The Delicate Matter of Lady Blayne (32 page)

She looked up from the basket, her mouth open. She had turned at least three shades whiter. “I don’t know, James, if I am ready for London. No’ just yet.”

“But I insist.”

“Please don’t make me.”

Her soft voice tore at his heart. He hardened his expression. “You must come. You will not have to socialize if you don’t want to, but I want you to see a doctor I know there.”

“A doctor?”

“Your flux. It cannot be normal.” It was hard to keep his voice cold and stern. Concern for her threatened to bleed through.

She shook her head. “Do not fash yourself over that.”

“I am responsible for you.” He frowned. “How can I not feel a need, an urgency to see what could be done about the matter?”

“Aunt Frances did what she could. She consulted the best doctors, years ago when I was first wed to Freddy. They had no answers. But finally, Dr. Meeker solved the puzzle.” Abject sadness muted her eyes. “It’s no good.”

He stood and walked the short distance to where she sat on the ground. “What the devil does that mean?”

“It is an effect of the hysteria.”

How calmly she said that. How resigned her expression. Rage boiled within him and broke through to the surface.

“Meeker was the one who told you this nonsense?” His jaw had gone so tight, it was hard to get the words out.

She shook her head. “No, he merely confirmed it. Another doctor told me, an expert with ladies’ matters that Dr. Meeker had called in to examine me. A Frenchman.”

Ah, yes, a Frenchman. Meeker had wanted to take Catriona to France, hadn’t he? All these mad doctors were each eager to have Catriona under their control. For what purpose? To enact their experiments on her? Perhaps. But most importantly, to have access to the Blayne fortune to pay for her care.

Catriona sighed softly. “He says it is unlikely I shall be able to conceive a child until the hysteria is cured.”

“You’re not suffering from hysteria.”

“Have you forgotten the other night?”

“You were experiencing the effects of the withdrawal of laudanum and also perhaps a bit too foxed.”

“I begin to think I shall never be fixed, never be whole. I could never give myself to a husband as I am now, not knowing if I can trust myself not to shame him with other men. Not knowing if I can give him children.”

How sad she sounded!

She really believed what she said.

But he distrusted anything that mad doctor had told her.

“If Meeker—”

She put her hand to his arm, her gaze boring into him. “James, I have accepted it.”

He gaped at her, stunned. Heaviness entered his chest. Crushing weight that spread up into his throat. Burning sadness.

“I have accepted it,” she repeated, softly, her hand still laying lightly on his arm.

All this time he had known he would eventually lose her to a husband. A man who could give her legitimate children. Now he knew that would never happen. Catriona would be too honest to ever let a man marry her under false impressions. She would confess her weakness. Or what she believed to be her weakness.

How she must have despaired, imagining the emptiness of a life without children of her own? How would a warm, loving woman like Catriona cope with that?

And now she tried so hard to face with fortitude the stretch of the lonely years ahead of her.

If he had faced something similar, perhaps if he’d been maimed in battle before he’d reached a captain’s rank, would he have been able to face that future with such bravery and composure?

He wasn’t entirely sure.

For the second time, he felt true admiration for a woman, for this woman.

He caressed her cheek, feeling as though his chest would collapse upon itself with the aching for her pain. Her incredible losses in life.

He had allowed the past to intrude between them today. He had allowed his petty pride to poison his mind to her.

He’d been bitterly disappointed.

But God, just look at the loss and disappointments she’d had to accept in her life.

She wanted time.

He wanted her. Yes, heaven help him, he still wanted her. Madly. Women had their flighty notions, their changeability, and every man had to accept that and learn to cope with it. It was at times part of women’s charm. Perhaps not so much in this case, but through his sympathy for her losses, he was willing to humor her odd notions.

However, if he further delayed returning to London, he’d lose important time, giving up any edge he might have gained in getting to town early, mixing in Society and winning the favor of important allies during the little season.

They couldn’t be together this way in London. They simply couldn’t indulge in that sort of risk. What happened between them must happen here. Yes, she was to be his mistress. But part of protecting her would be to preserve her reputation as much as he possibly could. Their sexual liaison must be kept in the shadows. Stolen times like this, here in the country, were to be all they could have together.

He cupped her face.

She was correct, but she hadn’t phrased it exactly right. If they didn’t pick the right moment, they would not only lose something vital between them. They would likely never regain the moment.

He wanted so badly to experience the sweetness of that moment. He would pay any price to have it. To be able to give it to her. If that price were that he must delay returning to London and risk losing valuable ground in Society, well, damn it all, so be it. He couldn’t disappoint her.

And yes, it must be admitted, he could not deny himself either.

That was the worst kind of weakness. The worst failure at maintaining self-discipline.

No matter. He wanted this time with her. More than he’d ever wanted anything in his life.

He would have it.

“We shall stay here a few more weeks,” he said.

Chapter Twenty-One

He lay awake in his bed.

Awake, listening to the soft creak of the floorboards as she moved about in the next chamber. Beguiled by her soft brogue that was accentuated by her singing. He’d pleaded a damned headache and taken to his bed early. At the time, it had seemed an apt excuse to escape from the constant temptation. Now he lay awake, his cock throbbing, while he listened to the sounds of her moving about, picturing her pacing before the fire in her gossamer nightdress.

