A Heart Deceived (36 page)

Impatience spread along every nerve, a consuming cancer that made him jittery. “See if her name is there.”

“You really ought to come back later, my lord. These documents are not—”

“Do it!” Ethan planted his hands on the desk, jarring the inkwell cover from the bottle. It rolled off the table and crashed to the floor.

Spyder pursed his lips, twitching them one way, then another. With precise movement, he reached over to a drawer and slowly pulled. He removed a pair of spectacles and a bit of cloth, then rubbed one lens to a fine sheen before moving on to the next.

Something snapped inside Ethan. Loud, almost crackling, like a shoulder joint ripped from a socket. His voice, however, remained deadly calm. “Mr. Spyder, if you do not hurry along, I will lunge over this table and personally add your name to the dead list. Do you understand?”

Spyder paused his polishing and narrowed his eyes. “Hostility is a sign of madness, you know.”

“Fine. Then lock me up and I’ll reach Miri all the sooner. But when I do”—his hands curled into fists—“you’d better pray I find her whole and hale.”

Setting his spectacles on his face, Spyder rifled through a stack of papers. “Name?”

Ethan growled. “Brayden!”

“Ahh,” Spyder murmured while running a fingertip the length of a document. Toward the end, his hand stopped. “Hmm.”

Ethan held his breath.

Spyder’s lower lip jutted out. Then his finger was on the move again, finishing out that listing and skipping over to the next.

The rustling paper slapped Ethan’s senses. Everything prickled. Spyder’s breathing grated shreds of flesh off him. Nothing should take this long.

“Huh,” Spyder grunted. “Looks like …”

Ethan willed the man’s words to continue, hoping, dreading, dying a thousand deaths.

“Brayden. Brayden. Yes, here it is.” The man looked from the document in his hand to Ethan.

He really ought to be able to figure out what that look meant, what those eyes were saying from behind the glass walls. But he couldn’t. He wouldn’t.

Yet he had to know. “What …” Thick emotion, hot and dusty, strangled him. “… what list is the name on?”

Spyder removed his glasses, setting them and the document on the desk. The fine lines at the corners of his eyes turned down. “Perhaps you ought to sit, my lord.”

Ethan froze. Rigid. Numb. He felt small and useless. A discarded heap of impotent bones.

“Just tell me.” An old man’s voice. His.

Spyder pushed back his chair and stood, meeting Ethan on a field for a game he did not want to play. The man’s lips moved. Eight words came out. Arrows, swift and sharp, keenly aimed to stop his beating heart.

“The name Brayden is on the dead list.”

38

Dead list. The
dead
list? How could he understand that? The phrase echoed over and over. The dead list. The dead list. Each time it circled, he tried to grasp it for meaning—and came up empty handed.

“My lord, are you all right?”

His heart still beat but only from habit—a custom his body didn’t know it should stop. Everything faded until all that was left was a pinpoint of light—and that not very bright. He tensed, muscles taut as bowstrings, then waited. Hold. Hold. Like a frontline infantryman anticipating the charge.

Snap.

Loss opened a mouthful of razor-sharp teeth and bit, swallowing him whole.

He staggered backward until his body hit a wall. Snippets of things Miri had said floated in the air around him. He reached, pulling memories to his breast, trying to keep them all from flying away. He’d lose them in this space.
God, don’t let me lose them.

“Sometimes I get scared, but not with you. Never with you.”

“Were you scared, Miri?” he whispered. “I wasn’t there, my love. I wasn’t there for you.”

“We all fail those we love.”

“I failed you most of all, my sweet, my love. I failed you!”

“There is nowhere else I’d rather be than with you.”

“Then don’t go, Miri. Please—” His voice broke. “Don’t leave me.”

If he tried hard enough, strained and pleaded and pretended, mayhap he’d sense the feel of her in his arms, her touch caressing the length of his face as she had that fateful eve in the barn.
Please, God. Please.
A ghostly tingle ran along his jaw, his neck, spanned his shoulders, and settled deep into his heart.

Then it vanished.

Completely.

“Miri, come back! Come back to me. I never said good-bye.” He jerked his face heavenward. “God, I never said good-bye.”

His legs gave way, and he sank. Gravity was a monster, pushing him down. Flattening him. Good. He’d sink and sink. Burrow under the earth. Find his beloved and lay with her. Forever.

