Lord Monroe's Dark Tower: The Albright Sisters: Book 2 (5 page)

“How did you get up here?” Flavian sounded upset.

“Don’t be cross.”

“You do not sleep here. I padlocked the door.”

Abella shrugged her shoulders and dipped her head, like a child imitating contrition. Then her eyes shifted to Claire. “These my things,” she said, as if issuing a warning.

Struggling to keep her voice calm against the staccato of her heart, Claire said, “How did you gather so … much?”

“Everyone be so generous. Of course, they know Vav my guardian, so they willing to give me.”

“I see … ”

Flavian let his hands fall away from Claire. She missed their safety. Chest tight, she fought to breathe normally.

Abella cocked her head to the side. “Is very late for visitor. Everything look better in sunlight.” She pushed the tattered comforter aside and slipped her dainty bare feet onto the floor. “There a reason I keep everything.”

“But what could that possibly be?” said Claire, too overcome to realize the rudeness of her question.

The smile left Abella’s face. “They my brother’s things. He die in Russia. He follow that fool Napoleon to Moscow. They tear him from his horse like wolves, and they ate the horse. They steal his boots and coat. He die betrayed by his men — starving, frozen.”

“How awful.”

Abella’s hands gestured in the air, molding her brother’s torment like a sculptor. “Hernando die with Cossacks riding down on him. Attacking from woods, attacking in middle of night, when he longed for rest. He die on way back from Moscow, walking over carcasses of thousands of dead men.”

Flavian went to Abella and pressed her head to his shoulder as he stroked her hair. “It’s all right, Bella. Tell Lady Claire in the morning. It’s late.”

But the girl didn’t seem able to stop herself or even to be aware that he’d spoken. “There no food in Moscow when they go there, but he was warm. The city burn … that night and for days after … ”

“Let’s get you to your room downstairs,” Flavian said, urging his ward off the bed. “It’s more comfortable.”

“At least he warm in Moscow. But the Russians, they leave that city. It empty when Hernando get there. He starve to death.” Abella looked at Flavian, her face a mask of woe.

“They didn’t take all the food,” he assured her. “Hernando had a hot meal in Moscow. I’m sure of it.”

The girl’s despair changed to suspicion. “What he eat, Vav?”

Flavian bit his lip and searched the piles of rot for inspiration.

Suddenly Abella clapped her hands like a small child. “I know! The wheat, just like this.” She bounded toward Claire and caught her by the wrist. “Come quickly.”

Darting into the cave-like opening, Abella laughed and chirruped in delight, pulling Claire under the filthy sheet and into the hall. “Wheat,” Abella cried, poking a hole in a rotting bag. A stream of yellow seed poured onto the floor. “This what Hernando ate.”

• • •

“Ratafia?” Flavian asked in the parlor after they’d left Abella in her clean downstairs bedroom.

“Brandy,” Claire replied. The drink wasn’t proper, but she needed something stronger than a dainty cordial.

Her hands shook as she accepted the glass of amber liquid.

“Poor thing, Abella was a shock to you. Forgive me. I didn’t give you sufficient warning.”

“I’m the one who needs forgiveness for pushing you into taking me there,” Claire said, hoping the nightcap would still her trembling fingers. “What a silly goose. I panicked.”

“You only did what any natural being would. It’s a terrible place.” He took a swallow from his snifter and ran a hand over his face. He looked so sad and worried, and Claire longed to touch his shoulder and soothe him. “It must be difficult to explain … the tower … Abella’s feelings about her brother.”

“More than painful,” he said.

“I wonder how she can bear the confusion and disorganization.”

“She doesn’t see any of it. For her that mess is a great accomplishment — years of labor for a noble cause.”

“Extraordinary how the mind sees what it wants to see.” The tower’s horrors replayed in Claire’s mind: rats dashing toward her skirts, burrowing under filthy rags, the rubble, the stench. It was as if her nose were filling with the scent. Her arms went numb and she heard buzzing. Holding onto the back of a chair, her vision blurred, and she fought to keep from fainting. Thousands of black dots danced before her eyes.

“You’re pale,” Flavian said, taking the glass from her with one hand as he supported her with the other. “Come, lie down.”

The room went black as her legs buckled. As if he were miles away, she sensed Flavian lifting her.

