Obsession (13 page)

The dank walls of her cell weren’t dank at all.

The only light in her cell had been a thin beam that oozed through the slot in the door through which
they
had peered in on her. Yet the assault of light on her eyes now did not appear to materialize through the portal. It washed over her so blindingly bright it felt hot on her eyes, making them tear.

Where was she?

Obviously she was dreaming again—imagining that she had been removed from the horrible little cell with its fetid floors and rats as companions.

Cautiously, she lifted her head and was besieged by dizziness that settled in her empty stomach like thrashing waves. Her surroundings tipped and swayed, the light—so hurtful—turning the room and everything in it into spectral blurs.

She could just make out the furnishings: a chair covered with deep red velvet and adorned by tasseled damask pillows, wardrobes of intricately carved woods that stood nearly as tall as the ceiling. There was a fire snapping on a hearth where, upon the mantel-shelf there were figurines, their faces of white, smooth china, with tiny eyes and flirtatious smiles.

Upon the floor lay a carpet where sinuous, serpentine motifs of deep burgundy formed patterns upon a background of thick, cream-colored threads.

A gilded mirror filled up the space between two windows. In the mirror she saw a spectral being with hollow, glazed eyes and sunken features that were bloodless and gray, and white hair, shorn nearly short as a man’s.

It was dreadful, the pitiful creature. Frightened and wasted. It gaped back at her like a portent of death.

Nearby, a figure stirred. She saw it approach through the spectral light, its face radiating a strange blurry glow. A woman, as beautiful as the figurines on the mantel, with flowing red hair and eyes as cold as Meissen china. She stared, unsmiling, and Maria sensed—as she always did when in the presence of malevolence—a darkness emanating from the very heart of her.

She sank into the bed, withdrawing, forcing the oblivion to return. If she concentrated hard enough…

It was there, like evening shadows, and in her mind she reached for it and pulled it over her like a comforting blanket—warm, snug, feeling it slide into her thoughts and body, filling her up in a tide of equanimity that gently caressed her brain. Softer and softer rose the flow, with warm, soothing undulations until, at long last, she disappeared.

I
PROPPED THE LITTLE DOLL IN A CHAIR NEAR
the window. Its shaggy head drooped sideways, onto its shoulder. Its body—worn, dingy muslin plumped by down feathers—was lumpy and floppy. Bertha had, at some time, dressed it in a pale pink sleeping gown with ruffles around the throat, wrists, and skirt hem. Its round blue eyes stared at me.

“It’s appalling,” Edwina declared. “First she talks to ghosts, and now demands to play with doll babies that belonged to a dead girl.”

“She wasn’t dead when she owned it,” I pointed out.

“And that’s supposed to make it all right?”

I shrugged.

“It’s…frightening. Look at it. Its face is cracked right up the middle.”

I shifted my gaze to Edwina’s. “You’re starting to annoy me again.”

Edwina flopped into a chair. “I’m going mad with all this. As mad as she. This boredom is crucifying.”

“Then leave.”

Edwina’s blue eyes narrowed and she sank more deeply into the chair. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

“More’s the pity.”

“Sometimes I hate you, Trey.”

I gave her a flat smile.

“I’m hungry.”

“Then eat.”

“What, pray tell? That dreadful little scullery maid vows there isn’t a morsel of meat left to eat in this dreary place, aside from pigeon, of course. If I have to ingest another one of those filthy birds, I’ll vomit.”

“Again?”

I left my chair and moved across the room toward the doll. Outside the window, the weather was bleak, with swollen dark bellies of rain clouds swaging low over the horizon. It cast a gray, dismal haze through the windowpanes.

Gently, I picked up the doll, cradled the fractured head in one hand, and stared down into its eyes.

W
ITH THE STRIKE OF MIDNIGHT,
I
SAT AT THE
pianoforte, a candle placed upon the ebony case beside the doll—Sarah. The candle glow reflected off the doll’s painted eyes and formed a yellow halo upon the keys.

I didn’t need the light. I had played the song a thousand times in the dark, a million times in my head.
Maria’s Song,
my tribute of love to a woman who had once saved my soul—who now needed saving herself, and I felt helpless to do it.

