Enlightened (26 page)

“I would…like to see you again,” Balfour said then, his voice low.

David didn’t know what to say. He searched Balfour’s face and saw he was serious. “I don’t know—” he began. He recalled too easily the long, melancholy winter that had followed their last parting.
 

“You don’t need to give me an answer,” Balfour replied. “You know where my house is. Come anytime. I’ll be in town for the next month at least. I’ll instruct my servants to admit you, even if I am not there.”

He released David’s hand. Their arms fell to their respective sides, and they were separate again.

“I’ll think about it,” David said, after a pause.

He suspected he’d do little else.

He nodded at Balfour once; then he turned and walked out the tavern.

The door closed behind him. He lingered for a moment to turn his coat collar up against the drizzling rain before he began the short stroll to his rooms in the Lawnmarket.

As he paced up the street, he heard Balfour’s words in his mind again.

“I would like to see you again.”

I would like to see you again.

They were such commonplace words.

Such commonplace words to make him feel so utterly hollowed out.

An imprisoned heart finds escape in forbidden love.

The Gentleman’s Madness

© 2014 Bonnie Dee and Summer Devon

No pride. No privacy. No hope.

Academic John Gilliam thought being caught embracing another man was the worst that could happen. Until he agrees to “treatment” at an asylum, where a vicious attack leaves him shaken and afraid.
 

But having all means of writing or reading taken from him…
That
is a serious threat to his sanity. Then a moment of kindness from an asylum attendant begins to restore his dignity.

Sam Tully feels sorry for the patient everyone calls “the professor,” but with a back injury that cost him his job on the docks—and without the education that would have bettered his position—he tries to keep his head down, and a tight lid on his attraction to men.

As John prays for freedom, he grows closer to the gentle, innately intelligent Tully. In spite of themselves, forbidden attraction leads to touches, kisses, and more. But there’s something other than curative treatments going on at the asylum. When John and Tully uncover a heinous conspiracy, their very lives are in danger.

Warning: Contains heinous crimes and frightening treatments—oh, and some sweet and loving sexy times between two healthy, not-crazy men.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
The Gentleman’s Madness:

John didn’t often lose his temper these days. Punishment came fast when one did, particularly when one had been diagnosed as aggressive. But their intrusive presence now, after this morning’s humiliation, proved too much for his temper. No more pens in his life. He’d been reduced to nothing more than a trembling child hiding under the covers. No. He must fight for what little he had left. Not dignity, but a faint shadow of it.

He drew the blanket from his face, down to his shoulders, too aware of his undressed state. “Dr. McAndrew, if you must speak of my illness and symptoms as if I am deaf, please be so good as to do it outside of my room.”
 

He looked over the group of four men. Earnest, well-educated men. As he had once been, but nothing like him any longer. His voice trembled, but he didn’t shout. “There is no reason one should be forced to listen to one’s diagnosis.” And then he lost all words. Familiar blue eyes met his, widened with shock, then pity and, worst of all, contempt.

The day’s pain suddenly increased beyond physical torment.

“Stanhope,” he whispered.

Stanhope hadn’t changed much in the last few years. He still wore his hair too long, and the shadow of freckles touched his nose.

“You look well,” John said, pretending that his old friend had answered. “I know the same cannot be said of me. I had heard you were going into medicine.”

Stanhope stepped back so he was at the rear of the group. The blank look he gave John now held no recognition. Except he gave a sharp glance to either side, probably to ascertain no one gazed at him with repulsion—as if John’s condition of madness was contagious.

“Oh, do not pretend you don’t know me.” John sat up, heedless of his naked torso. The dark rage boiled now. “For pity’s sake, that is too much. We were best of friends at school. No, gentlemen, not like that.
He
was spared any sort of perverse desire. Please, you must learn to hide your disgust better than this, especially you, Stanhope, if you hope to deal with patients who possess more intelligence than turnips.”

McAndrew stepped forward so his black jacket was all John could see. “Mr. G., you must calm yourself.”

He should, he knew. Instead, he rose from his narrow iron bed and wrapped the blanket tight around his shoulders. They had taken all but his drawers from him, and he knew he looked silly standing there, a skinny, crow-nosed fool, no doubt red-faced and staring. If he hadn’t been mad before, he had become so; he had nothing left. They had taken his pens, and now they stripped him of his past.

“I have nothing left,” he told them all, looking at Stanhope, whose gaze had dropped to examine something on his sleeve. “Apparently, even the inside of my brain is tainted. With despair, I should think. But no disease, no aberration is nearly as grotesque as pretending you do not know your old friend. You leave me with
nothing.
”

He should retreat and shut his mouth, but he knew that if he stopped railing, he would begin to weep. Anger kept the tears away, and he refused to cry in front of Stanhope and the rest of these gawping, muttering “gentlemen”.

“Attendant!” McAndrew didn’t shout, but the word held menace. Maybe John would have heeded the threat two hours earlier. Perhaps he would have heard it if he’d gotten some sleep the night before, but they’d been playing some sort of sleep-and-wakening game with him, seeing if they could wear him down.

“Attendant, now!”

The other men shuffled back to make room for the big oaf in gray who came into the room, moving far too quickly for a hulk like that. “Remove Mr. G to the restful room.”

