Addicted (40 page)

How dramatic his fall had been. To sink so low. To actually physically tremble with the need to take his pipe in hand and obliterate himself in a haze of vignettes that involved Anais and him, and a physical joining that could never be.

“No doubt she is staying at The Lodge with Broughton and his family?” he asked, venom dripping in his voice.

“I do not know, milord. Lord Wallingford has the news.”

“Tell him I don’t want it. Send him away, Vallery.”

“I’m not going anywhere, old boy.”

Lindsay whirled around and saw Wallingford standing before him, holding a letter out to him. “Drop the missive and leave. I’m busy.”

“Busy doing what? Sinking deeper into an addiction that will leave you broken?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

Wallingford shook his head. Lindsay saw disgust in his eyes. “I can’t stand to see you destroy yourself like this.”

“Then don’t watch.”

“Damn you, Raeburn, you selfish bastard!”

Lindsay blinked, startled by the outrage he heard. “If you came here to preach about the opium, you can save your breath. I’m not giving it up. Ours is an equitable love affair, my friend. I understand her and she understands me.”

“And no else does, is that it?”

“That is correct.”

“What do you think Anais would do if she saw you like this?”

“She won’t, will she? She’s gone. It’s over.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

“Piss off, Wallingford. You don’t know anything about what passed between us. Stick to your absinthe and leave me the hell alone.”

“I’ve been by your side in that godforsaken den, Raeburn. I’ve watched as women have crawled over to you, desiring you, their hands all over your body. And all you care about is the pipe. You don’t even glance at them. There is only one woman
you see. One woman whom your body will come alive for. It’s not over.”

“If I could get hard,” he sneered, “I’d have an orgy with those women, but the opium—my mistress—doesn’t allow for fornication with others. That is the cost of being her disciple.”

That wasn’t true. He could still get aroused. And while he hadn’t been physically aware of the whores in the den, he’d been aware of the sexual desire in his blood. But only one woman could fulfill those needs, however much Lindsay hated to admit it.

There had been one night, however, right after he had left Anais, with a beautiful Asian woman at Tran’s. She had been delightfully curved and seductively naked. Her long black hair had skated over his naked chest as she lowered herself down the length of his body. He’d been so high from the opium, flying above the clouds, waiting to feel her mouth on his cock.

It wouldn’t get hard.

“It’s no good, darling,” he had said, pulling her away from him. “He knows what he wants, and as lovely as you are, you aren’t what he needs.”

He had cried then. He was completely ruined. Physically. Mentally. Spiritually.

He hadn’t bothered with the women at the opium dens after that. Instead, he concentrated on his visions of Anais and pleasured himself in the temporal plane while the physical plane withered away.

“You truly are beyond help now, aren’t you? You’re lost to it. You’ve let it beat you.”

“If I wanted to hear a goddamned sermon, I would go to
church,” Lindsay snarled as he turned back to the silver tray that housed his elaborate opium spread.

“That, Raeburn, is precisely where you are going.”

“What the devil do you mean?”

Wallingford broke the wax seal and opened the letter before handing it to him. “I promised Anais I would make certain you read this. Now, read it and get yourself into some semblance of shape. Smoke whatever you’re going to need to sit through an hour of church, and don’t argue with me any further.”

Lindsay looked at his friend with raised brows. “You think communion and prayers for redemption are going to save me now?”

Wallingford snorted, “I don’t know what the hell will save you, Raeburn. I don’t know what can open your eyes to the life surrounding you. I just pray that when we find it, it is not too late.”

“De Quincey was in his late teens when he started using opium, he lived to be seventy. I have a few years yet. It’s a bit premature to be picking out my casket and tombstone.”

“Confessions of an English Opium Eater,”
Wallingford said with a shake of his head. “De Quincey’s great claim to fame, other than his opium habit. I hope you don’t think that book an exemplary way of life. He struggled with that addiction his entire life, Raeburn. Is that really what you want, to live your life like this day in and day out?”

Lindsay looked up from Anais’s letter. “Do you want the truth?”

“Of course.”