I lay my hands upon the keys—no longer the hands of the man I once had been. They were hard and scarred, and I wondered if they still contained the ability to wander the keys in so caressing a fashion.

Closing my eyes, I let my fingers drift, each note resonating through the cavernous room, resonating through my heart. But the tune evoked no peace in me, only frustration; encouraged my anger, the need to storm into Maria’s room and shake her out of her idiocy.

Damnable patience!

How long could I maintain it? I was a man who always took what I wanted, when I wanted it, and to hell with the consequences.

“Sarah,” came the whisper, and my hands froze upon the keys as I turned my head.

She stood like a shadow beyond the light, vaguely visible in the long red nightgown I had obtained from Edwina. With her silver hair, she might have been an angelic illusion.

My heart climbed my throat and I wanted to jump from the stool and take her in my arms, clutch her to my chest, and cover her face with impassioned kisses.

Yet I sat, motionless, breathless, as if in the company of a bird; unwilling to frighten it, in hopes it would venture closer so I might revel in its wild spirit.

Slowly, my hands continued to skim the keys, the song drawing her closer, to the edge of the candlelight that reflected from her remarkable eyes. Hope beat inside my chest. The air burned inside my lungs.

She stared at the doll, tears rising to her eyes and spilling down her cheeks. Then she turned those blue orbs, framed by winged brows and long, pale eyelashes, to mine, and even as I watched, the cloak of madness began to crumble, little by little, allowing reality to filter through her confusion.

She gasped and stumbled back, turned one way, then another, her gaze flashing around the room until flying back to me. Her eyes widened. Her lips parted as she drew in a sharp breath, released it in whimper—and she collapsed in a faint to the floor.

I
PACED HER BEDROOM THROUGHOUT THE NIGHT,
watching her sleep until at last, exhausted, I dropped into a chair, the doll in my lap, and closed my eyes.

My thoughts teemed with the prospect that Maria had made a sort of breakthrough; the image of her awakening playing through my mind as melodiously as the strands of
Maria’s Song.

Surely I had not imagined it. Her eyes, burning into mine those brief seconds before her collapse, had inspired me with hope…and something else. Some niggling disturbance I was too frightened to acknowledge. It crawled in my stomach like acid. It seeped through my veins in a hot torrent.

Sarah.

“Where are the children?” Bertha had asked.

The children. The doll.

Sarah.

Dear God, was it possible?

While imprisoned in that hellhole, had Maria given birth to a child? A girl she had named Sarah?

I had refused to acknowledge to myself to what lengths of depravity she had been subjected. But now the thought was there. Maniacs, brute workers who would naturally assuage their bestialities on an innocent such as she.

The horrid images squirmed through my imagination and conscience until a groan worked up my throat and I covered my eyes, filled with a rage that made me shake with a need to commit murder. The anger and hate I had felt for my grandmother before was minuscule to what I experienced now. I ached to rip out her heart.

At last, wearied by my thoughts and my body’s physical and emotional war, I drifted to sleep.

Edwina’s scream awoke me with a jolt, and I stared up into Maria’s maddened eyes briefly before I instinctively ducked, just as she drove an iron poker down into the chair where my head had rested. The chair tipped, spilling me onto the floor; I rolled to my back as she stood over me, her hair a wild spray around her flushed face, her teeth showing in fury.

“Bastard! Give her to me.”

She swung the poker again. It trenched into the floor by my head, and I grabbed it, fought to hold it as she lurched backward, attempting to take it.

“Filthy, dishonorable fiend!” she screamed. “I won’t let you take her, do you hear me? I won’t let you take her again!”

Removing the doll from under my body, I flung it at her feet.

Dropping the poker, she swept it up, clutched it to her bosom and retreated to the bed, huddled against the headboard and gently kissed the doll’s face, stroked its matted hair.

“There, there,” she wept softly. “Mama’s here, my darling.”

Edwina fell beside me, helped me to sit up. We watched Maria as she rocked, tears running down her cheeks as she smiled into the doll’s staring eyes.

13

A
S DAWN EMERGED THROUGH THE SULLEN
clouds, I dressed for my journey to Menson.

