Seduced by a Stranger (22 page)

By the end of it, he wished he could just die. Just close his eyes and never open them again.

“Why are you doing this to me?” he whispered when it was done and they let him out, barely able to speak, barely able to stand.

“To remedy the disruption of your blood circulation. To improve the circulation to your brain,” the doctor said, his tone reasonable and calm. “To cure you.”

“Cure me of what?” Gabriel cried, but no one heard him, or if they did, they never answered.

If he struggled too strenuously, they forced opium upon him, or camphor mixed with vinegar.

Weeks bled into months, and months into years.

His one link to the world, to his sanity, were the letters from his cousin Sebastian, written as he traveled the world with his guardian. Gabriel never looked at the name on the direction; it would only make him angry and bitter to see that proof that even Sebastian believed him to be someone other than he was. But he waited for those letters, only hungering for a taste of the world beyond the walls of Hanham House. And he read them over and over, long past the point that he had memorized every word.

A new doctor arrived, Dr. Bradley, who based his treatments on the methods of an American physician, Dr. Rush. Icy baths were replaced by the
relaxation chair
, which offered restraint at both ankles and wrists, and a wooden box that fitted over the patient’s head like a shroud.

Gabriel’s head.

The first time he was forced onto that chair, he thought he would go well and truly mad.

Dr. Bradley saw Gabriel as a wonderful challenge, and he paid special attention to him. And Dr. Bradley had a fondness for that chair. Gabriel quickly learned that crying and begging and pleading only made it much worse.

Though he could not move, could not see, could not scratch the terrible itch at the tip of his nose, he forced himself to keep silent when they stretched the leather tight across his wrists and fastened the buckles. To bite hard on his tongue when Dr. Bradley took the knife and slit open his vein. To make not a sound as his blood dripped into the bowl.

“Madness,” Dr. Bradley expounded to anyone who would listen, “is caused by morbid qualities in the blood.” And so he bled Gabriel until he fainted, strapped in the chair, unable to move, his world narrowed to only what his mind could conjure.

“Purgatives,” Dr. Bradley pontificated, “are a depleting remedy for the overwhelming state of madness.” He would force the patient’s mouth open—
Gabriel’s mouth
—and if he refused to swallow of his own volition, the doctor used a funnel attached to a long tube to administer his treatments.

Too, Dr. Bradley was a proponent of solitude as punishment. When Gabriel refused to answer to his brother’s name, he was locked away in the darkness and the quiet. Too quiet. He hated it there, believed himself truly mad when the only company he had were his memories. Of Cairncroft. Of his childhood, stolen from him now. Of his brother.

Memories of the dead girl, with her chest slit open and parts gone, and her blood staining the ground in a dark, glistening pool. Only, he had not been the one to find her, so how did he know what the others had seen? Was it their description that he conjured? Was it only a horror from his imagination? He had no way to know.

He began to believe he
was
Geoffrey and not Gabriel, that
he
had gone into the woods after Sebastian that day and found the dead girl.

Other days, he knew he was Gabriel. Knew that his brother had
become
him, though he knew not how. Or why.

Those questions gnawed at him like a thousand hungry ants, nipping and biting and squirming beneath his skin.

“How are you today, Gabriel?” Dr. Bradley asked as he strode along the narrow aisle between the tables where the inmates of the house were eating their supper.

“Fine, thank you, Dr. Bradley,” Gabriel replied, knowing as soon as the words left his lips that he had erred. He must never answer to his own name. He must answer only to his brother’s. Too late.

“To the solitude room,” Dr. Bradley said over his shoulder to the nurse. “To ponder his behavior.”

By now, Gabriel knew better than to resist. He glanced at the supper he had not yet touched, and knew he would not have any food to eat for some time. Inmates of the solitude room did not warrant dinner.

Hours later, in the damp, frigid darkness, Gabriel curled into a ball, and for the first time since he had arrived at Hanham House, his desperation and fear faded. Suddenly everything became clear.

Nothing
mattered.

The questions he had asked so many times needed no answers, because the answers would lead him nowhere. He must look forward, only forward. He must let go of his burning need to understand
why
, and instead think only of how he might escape.

No…not just escape. That would only be another sort of hell. He must not just escape. He must regain all he had lost.

To do that, he must become the monster they had judged him to be. In the solitude of his cell, he murdered the boy he had been as surely as if he had plunged a dagger in his breast. And from the rotting corpse of that boy rose a new creature, wily and sly, and coldly focused on revenge.