Denial.

It was a far more pleasing concept when it was James that was denying himself.

But left in the hands of the object of his desire, it was hell.

Not since he’d been a very young man had he suffered having to watch another person take the reins of control. To wait on a woman’s schedule.

Even with a young Sunny, once he had decided he would have her, that he would seduce her away from Freddy, James had been able to get his hand up her skirts rather easily. Oh, yes, she had fallen that easily.

The image of her face…God, he’d never been able to forget it, not even when he’d been doing everything he could think of to forget her, taking an endless stream of nameless, faceless women, their nubile bodies writhing beneath his, exhausting him in his waking hours. Despite it all,
her
face had haunted his dreams. He could not forget how it had frozen into that mask of stunned pleasure.

And in the next moments, how sheer horror and shame had overtaken that beautiful expression of ecstasy.

She had slapped him, hard enough to make his ears peal.

Then she had yanked her skirts down and run, straight into Freddy Blayne’s arms. The wedding had been arranged so quickly, people had whispered that it must be a case of needs must, which rumor time had proved false.

He’d known then that all he needed to have done was chase after her, be a little more forceful about matters, and she would have succumbed.

It was all that he really need do now, to get his way.

But he could never do that. Never with Catriona.

His cock throbbed painfully. He wrapped his hand about it and gave it a firm squeeze. God, how many hours until dawn? He had brought himself off more times in the past three weeks than he used to do over three months at sea. That option had begun to pall, quite dreadfully. It also proved to be a short-term cure. He gave a tug on his flesh then groaned deeply. It wasn’t as though he were in London and could simply go out and find a harlot.

And he rather feared that even if he could have, no other woman was going to do.

She was everything he wanted.

A memory swept over him—her lips, cold and stiff under his. Her hand limp upon his leg. The recollection was vivid enough to chill his arousal.

What the devil?

What was it she had said to him?

It seems like for the longest time, I have been beset with certain desires. Strong desires, perhaps even unnatural for a woman. And now, they are gone.

With his erection finally ebbing, mental clarity returned.

Meeker!

Christ, he had allowed himself to become too overwrought today. He had not paid close enough attention to what she had said. The only thing that had really changed for her had been the slow withdrawal of laudanum. Now she took none at all.

But who had given her the bottle? Dr. Meeker.

James leapt from the bed and went to his sideboard and withdrew the green glass bottle, still half-full of her medication. He opened the lid and took a sniff. Well, it would be impossible to know what the physician had added. But James was as sure as he’d ever been of anything that Meeker had added to the laudanum some herb or potion that had increased her sexual desire, until it became an obsession with her.

And the sudden withdrawal of such a wicked concoction? Her body might have become used to it, her natural processes might have been disrupted as a result, and the cessation of it may very well have caused a rapid and complete decrease in all carnal hunger.

Tension he hadn’t even known he’d still been carrying eased. A lightness spread through his chest and his stomach. His neck relaxed.

She had not been playing the tease with him at all. Not trying to leverage her feminine appeal for power over him, either. At least not entirely.

The poor girl was likely confused. Perhaps even frightened by her body’s seemingly capricious changes.

Giving such a potion to a young widow with no sexual outlets, a woman who had previously been trapped in a platonic marriage to a virtual invalid?

It would have driven any healthy, passionate woman to the edge of madness.

It was evil.

It showed the doctor’s true intent.

An indecent one.

James’ newfound sense of relaxation vaporized as cold, hard anger swept through him. The very first chance that James had, Meeker would pay.

There could be no apology, no atonement for so grave an injustice against a lady.

He plucked his trousers off the back of a chair and began dressing. Tonight, now, if Catriona was wakeful, he was going to have some answers from her.

* * * *

Sunny pulled the coverlet tightly to her chin, not so much out of any false modesty with James Blayne. No, she did it because it gave her a sense of protection against his having barged into her chamber without so much as a quick knock.

He stood before her barefoot, dressed only in his trousers. His eyes blazed. “What did he do to you?”

She gaped at him. “What?”

“What did Meeker do in the name of treatment?”

Her stomach sank. She had known this moment would come and had dreaded it.

“You cannot save him by holding back. His death is already a sure thing. Between gentlemen, there can be no apology or earthly atonement for so grievous a wrong done to a lady as he has done you.”

She put her hand to her collarbone and she shook her head. “No, you can no’ kill him.”

“He deserves no less.”

“He did what he did to help me.”

“He did what he did to gain control over you. He gave you drugs to make your desire stronger, to make it grow to the heights that it did. The heights that nearly drove you mad.”

She could only gape at him again. “You can no’ mean that?”

“I mean exactly that.”

Her legs went weak and she collapsed onto the bed then sat there, shaking her head. “No, no, he said he was trying to help me overcome my unnatural desires.”

“Yet, the whole time you were under his ‘treatment,’ those desires only grew stronger?”

She stopped shaking her head, a chill racing over her scalp to think that he might be exactly right.

“Please, James, no matter what he has done, you can no’ murder him.”

