Enslaved (17 page)

“I wish things might have turned out differently, but I’m afraid it’s too late. This time together will always be very special to me. If you believe nothing else, I hope you’ll believe that.”

A sudden fear seized him, for it sounded as if she meant to end things between them, not in another week, but then and there. That he might never again know the magic of touching her, tasting her, looking into her beautiful eyes and watching her come was almost more loss than even he could bear.

Anger was, if not an escape, a temporary refuge from the raw, bloody hurt. “I don’t know why I should believe anything you say. Since we met again, virtually every word from your mouth has been a bald lie. And I swallowed them all, every bloody one, but then, you see, I wanted so very much to believe in you, in the possibility of us. And you made me believe. You didn’t need those acting lessons after all. You’re a natural actress or a born liar, take your pick. I’m supposed to be a rather smart fellow, and yet I started to believe we might have a chance at some sort of future together. But then you’re very good, Daisy, not only the consummate actress but also a top-tier whore. Keep the money. You’ve more than earned it.”

Faced with her open-mouthed stare, he felt as if there wasn’t enough air in the flat to sustain the both of them. Though the room was on the chilly side, he was sweating as if the four walls were ablaze. “Stay or go as you please, it’s your call.” He brushed past her and headed for the door.

She took a halting step in his direction. “Gav, wait, don’t go off, not like this.”

He whirled on her. “Don’t you ever call me that again, do you understand?” He stabbed a finger into the air to punctuate the point, vaguely aware that sweat had broken out all over his body. “Calling me familiar is a privilege of friendship. You, Miss Lake, no longer have that right.”

He tore his coat from the back of a chair and walked out the door, letting it slam behind him.

Later that evening, Daisy sat tucked up in a quilt on the carpet in Gavin’s study, settled in to wait. Sooner or later Gavin would have to come home and when he did she meant for them to talk. The younger, more impulsive Daisy would have packed her bags and left that very night, but at twenty-four she was getting too old for such offstage theatrics, or at least she liked to think so. Even though the Whitechapel flat was hers for another week, she wasn’t foolish enough to venture forth in the infamous criminal district alone past dark with luggage in hand. But more than any practical considerations, she didn’t really want to leave with their quarrel still burning like a red hot brand in her brain. Perhaps once Gavin came home from wherever he’d stormed off to, they might talk things over rationally and afterward part as friends?

She left the study door ajar on purpose so she’d be sure to hear him when he came in. Instead of a key turning in the lock, she heard the ubiquitous clearing of a throat she’d come to associate with household servants. A moment later, Jamison poked his silvered head inside. “Will you require anything further, Miss Daisy? I took the liberty of keeping your dinner warm. Shall I bring it to you before I retire?”

Even if he was only performing his servant’s duty, he really was a very dear man. “No, thank you, Jamison,” she said, forcing a smile. “I shall be fine until morning.” Her stomach was too queasy with nerves to think about eating. At any rate, she’d grown accustomed to sitting down to supper with Gavin. Dining was but one of the many things she would miss sharing with him once she’d gone. The admission prompted a hitch in her heart.

He nodded and backed out into the hallway. “Very good, miss. Goodnight then.”

“Goodnight.”

The short interchange was fraught with meaning. The elocution practice sessions, torturous as they had been, had paid off, yet one more thing about which Gavin had been in the right. Anyone overhearing her say, “No, thank you, Jamison, I shall be fine until morning,” might have mistaken her for a lady. Beyond her cultured tone, what astonished her most was how comfortable she felt in the role of mistress of the manor, or in the present case, mistress of the flat. Gavin’s flat had come to feel entirely too much like a home, her home as well as his.

She pulled the blanket tighter about her and took another sip of the small sherry she’d poured. Gavin was a creature of habit, and no matter what hour he returned, the study would be his first stop. They would have their chat in a calmer frame of mind and tomorrow she would see about moving her things back to the Whitechapel flat and starting the search for a nicer place. It was better this way, really it was.

And yet if this was truly better, why did she feel so very badly?