“You can’t leave me here alone with her,” Edwina cried. “What am I to do if she lapses into a fit again?”

“Stay away from her. Keep the door locked. Should there be a problem with Maria, Herbert will deal with it.”

I tied a cravat around my neck before turning to face her. “She has the doll. That should pacify her.”

“If there was—is—a child, darling…what I mean is…what will you do?”

“Ascertain if it’s mine.”

“And if it’s not?”

“I’ll probably murder someone.”

Stepping from the house, I found Maynord waiting with my horse, its breaths bursts of vapor from its flaring nostrils. It pranced in place, eager to be off, and tossed its dished head, causing the bit to grind against its teeth. My cape swirling in the gusts of frigid air, I left Edwina standing on the threshold, wringing her hands.

The rutted and pitted road to Menson was covered with the season’s first thin ice, slowing my progress. By the time I reached the asylum, dark and looming amid the falling rain and sleet, the hour was well past noon. The intense cold gnawed at my feet and hands and made my bones ache.

Ruskin expressed little surprise when I shoved by his startled assistant and entered his office, a small space as gloomy as the cell in which I had found Maria weeks ago. His toad-like eyes wide in his fleshy face, he stumbled back against the wall as I approached, feeling as insane in that moment as the lunatics howling in the distant rooms.

“What the blazes are you doing here…Your Grace?”

“Where is she?” I demanded through my teeth, my anger mounting dangerously.

“Your Grace?” He swallowed and blinked. “Do you mean the woman? You took her—”

“Don’t disappoint me further with your miserable attempts at stupidity, Ruskin. I’ve ridden hours through the damnable cold and rain, and I’m in no mood to tolerate an imbecile.”

“I—I beg your pardon, but I cannot think—”

“The child, you moron. Where is she?”

His eyes glazed and his teeth began to chatter. “The child?”

“Maria’s daughter. Sarah. Where is she?”

“Your Grace, surely you must understand—”

“Understand that I don’t intend to leave until I get what I came for. What have you done with her?”

“I don’t know—”

I kicked the desk. It tumbled over with a crash, spilling papers and a lamp onto the floor. The wick flame set fire to the lamp oil and hot tongues lapped through the scattering of papers, igniting them in bright orange plumes that sent black coils of smoke in the air.

Ruskin shrank against the wall, trembling.

“Answer me,” I growled.

“Help!” he croaked. “Someone help!”

I slammed him twice against the wall. “If you don’t tell me, you filthy little man, I’ll kill you. And there won’t be a court in England who will hang me for it, because I’m a duke.”

Closing one hand around his throat, I began to squeeze.

He gasped and clutched my hand, his eyes bulging. “The child was taken…”

I closed my eyes briefly, the confession driving like a fist into my gut. So there
was
a child. No doubts now. Fear and rage became a tumult in me as I stared into his watering eyes.

“Whose child is it?”

“Please, Your Grace, you must understand: I’ll lose my position—”

“Better that than your life.”

“Yours,” he finally managed in a weak voice. “The child is yours, Your Grace.”

I felt shamed by the truth, and took an unsteady breath. “What have you done with her?”

“She took her. Your grandmother.”

I
T HAD BEEN INEVITABLE THAT
I
FACE HER.
A
S
I stood before her town house in Mayfair, London’s sooty rain beating upon my shoulders, I fought the familiar emotions I always experienced before confronting her.

Fury, yes. Disgust, aye.

Dread.

It washed through me as bitingly as the exhaustion and cold that made my bones feel brittle. Even my desire to wring her decrepit neck felt inconsequential to the consternation I always felt in her presence, like one attempting to stand toe-to-toe with a hydra. One never knew if one of her many faces would embrace with kindness, or bite.

The butler greeted me with a lift of one eyebrow and the news that the dowager duchess was occupied with friends.

“Not for long,” I told him, and strode through the foyer into the room where a collection of chattering peers all fell silent upon my unexpected entrance. They gaped at me as if I were a demon suddenly popped into their midst as I stood in the threshold, rain dropping from me and forming a puddle on the floor.

“Get out,” I growled at them, my gaze piercing my grandmother, whose expression went from shock to fury.