A sob rose like vomit, ripping out his throat, severing soul from body. “Nooo!”

“Are you all right, my lord?”

He felt his hand lift. Someone patted it. Maybe.

“What’s going on here?”

The words meant nothing to him. Words would never mean anything again. Nothing would.

“He came asking about an inmate. He’s not taking it well at all, I’m afraid.”

What kind of gibberish was that?

“Move aside, Mr. Spyder. This is my line of work, after all.”

Something nudged him.

“Sir?”

A stinging slap jerked his head. But it didn’t matter. Not anymore.

Fingers pried open his eyelids. Hot breath fanned his face.

“Hmm … appears normal. What did you say happened, Mr. Spyder?”

“He came in here asking about a Miri Brayden. Insisted I look up her name, though our documents are far from complete, as you well know. I did find it, however. On the dead list.”

Dead list. Dead list. There it was again. Circling. A vulture looking for a carcass to pick clean, gnaw on the bones, suck out the marrow—from Miri.

Ethan started rocking. What else could he do? The sorrow welling inside would not sit still. It raged and ranted, prodding him to movement.

A strong arm restrained him.

“But that’s impossible, Mr. Spyder.”

“Why’s that?”

“I just came from the woman’s bedside. She’s well on her way to making that list of yours, but she’s not there yet.”

Slowly things came into focus, emerging as one swimming up from a great depth. Murky at first, then taking on form. Ethan sucked in a huge breath.

“Well, well, an amazing recovery.” A skeleton with skin crouched next to him.

“What did you say?” Ethan’s voice was rusty.

The skeleton peered at him, assessing him from one end to the other. “Mr. Spyder tells me you are searching for a Miriall Brayden, yes?”

She was here? Alive? His heart swung on a pendulum, the extremes making him queasy. He shoved the man away and bolted up. The room spun. He flung out a hand and balanced against the wall. “Where is she? Take me!”

“Calm down, sir. I assure you she’s receiving the best care I can administer. There’s nothing you can do. Taking you to her would only endanger your health.”

Grabbing handfuls of the man’s shirt, Ethan shoved him backward. “I don’t give a flying fat rat about my health. Bring me to her!”

The skeleton’s thin eyelids stretched over bulging eyes as he blinked.

“Now!” Ethan’s voice rumbled, the harbinger of a black storm about to unleash.

“As you wish,” said the skeleton.

“Dr. Pembernip, I am not at all certain that’s wise.”

Ethan let go of the man and growled at Spyder, stomping toward him.

Spyder held up both hands, retreating.

“Wise or not”—the doctor straightened his shirt—“there’s no reasoning with a man in a state such as this. Believe me, I’ve seen it many times. Were we not closing down this asylum, you can be sure I’d admit him for observation. As it is …” He glanced at Ethan, then turned. “Come along.”

Ethan followed close behind. He’d run ahead if he knew the way. The place bore an eerie resemblance to Newgate. Dark. Dank. Foul smelling. No wonder disease roamed these halls.

A million things ran through his mind as they went. How near death she might be. How much she’d suffered already. How he’d ever be able to forgive Witherskim for putting her through all this.

Led into a large room with pallets on the floor, he recoiled from the stench.

The doctor glanced over his shoulder at him. “She’s right over … You look a bit green, my lord. Are you sure you want to—”

“Lead on.” It was hard to let words flow out past the vomit welling at the back of his mouth.

“Over here.” The doctor lifted an arm, allowing Ethan to pass.

His gait hitched, much the same as when he’d visited his mother’s deathbed as a small boy. No! He threw back his shoulders. This was
not
the same. It couldn’t be.

In front of him sat a girl. Her waxen face looked as if it had been placed too near a candle flame and melted. Part of it, anyway. Disfigurement and beauty mixed in such a grotesque combination, it pulled at him. He stared, mesmerized, wanting to look away but unable to.

The girl turned from his open stare.

What kind of horrid joke was this? Ethan shot a glance at Pembernip. “That is not my Miri.”

“Of course not.” The doctor looked past him. “Lil, run along now. This gentleman is here to see Miriall.”

The girl rose, leaving a clear view of the entire pallet. No wonder he’d missed her. A mud-colored blanket clung to the shape of a cadaver curled into the fetal position.

This
was Miri?

He peered closer. No beautiful curls adorned that shaved head. Amber eyes did not shine out of those shrunken sockets. The Brayden high cheekbones looked as if they’d climbed higher to escape the hollowed cheeks beneath.

