Lady in Red (7 page)

Edward ignored his butler’s question and snatched the glass from the tray. “Do what I say.”

Grieves nodded, his mouth agape.

“I’m going to hold her still.” Edward shoved the crystal glass into the butler’s hand. “You’re going to force this down her damned throat.”

Grieves’s eyes flashed with alarm, his gaze traveling from the fizzing glass to Mary’s prone, half-naked body. “Your Grace?”

Edward mounted the bed, positioning himself against the pillows and headboard. With more roughness than he’d intended, he grabbed Mary’s upper arms and dragged her weightless form up the length of his body. Sucking in slow, sure breaths, he rested her against his chest so that she sat upright. He could feel her delicate bones against the muscles of his chest. He found himself willing his own ferocious capacity to live into her. “Do it.”

Grieves flinched, then edged up to the side of the bed. He dropped the silver tray to the floor and the dull thud echoed through the room.

Edward curved his palm against the base of Mary’s head, bracing her so she could slide neither right nor left. Then he gripped the nape of her neck, tilting her back.

With a look of pure determination on his face, Grieves opened Mary’s mouth and pressed the glass to her lips.

“Drink,” Edward whispered against her ear, aware of the way her silken hair felt against his lips. Even the scent of laudanum and red wine were not enough to cover the faint touch of tea roses emanating from her soft locks. For some unfathomable reason, it was this simple thing that ripped him apart with the desperate hope she would survive this.

The bubbling soda water flowed into her mouth. The liquid merely spilled from the corners of her lips and dribbled down her cheeks.

Grieves lifted his gaze to him, dismayed.

“Pinch her nose,” Edward ordered, his heart slamming like a hammer against his ribs. There was no way in hell they were giving up.

Grieves didn’t wait. His white-gloved fingers pinched Mary’s small nose and he kept pouring the drink into her mouth as if he could somehow will her to come to.

At last, she swallowed in one great, tortured gulp.

Her body jerked against Edward’s. She gagged, then coughed. Shaking against him, her chest expanded in a huge gasp. She flailed her arms, struggling weakly to get away from his demanding grip and Grieves’s unrelenting pouring.

Edward didn’t let up, nor did he feel relief. They were a long way from safety yet. “Give her a moment to breathe. Then do it again.”

Grieves pulled back, his worried old eyes flicking over her. He held the glass at the ready, and as soon as Mary had stopped gasping, he pressed it back to her lips and pinched her nose closed again.

She drank. Her body convulsed around each swallow.

Grieves didn’t relent until every last drop had been forced down her throat. When the glass was empty, he stepped back. “Now what, Your Grace?”

Edward rocked Mary carefully against him, imploring her to stay with him. “We wait.” Edward grimaced, willing her to respond. “And grab the chamber pot.”

It was only a matter of moments before she jerked, her throat working as her stomach rebelled. Quickly, Edward turned her. Grieves was there, the chamber pot ready.

The poison came out of her mouth in one fast go.

“There you are, Calypso,” Edward said gently, his hand stroking her back. He wished he could tell her the worst was over, but he knew it wasn’t so.

She shuddered and groaned.

Gently, Edward pulled her back up and rested her against his chest. He whipped a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped it softly against her mouth. He longed to wrap his arms about her and clasp her to him in a vise, but that would not aid her fragile body.

“Will the young lady require water, Your Grace?” the butler asked with surprising calm.

“Certainly.” Mary was not going to want to ingest a damned thing, but water was the only thing that would help her now.

The butler took a step back, transfixed by Mary’s still form.

“Grieves.” Edward stayed his butler, rocked by a level of gratitude that astonished him.

“Yes, Your Grace?”

Edward paused for a moment, aware that he might have never before said these words to a servant. “Thank you.”

Grieves’s brows lifted slightly in shock. “Of course, Your Grace.” The older man bowed, then headed out the door at a brisk clip.

As soon as he was gone, Edward allowed himself the brief luxury of closing his eyes. He savored each strong breath Mary drew in. He hadn’t been mistaken. His Calypso hid a depth of experiences and emotions that it would take a lifetime to uncover.

