride. “They deferred to him though he was neither the eldest nor the largest. He was thin and filthy and his nose had been broken, but still he had a comeliness about him.”

The bile rose in her throat.

“I asked the boys one question: ‘Which of you is Henry?’ Of course, no one answered. They were suspicious of what would happen to ‘Henry.’ Exportation. Perhaps a brothel. You didn’t know about boy children and male brothels? Young people today are too sheltered.”

She choked back her sob. He would have enjoyed it too much. “So I said, ‘I will adopt the one named Henry and raise him as my son. He will be fed every day. He will sleep on a feather mattress and he will learn to read and write and when I die he shall have all that is mine.”

“Immediately a sickly little toad with a hunched back called out, ‘I be ’enry!‘ ” Jamison’s face contorted with disgust. “And from the full minute that passed before the other refuted his claim, I knew he was indeed called Henry.”

There was nothing more he could say to shock her. She gazed at him, made callous by his cruelty. “What next?”

“Every one of those boys shouted that he was Henry . . . except Seward. I will not forget the look on his face. He was near starved to death and no favorite of the workhouse gang leader. I knew he would not last much longer in that place, and he knew it as well. But neither would ‘enry. I did not want ’enry. I
did
want Seward.”

The ugliest of associations formed in her mind, sickening her. Jamison saw it and it amused him.

“Oh, dear, no. I am no catamite. Listen a bit longer.”

“I can’t.”

“This is your husband. Any fool can see you are mad with love for him.”

Anne stared at the man. How could he know what she’d only just begun to suspect herself?

He stared back at her and then began to chuckle. “You didn’t know? How droll! I commend you, my dear. You have made me laugh! But where was I? Ah, yes.”

Yes, I love him,
she thought fiercely, denying his mocking evil from the very depths of her heart.
Yes and yes and yes.
She loved Jack. And she would fight for his life and his soul.

“I cuffed the runt away and pointed at Seward. ‘You have the looks of a Jamison about you,’ I said. ‘What is your name?’

“ ‘John Seward,’ he replied. But I saw the effort the admission cost him. I could see him looking about that room at the pails of excrement overrunning in their corners, the piles of straw on low pallets, the animal fervor of his cellmates.”

Dear God.
She swallowed.
Dear Lord, please.

Jamison continued. The head of the silver cane bounced lightly in his palm. “ ‘Now lad,’ I said, ‘think again. When you were a babe someone surely called you Henry?’

“Seward still didn’t reply and now all the others fell silent. Even they were able to appreciate the act of creation they were witnessing.”

“Creation?” she murmured through dry lips.

“The creation of Seward,” Jamison answered in a gentle instructive voice. “The act upon which all of his subsequent acts ultimately refer.” Once more his eyes narrowed in remembrance. “For a moment, his soul hung in balance. He realized what he was about, what I was about. He knew that if he said yes, he sentenced ‘enry to certain death and if he said no, his own death would be almost as sure.
Almost.
On such short words hang a soul’s damnation. ’Well, what is your name?‘ I asked.

“ ‘John Seward,’ he replied, and his voice broke and I knew I was this close.” Jamison held his thumb and index finger a fraction apart.

“ ‘And, John Seward,’ I said, ‘if I say you are wrong, that I
know
you are Henry, do you know what you would owe me?’

“ ‘Aye,’ he whispered.

“ ‘I call you Henry. Do you say I am wrong?’ ” Jamison leaned forward in his seat, the cane’s silver head clutched in his fist.

“ ‘I call myself John.’ He stood like a young willow being whipped by a gale. I picked up his chin and forced him to look me in the eye.

“ ‘But if
I
call you Henry, will you answer?’ I said.

“Tears started in his eyes. Tears of fury. I would not release his chin.

“ ‘I will answer,’ he said.” Abruptly Jamison slumped back in his seat. The silver head began bobbing once more in his palm. “Quite a weighty decision for a boy of, what? seven? eight? to make, wouldn’t you say? Ah, you are overcome. Here, use my handkerchief.”