Fencing had been Gavin’s solace since his grandfather brought him back to London fifteen years before. The twice weekly lessons were one of the few aspects of his gentlemanly training in which he took actual pleasure, one of the few domains where he felt as though he could fulfill his grandfather’s expectations and still be himself. The sport provided a vigorous physical workout while requiring a sense of timing, strategic thinking and, above all, self-control. Prior to Daisy and he becoming lovers, the sessions had provided a desperately needed release, the surest means of salvaging his sanity—or what was left of it.

When earlier that evening he stormed out of his flat, instead of drowning his sorrows in drink, he headed for his fencing club. Part gymnasium and part gathering spot, the London Fencing Club kept liberal hours to accommodate its members’ varying needs and schedules. There was a small, informal sitting room where one might take refreshment after a match, and a telephone for guests’ use. Gavin hesitated and then rang up Rourke, reaching his butler instead. The Scot wasn’t in at present, but the butler promised to relay Gavin’s message inviting him down.

Rourke must have sensed Gavin needed more than a sparring partner, for Gavin had just emerged from the changing room when the Scot strolled in. “I’m more of a wrestler, mind, but I’ll do my level best not to disappoint.”

Gavin sent him a grateful smile. “Thank you.”

Ten minutes later, they faced each other in the fencing gallery, each attired in the requisite wire mesh mask, gloves, padded jacket, and white breeches and wielding foiled swords. It was the dinner hour, and they had the room to themselves.

Standing the requisite number of paces apart, Gavin lifted his foil, the tip hovering about Rourke’s.
“En garde.”

A newcomer to the sport, Rourke couldn’t come close to matching Gavin’s skill, but he was a natural athlete and over the past year he’d picked up the basics easily enough. He was more than able to handle himself in a friendly sparring session.

Only Gavin wasn’t feeling in a particularly friendly humor. He was out for blood, Freddie’s blood. In the absence of knowing that supreme satisfaction, he meant to make his friend sweat out every second. They had the safeties on their swords and wore the full complement of protective gear. In such controlled circumstance, where was the harm in pretending?

They advanced and retreated, slashed and parried back and forth across the empty gallery, Gavin mounting an unforgiving assault.

“You must have had a pisser of a day,” Rourke called out between labored breaths.

“You’ve no idea,” Gavin shouted back and then lunged forward, aiming for the heart.

The next few minutes were reduced to clashing steel and heaving breaths punctuated with the occasional grunt or oath. Sweat streamed Gavin’s face and neck, seeping through his white shirt into his padded doublet. Though he couldn’t see his friend’s face beneath the concealing mask, he knew Rourke would be in a similar state. At this point, he ordinarily backed off and gave the novice a chance to recover. Only in his mind it wasn’t Rourke he was fighting but Daisy’s lover, the faithless, feckless Freddie, nameless except for the absurd nickname. Gavin had never hated a fellow human being more.

Envisioning a fair-faced Adonis with a head of honey-colored curls, he easily parried Rourke’s clumsy thrust and then went in for the kill, the point of his blunted sword stabbing into the left side of the Scot’s chest. Even with the safety on, such a blow would leave his friend with one hell of a bruise.

“Jaysus, Gav, have a care.”

“Sorry,” he said, though in reality he was too far gone to feel much of anything beyond an irrational anger, a heated hatred.

Men and women share their bodies all the time without involving love. Matters go off a good deal more smoothly without adding messy emotions to the mix, or so I’ve always found.

Daisy’s callous declaration interspersed with the sounds of their sword play echoed in his ears. Of all the things she’d said to him earlier, hearing that their making love meant absolutely nothing to her hurt the very worst.

He went on full attack, thrusting ever harder and faster until he had Rourke backed into a corner. “Gav, what the devil’s got into you, man? Leave off. It’s just a practice match, for Christ’s sake.”

Too far gone to heed reason, Gavin went in for the kill. At the last minute, Rourke turned to the side, deflecting the blow and sending Gavin’s sword stabbing air. Committed to the attack as he was, the momentum carried Gavin forward. He caught a flash of steel coming toward him and the next thing he knew, pain seared his left shoulder. Holding onto his sword, he staggered back.