“Who are you?” Dr. Bradley asked, his fingers steepled before his face, his brows lowered in contemplation.

“Geoffrey St. Aubyn,” Gabriel replied, letting no emotion color his lie. To say his true name aloud would only earn him the doctor’s well-intentioned treatments, and he had had enough of those to last him a lifetime.

He had become so adept at lies that he rarely gained any notice at all anymore. All of which made him wary of the reason for this summons by Dr. Bradley, who meted out his attentions only to those patients he deemed in need of reward or punishment. Gut instinct had Gabriel sincerely doubting he was here for reward.

“Did you enjoy your visit with your family, Geoffrey?”

“Very much, thank you.” The words tasted like dust on his tongue. The only thing he enjoyed about their visits was the packet of books they invariably brought. He lived for Sebastian’s letters, and for those books, devoured them, soaking up knowledge. But the visit itself was always a torment, their faces a reminder of all that had been stolen from him.

Earlier today, they had sat there in a small, windowless room—his mother, his father, his treacherous brother, his cousin Madeline—and stared at him across a bare wooden table. They had done this to him, confined him to this place, to hell on earth. They came now, once every few weeks to visit, and always they brought him a plate of raspberry tarts.

“Your mother was saddened that, yet again, you declined to taste the tarts she brought,” Dr. Bradley said, his tone chiding. “Did you mean to cause her distress?”

Yes. I meant to make her tear her hair and beat her breast and truly see what she has done to me. Why, Mother? Why did you leave me in this place, with these people? What wrong did I do to make you hate me so?

“No, I did not mean to cause her distress,” Gabriel replied, attempting to color his tone with contrition. That was the one area he was yet lacking. He had trouble summoning genuine emotions other than hate and rage. He knew he had felt other things at one time, in a different life, when he had been free. But no longer. Now, he watched those around him—the nurses, the doctors, the rare visitor—to try and learn from their actions, and he mimicked them to the best of his ability.

“You caused her pain. You will write to her immediately to apologize.”

“Of course.”

“Why do you not eat the tarts? Your mother goes to some trouble to bring them each time.” Dr. Bradley leaned forward, his gaze intent. Gabriel knew that posture, knew the doctor watched for some sign of madness, waited for it, longed for it. He wanted to find something in Gabriel’s answer that he could pounce on, cat on mouse.

“I have always preferred lemon to raspberry,” Gabriel replied carefully, certain this was a trap, but unable to see exactly how. He made no indication of his anger or frustration, certainly not the fear that flickered in his heart. He did not say that raspberry made his tongue feel numb and thick in his mouth, made him feel that his throat might close entirely and he might die.

“Ah.” Dr. Bradley sat back in his chair, his expression jubilant. “I knew it. The madness has returned. It is
Gabriel
who prefers lemon, not you, Geoffrey. Never you. Your mother told me it is raspberry you like.” The doctor’s eyes gleamed with a zealot’s fire and it was all Gabriel could do not to leap across the desk and close his hands about the man’s throat and watch his face go blue as he choked.

But he held himself still, kept his expression blank. He must bide his time.

“It is the morbid qualities of your blood, Geoffrey, that create this madness and make you believe you are your brother. But never fear, never fear. Copious bleeding is the answer, the key to your recovery. Tomorrow, we will draw away a full three-fourths of your blood. The disruption to your circulation will be remedied, and your overheated brain will heal.”

Gabriel stared across the desk at Dr. Bradley. He knew his face was a mask. He could feel it, his expression cool as marble, for he had practiced and practiced until he had the game down to perfection.

He had come to Hanham House as a boy of thirteen, and now his seventeenth birthday had come and gone—at least, he thought it had. In that time he had endured things no one ever should, and he knew what the outcome would be if he was forced to endure even one more.

If Dr. Bradley did as he wished, if he strapped Gabriel in the chair again as he had so many times before, fed him a purgative and opened his vein and took the amount of blood he described, Gabriel knew for certain he would die.

Unless Dr. Bradley died first.

There were only the two choices.

As he sat and listened to Dr. Bradley extol the virtues of the relaxation chair and bloodletting and applying caustics to a wound at the back of the neck to keep it open and offer discharge for the overheated brain, Gabriel spoke up, a last effort.

“I will not survive it,” he said, very polite, very cold.