When she came to, she tried to apologize, but the words wouldn’t come. There was only the smooth silk upholstery of the settee, cool under her fingertips, as she closed her eyes, fighting tears, struggling to find peace away from Abella’s devastated tower.

The chill edge of the brandy glass touched her lips. “Drink,” Flavian said gently. His hip touched her waist as he sat beside her. The fiery sweetness of the liquor washed over her tongue.

“I don’t know,” she swallowed, “why that happened. I don’t faint normally.”

His gaze lingered on her — studying. “Even pale and frightened, you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

“How kind of you.”

He shook his head. “Kindness has nothing to do with it.” An animal fire lit his eyes as he regarded the top of her bodice. He swallowed and looked at his hands. A melancholy ghost seemed to invade his soul. He turned from her and smoothed her gown, standing to pull a fold over her ankles.

But she wanted him near — longed for the kindle of his body at her side. “Take my shoes off,” she whispered so softly she wondered if he heard — and half hoped he hadn’t.

He stiffened for an instant. Then, as if losing a battle for control, he fell to his knees at the far end of the settee. With the reverence of a starving man faced with a cup of ambrosia, he ran a hand along the exposed top of her foot. Light as a feather, he pushed the gown back up past the beribboned binding of her slippers. At the exposure of her ankles, he drew a short breath. Fingertips jostled the bow and the silken ribbons unraveled, dropping like leaves. His hand lingered on the ridge of her right shin before it brushed down to her ankle, circling the slim circumference. He lowered his head as if he were going to kiss the tender bone above the joint, and then, with obvious effort, controlled the impulse and sat back. The heat of his palms, the strength of his fingers, sent a bolt of sensation to her core. For the first time, she became aware of a deep primal urge that made her pant slightly in the confining cloth of her undergarments.

Once again, he seemed to lose the test of will, and his hand plunged between the arch of her foot and the slipper, his thumb tracing the crescent of her sole. Then her footwear clunked to the floor.

The next shoe came off more quickly, as if he could no longer wait for the appearance of her furthest extremity. Where the ribbons had strapped her flesh, cool air now stirred. His hands, hot and insistent, caressed her ankle, stroking the protruding nub of the heel. Again, he hesitated. Claire closed her eyes and stretched ever so slightly toward him, her body humming. He fingered her stocking-clad toes, tugged on each one, and then slipped a finger between her big and index toe. A gasp escaped her lips, and her body shook with sensation.

Instantly, he bolted to his feet.

Overcome with shame, she sat up, avoiding his eyes. “How unseemly of me,” she said, straightening her skirt.

“Not at all.” He turned his back, looking discomfited. As he headed for the brandy decanter, she noticed that the front of his pants jutted. “I took advantage of your vulnerability,” he said, “your distress over Abella’s state. It was a terrible thing to do.”

“Please don’t say that. I … I’m equally responsible. My reaction to your ward … it has affected you as well. It’s for me to make amends.”

He took a long time pouring himself a glass. She smoothed her skirts, giving him time to calm his excitement and end her own.

He lifted the snifter but paused before sipping. “She is innocent, you know. She can’t help her mad thoughts.”

“You’ve tried to stop her collecting then?”

“Every specialist in England has been to see her. One wise sage told me to beat her each time she brought something home. He suggested I use a green branch because the whirring sound would be the most frightening and the sting would last the longest. Another thought the cat-o’-nine-tails we used in the Navy would be more effective.”

He returned to the settee carrying the cut crystal decanter. “God help me, I did it,” he said, placing the vessel on a side table. Candlelight refracted in the glass, creating wavering stars on every surface. “I beat her.” Rubbing a hand over his chin, he stared at the decanter without seeing.

“Oh dear … ”

“I wasn’t even angry when I took her to the tower and started the lashing. She kept screaming, ‘Why are you doing this?’ And then she fought as if possessed by the devil. Even when she was free, she didn’t stop. Anything she could get her hands on she threw or smashed or tore. The girl came apart — there was nothing left of her reason.”

“What did you do?”

“Two footmen held her down while I forced whisky into her mouth. We tied her to the bed, and her maid slept in a chair that night. At six the next morning, Abella woke in such agitation, she broke a tooth.”