“Gav, it was an accident, I swear it.”

He slammed into the plaster wall, vaguely wondering why a bruise should hurt that much. A spangle of stars danced before his eyes. His knees buckled, sinking him as though he stepped upon quicksand.

He opened his eyes to find Rourke kneeling over him, his arm beneath Gavin’s head the sole anchor in a suddenly topsy-turvy world. Visor up, the Scot’s tanned face dripped with sweat. “The bloody foil slipped. Are you all right? Speak to me, man.”

Gavin shook his head. So many questions and focusing on any one suddenly seemed to require a Herculean effort. He tried for a shrug, and the pain that small movement brought about would have sent him to his knees were he still standing.

Gavin moistened his dry lips. “It was my fault. I wouldn’t leave off. Can’t be as bad as it looks. Just a scratch, I’m sure.”

Rourke’s grim face told him it must look bad indeed. “You’re bleeding like a stuck pig. I assume there’s a surgeon on the premises?”

Gavin managed a nod, his head feeling as heavy as a stack of stones. Jaw clenched, he looked down and saw a scarlet stain spreading over the left side of his white doublet.

Unclenching Gavin’s fingers from the sword hilt, Rourke gently drew away the weapon and set it safely on its side. “Stay here and try not to move. I’ll go and fetch the doctor.”

“Get me home, Rourke. I want to go home.”

He started to add “home to Daisy” when a shaft of white hot pain shot into his shoulder, stealing his breath and his will. The next thing he knew, his friend’s retreating form faded to black along with the rest of the empty room.

“Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy:
This wide and universal theater
Presents more woeful pageants than the scene
Wherein we play it.”
—W
ILLIAM
S
HAKESPEARE
, Duke Senior,
As You Like It

D
aisy must have drifted off to sleep because the main door opening caused her to start. She blinked and looked about. Though she’d left the desk lamp alight, it still took her a full moment to remember where she was and why she was there. Gavin’s study … They argued and then he walked out. He was hardly the first man to have done so and yet in his case she’d known he would come back eventually and not only because he lived there. It simply wasn’t in his nature to walk away, and yet years before hadn’t he done just that?

He was a boy, Daisy, a child the same as you. Forgive him and get on with your life.
Her adoptive mother’s words came back to her, their commonsense wisdom a balm to her bruised heart.

It had gotten chilly in the study. The blanket wrapped about her, she rose to stand on stiff legs. “Gavin,” she called out in a carrying whisper, loud enough for him to hear and yet not so loud as to wake the household, or rather Jamison, whose snores sounded from the far end of the hall. When no reply was forthcoming, she wondered if he might be deliberately ignoring her. She walked over to the door and poked her head out into the hallway. “Gavin, is that you?”

“It’s Rourke, but I’ve Gavin with me.” The Scot, not Gavin, called back to her from the outer room. “The surgeon’s seen to him and he’ll be fine.”

Surgeon! Daisy threw aside the blanket and hurried into the parlor.

Rourke had Gavin propped against the door. Leaning heavily on their friend’s arm, Gavin looked up at her and tried for a smile. “Daisy, you’re still here?” followed by “Sorry … didn’t mean to wake you.” Instead of the intermittent stammer, a slur thickened his speech.

She looked to Rourke. “Dear God, what’s happened to him? Is he drunk? Was there a fight?”

He’d left the flat in a temper, but Gavin still wasn’t the type to brawl. In the year they spent together at Roxbury House, she’d never known him to get into a single scrape whereas Rourke and Harry were always coming to her with blooded noses and blackened eyes.

“In a manner of speaking. Help me get him to bed, will you?”

“Of course. Follow me.”

She led them down the hallway to Gavin’s bedchamber, the room in which they’d made a lifetime of memories in such a very short span. It was difficult to believe that just the night before he’d been glowing with health.

She turned up the bedside lamp and threw back the bedcovers. Together they eased Gavin onto the bed. Daisy was shocked to find he was as good as dead weight. His arm floundered when Rourke released them as though he had no more muscle mass than air.