Any man in his right mind would drop her back on Madame Yvonne’s doorstep.

Any man would have judged her beyond saving. She had been at death’s door, knocking determinedly for hell to let her in. Perhaps she had no wish to be saved. If that was the case, could he still manage it? Could he force her out of hell?

As he stared down at her, his need to keep her close was so fierce he burned. He brushed his fingers over hers, needing to believe she hadn’t tried to kill herself. Not like his mother. He’d seen Calypso’s strength, and those tempered by such determination didn’t try to take their own lives. But what if she had?

Edward closed his eyes, and for the first time in years, he prayed to a god he didn’t believe in. He prayed with all his might that she longed to live.

“C
an you tell me her family name?”

Mary felt herself pulling away from the safety of her dreamless void. Fractured and in shocking pain, a healthy dose of panic laced through her as voices murmured in the shadows of her mind.

She held absolutely still, not sure whether she was truly hearing this muted conversation or whether she was just imagining it.

Dear lord, she had no idea where she was. Or what had happened in the last hours. Mary struggled to keep her breathing even, lest she make the men aware she was awake. She needed time. Time to understand what was happening and time to decide upon her next course of action.

She wasn’t at the asylum. Of that she was sure. There were no kind voices in that prison.

“I don’t know her family name.”

This last voice. It was familiar. She’d heard it before. Sensual and strong. Genuine. Now it was hard and strained with tension. She waited. Waited for any indication that she might be in danger, and if so she should bolt.

She strained to hear what these disembodied men would say next.

If she was lucky, the voices were a figment of her tortured imagination. They would disappear, leaving her to heal in solitude.

The length and breadth of her body burned. An ember crashed to the cruel, hard ground.

Everything hurt.

From the tense muscles at her neck to the throbbing pulse screaming inside her head, she was a mass of punishing sensation. She didn’t even like to think of her belly and the roiling agony pulsing within.

“This laudanum was very poorly mixed,” the older voice said. The tones were firm, yet reedy with the effects of a long life. “’Tis almost entirely opium.”

There was the rustle of fabric, a drawn-out silence. The other voice, slightly shaking now, asked, “You don’t think she tried to—to end it all?”

The acidic pain humming through her flesh indicated this was all too real. But who had tried to destroy herself? It was foolishness to toss aside so carelessly the only gift one had. Life.

Mary struggled to think who could have attempted such an unforgivable thing. At the asylum, only one girl in the three years she had been there had triumphed against the keepers’ watching eyes. The girl had died, hanging at the end of her twisted bedsheet, a pathetic figure dangling in her icy room. That was the last night they’d had coverings for their hard sleeping pallets. Henceforth, they had been stripped of anything that might have given them escape from their wretched existence. Even spoons had been deemed contraband, reducing them to animals, scooping their gruel into their mouths with blackened fingers.

“No, I don’t think she did,” the softer voice finally replied. “We will have to ask her, of course, but the doctor who prepared this tincture should be hanged and quartered.”

Mary winced as faint light pierced her aching eyes. Despite her attempt to suppress it, a low groan escaped her throat. She’d taken laudanum, too.

It couldn’t be
her
laudanum they were speaking of?

“Mary?” one of the men called urgently through her haze.

She longed to roll away from him, but she could barely flutter her lids. As she fought to keep them open, she caught sight of the ivory ceiling painted with gold leaf.

Gold leaf and plasterwork?

Where was she? She somehow knew the elaborate decor. Even if she did know one of the voices, she couldn’t recall who the people in the room were or what they might do to her. “Wh-who?”

A weight pressed down on the bed. Fighting the agony in her limbs, she grabbed the sheets and struggled to pull away.

She had to leave before anyone tried to hurt her. She had to get free—

A warm hand circled her fingers. “It’s Edward.”

Instinct commanded she fling the hand away, but she stilled, a warm sort of unfamiliar hope giving life to her heart.
Edward?

She slowly turned toward the man sitting beside her on the wide bed. Jet-black hair fell over his hard brow. Black eyes stared down at her, intense with a hint of wildness that verged on the frightening. A faint shadow of black beard dusted his square jaw and the V of skin, bared by his unlaced linen shirt, exposed taut muscles.

