by Lenora Bell
He’d thought he would have years to crumble slowly, but this was no slow fade, this was a landslide and it swept everything away.
Madness dragging him down. Smothering him.
Clawing to the surface only to be dragged deeper and deeper.
Dr. Forster arriving.
Lear. Patrick. Shaking him by the shoulders. He thrust them off and threw himself at Coleman.
“You animal!” Nick slammed his fist into Coleman’s nose, and his vision exploded to red.
“He’s insane,” Coleman screamed.
Not a fumbling, bumbling descent but a rushing, roaring one that consumed from the inside out and left nothing but a husk of a man, a man who used to be able to feel the blood pumping in him and then nothing, darkness, and he would have nothing, no one to care for him.
His heart galloping so fast he clutched at his chest, trying to slow it. He staggered and hit a wall. His head pounding, pounding, his mouth like cotton wool.
Alice so blurry now, he could see nothing but a faint streak of blue-green eyes.
Everyone disappearing, fading like light from the gathering dusk.
He had one final thought before true darkness descended:
He loved Alice.
And now he would never have the chance to tell her.
Chapter 28
The following are the men who generally obtain success with women: Men who are celebrated for being very strong (bull-men) . . . enterprising and brave men.
The Kama Sutra of Vātsyāyana
Her fault.
Nick had experienced a delirium induced by his fear and by the unwholesome atmosphere of the madhouse, and his mind had broken.
Lear and Patrick had taken charge, half carrying Nick to the carriage.
His huge frame was convulsing. Dr. Forster instructed Lear to pin him down. Alice sat across from him and held his hand.
At Sunderland they rushed him to bed.
“Tie him to the bed,” Dr. Forster instructed. “Close all the curtains. Instruct the servants to be absolutely silent.”
Alice raced from the room and down the stairs, bursting outside into incongruous sunlight. She frantically searched through the kitchen garden for lavender to calm him.
“What’s wrong?” Bill asked, following her down the garden path.
“Lord Hatherly is having an attack. We must all be very quiet. Please inform the other servants.”
“What are you looking for?”
“Lavender.”
“Here.” He plucked some and handed it to her.
“Thank you, Bill.”
She rushed back to the bedroom. Nick’s convulsions were so strong they shook the bed. Dr. Forster had stripped him to the waist.
Alice crushed lavender between her nails and rubbed it on his temples. “Please,” she whispered. “Please come back to me.”
“He’s convulsing!” Dr. Forster shouted. “Leather for his mouth.”
Lear slit a chair cushion with a knife he produced from somewhere in his clothing, and tore a strip of leather free. He worked Nick’s jaw open and stuffed the leather in his mouth to keep him from biting his tongue.
Nick mumbled something incoherent, thrashing against his restraints, straining, the muscles bulging in his arms, his veins popping blue against his tanned skin.
Alice held tight to Nick’s head, trying to keep him still.
“Nick, shh.” She smoothed lavender over his temples. “Listen to my voice, Nick. Follow my voice. I’m here with you.”
The duke and Berthold came to the door. “What’s happening?” the duke asked, his voice trembling. “Nicolas, my boy, what did they do to you? The orchids warned me something bad would happen. They said you would suffer for my sins.”
Berthold placed an arm around his shoulders. “We can’t do anything, Your Grace, best to wait in the other room.”
Oh Nick, she thought. I should have listened to you. You were trying to tell me. But you didn’t want to admit to any weakness. You big, stubborn fool.
“He told me he didn’t want to go,” Alice said. “It’s all my fault. He knew this might happen. He knew he might go insane.”
“He’s not going insane,” Dr. Forster snapped. “He’s been poisoned.”
Poisoned? Not insane. Poisoned.
Alice and Lear exchanged a glance. “The tea,” she breathed.
Nick’s cup, shattering when he set it down. A red handle; she saw it in her mind. Her handle had been . . . blue. Coleman must have poisoned Nick’s teacup.
Alice recalled thinking it was odd that the tea had already been poured.
“Oh, thank God,” said Alice.
Poison they could control, couldn’t they?
“I wouldn’t thank him yet,” Dr. Forster said. “He’s not out of danger. It was a very large dose. Belladonna, if I’m not mistaken; look at his pupils.”
Alice raised one of his lids; his eyes were nearly black the pupils were so enlarged. No silver visible.
“A large enough dose to kill an ox, but he’s strong and I think he’ll survive. Everyone must be quiet. He needs absolute silence and darkness. And we’ve got to stabilize him. Hold him down, Patrick and Lear. Keep him covered. Lady Hatherly, you keep speaking to him in a soft voice, he seems to like that, his eyelids flicker when you speak.”
Alice held his face in her hands, her tears falling on his cheeks as she bent over him.
“Nick, she whispered. “I love you. Nick, please come back.”
She didn’t even care that everyone in the room must have heard her say she loved him. She didn’t care if he knew it.
If only he woke up, if only he wouldn’t die, she would tell him again and again.
“Nick,” a voice cried from far away.
Scent of lavender.
A soft voice.
Alice.
Was she down here with him? Had he dragged her into the abyss?