As if reading her mind, Rourke said, “It’s the laudanum. The club surgeon dosed him with it before beginning the stitching. Me, I would have called for whiskey instead. I only hope the wee quack dinna give him overmuch.”

So that explained the slurred speech and limp muscles. “I want to hear everything from start to finish, and see you leave nothing out.” She started on the buttons fronting Gavin’s damp jacket.

“The doctor, Pritchard, says he’ll call tomorrow morning. I gave him your direction. I hope that’s all right.”

“Of course.” It struck her that even their friends had begun treating her as though she were Gavin’s wife rather than his lover. She ought to feel, if not annoyed, then trapped, only she felt neither. At what point had her gilded cage begun to feel like a happy home?

Gavin’s jacket unbuttoned, she set to work on the shirt. She was easing it off his shoulders when he groaned. Looking down, Daisy saw the blood-soaked bandage covering a goodly portion of his left shoulder and felt her own blood turn to ice water.

She jerked her head to Rourke. “Dear God, what happened to him?”

Standing sheepishly by the bed, he could barely meet her gaze, putting her in mind of the boy from all those years ago. “We were fencing, just a friendly match, when the foil slipped off my sword just as I lunged forward and, well … I mean to stick with boxing from here on.”

She nodded. Men could be such ridiculous creatures. “I don’t suppose this doctor of yours left any instructions for his care?”

Her question apparently jiggled Rourke’s memory. “Oh, aye, I’d as good as forgotten.” He reached into his coat pocket and produced a small, brown glass vial. “It’s laudanum. Should he wake up toward morning in pain, you’re to give him one drop, no more and no less.” Handing her the medicine, he turned to go.

She nodded. “Thank you for bringing him home.” As soon as the words were out, it occurred to her how very much like a wife she must sound.
Bad, Daisy, bad.

On the threshold, he turned back. “Daisy?”

She looked up from Gavin’s sweat pearled face. “Yes, Patrick.”

“His first words after being struck were for me to be sure to bring him back home.”

Wondering where he was headed, she answered with a nod. “I’m sure he’ll rest best in his own bed.”

Rourke hesitated as if weighing whether or not to say more. “If you’ll pardon my saying so, it wasna his bed he was missing. It was you.”

As much as Gavin appreciated Rourke bringing him home, now that he was tucked into bed that the night before he shared with Daisy, he couldn’t wait for the Scot to leave so he might have her to himself. He knew he was supposed to be angry with her, he remembered that much, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember why. Rourke had plied him with whiskey in preparation for the surgeon stitching up his shoulder and the subsequent dosing with laudanum had sent him over the edge of sobriety.

Hearing the outer door close, he let out a relieved sigh and looked up into the beautiful if strained face of his nurse. “Do you realize how close to the heart that blade struck?” she demanded, tone admonishing. “You might have been killed.”

She bent over him to arrange his pillows, and he caught a glimpse of her breasts spilling out the top of her black silk wrapper. Remembering how perfectly they fitted his palms, how the hardened nipples felt against his fingers and lips and tongue, he realized he was randy as a game cock.

Straightening, she looked down on him, her lovely face serious. “Mind, you’re not to stir from that bed, do you hear me? If you need anything in the middle of the night, I’ll get it for you.”

“How will you know what I need?”
You, I need you.

She hesitated. “I’ll know because I’ll be right here beside you.”

Things were definitely looking up. “In the bed?”

Even in his stupefied state, he marked how her gaze slid away. “No, I’ll sleep in the chair. I wouldn’t want to risk bumping your shoulder.”

He’d be only too happy to have her bump into him though he wasn’t thinking of his shoulder. “I’ll have to bathe. You’ll have to help me with that.”

Turning back to him, she arched a brow. “It won’t hurt you to go to bed dirty for one night.”

“Now which of us is being a spoil sport?” Not giving her time to answer, he said, “You look fetching, by the way.” He sent her a lopsided grin and reached for her hand.

She let him take it, and he realized it was cold as well as trembling. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He rubbed his thumb along the seam of her palm, making sure to hit the sensitive spot he knew she liked. “Won’t you rest beside me … in the bed, I mean?”

