Madness (4 page)

Gabrielle sighed. It had been one trauma after another ever since her brother Chauncey had been arrested for murder. He had eventually escaped from prison and committed suicide, but his crimes had been great. So great that if finances had not dictated her move, she would have left their little village of Oxnard anyway.

In the circumstances she would never have been able to hold her head up in decent society ever again, and was trying to resign herself to the fact that given all that had happened, she would probably end up a poor obscure spinster. Though she was lovely, no one would want to ally themselves with such a tainted family.

Lucinda’s panicked reaction to the scandal had been to elope with Oxnard. He had pestered her with attentions, and she had decided that being a wife was far preferable to being an old maid.

But now Lucinda was, as Gabrielle had feared, completely dependent on him for every penny. She was little better than a piece of chattel to be disposed of at will.

Gabrielle had not despaired. There were worse things in life than being an old maid. Lucinda’s marriage had proven that, even if she had had her doubts.

But Gabrielle had always felt she could take her destiny into her own hands. That women were more than capable of managing their own affairs if only they were allowed.

There had been a period of trial and error as she had found her feet, but she had learned a moderate amount about money and bookkeeping, and invested her small fortune with the help of her cousin Randall, the Earl of Hazelmere. Then she had gone to London to start her new life and find some decent work.

She felt sorry that she had been so vociferous in her denunciations of her sister’s marriage when she should perhaps have been more supportive.

But the Earl of Oxnard had not been a man who inspired trust as a husband, not least because he had already had three wives and was still under thirty. Perhaps if she had been more sisterly, forced Lucinda to confide in her, none of this would have happened...

She sighed and finished changing her sister’s chemise and drawers. Of course she felt guilty, but her married sister had had a house full of servants down in Dorset. Surely someone should have contacted her? Told her how bad things had got?

It had only been by chance that she had heard she was unwell from her cousin when they had paid her a visit. Randall had had business down in Dorset, and his wife Isolde had been trying to let Lucinda know that bygones could be bygones. That they forgave her for all that their brother Chauncey had tried to do to their family.

Randall had insisted he would not interfere, that it would be Gabrielle’s decision alone as to Lucinda’s fate now that she was so ill.

So she had gone to Dorset and been doubly shocked at the neglect Lucinda had been suffering even though pregnant. Was Oxnard so lost to decency that he didn’t even care about the possibility that Lucinda was carrying a son and heir? It had made no sense. He had been married several times before, but still not begotten any progeny.

It had been the threat that Gabrielle would publicly expose him as a scandalously callous husband which had eventually secured her sister the consideration of a private chamber. Well, that and the appalling events the day she had been attacked...

Gabrielle looked around, determined not to think about that now. She sighed. The room wasn’t much, a cell just large enough to hold a cot and chamberpot, and little more. There was one tiny barred window just out of arm’s reach even if she stood on the wrought iron bedstead with its thin mattress.

But it was certainly better than being in the common wards, which she had to pass coming up and down the stairs every day.

She shuddered at the mere thought of the place. Every single depravity known to mankind occurred there. Her sister still bore the scars of the beating she had taken within her first three days of being immured within, and had been thrust into this total torpor by the sexual assault she had had to endure three days later.

Had had to endure until one of the other inmates, shuffling through the corridor for his monthly bath, had unexpectedly saved her. Saved them both. Simon….

Gabrielle could still feel the catch in her breath where her ribs had been battered as the assailant had lashed out at her, and then tried to turn his foul attentions upon her own tender person.

She had tried to shield her poor fallen sister and her own virtue as well. It had been an unequal struggle with a man in the throes of such mania.

Only the huge, dark-haired man, his lank, greasy hair obscuring his eyes, had come to their rescue.

Gabrielle had blacked out for a moment, but then the pressure had eased from her throat, allowing her to scrape a breath in past the inmates thick fingers.
 
She had seen a man glaring over the would-be rapist’s shoulder.

For a moment she had been certain he was about to pull the man away only so he could have a go at her himself.

Then he had lifted the giant off his feet and flat on his face in a second, stomping him down with one foot planted in the middle of his spine.

She had gasped as he’d torn off his shirt, exposing a huge chest and shoulders rippling with solid muscle. She’d steeled herself against ravishment once more.

The man had rent the garment in two with a single effortless tug. Using one piece of shirt he had tied the pervert’s flailing hands behind him tightly. With his knee planted firmly in the small of his back, her helper had then fastened the degenerate’s ankles.