Arms holding him, encircling him. “Come back.”
Tears wet on his face. Her tears. Her soft voice calling.
A stern voice now. “I’ve had about enough of this. Now follow my voice and come back to me.”
A thread spooling before him.
Laughter. Dimples. A body. Not a body. Her body. Alice. She wasn’t here with him; she was in the sunlight, trying to save him from the darkness.
You can’t save me, Alice. He couldn’t breathe. Fear clutching at his throat. Taking away his breath.
“I love you, Nick.”
The words pierced through him.
She loved him and he would never emerge from this prison.
He’d gone mad. No other explanation for this darkness and these delusions. For the rest of his life, he’d always be searching for the lavender scent of her hair and the turquoise color of her eyes.
Not knowing why.
Just searching, as his father searched for orchids everywhere.
Finding orchids in the cotton stuffing of chairs.
Mistaking dandelions for rare blooms. Or even, once, a tuft of white hair the duke snatched from his hairbrush. Holding it up, so proud.
Lovely things, the coelogynes, he’d said, stroking the puff of hair.
Soft, yet hardy. I brought these back from eastern India. Tolerate drought and neglect, and flower faithfully—snow-white or emerald-green with black stripes. Scent like a freshly peeled orange.
Nick had dutifully sniffed, gulping back emotion. Wanting to cry.
Never allowing himself to cry.
That’s how Nick would be with Alice. He’d see her everywhere. Hear her voice everywhere. He’d feel her soft hand on his cheek.
She kissed him. Holding him like a punishment for everything bad he’d ever done. It was a punishment because her love would torment him the most. Her love was his final error.
The darkness came again then, blotting her out, snuffing her voice to silence.
His bright, curious Alice. His greatest mistake.
Chapter 29
It is only,
moreover, when she is certain that she is truly loved, and that her lover is indeed devoted to her, and will not change his mind, that she should then give herself up to him.
The Kama Sutra of Vātsyāyana
The next few days passed in a blur of carrying on with life, while her heart and mind lay sleeping in the bed with the still unconscious Nick.
Patrick came to report that he’d had Coleman arrested for attempted murder and he was being held in jail awaiting trial.
Lear assured her that Jane was halfway to Scotland now and safe from pursuit.
Alice sat with Nick every day, as she was sitting now, in a chair beside his bed, holding his hand, reading to him, crushing lavender and soothing it over his temples.
Kali liked to sleep curled up against Nick’s side. She was here now, sniffing Nick’s cheek inquisitively.
“He’ll come back to us, Kali,” Alice said. “He must.”
Dr. Forster entered the bedchamber for his daily visit. Even though his medical specialty was lunacy, Alice wouldn’t allow another physician to tend Nick. She trusted the doctor completely.
“How is he today?” Dr. Forster asked.
“The same.”
“Please go out, Lady Hatherly. You’ll make yourself sick and he needs you strong and healthy when he recovers.”
“You think he will come out of this?”
“I have seen patients in a comatose state for months that suddenly recovered. Now go outside. The sun is shining. You’ll do him no good if you are weak with an illness.”
Reluctantly, Alice left the bedchamber.
She walked the path to the orchid conservatory.
She hadn’t been out of doors in days. The sun felt like a kiss on her cheeks.
She found the duke in the conservatory with Berthold, tending his orchids.
“How is he?” Berthold whispered with worried eyes.
“The same. But the doctor said I needed to come outside and enjoy the air. So here I am.”
“It will do you good, my dear,” said the duke. “Remember the orchid you helped me water last week? See what you did? Isn’t she lovely?”
Alice knelt on her knees to have a closer look.
The orchid’s beauty almost hurt her.
The perfect swooping formation of the five overlapping petals, the cup in the center with its two symmetrical tendrils, the small bud inside bordered by very precise marking like the stripes on Kali’s flanks.
The petals weren’t uniformly purple, but crisscrossed with a spider’s webbing of violet veins, like the veins visible beneath the skin of her wrist.
She loved those flowers with the fierce awe of possession.
She had helped create this beauty and now it was here, in this world, a burst of velvet purple and a secret spiraling darkness inside.
Several more small buds, as long as the distance from her nail to her knuckle, were close to opening. The power to form blossoms surged in the roots of the plant, replete with life and possibilities.
The duke handed her a watering can. “Why don’t you water it, my dear? Remember, only a small amount of water. And don’t leave even one drop on the petals or the leaves. They don’t like that.”
Alice tended the orchid, giving it a nice soaking drink and wiping the waxy green leaves dry with her skirts.
Some of the root tendrils curled straight up into the air instead of down.
Dr. Forster had been right. Being here with such beauty was good and right.
Nick was too strong to succumb to poison.
He would wake soon.
Alice leaned back on her heels.
Today was the day her ship sailed. And she wasn’t on board.
How could she be, when Nick lay inside the house, unconscious and dreaming, growing paler every day?
Here in the humid air, with the trickling sound of water dripping from the plants and the scent of vanilla, she listened to the orchids whisper of new beginnings.
Of new adventures.
The duke lifted his head and stared straight at her. “Can you hear them, my dear?”