She shook her head, apparently adamant. “No.”

“How about a goodnight kiss, then?”

She hesitated. “Are you certain you’re up to it?”

Glancing down at the erection tenting his trousers, he said, “Yes.”

“Very well.” Bracing her hands on the mattress on either side of him, she leaned forward and kissed him, a soft, sweet brushing of her mouth over his. Pulling back to look down at him, she asked, “There, better now?”

He nodded and reached up to cup the back of her head. Threading his fingers through her loosened hair, he was aware that his eyelids felt suddenly very heavy as though weighted with sandbags.
The sand man’s coming, Daisy. Best close your eyes or you might miss him,
he’d said to her on those nights at Roxbury House when she couldn’t seem to settle. So many years spent, so much innocence lost. His eyes drifted shut. Holding up his arm suddenly took tremendous effort as though it were made of lead rather than flesh and bone. He dropped it, and it landed bouncing on the mattress like India rubber.

Daisy’s hand, cool but no longer cold, descended on his brow, brushing back his hair. As if from the opposite end of a tunnel, he heard her say, “Good night, Gav.”

Straightening, Daisy looked down. Gavin was asleep, which was all to the good. Now that the drama of the moment was past, she realized she could do with a rest herself. Hearing he was hurt had affected her more than she would have thought. Though the wound was a nasty-looking gash, judging from the extent of the dressing, it could have been so very much worse. She hadn’t exaggerated when she said he might have been killed. A world without Gavin Carmichael was a world she didn’t care to imagine. Even though she meant for them to part ways at the month’s end, it was important to her that she leave him alive and well. She pulled the covers up over him and turned down the lamp.

She bent and brushed a kiss across his brow. “Sleep well, Gav. Like as not you’ll forget all this by morning, but I’ll remember every bloody word you said as well as all the ones you thought to but didn’t say.”

She pulled the chair up to the bed and settled in to watch and wait.

The club physician, Dr. Pritchard, came the next morning to check on Gavin’s progress. Jamison led him into the bedroom where Daisy sat beside the bed memorizing her lines from
As You Like It.
A sickroom might not be the ideal rehearsal hall but Gavin had insisted he didn’t want to stall her progress and she was glad enough for the distraction. Neither of them made mention of the found letter, the ensuing argument, or the fact she still meant to leave in another week. Matters between them went back to more or less normal—on the surface anyway.

Small and squat, the doctor reminded Daisy of some species of plump game bird—a squab or perhaps a pigeon. She stood at the bedchamber door while he examined Gavin’s wound and came forward when called to assist in changing the bloodied dressing for clean.

After they finished, Pritchard beckoned her out into the hallway. “Am I safe in assuming you are taking primary responsibility for his care?”

“Yes, that’s so.” If she had to stay past her final week to nurse him, she was prepared to do so.

Beyond a faint lifting of the brow, he gave no indication he found their situation scandalous or even untoward, but then in his profession, he must hear and see a great many situations that skirted the bounds of propriety. “In that case, see the wound is bathed and the dressing changed at least once a day. The salve I’m leaving you should ward off any infection, but if the site turns flush or putrid, send for me at once.”

“I will, doctor. Thank you.”

Gavin was lying propped up on a pillow, shirt off, the left side of his chest swathed in fresh bandages, when she reentered the room.

“What’s that you’ve got there in your hand?”

She glanced down the brown glass vial. “Laudanum. I’m to give you some just before bed to help you sleep.”

“I don’t want it,” he said, face fierce, and she suspected he must be recalling snippets of the previous night when his drugged state had loosened his tongue and his inhibitions. “You can toss it out for all I care.”

Rather than argue with him, Daisy shrugged. “As you wish, but I’d just as soon keep it on hand.”

She settled into the chair beside him and picked up the play script. She was searching the page for the place she’d left off when Gavin reached out, his hand going about her wrist. “Daisy, about the other night …?” Gaze locking on her face, he let the sentence fall off unfinished.

It had to happen sooner or later. The elephant in the room could not be ignored indefinitely. Stiffening, she looked up from the printed page. “Yes, Gavin?”