Lammas Night (32 page)

With murmured good nights all around, William went out with Jennings. As soon as the door closed behind them, Alix breathed a long sigh. Graham gazed across at her in annoyance.

“Will you please tell me what's going on? First you hedge the end of a reading in ways that make no sense to me; then you let me tell him that we'll use his plan even though we all know how dangerous it is. Then you practically shanghai him into staying the night. Is something very wrong or very right?”

She took a cigarette from a box on the mantel and lit it with a hand that shook slightly. She almost never smoked.

“I don't know yet,” she said, sitting again. “I can't put my finger on it. That's why I asked you to stay.”

“
Was
there something negative in the reading, then?”

“It could be read that way. I'd rather not say just yet. Are you too tired to do some trance work?”

“No. Why?”

“I don't know that, either. Not exactly, anyway. I did some digging on those other names you gave us at Buckland, and there are several points that aren't clear. I have this nagging suspicion that it all ties in, that there's something we're over-looking.”

Graham frowned. “Important enough that we need to look for it tonight?”

“I think so. I know it's awkward.” She blew out smoke in a nervous gesture. “I have to ask you to do something even more awkward, too.”

“Oh?”

She would not look at him.

“I need to work with you in trance. I don't want to have to worry about
him
.”

“William? But he's already gone to bed.”

“I want to be certain he stays there.”

“That he stays there?” He looked at her in surprise. “What makes you think he wouldn't?”

“I simply don't want us interrupted.”

“Well, do you want me to post a guard or just lock him in?” Graham retorted.

“Neither.”

“What, then?”

“You managed to deal with his aide and valet at Plymouth, I believe.”

With a queasy little turning in the pit of his stomach, Graham slumped back in his chair. He could hardly believe what he was hearing.

“Alix, I can't drug a royal duke.”

“Can't you? I'll do it myself, if you can't.”

“You know it isn't that,” he whispered, troubled. “Is it really necessary, though?”

“I would not ask if I didn't think so. Surely you realize that.”

He swallowed with difficulty, still searching for a way out.

“I—don't think I can do it without telling him,” he said. “He trusts me.”

“That is your decision,” she said in a low voice. “The deed is not.”

He sat unmoving for several seconds, still rebellious, then rose wearily, head bowed.

“Very well. He won't like it, though.”

“You're damned right I don't like it!” William snapped, glaring at Graham twenty minutes later from his bed, where he sat with the bedclothes pulled up to his waist and his arms folded stubbornly across his bare chest.

Graham sighed and set the offending glass of milk on the bedside table. He had told William exactly what was in it and sketched the reason as best he could. The prince was not convinced.

“Look, William, I don't like it any better than you do, but I don't think you realize how complex all of this is. Alix and I are working on a number of different levels, some of them very delicately balanced. If it will reassure her to know that you're asleep and can't intrude on what she needs to work out with my help, then it seems like you could go along. You said you'd accept her authority. If you're to be a part of this team, that means abiding by that, as you promised.”

“Why can't I just promise to stay here? If you'd waited half an hour, I really would have been asleep. Isn't my word good enough?”

“That isn't the point. Now either drink the milk or let's forget the whole thing. I'll tell her you've changed your mind, and we'll go back to London tonight, if that's what you want. I didn't have to tell you what it was, you know. I could have just had Jennings bring you your usual nightcap, and you never would have known, any more than Wells and Griffin did.”

“Well, why didn't you?”

“Because that isn't the way to build trust, dammit! Because there may be other times when I
have
to ask you to do something without being able to tell you why. I want the rest to be as honest as I can make it. That's the only reason. If we don't trust one another, we might as well forget the whole thing. It's one of the tenets of the game—perfect trust.”

“Is it perfect trust to be so afraid I won't keep
my
word and stay here, that you have to drug me?” William retorted. “You can't have it both ways, Gray!”

Graham sighed. He had not wanted to go into the whole rationale he suspected behind Alix's order, but he supposed there was no choice now.

“I don't see it as a matter of not trusting you,” he said slowly. “There are many factors that can influence—what she wants to do with me when I go back downstairs. We already know that there's some kind of psychic link between you and me. You saw it at work at Buckland when I was coming out of trance, even though you weren't aware what you were doing at the time, and still aren't. I think that's what worries her—the unpredictability. She's probably afraid you might do the same kind of thing again—psychically, not physically, and certainly not deliberately, but it would increase the danger to both of us, nonetheless. She's only trying to protect us, William. That's her job. Why won't you let her do it?”

William thought about that for a moment, then cast a resentful look at the glass.

“It ordinarily comes in a lovely yellow capsule, as I recall,” he murmured sullenly. “Did you really have to put it in the milk?”

“You might have palmed the capsule. I taught you how.”

William smiled in spite of himself—a quick, ironic grin—then picked up the glass and held it to the light.

“Well, I suppose I can look forward to a terrific head in the mornings, like poor old Wells. Do I get the needle, too?”

“I don't think that will be necessary,” Graham replied as William sipped cautiously and then began drinking it down. “In fact, that's probably what gave Wells his headache—not what you just drank.”

He smiled sympathetically as William made a face and handed back the empty glass.

“I know there isn't any taste—it's the idea,” William muttered, sliding further under the blankets and lying back on his pillow.

Graham watched him settle, then went into the adjoining bath and rinsed out the glass. When he came back, the prince's eyes were already dilating slightly, though he resolutely refused to close them.

“Will you stop fighting it?” Graham said, sitting companionably on the edge of the bed. “It's done. You're going to go to sleep in a few minutes now, whether you want to or not. Meanwhile, I can't leave until you're out.”

