The Dark Affair (6 page)

J
ames fingered the miniature of Sophia in his palm, clenching his white-gloved fist around it. He’d promised himself he would never remarry. But now, standing under the portico of one of Christopher Wrens’s ivory-spired churches, he knew he would have done anything to escape from that asylum, which leached the soul from men.

In the end, it was a small price to pay.

He’d seen asylums before. He’d helped rescue his friend’s wife from one. His own experiences had likely been heaven compared with the prisoners in the place Mary had been, but still. He’d felt himself slowly slipping away, with no control over his own daily activities. Daily activities? He fingered the gold-rimmed portrait. He’d not been allowed to wash himself, and the doctors had studied the color of his piss and excrement.

Only the Irishwoman had seen that he truly didn’t belong there.

Even so. This was no mission of charity she was performing. She was hiding something from him, some very personal reason for this union, and he would discover it. Eventually. Margaret Cassidy was a fool if she thought she could control him. No one could ever take his life from him again; nor would she be able to manipulate him.

He tilted his face, attempting to catch the cold morning breeze dampened with the rain that dashed down upon the square. Nothing had felt so marvelous in a very long time. If he could have, he would have stood out under that rain, allowing it to soak him through, to wash away the poison of that place and the memories that woman had evoked within him.

He was never going to forgive her for that. For forcing his wife and child and their demise back into his thoughts.

One of his father’s carriages raced up before the steps, its black wheels whirring and the white horses tossing their drenched manes.

Protocol suggested that he now move into the nave of the church and march up to the altar. Following it would be the sane thing to do, but Miss Maggie still believed he needed to be worked upon. So he wouldn’t follow protocol. In fact, he was going to make her work for his
recovery
. If she thought he was going to make this marriage an easy one, she would be surprised.

For once, there was no guilt in his heart as the carriage door swung open, the liveried footman’s shoulders perfectly square despite the growing deluge. She’d pushed him into this marriage, for all her pretty sentiments. It had been marriage or a lifetime in that hell. Perhaps she had not considered his character carefully enough before embarking upon her harebrained scheme. For she had not considered that as her husband, once proved sane,
he
would have the power over
her
.

The footman reached into the carriage, and his bride’s delicate hand appeared, braced on the footman’s forearm.

A bark of laugher rumbled up James’s throat. At least the woman had a suitable sense of humor.

Swaths of black bombazine tumbled from the vehicle as she descended. Given the fashion of the day, she could barely squeeze through the small doorway with her skirts. And when her face was revealed, it was covered, as appropriate for a bride . . . but it was black lace that veiled her.

She was in mourning.

For her life, he would assume. Ah. How perfect it would be if only he could find an armband. Then they could march up the aisle in connubial mourning.

Droplets of rain bounced down upon her, slicking her like damp obsidian. Before his father could climb down behind her, she was heading up the steps in purposeful strides, but the full bell of her skirts gave the oddest impression that she was floating. A netherworld specter in the fog and rain, come to claim him.

When she reached the top step, his father still only just alighting from the carriage, he inclined his head ever so slightly.

She held out her black-lace-gloved hands, the tips of her fingers peeping from the fabric. “Do you like it?”

“Prodigiously suitable for the occasion.”

“Thank you.” Her face was invisible, but there was a rich drollness to her tone. “It is the only suitable gown I possess.”

He held out his arm. A mourning gown? Who had died? It struck him then that he knew almost nothing about her.

“I thought your father would escort me down the aisle.”

“My father has had too much to do with this occasion already.”

He could have sworn she laughed, but the sound was muffled by the veil, and before they could banter in any more foolish ways, he took her small hand and placed it atop his dove-gray coat and marched her through the doors.

They were halfway up the nave, her skirts batting his legs, when she tugged slightly at him. “Yes?” he asked. “Doubts? Would you care to reconsider? Give me my sanity without the vows? Hmm?”

“No doubts, my lord. I am quite fixed in my decision.”

“Then why the unmaidenly pawing at my person?”

“You are walking too fast.”

