Lady in Red (21 page)

Without allowing herself to reconsider, she popped the cork and lifted the bottle halfway to her lips.

You can learn to be as normal people. ’Twill be easy to learn to take but a sip of laudanum for a temporary ailment, the twin, so animalistic with its driving argument, reasoned. Many must learn to curtail their eating habits when they have overindulged. And so can you learn to take laudanum in moderation.

She smiled. How foolish she had been to be so cruel in denying herself a bit of relief. Of course she could learn to take it in small doses. Look at what she had endured over the last years. Surely, a person who had gone through so much could summon the power of will to stop before she had consumed too much. Her hand shook in anticipation as she lifted the bottle to her lips. Even before she drank, her entire body relaxed, so relieved that it was about to welcome its old friend.

“You won’t, you know.”

Mary jerked the bottle away from her mouth, twisting her arm so she could hide it behind her skirts.

Powers stood in the doorway of the small pantry, his shoulder pressed lazily against the frame. Daylight haloed him, basking his face in shadows.

“I beg your pardon?” she said quickly, her heart racing so harshly she could barely speak those few words.

“You won’t drink just a little.” He cocked his head, his face impassive. “You will drink most of the bottle. And someone—Edward, myself, though not Yvonne with her wounds, or a servant—” He shrugged lightly, not moving from his careless rest against the doorframe. “They will find you on the floor quite incapacitated. You may not be dead . . .” He trailed off and his brows rose ever so slightly. “But then again—”

Mary narrowed her eyes and pinned him with as much animosity as she could muster. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Am I?” he asked gently. “Being ridiculous?”

The immediate, burning fury at being caught fizzled, replaced by soul-breaking recrimination. Hot tears stung her eyes as she realized what she’d been about to do. How was it that she could now cry so easily? It didn’t seem fair that after years of no tears, she was suddenly inundated.

It was like slowly coming out of an unyielding dream. She gasped for breath. Her body began to shake and she set the bottle down on the table, thrusting it far from her reach. “H-how do you know?”

He pushed away from the doorframe and crossed the short distance between them in slow, measured strides. “I have seen it many times. That moment in which a line is crossed from simple use of alcohol or opium to consuming the substance with such determination that one will die in the pursuit of getting it down one’s gullet.” Powers gazed down at her without accusation but with such kindness, his eyes seemed ablaze. “You’ve already crossed that line, Mary.”

A dry cry racked her body and for the first time since she had left the asylum, she wished she were dead. She wished she could burn apart and collapse, never to face such an ugly truth about herself again.

“Shhh, now.”

And much to her astonishment, cold, calculating Powers folded her up against his big chest. Even more astonishing, she allowed him to do so. His chest against her was like a great fortress of comfort, fending off the terror so wholly swallowing her up. “Wh-what am I to do?” She gasped.

As he rocked her gently, swaying with his arms completely bound about her, he said, “It is quite simple. You don’t drink laudanum, love. I don’t recommend the consumption of wine either for those such as us.”

Mary pressed her fingers against his linen shirt and blinked. “Us?”

“Of course,” he said against the top of her head.

“Unlike you, I have chased my demons for many years. And I still fail in my battles with them. But I don’t want that darkness for you.”

“But you’ve never—” She swallowed, unsure whether she could force the words out. It was so hard to expose her own weakness to such a man as Powers. “Never accidentally tried to kill yourself, as I have done.”

A soft rumble of laughter came from his chest, jostling her cheek against his sternum. He stroked his own cheek against her hair. “One night when I chased the dragon, sweetheart, I woke up in my own piss and vomit, shaking, terrified . . . I was utterly alone except for a few bastards who were picking my pockets in the filth of London’s East End.” His grip about her tightened as though he were anchoring himself in the present so he would not lose himself to that past. “I should have been dead.”

“You?” She marveled. “But you’re so strong. So . . . powerful.”

“How flattering, but then again . . . so are you.”

“No.” She shook her head slightly. “If I were, I wouldn’t wish to drink the laudanum.”

A bark of a laugh came from him. “The drug overtakes us, Mary. It is our master and we owe it our allegiance. Do you think it will give us up so easily?”