“I can’t imagine how upset you must have been.”

“She spit the tooth at me when I came to see her.” By the end of the tale, he looked exhausted, as if his body weighed too much, and he sank onto the settee.

Claire wracked her brain for something comforting to say. “I’ve heard they treat the insane with rhubarb, chalk, and mercury. None of it seems very effective. There is valerian root. It might calm her … ”

He straightened. “Then you think there might be a cure in one of your remedies?” Before Claire could speak, he gripped her hand. “I can’t tell you how grateful I would be for anything … anything you could do.”

Claire understood now why he’d invited her to Bingham Hall. It wasn’t love he sought — it was a cure for Abella’s madness. He wanted her power to heal the sick. Her mouth went dry with disappointment, but she forced herself to speak. “There’s also the German scientist, Friedrich Serturner. He’s separated the painkiller in opium from the hallucinogenic. The drug is called morphine. But Abella’s voice, her vibrancy — would you want to lose that to keep her sedated?”

“Is it better that she’s kept here, buried in her sad tower? If there’s any chance for her to be well … any chance.” The excitement in Flavian’s voice almost made Claire smile.

Medical challenges were always welcome. Perhaps a calming remedy could help. This wasn’t like the situation with Mrs. Optkin and her stillborn babe. There was hope here, and maybe, just maybe, a chance to do something to make up for the child’s death.

In the morning, rain streamed from the sky and the air carried a raw chill. As Claire approached the breakfast room, she overheard voices. Flavian’s baritone and Abella’s melodious timbre pitched higher than usual. Could they be in the middle of an argument? The closed door absorbed their words, so Claire couldn’t hear what they were saying and she felt too guilty to eavesdrop. She rattled the handle before making her entrance. The room went quiet. Pushing the door open, she noticed that no footmen attended the breakfast table.
Probably dismissed as the argument heated
. Abella held a slice of toast, thick with orange marmalade, her brows stitched together in sullen anger. She turned the bread this way and that, daring the marmalade to drip onto her bodice.

Flavian poured coffee at a sideboard, his back rigid.

“Good morning,” Claire greeted them.

“Good morning to you, too,” he said, rallying a thin smile. “Would you like to join me in a cup of coffee?”

“Chocolate for me, thank you.” Claire caught the briefest glimpse of Abella rolling her eyes.

The girl dropped the toast onto her plate jelly side down. “So you here for my health, and I not to go with you to London?”

Claire froze. “I would like to do something to help you.”

“Can you lift seven-stone sack of grain?”

“No.”

“Well, I can. So, there my health for you. I fine. It Vav. He worry too much.”

“What does he worry about?”

“Silly things.”

“Such as?”

Flavian put a cup of chocolate beside Claire’s plate.

Abella scrutinized his movements with the watchfulness of a cat. “Such as my collection — he no like it.”

Pulling out a chair next to Claire, across from Abella, Flavian sat down with his breakfast.

Immediately, the girl pushed away her cup of chocolate, and then drew it back so the brown liquid sloshed over the edges and onto the white tablecloth. Flavian left his seat, walked around the table and gripped her arm.

“Get a hold of yourself,” he commanded.

She shook him off. Her features went as dark as a tavern thug’s.

Flavian daubed at the stain with a napkin. “As I explained earlier, I’m concerned with the state of your nerves, not with your collection.”

Abella pinned Claire with a gaze. “You said London lie at my feet.”

“I have no doubt they will swoon with your first note,” said Claire, “but … ”

“You see, Vav,” Abella pushed his hip, forcing him away as he hovered over her, cleaning the spill, “there be people who believe in me. People who believe in beauty of my voice.”

Flavian returned to Claire’s side. “No one doubts … ”

“And Lady Claire sister, she want me,
si
?”

“If your guardian is concerned about your nervous condition, you must obey him. I could not interfere.”

“But nothing wrong with me! Vav fuss because I love my brother.”

How she wished she’d never issued that invitation. Claire tangled her hands in her napkin. “Could you love him too much?” Abella’s eyes narrowed, but Claire continued, “Because my Uncle Sebastian, of whom I was terribly fond, died a few years ago. As much as we adored him, we have no rooms stacked with things for him in the hereafter.”