“Am I?”

“Your legs are considerably longer than mine.”

He angled his head. “I cannot see your legs, so I cannot adequately judge such a statement.”

“I am also considerably shorter.”

He paused, giving her an exaggerated once-over. At her height, to kiss her thus, he would need to pick her up . . . or find a stool.

At the very thought of kissing her, his brain melted, tumbling back to that kiss while he’d been strapped to his bed. It had been the most chaste kiss outside of his married life, but the fire that had laced through him had been wilder and more demanding than anything he’d ever experienced. He was determined to blame the morphine and not the woman who had leaned over and taken his lips with such trepidation.

“My lord? Are you well?”

“And wouldn’t you love it if I weren’t?”

“That is hardly the case—”

He waved a hand and then began a slightly slower walk toward their mutual unhappiness.

The church was entirely empty except for his father trailing behind and the good bishop who waited at the altar, his hands fervently clasped around the book of prayer. Given the lack of bodies to absorb sound, their steps clattered over the green and pink marble stone. Each slap of the foot was a harsh little smack of ill portent.

His last marriage had been so different. He’d married at St. Paul’s. The cathedral had been so full of people that they had spilled into the wings, and—

He shoved the memory aside. He couldn’t afford to think on the past. Or else he would swiftly be heading back to St. Giles. And that, for now, he couldn’t have.

After what seemed forever, they arrived before the wrinkled old bishop. The bishop didn’t smile. Instead he seemed a grim old fellow who knew he was marrying a madman to a Catholic. But with the promise of a new pension, the bishop had presumably become amenable to the swiftness and unusual circumstances of such a union. James’s father did have a convincing way about him.

The ceremony began, and as the old man droned, James began to sweat. It was most disconcerting. He was always so composed. He’d been completely composed just moments before, happily tormenting his wife-to-be. Now? Now his skin itched and his stomach jerked within him, vying for escape either through his throat or his abdomen.

He heard the vows through a mist of nausea. He shook his head, trying for clarity, but panic was setting in and his hands began to tremble. What was happening to him? Sweat moistened the palms inside his gloves, and he felt a strange urge to peel the fabric back and wipe his hands on his trousers. A most indecorous thing to contemplate.

“I do.” He looked about, trying to see who had spoken in that shaky tone, and then he realized it was he who had vowed to keep Lady Margaret until death they did part.

Death . . . He swallowed. He’d known so much death. Death was a part of his existence. Perhaps his soul had been consumed by it, for he was certain that his soul was nothing more than a black lump somewhere in the vicinity of his chest.

“My lord?” the bishop inquired.

James swung his attention up from the floor to the old man. “Mm?”

The bishop folded his hands over the leather-bound, gold-embossed book and smiled carefully. “I now pronounce you man and wife.”

The fatal words echoed through the church, as if somehow they could be sent directly up to God. James lifted his chin and stared up at the soaring dome above his head. As he attempted to take in the gold-winged, ruby-gowned angels hovering over his head, the air around him grew hot, his vision grew splotchy, and he staggered forward.

Hands, firm yet small, latched on to him. “My lord?”

Lovely voice. Such a beautiful voice. A voice meant for sin and salvation. Christ. What was wrong with him?

“When was the last time you took morphine?” that lilting voice asked urgently.

He narrowed his gaze, his facial muscles suddenly very apparent in their movements, and he scowled. “Hours ago. I am not under the influence—”

Voices buzzed around him, and he longed to swat at them. He also longed to fall to the stone floor and press his naked skin to the chill marble. How else would he get rid of the sweat now trickling down his back?

Those hands tugged at him again until finally he looked upon the woman at his side. The black veil had been pulled back, and her saintly face peered up at him, her eyes full of intensity. “Listen to me.”

He didn’t know if he could. The world was so . . . so lost to him right now, as if he’d jumped into an incredibly deep ocean and the waves kept crashing over his head. Drowning him. Compressing him. Wrapping him in death.

“You need morphine.”