“Then, yes. Yes, this is how I want to live. Not feeling a damn thing. Not caring about anyone or anything. Now, leave me alone. I need two pipes before I can even think of getting dressed.”

Slamming the carriage door shut, the cracking sound echoed through the crisp morning air. Lindsay sprawled out on the velvet bench, his gloved hand curling into a fist as it lay upon his lap. His gaze stayed transfixed on the snow that was slowly beginning to melt. Occasionally, he would see the lure of green beneath the white stuff, teasing him with the idea that spring and warmth were not too far away. The naked branches, which a fortnight ago bowed with the weight of ice and snow, were now upright. He could see the faintest beginnings of leaf buds swelling along the wooden stalks. Soon the vale would be in bloom. Everything would be green and alive—full of wonder and life. He half wondered if he would live to see it.

The carriage wheels rolled along the roads, which were thawing and filling with mud and snowy slush. Soon they would be traveling over the bridge that crossed the Severn River, bringing them to the village.

“When was the last time you slept?”

“I sleep every night.”

“Without the opium drugging you.”

Lindsay did not glance at his traveling companion and instead kept his gaze on the scenery outside the carriage window. When
was
the last time he had slept the night through, and without opium? The night he’d slept with Anais, in his bed. They’d made love. Passionate, beautiful love.

“You look like hell, you know,” Wallingford mumbled as he reached inside his jacket for a cheroot.

“I’m fine.”

He saw the bridge directly ahead and mentally calculated
how many minutes he had left before he found himself in church, suffering through a ceremony he had no wish to witness. Bloody hell, why had he even bothered to read the letter from Anais?

“You don’t look fine to me,” Wallingford said between a cloud of smoke. “You look as if you have not slept in weeks. You’re gaunt. When was the last meal you took?”

He rounded on Wallingford who sat opposite him, leisurely enjoying his smoke. Wallingford’s fathomless eyes studied him intently from beneath the rim of his beaver hat and Lindsay had the irrational urge to plant a punch on Wallingford’s handsome visage. “I don’t want to hear another word! Do you understand?
I’m fine!
”

“If you say so,” he shrugged. “But you are only lying to yourself. Any fool with eyes can see that you are not.” Wallingford exhaled, blowing a cloud of smoke between them. “Perhaps it is not wise for you to go to this…this service, after all. I might have erred, insisting you go.”

“I must,” he whispered, averting his gaze so he was once again seeing beyond the glass to the outside.

“Why must you? Because Anais will be there?”

“It is personal.”

“Why is this particular Sunday so damn important? Why, when you have not stepped foot in a religious house since you arrived back in England?”

“Because I must,” he said, finally meeting his friend’s shrewd gaze.

“I can’t quite figure it out. What has prompted you to get off your divan? Nothing else has worked these past weeks, so why
would a church service inspire such energy? Do you mean to patch things up with Broughton by attending his niece’s baptism, then? Is that the reason you have dragged yourself out of your opium haze?”

Lindsay let go of his tightly held facade for the first time in weeks. “Surely you can reason why I must do this. You of all people must know. Or have I been so brilliant at hiding what I fear I wear on my sleeve?”

Recognition flashed in Wallingford’s blue eyes, then he sat forward and wrapped his arm around his shoulder in a very caring, very un-Wallingford manner.

“I am so very, very sorry, Raeburn,” his friend murmured and Lindsay could hear the sincerity in his voice. “So sorry.”

He nodded and looked down at his gloved hands. “Thank you for not asking me to say the words. I…I can’t say the words. They hurt too much.”

Wallingford sat back against the squabs. “Words aren’t necessary. I see the truth in your eyes. I have only to think back to our conversation to know the truth and the depths of your agony.”

“I thought you might have dragged the truth out of me that night I went to see you,” Lindsay muttered, looking up from his hands.

“I wanted to, but I knew that you would tell me if you wanted me to know. You have my sincerest, most profound sympathies. I cannot imagine what it must be like, what you must be feeling right now—”

“Rage. Pain. Hate,” he looked at his friend and his mouth twisted in a deprecating smile. “Lust, desire. I want to hate her for what she has done. I want to make her pay. Yet whenever I
close my eyes I can think of nothing other than pleasure—the pleasure I find only with her. What hold has she over me, Wallingford, that I should wish to forgive her so easily, that I can forget that she has given my child to another man to raise?”