Dr. Bradley stared at him, jaw open, brows raised. “Do you think you know what is best for you? Do you think yourself so knowledgeable in this?” he sputtered. “I will do as I think best, Geoffrey. Do not doubt it. Resist, and it will go badly for you.”

“You will not alter your intent?” Gabriel asked.

“I will not.”

“Then events will unfold as you have steered them.” Gabriel studied Dr. Bradley’s face.

And as Dr. Bradley folded his hands across his round belly and leaned his chair back on two legs, his expression one of bloated self-importance, Gabriel knew he was going to kill this man. In that moment he acknowledged that he had every intention of committing murder. And he thought he might even enjoy it.

He waited for the swell of abhorrence, the conscience that would still his hand. He waited for the certainty that he could not,
would not
do it, no matter the provocation.

But it did not come. In its place was the certainty that he
would
.

If it was a choice between Dr. Bradley’s life or his own, he would save his own.

Such was the creature they had made him.

“You have made exceptional progress, Geoffrey,” Dr. Vincent said, his bushy gray brows rising to blend with the heavy thatch of gray hair that fell over his forehead.

“Thank you,” Gabriel replied, offering no evidence of the repulsion he felt at being addressed by his brother’s name. He had trained himself never to betray emotion, had become quite adept at it, in fact. It was too dangerous here, where even a smile could be read as a sign of an excitable state. In truth, he thought he no longer felt emotion, not the way normal people did.

Hanham House had changed him, molded him, forged a new being from the creature he had been.

He read things in the faces of others and he had vague recollections of understanding their emotions, but he did not feel such things himself. Not anymore. His world was viewed through a haze, a fog. One that both insulated and caged.

“My recovery is a testament to your skill, sir,” he said, blandly.

Dr. Vincent was new, only one year at Hanham House, a replacement for Dr. Bradley, who had tripped late one night and tumbled to his death, his body twisted and broken at the foot of the stairs. None of the inmates of Hanham House had shed a tear at his loss. And none had been blamed for the tragedy. How could they be? After all, they had been locked in their rooms each night, and no one had the key save the doctors and nurses.

And if one young nurse, horribly scarred by smallpox, was smitten with a certain handsome inmate of the house, and if she visited his room on occasion and stayed for some time, creating the perfect opportunity for him to steal her key…well, no one remarked upon it.

Dr. Bradley had not been a well-liked man.

By contrast, Dr. Vincent was. He had brought his own mores and methods with him to Hanham House. No more icy baths. No more restraining chair. Even bloodletting was kept to a minimum. Patients were only restrained if they presented a genuine physical risk to themselves or others.

“You see,” Dr. Vincent said to the small group of gentlemen—visitors who had come from other asylums to study his methods—as they walked together across the vast grounds of Hanham House. The manicured grass was springy beneath their feet. “Intractable though my predecessors deemed him, Geoffrey here is an excellent representation of the efficacy of my treatments. He is proof that dignity and respect are essential parts of the daily regime. Along with fresh air”—he made an encompassing gesture at the surrounding manicured lawns and gardens—“and soothing scenery. We encourage horticultural pursuits here, and attendance at services in the chapel. Our patients are kept busy. Idleness breeds illness, after all. The benefits of activity—both bodily exercise and mental recreation—along with dignity are stressed, gentlemen. Dignity, I say.”

Murmurs followed this statement, and Gabriel only walked quietly by Dr. Vincent’s side, his expression carefully blank, his gait measured.

“Why, just yesterday, Geoffrey’s mother fell upon me after her visit, prostrate with gratitude. She said that in his early years here, Geoffrey barely acknowledged their presence when they came. But now, he shows great interest in his brother, Gabriel, discussing his time at school, his teachers, his friends, hanging on every bit of information. And yesterday he ate a raspberry tart.” He glanced at Gabriel. “For some reason, your mother found that exceptionally encouraging, Geoffrey.”

“They have always been my favorite,” he replied. “It was kind of her to bring them.” His tongue had begun to tingle not ten minutes after he ate the vile thing, and his throat had felt tight enough that he wondered if all his plotting and planning was for naught and he would asphyxiate there on the spot. But finally, the tingling and numbness had abated, and his breath had come freely once more.

The easing of his brother’s ever-vigilant expression had been his reward. He had lulled Geoffrey into trust. It had only taken him the better part of a year.