“No.” He jolted away from her hands, backing away. “Don’t want it.”

“Not much,” she assured. “Just a little. To stop the imminent hallucinations that come with abrupt ceasing.”

He shook his head, and the very motion cracked his skull. He winced. His tongue didn’t want to form words, but he very carefully managed to say, “No more. Will not be poisoned.”

She took a step toward him, her black gown stuttering in his vision like the great feathered appendages of a demon. “If you do not, my lord, you will be screaming for it soon, and the effects will be most unpleasant.”

The veil around her face twisted into a strange iron crown. Queen of the damned. Queen of the underworld. He swallowed. The entire church bent around him, tumbling into distorted shapes. “Do I look like I give a damn?”

“You are in a house of the Lord,” the bishop hissed.

She whipped toward the old man, whose purple cloak had twisted into strange, overshadowing wings. “I think God will forgive him, Your Grace, given he’s out of his raving wits right now what with his need for opium.”

He lifted his hands to his temples. No wings. No demons. Maggie. That’s who she was. But he was losing even that thought. “I am . . . not”—he gulped back the sick at his throat—“out of my wits.”

“Sure, and you could walk down Pall Mall right as rain, then?”

“I most certainly could.” He turned from her and stared down the long nave, determined to show he was not mad. Determined to show he needed no one but himself. But as soon as he did, the church doors went up in crackling flames. A portal to the world he had always so secretly feared but knew he deserved.

“I—I—”

Those gentle hands came up and touched his arm. “Let me help you.”

He could not tear his gaze away from the fiery doorway. “I don’t want to go,” he whispered.

“Go where?”

“To hell.”

“You’re not going to hell,” she soothed.

But he couldn’t shake the growing fear inside him. “You don’t understand.”

“Tell me?”

A breath shuddered out of him. “I’ll never see them again if I go to hell.”

Her fingers gripped harder, then went up to his face, cupping his cheeks. With a firm, cool grip, she urged his face down. “James, I will protect you from hell.”

“Are you my angel, then?”

Her face twisted. And for one brief moment, he could have sworn his red-haired Madonna was going to cry. But then her brow smoothed and her Caribbean-colored eyes locked with his. “Yes, James. I am your angel, and I will guide you away from the darkness. No one will ever take you there. I promise.”

He looked to the doors, and the fire was gone. Two towering, carved wooden panels stood in the inferno’s place. How close he had come to hell. How close. And then he tumbled through the air, his body slamming against the floor. At last his cheek pressed against the cool marble. He smiled gently and let the world fade.

•   •   •

Margaret gnawed on her nail. A filthy habit and one she’d broken long ago, but she’d never seen the like as she’d seen today. She’d thought the bishop was going to have apoplexy, and if the man had been a Catholic, he’d no doubt have been sprinkling holy water everywhere and exorcising the place.

The viscount had most definitely appeared possessed. But she knew better. He was in the throes of need. And despite his wishes, she’d injected him with a very small dose of morphine the moment they had arrived at his palatial town home by Green Park.

Few understood that the immediate cutting off of opium led to intense visions and horrific illness. The hallucinations were often worse and usually far more terrifying than those suffered while under influence of the drug. She’d seen it happen.

He’d barely been coherent, and his fever had been monumental. She peered over her shoulder, studying the strong figure in the big bed.

She’d never seen such a bed in all her livelong life, what with its massive gold frame. Even her family’s home in Galway had held nothing so grand. Above that bed, as big as the wall in her small former lodgings, hanged a captivating painting. She wondered at it. A man being devoured by a tiger, arms thrown up, face somehow peaceful . . . and yet the blood was all about the sandy ground, and the flesh of his torso was torn in the tiger’s massive jaws. So, he identified with the tiger. Just as she’d envisioned.

But what would compel a man to place that over his bed?

The man himself was fidgeting under the downy burgundy covers. The restless energy of the painting was reflected on Powers’s face. It kept contorting with dreams—no, nightmares.

Good Lord, but he had the look in this moment of a tormented angel. Perfection hid such anguish.