“But I don’t wish to . . .
worship
it.”

“You must wish to stop. With all your heart, and then . . . you must talk to me whenever you wish to take it. As I must talk to you. Perhaps . . . together we can stop. I know I’ve tried many times, only to end up back in a den, smoking my brains away. Perhaps . . . we can save each other.”

What he was proposing sounded so wonderful, a tendril of hope sprung in her soul. It also sounded terribly intimate. “And Edward?”

“Edward will never judge you, good man that he is. But he will also never understand the control the drug has over us. He has never felt that soul-rending voice demanding that you consume your drug until you’ve no mind or soul left. Edward is . . . not truly capable of understanding the likes of us.”

“But he—”

“He is good, and strong, but his demon is of a very different sort. He doesn’t let anyone in. He can’t, you see. He’s afraid of his own taint.”

She frowned. His supposition sounded so like her own, it frightened her. If Powers, who had known Edward for years, doubted his ability to ever love . . . “Have you ever been loved?” she asked.

A sad smile turned his lips. “Oh, yes. I was married once, you know.”

She gasped.

“Hard to imagine, isn’t it?” he quipped, but there was a darkness now to his light eyes. “She died sometime ago. As did our daughter.”

“You make it impossible for me to hate you.” She breathed.

“Well, I am ever fractious.”

“I never realized.”

He shrugged. “We all are walking through fire, Mary, but I’m not sure you should expect Edward to put yours out. Or that you can put his out.”

“Why are you saying this?” As quickly as she’d felt for the man, she suddenly felt hollow, as if he’d stolen all her air.

“Because I don’t wish to see either of you hurt. All his life, Edward has run from his pain, pretending he doesn’t feel it. But he does. Until he stops, he will never let anyone close, because letting someone close means facing yourself.”

He paused, as if considering how much he should say. “It’s why Edward and I don’t call each other
friends.
He’s always there for me and I for him, but he never tells me about his inner life, his broken recollections. We don’t share those kinds of things, because he can never let anyone see
him.
He’s been trying to escape himself since his father died. Do you understand?”

“Oh, god,” she whispered. She did understand. Edward had briefly told her things, but then he’d always grown silent, as if he’d regretted sharing anything about himself. Her fingers itched for the laudanum bottle and she realized that she, too, wished to run away from her pain. “Can’t we stop? Running?”

“I can’t answer that.”

She squeezed her hands into fists and sucked in harsh breaths, desperately trying to quell her panic. “I’m helping Edward run from his pain, aren’t I, instead of facing it?” She fought back a sob. “That’s why he needs me. To run.”

“Easy, easy,” Powers soothed, stroking her back in small, repairing circles.

“I want that laudanum so badly now.”

“It is only what is natural to you. For years now, you have had laudanum in you. For happiness, for sadness, for pain, for nothing, you have had laudanum. Why should you be different in this harsh moment? Or the moments that will follow? Rome was not built in a day, my darling.”

A half laugh slipped past her lips, despite the apprehension thudding in her heart. “No. No, it wasn’t.”

“You are worthy of love, Mary. Never forget that.”

She pressed her forehead against his shoulder.

“Do you hear me? Only you can give yourself that worth. No one else—not Yvonne, not I, not even Edward. Only you.”

After a long, calming breath, she tilted her head back. “I hear you. And thank you.”

“You feel better?”

She gazed at his face. What she saw was a hard man, brittle, near broken, who deserved to be free of his suffering as much as anyone she had ever known. “I don’t feel quite so alone in my weakness.”

He smiled, but there was an aching sadness in it. “You aren’t alone, Mary. You will never be alone because I am just like you and you are just like me. No matter our external differences, we are driven by the same mad need.”

To her own shock, she hugged him tightly, briefly, savoring the moment, savoring this first friendship since her imprisonment. “And together we shall triumph over it.”

“Exactly,” he confirmed, though his eyes had flared at her embrace.

“Thank you.”

“There is no need for thanks. For you help me, you see.”

She dropped her hand away from his face. “You are quite the puzzle.”