“Well, you can jolly well wait another few minutes until I
am
out,” the prince replied. “I want it noted for the record that I resent this like hell—and you can tell your Lady Selwyn that I said so, too. I don't know where you people get off being so high and mighty. One would think you're the only ones taking any risks. I'm in this now, too, you know.”

“I could hardly forget that,” Graham said, noting the beginning slur in William's voice. “But right now, this is your part in the battle plan. Hasn't anyone ever told you? They also serve who only lie and sleep?”

“I think I'm being poked fun at,” the prince grumbled around a yawn. “It isn't fair. You wouldn't laugh at Michael or one of the others if they were in this predicament.”

“If Michael or one of the others were in this predicament, they wouldn't be fighting the inevitable. They'd be cooperating: Now take a nice deep breath and go to sleep.”

As he said it, Graham reached out offhandedly and touched the prince's forehead lightly, just as he would have done for Michael or any of the others under the circumstances, not thinking how it might be taken. To his surprise, the blue eyes rolled up under trembling lids and then closed as the prince breathed out in a little sigh—a textbook response to a posthypnotic trigger. Was it possible that William had just gone into a trance?

“That's right,” he breathed, watching in amazement as all the classic signs came across the relaxing face. “Deep asleep.…”

And William was, and not entirely from the sedative he had just taken.

This was totally unexpected. He and William had spoken of trust, but Graham had not dreamed that the prince would give him such a graphic demonstration of it. Shaken, he stood and gently drew aside the blankets far enough to expose a bare right arm and raise it in the air. However he moved it, it hung suspended in perfect catalepsy—a response that was surely beyond William's ability to fake. Graham straightened the arm and ran his hand along it several times, with the whispered suggestion that it was becoming rigid—and it would not bend.

Still hardly able to believe what he was seeing, Graham canceled the suggestion and returned the arm to the prince's side, then pulled the bedclothes back into place. He had no sure way of knowing how much of what he was seeing was drug induced and how much was genuine trance, but he decided to proceed as if William still could hear him.

“Deeply relaxed, William,” he said in a low voice as he sat on the edge of the bed again. “You've achieved a very good, deep trance, but we haven't much time before your sedative puts you to sleep for real. Before it does, I want you to examine very carefully how it feels to be deep in trance, the way you are now, and remember it.

“Not consciously. In fact, for now I want you to forget everything that's happened in this room tonight. I promise you, there's nothing sinister behind it. I simply don't want you to have to be anxious about it. Remember only that I brought you an ordinary glass of milk before you went to sleep. Wake up refreshed and confident in the morning, with no adverse effects from your medication. Do you understand?”

He heard the prince's faint “yes” and was still surprised. He had not realized that William would be such a good subject, though the sedative certainly had taken the edge off any normal first-time resistance.

“Thank you,” Graham whispered. “Now, in case you and I should want to work together with a trance state in the future, as I sometimes do with Michael and the others, I want to give you a posthypnotic trigger. Do you remember the way Michael went into trance for me at Dover?”

“Yes.…”

“Fine.” He touched his finger tips lightly to William's forehead the way he had before. “In fact, you've already used that trigger once. Remember how it worked then, and this signal, and what it feels like now. And know that you and I can duplicate this state whenever there's need, and you can go even deeper as I guide you. Is that all right?”

“Yes,” came the reply, though dragged from greater depths this time.

“Good. Go even deeper now and let go. Your sedative is taking over, so just let it happen. Don't fight it. Go to sleep—and forget all this.”

He withdrew and watched for several minutes, checking the pulse in the side of William's neck and the pupils under slack eyelids, then stood and shook his head. He was still shaking it as he rejoined Alix in the library.

“Is everything all right?” she asked as he closed the door and locked it.

A smile quirked at one corner of his mouth, but it was as much a sign of nervous reassurance to himself as an expression of amusement.

“You tell me,” he said, settling bonelessly into an easy chair. “After some rather animated discussion in which we touched on the subject of perfect trust—and much against his preference, mind you—he took the sedative. That was only the beginning. He then went into a spontaneous trance—a rather good one, too.”

“He
what
?”

“You heard me.” He leaned his head against the back of the chair and closed his eyes. “I can't think of a single more poignant way he could have chosen to demonstrate his trust of me. It made me feel like a first-class cad. I suppose Michael and I must have made much more of an impression than I thought.”

“Michael? Whatever are you talking about?”

“At Dover. Remember I told you he'd watched me put Michael under?” he asked, opening his eyes as she moved a straight chair closer and nodded. “Well, I don't know what possessed me to treat him like Michael, but I did. He was getting drowsy from the drug, and fighting it. He said something about me not treating Michael or the rest of you this way. I told him that Michael wouldn't be fighting the inevitable, and to take a nice deep breath and go to sleep. Then I touched his forehead, just as we usually key one another. He must have remembered that same sequence with Michael, at least on an unconscious level, because the next thing I knew, he was under. I could hardly believe my eyes.”

Alix was shaking her head by the time he finished. “Are you sure he was in trance and not just asleep?”

“Are you doubting my ability to tell the difference?”

“No, but—”

“He doesn't know enough to have been faking, Alix—and certainly not with the drug in him. I ran several tests, and he passed them all.” He paused. “I suppose the true test will be in the morning. I told him to forget the whole sequence of the sedation and trance. I also set up our standard posthypnotic trigger. It seemed a shame to waste the opportunity—and one never knows when one will need such a thing.”

She shook her head, looking not at all reassured. “I hope you know what you're doing. Has he asked you about hypnosis before, other than the time he saw you and Michael?”

“Yes, on the way back from Buckland. He wanted to know how I'd gone into trance without words being spoken. He understood my explanation. He also expressed an interest in past-life regression. You can bet I put him off on that one.”