“I can think of only one thing that could make a man forgive such a thing. Love, Raeburn, love is what hold she has over you. The same sort of elemental passion the poets talk of. The same, passionate, violent emotion that most men can only dream of finding.”

“I did have that with her.”

“You still have it, else you would not be trying to hate her, you
would
hate her.”

“It was all I ever wanted from her—her love and our child. She deprived me of a chance. I should despise her for it, yet all I can think about is my future, and how bleak and utterly black it will be without her in it. The whole matter is perverse, is it not? What the hell can be the reason for such depredation?”

“‘Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you,’” Wallingford said quietly and Lindsay saw that his friend was looking out the window at a place far, far away from the road they were traveling. “It is from Ephesians and the only passage of the Bible that I can recall. Perhaps I remember it because my grand mother would repeat it to me day after day as she fought tirelessly to reconcile me to my father. And to some extent, my step mother. She failed in that. I cannot forgive. But perhaps you have done just that. In your heart you have forgiven her. You have offered her the compassion of your soul. You share a pure love with her. A love that is so rare, so perfect, that it can survive anything—even betrayal. Even,” Wallingford said as he looked at him with eyes that shone sadness, “opium.”

The church bells rang, heralding the flock to the fold. The carriage rounded the bend and St. Ann’s Church loomed to their right. People dressed in their Sunday best were climbing the steps where the arched doors were opened and the welcoming glimmer of candles could be seen flickering from the ceiling of the nave.

Forgive and you shall be forgiven.
For the first time, Anais’s quiet words had new meaning for him. She had forgiven him for everything he had done. The question now was could he forgive her?

He must have spoke aloud, for Wallingford pressed forward and clasped a strong hand on his shoulder. “No, Raeburn, the question is, can you forgive yourself?”

Lindsay looked away, back to the church steps and the couples climbing them. “I…don’t know.”

“You must. To forgive is to free yourself from this opium prison you have built for yourself.”

“I have nothing without opium.”

Wallingford squeezed his shoulder. “Don’t you see? You have nothing with it, my friend.”

25

The choir sang the opening hymn as Anais ran her fingers along the gilded edge of her prayer book. Refusing to look up, she stared at the words before her, fearing that if she raised her chin and sang the words she would meet Lindsay’s green gaze from where he sat in his family pew ahead of her. He sat to her left, leaving her with a perfect view of his strong profile. He had only to glance over his right shoulder to find her. She could not look up, for she knew if she did, she would not be able to keep her eyes from the face that had once been so dear to her. That same, beautiful face was now the ghost of a man who haunted her dreams and plagued her thoughts.

How ill he looked. How tired. It was the opium, it was killing him, and so, too, was what she had done to him. When he had walked away from her that night, he had turned his back on her and welcomed another woman into his life. Opium was now his lover and her clutches were deep. So deep that Anais feared he was lost to her forever.

Her fingers shook slightly and Garrett, who was seated beside
her, reached out and settled his hand atop hers. She felt him looking at her, but she did not return his gaze. She could not hurt him any more than she already had. They had made their peace with one another. Garrett accepted her friendship, as she accepted his. There was love between them, but not the physical love that Anais felt—would always feel—for Lindsay.

As if knowing her thoughts, Garrett squeezed her fingers, giving her hand a reassuring shake, a silent acknowledgment that he was, and always would be, there for her. Her rock. Her pillar of strength when she was weak. She wondered who Lindsay had to cling to. How would he weather the storm?

The answer was etched on his face. Opium would be his safe harbor.

The choir had stopped and Mr. Pratt, the vicar of St. Ann’s, stood at the pulpit, smiling down upon the faces of his faithful flock. Anais met his gaze and she saw a glimmer in his normally sedate brown eyes. The church was full and she could tell that Mr. Pratt was overjoyed to have the four aristocratic families of Bewdley taking up their family pews as they once had, many long years before.