“So she said. She fondly recalled you gorging yourself on them as a boy. She is immensely encouraged by your progress.” Dr. Vincent clapped him on the back. It was all Gabriel could do not to turn on him with a snarl and tell him to keep his distance, to keep his hands to himself. Instead, he offered a bland smile and said nothing at all and merely strolled in the garden with the flock of black-clad crows beside him.

“Excellent. Excellent. And your brother will visit again next month?”

“So he has said, much to my pleasure,” Gabriel replied, his lips shaping a parody of a smile as he contemplated that visit and the ones that would follow, each a stepping stone on his path to vengeance. “Very much to my pleasure.”

In the months that followed, Geoffrey came often, always solicitous and kind, but when no one watched, his lips would curve in an ugly sneer and his eyes would glitter with malice. Gabriel pretended not see it, not to know what his brother was. A villain. No one would think to look for such a creature, for no one would imagine such a one existed. Certainly, he had not. His own brother had orchestrated his imprisonment at Hanham House and usurped his place at Cairncroft Abbey. For Gabriel was the elder by three minutes, the heir, and Geoffrey had become him now, in manner and name.

Was that the reason for all of this, then? For money and the title? Had Geoffrey switched places with him so he would be the one to inherit all?

How had he summoned such a convoluted plan? When it had been orchestrated they had been little more than children, Geoffrey and Gabriel twelve, Madeline nearly fifteen, and Sebastian a year older than she. Had one of them helped him? He could not fathom it. Madeline, so silly and weepy and wan. Sebastian, away for such lengthy periods of time. Neither seemed a viable choice.

Which left only Geoffrey, alone, to spawn his poisonous plot.

But then, Geoffrey had ever been more cunning and wily. He had been the brilliant one. He had been the one to think up every plot and plan that had landed them in trouble in their childhood.

And always, it had been Gabriel who took the blame. He recollected that now. He had had so many endless days and nights to recollect that.

Still, it made no sense to him. Other than the abbey, which was entailed, there were funds enough for both of them, separately allotted.

Was it greed, a need to possess all, that had driven Geoffrey to this end?

Gabriel had no answers, but he did have a plan. Each time his brother visited he aped his mannerisms and tone and posture, a matter that Geoffrey found amusing. Every few weeks, one of the nurses trimmed the residents’ hair. Gabriel always begged her to cut his just like his brother’s. Geoffrey found that amusing as well, and Dr. Vincent took it as encouraging, saying, “Imitation is a form of flattery. I am gratified to see you holding your brother in such esteem.”

“Hello, Geoffrey,” Geoffrey would say each time he came, and laugh as though delighted to see him. But Gabriel knew the darkness that lurked in his heart, the enjoyment of his predicament, for what was he to do other than call his brother by
his
name.

“Hello, Gabriel,” he would reply, his tone even. It was a confusing and vicious thing that twisted his thoughts and left him sick with rage. And each time Geoffrey came, Gabriel begged for books. His brother twisted even that into a game for his private amusement, arriving with tomes on agriculture or geography or some other topic he considered dry as dust, believing that he perpetrated a subtle torture in those deeds.

“I suppose you would prefer a novel,” Geoffrey said with a malicious laugh as he handed over two weighty books written in French.

As a boy, Gabriel had preferred tales of adventure to texts and treatises. But he was a different person now. Hanham House had forged a new person out of flame and suffering. This new Gabriel—the one known here as Geoffrey, forged in icy baths and hot irons, isolation and blood and pain—was grateful for any knowledge, any diversion that filled the empty hours and the empty spaces in his mind. In fact, he had come to crave educational texts more than imaginative ones. Dr. Vincent even allowed him to borrow from his own personal library of anatomy and medicine.

“Thank you, Gabriel. You are most kind.” He held his brother’s gaze as he accepted the books, letting him see none of the rage and hate. Only a blank mask. “Will you come again soon?”

Geoffrey leaned close, his eyes narrowed, his expression hawkish. “They’ve done it, haven’t they? They’ve broken you to heel. You believe you’re Geoffrey now? Do you believe it?”

Gabriel held his gaze and forced his brows together, offering a carefully crafted look of puzzlement. “What do you mean? I
am
Geoffrey.”

Throwing back his head, Geoffrey laughed. “Wonderful. Perfectly wonderful.”

Gabriel stole a knife from the dining room. He had spent a great deal of time on planning exactly how he might accomplish that feat, for to be caught at it would be disastrous. Ironically, in the end, it was pure luck that saw him succeed.