“Yes.” Alice’s eyes filled with tears that spilled over, streaking her cheeks. She was careful not to drop any tears on the orchid leaves.
“I can hear them,” she whispered.
Chapter 30
When a lover coming home late at night kisses his beloved who is asleep on her bed in order to show her his desire, it is called a “kiss that awakens.”
The Kama Sutra of Vātsyāyana
“Brandy,” Nick croaked.
“Oh my God.” Alice clutched his hand. “You’re awake. Nick, you’re awake! Send for Dr. Forster,” she shouted at March.
March, who had been hovering by the bedside more often than not during Nick’s illness, immediately bolted for the door.
Nick tried to sit up, but Alice laid a hand on his chest. “Don’t try to move. Lie still.”
“Alice?” His eyes drifted open. “Where am I?”
Dr. Forster had told her that it wasn’t uncommon for the delirium induced by belladonna poisoning to be accompanied by a temporary state of amnesia. He’d said Nick probably wouldn’t remember anything about what had happened.
“I’m so thirsty,” Nick said. “I need brandy.”
Alice laughed, so happy to hear his voice, even if it was a croaking shadow of its former bass rumbling. “I’ll find some brandy but I’m going to weaken it with water.”
“Water my excellent brandy?” he said. “That would be . . . a crime.”
He was still weak; she could see by the way he struggled to breathe.
She handed him a glass. “Sip this slowly.”
He obeyed her orders, taking small sips. He fell back against the pillow. “Good brandy.”
“Lear brought you another case yesterday.”
“Good man.”
“Nick, you scared me so much.” Alice squeezed his fingers. “Don’t ever do that to me again.”
“What did I do?”
“Do you remember going to the Yellow House?”
“No. I don’t remember . . . anything. I remembered your name, though, didn’t I? Alice, have I gone mad?”
She threaded her fingers into his fingers. “No, and you never will.”
“You can’t know that for certain.”
“I don’t have to know it. I feel it.” She brought his hand to her heart. “Here.”
“We went to the Yellow House?”
“We did. You were very anxious and I knew I never should have asked you to go. And then Coleman poisoned you with belladonna and you had a violent delirium with paroxysms. You lunged at Coleman and beat him.”
“Excellent,” Nick said with satisfaction. “At least I landed a punch.”
“Coleman’s being held on suspicion of intent to murder. So we won after all. And Mr. Stubbs has his Annie. Lear helped them book passage on a ship bound for America where they will start a new life.”
“I remember one thing.” Nick smiled. “The scent of lavender, seeping through the darkness. You sat with me, didn’t you? All day and all night.”
“I was so frightened. I didn’t know your fear of going mad ran so deep. You should have told me. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to appear weak.”
“You’re not weak, Nick, you’re so strong. Any other man would have died with a dose of poison that lethal. Coleman was trying to discredit you, and perhaps if he’d administered a smaller dose, no one would have been the wiser. People would have thought you had a manic episode, triggered by visiting the asylum, but the dose he used was too strong. Enough to kill an ox, Dr. Forster said. And you survived.”
She kissed his knuckles. “I knew you would wake up.”
He wanted her to keep touching him.
Bringing their joined hands to his lips, he kissed the center of her palm, inhaling her clean, womanly scent.
Lavender. Lemon. A hint of salt spray.
A hint of adventure.
; A disquieting thought gripped his throat. “Alice. How long have I been asleep?”
She smiled warily. “Five days.”
“Five days . . . but that means your ship . . . has it already sailed? What are you doing here? You have to go to India.”
“I wasn’t going to leave you when you might die, Nick. How could I leave and spend six months on the ocean wondering if you were alive or dead?”
“But you won’t be able to give the scholars your missing chapters of the Kama Sutra. They’ll be waiting and no one will arrive. I never wanted to come between you and your dreams, Alice.”
“I know that, Nick. You’ve encouraged my dreams at every turn. Outfitting my study. Finding me a tutor.”
Nick shook his head. “You should have gone. You can’t abandon your dreams for me.”
“I should have listened to you. You had a very good reason not to go to the asylum. I blindly forged ahead without thinking that you might have a legitimate reason. I should never have forced you to go.”
“You didn’t force me to do anything. I made the choice. And you have to find another ship. Is there another in your father’s fleet that will be leaving this month? You’ve worked so hard on this, Alice. I won’t let you give everything up for my sake.”
“You want me to leave?”
“Of course I do. You must follow your dreams to India.”
Dr. Forster arrived. “Awake, are we?”
“And obstinate as ever,” Alice said.
She dropped his hand and rose from the bed.
Nick heard the hurt in her voice and he didn’t know how to make anything better.
She was fearless and unconventional and she wasn’t his to keep.
She was something of the wind that blew through his life and lifted the dust from his heart. He could never be the one to destroy her dreams.
“Good to see you in the land of the living,” Captain Lear said, shaking Nick’s hand. “Scared us there for a moment, Hatherly.”
“Lear, I upset Alice. She left in a huff.”
“What did you do, you fool?”
“She missed her ship to India. And I told her she should find another one. That she should leave and she became agitated.”