Gabrielle had gaped in astonishment as her rescuer had lifted the savage man off the floor by the ankles with a single hand and hung him upside down from one of the wrought iron candle brackets nearly seven feet up the wall. With the man thus suspended, he had then come over to help her.

“Are you all right, Madame? Did he harm you and your sister very cruelly?”

He had taken her hand, sending a shiver of pure terror through her limp body.
Terror, or something more?

For despite his bedraggled appearance and emaciation, she had never seen a more handsome man. She had blinked, trying to think who he reminded her of.

His other hand had stroked down her side from just under her breast to the swell of her hips with a curiously impersonal gesture. She had shrunk away from him with a sucked-in breath and cry. Then the guards who were supposed to have been escorting him, or maintaining some sort of order in that hell hole, had moved to beat him to the ground.

“No, he didn’t hurt me. It’s my ribs!” she had shouted.

She raised her hands and inserted herself between the man and the guard with a raised truncheon. “No! Don’t hurt him! He was trying to help.”

She could see the weapon descending inexorably, and shoved the man’s barrel chest as hard as she could, while stepping back hard to ram her hapless rescuer out of the way. She trod heavily on his foot, and her buttocks came into contact with a rigid wall of flesh and bone.

One huge hand came up to steady her as she lost her balance. He staggered backwards slightly, taking her with him as he fell against the wall and hit it with a solid thunk.

Her whole body jarred and juddered against him. She gasped again, this time in shock comingled with desire. For some of his flesh was now even more solid than it had been a moment before.

Gabrielle was no fool: she had been poked, prodded and pressed enough in crowds and at balls and assemblies to know what this change in his body signified. She looked at her unconscious sister, and shivered. But the stranger had saved her…

And they were going to bludgeon the man to beetroot if she didn’t stop them. She took hold of his hand, pulling it from around her waist with her right hand and stepping forward to shield him. She kept hold of him with her left hand, forcing him to remain behind her.

“That’s enough! He didn’t do anything wrong. If he so much as gets a splinter from that baton I’m going to write a letter to
The Times
about everything that happened here today. How I can’t even come to visit my sister without being molested. How she herself was accosted and would have been violated by that odious creature had this man not intervened.”

She pointed at the man dangling from the hook, who began shouting the most foul execrations she had ever heard. She could only guess at the meaning of some of them, but his tone was more than enough to discern their import.

The man was foaming at the mouth like a rabid cur, his teeth white and snarling. She shuddered as he ranted about what he was going to do to her ripe young body as soon as they cut him down.

“And your sister!” he shouted. “You bloody pair of whores!”

To her surprise the man behind her squeezed her hand sympathetically, and rubbed the back of it with his thumb before removing his own from her clasp.

She started as his hands both descended upon her shoulders and came around her. Looking down, she saw he was draping his miserably tattered scrap of towel around her bared bosom. She clutched the rough cotton to her gratefully, and tugged up the shredded flap of wool, lace and linen which was dangling down below her navel.

His hands had vanished as suddenly as they’d come, but she reached behind her to touch him to show her gratitude. Her hands had brushed along his lower abdomen, and she’d felt him shudder and jerk. He snatched her hand and squeezed it tightly in both her own, gasping under his breath.

“Oh God,” he moaned softly. “I’m sorry.”

Gabrielle guessed in an instant what the innocent contact had provoked in him, but squeezed his hand once more. She flicked a look at him over her shoulder, meeting the most remarkable pair of pale golden eyes she had ever seen.

She caught a glimpse of a high brow, aquiline nose, generous lips, and a finely hewn chin with a cleft discernable under his heavy beard. If not for his gauntness, pallor, and the filth he was besmirched with, he would have been perfection.

A big
if
, of course, but once again it made her wonder who on earth he was. For she felt sure she had met him before. Or someone very like him…

“You have nothing to apologise for, sir. You saved me and Lucinda. Thank you.”

She faced the two guards, who were moving in to grab the huge man. “No! Leave him. Take up my sister and bring her to the infirmary. And you, get another man to help you get this vicious brute down and confine him before he harms anyone else.”

Still they pressed forward.

“No! Leave him. He’s done nothing to me. He’s fine. Please help my sister, before I’m forced to lodge a complaint against you for your appalling negligence.”

By now, the look on their faces had grown positively ugly. She had no idea what would have happened at that moment if a tall, sandy-haired man had not entered, and come running over to her side.

“My God, Gabrielle, what’s happened to you?” Dr. Herriot demanded, taking in her dishevelled appearance and white face.

“Never mind me, Antony. Lucinda’s been cruelly abused. The baby--”

He immediately went over to the prone woman’s side, and demanded of the still glaring attendants that they get help.