Every bit of him looked imperious and entitled, even in dishevelment. Yet a haunted air played at the planes of his face.

The duke.

A fresh wave of horror crashed through her. This man was meant to protect her and she’d—

She couldn’t even recall what she’d done. One moment she’d been standing by the fire waiting for him, terrified of how she’d respond to being alone with him and the advances men always made, and in the next the world had rattled out of her control.

“Forgive me,” she begged, then felt the rock of self-loathing spasm in her stomach. Once she had been petted and loved, and had had everything she could ever want, before she even knew she wanted it. Now she had no power at all. And had to beg forgiveness for every moment of her weakness.

Why did she have to keep doing things to be forgiven for? Hate laced through her heart. Hate for the man who had done this to her. Her father had longed for her to be broken. How happy he would be if he could see her now. He would merely say it was in her blood, that she had fulfilled her mother’s mad strain.

“There’s no need for forgiveness, my darling, and you must never ask for it again.” There wasn’t an ounce of sympathy in Edward’s statement, just a sort of sadness deepening his tones. That factualness was far more comforting than all the soothing platitudes in the world.

Nothing to be forgiven.
Yvonne had said it, too. But they couldn’t possibly mean it. She was a disgusting creature not meant for society. Her father had made sure of that.

How she wished hot tears would sting her eyes, but none would come. She stared up at Edward, unflinching. “You don’t deserve this.”

“You have no idea what I deserve.” His big hand clasped hers softly.

To her shock, she didn’t pull away. Instead, she savored the touch, stunned by how right it felt.

His lips pressed into a tight line before he drew in a long, careful breath. “I must ask . . . Did you—?” He looked away, clearly unable to go on as his face darkened with some emotion she couldn’t quite identify.

She shook her head slightly. What could shake this powerful man so? “Did I what?”

Another face came into view, one that had doubtless been in the room the whole time but had stayed hidden. He was an older man whose white hair shone silver in the candlelight. Heavy lines had turned his face into a beaten yet kind map of emotion. “I’m Dr. Carrington, my dear, and . . . what the duke wishes to ask is, did you mean to destroy yourself?”

Stunned, she looked from the doctor to Edward.
They think . . .
She opened her mouth to shout a torrent of fierce and offended denial. Before she could, she thought of the laudanum she had taken, and the wine . . . Of course they thought the worst. What else would one think?

She pulled her hand from Edward’s and looked toward the damask-curtained windows. “No. I would never give up the only thing that is mine.”

Edward let out an audible breath. Of relief? She turned back to face him. His eyes had lost their haunted look and whatever demon had been holding him these last minutes seemed to let go.

“That is what I had concluded,” Dr. Carrington said. “The laudanum you drank was well over three quarters opium. Who gave it to you?”

Mary closed her eyes, a wave of nausea rolling over her. “It doesn’t matter.” She doubted she could keep talking about this. Or anything for that matter. She felt so ill.

“It matters,” Edward gritted out. “You almost died. And someone else could die if they take something of its like.”

Humiliation claimed her, a thick weight on her already worn heart. He was going to think so little of her—not that he already thought much. But she wasn’t sure she could bear to see disappointment in his eyes. She didn’t know why, but it was important that he not see her how she truly was.

No, she did know why.

For one brief, illusive time, he’d seen her as more than a wounded animal who needed saving. He’d seen her as a beautiful creature. A fascinating woman to keep. Now he would cast her out like the sick, used-up woman that she was. Carefully, she pressed her hands into the silken-smooth sheets and shoved herself into a sitting position. She swallowed back the rising sickness at her throat. “I think I should go.”

Edward leaned toward her. “I beg your pardon?”

“I have nothing you could desire.” Her own surety was surprising, given how paper-thin she felt. “I have neither mind, nor strength, nor a body that could make me of use to anyone, let alone you.”

She could feel his eyes burning her, intense yet cold with calculation, the kind of calculation that only the most intelligent and hard humans could produce.