A new inmate—Mr. Winston—came one day, an older man who was genial one moment and rabid the next, then almost childlike as he sang to himself in a language Gabriel did not understand. At supper one evening the new arrival went into a rage, throwing his plate and his cutlery and upending a chair.

“Grab him,” cried Dr. Vincent, who had been passing between the long tables, stopping now and again to greet a patient. The nurses hurried forward.

Gabriel dipped his head and watched as a fork went spinning across the floor between Nurse Little’s feet as she reached to grab hold of Mr. Winston’s arm. He flapped and screamed and landed a hard crack to her jaw. With a cry, she jerked back and the pandemonium continued.

Snapping and biting and thrashing, Mr. Winston evaded all attempts at restraint. Gabriel glanced about to see if any eyes had wandered from the frantic tableau, for at his feet lay Mr. Winston’s knife where it had been tossed, the blade catching the lamplight, singing a siren’s song.

Almost did Gabriel reach down and snatch it up. But at the last moment, he hesitated, certain that any gift came with a price. Again, he glanced about and found that Dr. Vincent’s gaze lit on him, then slid away, watching all the patients lest they, too, become deranged of a sudden.

Deciding against bending forward and reaching for the knife, Gabriel turned his attention to his plate even as he nudged at Mr. Winston’s knife with the tip of his shoe. He pushed it, a little at a time, until it was fully beneath the table. Then he pressed his feet together and slowly, slowly eased his right foot up his left calf, the knife hilt caught between them, slowly rolling higher and higher.

His breath stopped as it almost slipped free. Then he managed to right the handle and slide the thing a little higher, mid-calf. Almost there.

After what felt like a thousand years, he had it to his knee. Reaching down, he closed his fist around the handle and secreted the knife up his left sleeve.

The blade, dull though it was, was essential to his plan.

Because he had a scar, low on his left side, while his brother did not. They were twins. Identical in every respect. For the first six years of his life, his parents had made Geoffrey wear a thick, braided leather band around his left ankle, tied too tightly to ever remove. It was the only way anyone could tell them apart. It would not do for them to have even a single differentiating marker now. Certainly not a scar on one that was absent from the other. Not if his plan was to succeed.

Precisely how long he had been incarcerated at Hanham House, Gabriel could not say. Years. He knew that much, though he could not recall the exact date he had come here. Nor did he know the exact date it was today. His only marker of time were the dates noted at the tops of Sebastian’s letters, and those were often months old by the time they reached him. Too, he had Geoffrey’s visits to mark the passage of time. Otherwise, the sameness of the days blended one into the next.

Then, one day in spring, perhaps April or May, Geoffrey came to Hanham House unexpectedly. Gabriel sat on a bench outdoors near the grotto, a raised circle of stone surrounded by lush vegetation. It was a cloudy day. He preferred such weather to full sun and heat—sunshine always reminded him of the day his mother had left him here, not even bothering to step down from the coach as she consigned him to hell.

He sat now under the charcoal sky, reading a text on medicine that Dr. Vincent had lent him, when he heard the sound of muted conversation drawing ever closer.

Looking up, he saw his brother and Dr. Vincent approaching. Two things struck him immediately. Geoffrey was not expected. And Dr. Vincent had himself acted as guide rather than sending one of the nurses. Neither point boded well.

Whatever news his brother brought, it was not good.

He rose as the two approached, and said, “Brother, how good to see you.”

“And you.” Geoffrey drew closer, his gaze intent. He reached out as though to lay a hand on Gabriel’s arm, and then shot a quick glance at Dr. Vincent. Finally, he dropped his hand to his side once more.

Well played,
Gabriel thought. Geoffrey had added just the right touch of fear to his expression. Just enough that he clearly conveyed his concern that the news he brought might unhinge his brother and send him into a dangerous fit.

He had no idea that he had just given Gabriel a gift.

As children, Geoffrey had always won at chess. But in the years since then, Gabriel had become a much more adept player. He could only hope his skill was now such that he could outmaneuver his brother.

“I am afraid I have tragic news,” Geoffrey said. “Dr. Vincent has accompanied me in the event you are overcome and require assistance.”

The breeze stilled, as though the weather itself waited for Geoffrey’s pronouncement.

“Our parents are dead.”

Ah.
Oddly, he felt no surprise, almost as though a part of him had anticipated the words.

What to say? Gabriel’s gaze flicked to Dr. Vincent as he searched for the appropriate response, the one that would not mark him as mad.