Miri.
Dear God.

Ethan dropped to her side and gathered her in his arms. A bundle of kindling could not have been lighter. Holding her close, he gasped. Urine and sweat violated her trademark violet scent. Oh, what she must have suffered.

He stood, clutching her to his chest, and faced Pembernip. “Lead me out.”

The doctor rested his hands on his hips. “You can’t be serious. Moving her now is much too risky. She’s close to delirium, and once that sets in—”

“Lead me.” Ethan measured his words, each one a threat ready to strike. “Or I assure you, you’ll wish you had.”

Pembernip lowered his hands and lifted his palms in a shrug. “I see. There … is a certain procedure, sir, that—”

“Hang your procedures! And hang you as well.” He stomped toward the door they’d come through earlier. He’d find his own way out or be damned in the trying.

Miri moaned. Her perspiration soaked into his shirt. If he didn’t get her some real help soon, the grief pooling just under his skin would flood over him again. He’d lived through that once.

Never again.

39

Ethan cradled Miri as the coach’s wheels jolted out of a huge rut. Several inches cleared between his bottom and the seat, and he smacked his skull on the roof before landing. Silently, he cursed the beastly roads and worse carriage. A rubber ball caught between two paddles would be less bruised.

Pushing against him, Miri rose. Her face twisted as she darted a glassy gaze from one wall to the other.

Ethan shot his head out the window and yelled, “Faster!”

A low-hanging tree limb rushed toward him, and he jerked back his head just as the branch raked the coach’s side.

“Roland?” Miri’s voice was a thin piece of glass rattled by the wind, on the sharp edge of breaking.

The first time she’d done this, hope made him giddy, thinking her fever had subsided. But then Pembernip’s warning of delirium barreled back, grinding that hope to a fine dust. Now he merely allowed her to look one way and another before drawing her against him.

“Shh, love. Soon. We’ll be there soon.” He doubted his words meant anything to her. Neither did his presence. And that cut deep.

“Rest now.” He caressed her hair as the coach jostled along. Stubbly patches scraped against his fingertips, and he grieved afresh that her curls adorned a rubbish pile somewhere.

She sank to his lap, poured out like water from an urn. Since leaving the asylum, the day and a half of travel had taken more than she had to give. How much she had left, only God knew.

Please, God.
That prayer, his breath.

With Miri quieted, he gazed out the window. Afternoon sun dappled through a thick hedgerow. Each shrub stood at attention, shoulder to shoulder. A living fence, marking one field from another. Darby’s wheat. Jonesey’s rye. Trenton farmers. Trenton lands … home.

A home he’d not seen nigh on fifteen years.

He sat back, leaving the curtain swinging, and aimlessly ran a finger along Miri’s arm. So many threads of emotion twisted inside, the sorting might unravel him. Sorrow over his father’s and brother’s deaths tangled with regret that he’d never reconciled with them. Years of anger and hurt. All this balled together in the pit of his stomach whenever he thought of his new position as lord of an estate. Many would depend upon him. How would he manage without fouling things up?

Please, God.
That prayer, his breath.

At last the coach lurched to a stop. The door opened, but he sat as still as Miri. Once he set foot on Westford Manor’s drive, a bridge would span from past to present. Could he cross it without falling off?

“My lord?” The driver poked his head through the door, nodding toward Miri. “If ye’ll hand me yer lady, I’ll hold her right proper till yer out on yer feet.”

Ethan lifted Miri into the man’s arms, then sucked in a breath as he peered outside. Westford Manor, brick-faced, lace-curtained, overhung with scrolled soffits and slate tiles, looked exactly as he remembered. The ivy thicker, the yews taller, but the house … the same. Many a woman would pay a king’s ransom to age half as well as this. He jumped down, both feet tamping onto Trenton soil and the demons of his past.

Retrieving Miri from the driver’s arms, he rested his cheek against the top of her head. “We’re home, love,” he whispered.

Gravel crunched beneath his boots, memories swelling with each step. Above, third window to the right, was the escape he’d used on many a night to sneak out from his chamber. Off to the left, a hedgerow where he’d stashed cheroots stolen from his father’s study. And if he bypassed the main entryway and followed the drive behind to the carriage house … no. Better to not even think of the wicked acts he’d committed in those shadows.