“As are you, little dragon.”

She looked askance, ashamed she had almost forgotten Yvonne. “I still need what I came for.”

He arched a brow. “And that is?”

“Headache powder.”

Powers nodded, turned, and went to the medicine chest. He rummaged through it, then slipped a bottle out, holding the brown glass aloft.

She slipped it from his fingertips, her heart pounding hard at her narrow escape.

Carefully, he stepped back from her. “Now go. Think not overlong on this small event and be kind to yourself. No one deserves it more.”

She took a few steps to the door, but then she paused and looked back. He was returning the laudanum bottle to the medicine chest. “You deserve it, too, you know. Kindness.” She worried her lower lip before adding, “I hope you allow yourself to have it.”

He nodded, but there was more pain upon his features as she turned from him and went in search of Edward. Her heart lamented Powers’s sorrow with every step. She wished she had known from the first moment of their acquaintance that Powers had not just been some indulgent lordling but one who had also been hurled through hell’s barbed gates. But now she did . . . Now she had a friend.

It was the most remarkable thing in the world.

E
dward glanced up from his reading and his heart leapt against his ribs. He could scarcely believe his eyes and didn’t dare blink lest the apparition vanish.

Mary stood in his doorway in a silk dressing gown, her short curls teasing her pale face. She’d slept beside him the last few nights, but virtually fully clothed and not under the covers.

The sight of her standing there, clearly naked under the light silk, claimed his reason and he immediately said the most ridiculous thing: “Where have you been?”

He nearly bashed himself for the possessive note in his voice. What the hell was happening to him?

Clearly,
she
had happened to him, awakening feelings he’d never had, nor had to contemplate. Something had occurred to him on the beach earlier. Before, he’d cared about her, needed to help her. But tonight? He felt the need to
own
her. And that was bloody terrifying. He’d seen where that emotion led by his parents’ example.

Mary strode into his bedchamber like a goddess deigning to visit a mortal. She was indeed Calypso,
before
she’d been cursed. Everything about her was perfection. That jetty hair he so adored had taken on a luster that gave her a pixie air. Taken with her vivid amethyst eyes, still slightly too large in her slender face, he was nearly breathless. It didn’t help that her only covering was a lush, sapphire robe dripping with black webbed lace. The rich fabric skimmed her form like a constant lover. The lover he so desperately longed to be.

“I might ask you the same,” she returned throatily, a gamine grin on her face. “You were gone for most of the evening. You missed dinner.”

Edward shifted uncomfortably in his chair by the fire. There was so little between them and yet so much keeping them apart. “I went for a very long walk. Besides, I couldn’t find you after our ride.”

God, he sounded like such a child. Why was he being such an ass after such a perfect day?

Fear
, he immediately realized. Fear that, now that he cared, she might abandon him. As others had done.

“Did you look for me? Was I so difficult to find?” she teased.

He wished to accuse her with a vehement
yes
, but even he couldn’t bring himself to play the complete fool. He’d had this conversation at least a hundred times, but in the past it was always he who had been the one to slip off. It was a deeply unpleasant sensation to realize he had become that thing he so loathed: a harpy. “I supposed you needed your own time,” he acceded grudgingly.

She nodded absently, listening but not truly hearing as she took slower, more purposeful steps into the room. “But I wasn’t really alone. I had a chat with Yvonne and then . . .”

Her pale leg emerging from the fold of the gown nearly consumed his brain and it was all he could do to recall that he was irrationally irritated.

He was half dressed. His shirt open. And though she’d seen him naked, this seemed far more intimate, with her in such deshabille.

He swallowed, trying to think of something to say. “And you saw Powers.” It was the first thing to come to mind, and the most possessive.

He shut his mouth immediately and looked away. Christ. He sounded like a shrew. A male shrew. How perfect. But he couldn’t help it. He knew Powers’s talents and manipulations so well. Fool though he was, he couldn’t quite dismiss the possibility that Mary might transfer her allegiance if she deemed it favorable to her cause. Such thoughts gave life to painful recollections. Recollections of his own tainted past.