“Mr. Gilliam. My name is John Gilliam,” John shouted at them all. “I still exist.”

The large gray-covered arms came around him, fast but not rough. He fought against the hard bands of those enormous arms, but they only tightened around him, catching his own arms helplessly at his sides. Too much like the man who’d attacked him in his sleep only a week earlier at Dr. Maxwell’s Asylum, and John began to panic, his heart beating erratically.

“Hush now, sir,” a voice said next to his ear.

“Give me one good goddamn reason why I should.”

The attendant didn’t answer as he expertly shoved John’s hands and arms into restraints.

“I hate this,” John said. He stopped fighting and allowed himself to be strapped and buckled into the jacket, which had been designed to calm the hysterical. Yes, that fairly described him at the moment.

At least the others had moved on, out of the room, so he could let go of the anger. “I fucking hate this all.” And he let the tears fall.

The attendant said, “Yes, sir,” and with a firm hand on his shoulder, marched him passively out of the room and down the hall.

“Today is not a white-letter day for me.” John talked just to hear his own voice rather than their footsteps, which echoed in the long, empty hall. Or rather, the attendant’s boots thumped. John’s bare feet, his ineffectual flesh, merely slapped against the floor. They went into the stairwell, and now their steps shuffled and clapped on the iron steps. “Do you know where the term black-letter day came from?”

He didn’t expect an answer, but the attendant said, “No, sir.”

Rather than think of his lost dignity, of the scorn in Stanhope’s eyes, of his own idiotic response, of anything to do with his proclivities or the fact that the large, ignorant bear of a man who held his shoulder had complete power over him, John began to babble. “A black-letter day is an unlucky day, one to be recalled with regret and sorrow. The Romans marked their unlucky days with a piece of black charcoal, and their lucky ones with white chalk.”

As always, knowledge soothed him. That small bit of the ancient past in his head connected him to the rest of the human race, to all that he had learned and all that he would someday return to. He could breathe without sobs again. And think, thank the good Lord.

“If I can think,” he said to no one as he waited for the figure of doom next to him to fumble with the jangling circle of keys, “I am not lost after all. I shall survive.”

“Yes, sir.” The attendant fitted the right key into the lock, and iron scraped against iron.

John’s storm had passed. “I suppose I will have to ask McAndrew to forgive my outburst,” he said, wishing he could wipe the tears and mucus from his face. He tried hunching his shoulder, but that didn’t reach the worst of the mess on his cheek.

“You might, later.” The attendant’s voice was mild and deep. So far the man hadn’t shouted or barked, a pleasant change from most of the asylum’s staff.

The door opened, the door closed, and John stood alone in the entirely empty room.
I have nothing
, he thought again, though the storm of self-pity had passed and the thought aroused no strong emotion.
I am nothing, and I am alone.

Although no, he wasn’t alone. The attendant had come in as well.

“Get away from me,” John said. “I am not interested. I don’t know what they told you about me, but just get away.”

“I thought perhaps I might take the restraints off, sir.” The attendant stood, hands at his sides. Not impatient or scornful, simply waiting.

“Yes, yes. Thank you.” Unable to keep his balance correctly with the straitjacket, John dropped suddenly to the floor. He landed on his rear with an
oomph
.

“Whoops.” The attendant lunged forward as if to grab him.

John flinched. “No. Stay away.” He added the word, “Please,” not because he was begging, but because he remembered he was a civilized man and had been taught manners. Ah, damnation, the tears would start again.

He shut his eyes, and something soft, some fabric, touched his face.

With a cry, he jerked away. “Damn me,” he muttered when he realized the attendant had pulled out a handkerchief. He’d wiped John’s cheek. He cleaned the rest of his face carefully, as a nurse dries the tears of a screaming baby, which John supposed fit the situation.

The big man tilted his head to the side to inspect the cleanup he’d done. “That’ll do,” he said.

“Thank you.” It was time to pretend to be an adult human again. “How do you do? I am John Gilliam, as you probably know. You are?”

“Tully. Sam Tully.”

Enlightened

Joanna Chambers

The cruelest duel may not spill a drop of blood…but it could break their hearts.

Enlightenment, Book 3

Five months ago, David Lauriston was badly hurt helping his friend Elizabeth escape her violent husband. Since then, David has been living with his lover, Lord Murdo Balfour, while he recuperates.
 

Despite the pain of his injuries, David’s time with Murdo has been the happiest of his life. The only things that trouble him are Murdo’s occasional bouts of preoccupation, and the fact that one day soon, David will have to return to his legal practice in Edinburgh.
 

That day comes too soon when David’s friend and mentor takes to his deathbed, and David finds himself agreeing to take on a private mission in London. Murdo is at his side in the journey, but a shocking revelation by Murdo’s ruthless father leaves David questioning everything they’ve shared.
 

As tensions mount and the stakes grow higher, David and Murdo are forced to ask themselves how far they’re prepared to go—and how much they’re prepared to give up—to stay together. And whether there’s any chance of lasting happiness for men like them.........................

Warning: Men in love, men with secrets, and men armed with dueling pistols.

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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

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Enlightened

Copyright © 2014 by Joanna Chambers