“It wouldn’t be murder. Killing him is justified.”

“But blood on your hands!”

“Do you delude yourself that my hands are clean? That I could serve my King for so many years and keep my hands clean? I have sent boys to man the cannons, I have sent them to their deaths.”

Was he saying that just to shock her? “Boys?”

“Young men go to sea early. Many of them have no choice. But to a man my age, a young man of sixteen or seventeen still seems a boy. And on a warship, there’s no room for sentimentality or softness, only duty.”

His eyes were frosted over, hard, staring into hers directly, and she had no doubt that he meant every word. It gave her pause, for even though she knew he’d been a naval officer and had commanded men, she had never thought of that side of him. A warrior, a man who could send boys to their deaths.

Weak, she lay back on the bed. He stood above her, his coal-black hair falling over his forehead, the shadows from the fire making the hollows beneath his cheekbones look far more rugged, and his narrow nose look longer. The sinister effect chilled her further. She hugged herself.

“The death of such a man as Meeker wouldn’t concern me any more than my boot crushing an ant in the garden,” he said coldly.

She shook her head. “I do no’ want to be the cause.”

“You’re not the cause. Meeker’s actions are the cause.” He took the extra quilt that was folded at the foot of her bed and laid it over her.

She still felt cold.

“I’ll have an answer, Catriona. What else did he do to you?”

“I will no’ tell you, not unless you promise you will not pursue this mad justice!”

“He told you not to give yourself sexual release, he taught you to fear and to be ashamed of your carnal desires. He gave you a medication, telling you that it would ease those desires, yet all the while it was laced with potions that would provoke the very desires he told you were proof of your hysteria. Those are not the actions of a caring, dedicated physician. Those are the actions of an evil man.”

“You can no’ really believe he would give me such medications, if such medications even exist.”

“They exist.”

He sounded so certain. But she could not wrap her mind around even the possibility that Meeker had done such a thing. No, he couldn’t have duped and betrayed her like that.

“It is too incredible,” she said.

“He made you doubt yourself. He tried to drive you mad. It was the attempted murder of your soul. What would you call a fit punishment for soul murder?”

“You don’t understand. I was mad when Aunt Frances brought him to help me. I was close to…to commit the most desperate act.”

He frowned. “You wouldn’t have.”

“I was ready to follow my husband to the grave.” His look turned so fierce, she closed her eyes. Inside, she saw only the darkness she had once known. “Dr. Meeker was so understanding. He had such a soothing voice. I poured my heart out to him and he promised never to leave me alone with my fears. He promised to help me heal what was damaged within me.”

“There was nothing damaged within you. You were simply grieving a husband and recovering from years of living in a difficult marriage.”

“Well, Dr. Meeker would disagree with you. He said I needed treatment.”

“You said before that he disciplined you. But of course we both know that you meant that he physically punished you. I know that it is a difficult thing to talk about, but now that we have shared so many intimacies, surely you will speak plainly with me. Did he physically discipline you?”

“Yes.” She paused and took a deep breath. “When I was wrong.”

“What did he deem wrong behavior on your part?”

“He said I mustn’t touch myself…for pleasure.”

“He was the one in the wrong. That was something private. How did he punish you?”

“You must promise, James. Promise!”

He hesitated, then said, “If he attempts to endanger you or comes near you ever again, no promises will hold me back from protecting you.”

“That’s fair enough. But I will no’ have you endangering your own life to enact your idea of justice.”

He scoffed loudly. “I would hardly be endangering myself.”

“Duels are never certain matters.”

“My cause is righteous.” The bed rocked with his weight as he sat beside her.

“You will no’ challenge him?”

“I will not kill him. That’s as much as I can promise.”

She met his steely gaze. “I suppose it will have to do.”

“You must tell me all, else I will consider myself released from the promise.”

“Oh.” She hadn’t realized that even as she had trapped him into making his promise, he had trapped her even more neatly. “How did he punish you?”

“He would restrain me with rope and he would administer punishment.” Her heart pounded with her audacity to share this secret, to actually betray Dr. Meeker. Even though she had longed to tell James this, it still felt like the worst disloyalty to a man who had only wanted to help her.

“How did he punish you?” James’ tone was harsher, commanding, compelling her to obey.

“He used a cane.” The words slipped from her, her voice hushed as though that might mitigate the wrongness in the betrayal of Dr. Meeker, and yet she felt a tremendous load lift off her shoulders, as now that she had told, she knew that Meeker could never hurt her again. James would never allow it. Still, one final shudder over the matter shook her frame. “How I hated that cane.”

She could feel the tension in his body, radiating on the air like that feeling one senses moments before a storm.

“You hated it.” His voice was harsh, oddly hushed. “Yet, you defend him again and again.”

“He saved my life. And perhaps he saved my sanity too, time will tell.”

“There’s naught wrong with your sanity. I tell you this over and over. Why do you value his word over mine?”

“He is a learned doctor! Who are we to question him?”

“He may be a doctor but he wronged you.”

“He had the best intentions. It is my fault that I couldn’t tolerate his methods. I suppose I have been too coddled in my life. I could no’ bear a little well-deserved discipline from someone who only wanted to help me reform.”