by TJ Bennett
I bit my lip and slowly withdrew the chain around my neck until the pendant dangled before me. The cameo Jonathan had given me in honor of Eliza’s birth—whether out of guilt at his behavior during my pregnancy or out of generosity, I could never be certain—glowed pale as a pearl in my hand, its surface shiny from handling. The carved shell displayed the image of a mother and infant in relief, the mother cradling the child protectively in her arms.
I had not protected my little one, and now she lay in the ground, far away.
I thought of the stillborns of Ynys Nos. I could not help but picture all of those little babies, silent and motionless, crushed under the weight of the Earth as they slowly rotated beneath the pitiless gaze of the sun. I saw Eliza’s blank stare, Jonathan’s, too, and felt the Siren call of madness whispering just on the edges of my sanity.
I gripped the cameo in my hands and slid down onto the overstuffed chair. “No,” I moaned. “Never again.”
I rocked in the chair, fighting the images to exhaustion, forcing them out of my mind. I needed something to do, to be, other than trapped and alone with too much time on my hands to think. I jumped up and raced to the door, flinging it open to the footman’s astonished stare.
“Bring me a dusting cloth and some polish,” I demanded.
He gazed at me stupidly. “Ma’am?”
“This room is dusty and I intend to clean it. It is imperative you bring me what I need at once.” I forced myself to slow my breathing lest I hyperventilate. “Please.”
He frowned. “Ma’am, I can have someone come. It wouldn’t be proper for you to do it. What would the master say if he saw gentry cleaning his library?”
I clasped my shaking hands in front of me. “I understand, and I do not wish to intrude upon anyone’s duties, but I am not used to being idle. Cleaning is a kind of therapy for me. I use it to—to occupy myself. It would make me happy. Will you please fetch the things I need? I will explain to your master when I see him if it causes you any difficulties.”
“Y-yes, ma’am,” he said doubtfully. “I’ll only be a moment, then.” He raced away.
One thing was certain: Gerard’s staff was well trained to give in to the demented foibles of their “betters.”
The man returned five agonizing minutes later with the articles in hand. “Certain you won’t be needing some assistance, ma’am?”
“No.” I took the cleaning things from him and waved him away, shutting the door in his face.
He had thought to provide an apron for me, and I tied it over my dress, tucked the cameo away, and went to work. I started at the bookshelf nearest me, but the shelves at eye level already gleamed. Therefore, I got down on my hands and knees to wipe the spaces in between the books on the lower shelves. No one ever thought to clean there, I noted with vicious satisfaction, and swiped at them without mercy. Finally, I found a ladder and stood on it to dust the highest shelves. Whoever had cleaned in here before had been slothful in attending to the tops of the books. I attacked them, wiping and sneezing as the dust invaded my nose.
And that is how Gerard found me.
“What the devil—” he exclaimed from the doorway, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. I rocked back dangerously and lost my balance, plummeting off the ladder. Gerard’s arms were around me in an instant, dazzling me with the speed of his movement. I stared up at him in astonishment while he looked down at me with what I imagined was a similar expression on his face.
“How—how did you do that? You were over there,” I pointed to the door, “and then you were here.”
“And a lucky thing for you I was,” he said gruffly. “What the devil do you think you are about, climbing on my shelves with a dustrag like some overzealous chambermaid?”
He had not set me down. He was too close, his body too warm. I could not bear the contact, for it made me long for things better off forgotten. I squirmed to be released, but his grip on me only tightened.
“Answer me,” he demanded, his dark eyebrows drawing down over a frown.
It occurred to me then I had not seen any chambermaids in my entire stay here. In fact, the only woman I had seen at Alexander Hall other than myself was Mrs. Jones.
“Why are there are no women here?”
He paused for a long moment before answering, his exotic eyes lingering while he perused me from head to heel. “You are a woman. You are here.”
Heat rushed through me at his look. I struggled not to be distracted. “Other women. Besides Mrs. Jones. And Cook.”
“There are a few women who come from the village to do the day work, but they do not stay in. I find them a distraction. They are silly and engage in foolish fancies, and I cannot abide the type. Mrs. Jones and Cook are old enough to be sensible.”
Ah. So the village lasses throw themselves at him, do they? Why not? He was rich, commanding, with dramatic, compelling looks. Nevertheless, as lonely as he was, he still had some standards. I should not have felt better at the thought, but I did.
The whipcord strength of his arms beneath his dinner coat tightened, his grip forged from iron and steel, and I became aware of how close he held me. His citrus-and-piney-woods scent seemed designed to tempt and tease an ordinary female like me. But temptation would lead only to disappointment. In my experience, men often made promises with their words that their hearts could not keep.
I pushed at his chest, squirming to be released. His gaze narrowed, and for one breathless moment, I thought he might refuse to let me go. Finally, he set me on my feet. I hastily stepped back.
He shoved his hands in his pockets, tightening the fabric across his taut thighs. I tried not to notice, but failed miserably.
“You have not explained what you were doing up there.” He jerked his head toward the ladder. “Or why I was instructed by my butler to meet you here at my earliest possible convenience. You must have quite terrorized the poor fellow to get him to say such a thing to me.”
Oddly, he did not seem displeased at the thought. A faint smile ghosted his mouth, and his gray eyes were alive with interest.
The mention of his butler reminded me of my earlier frustration, however, and I tugged the apron off with an angry gesture. “No one will talk to me here. They all say I must speak to ‘the master’ if I wish to know anything about this island and its history. And so I am speaking to you.”
His expression grew wary. “What is it that you wish to know?”
“I cannot think where to begin.” I flung the apron on the overstuffed chair and crossed my arms. “Perhaps it is with your vicar and his cousin, who appear to be quite insane. Or with your servants, who insist on hounding my every step and watching me like a hawk. Or with”— my voice caught— “with those little graves in the cemetery and all those babies in them.”
He paled. “What were you doing at the cemetery, Catherine?”
We stared at one another. “Mrs. Jones said you carried a burden about those stillborns, and I want to know what it is.”
He turned and sat down, his long, lean body slouching into the chair as though he was infinitely tired. He flouted convention by leaving me standing while he sat, but when he put his head in his hands, I could not find it in me to reprimand him. “And so I do carry a burden. But it is not one I can share with you. You do not know me well enough, and I fear your judgment.”
“You fear my judgment?” I went to stand beside him, looking down on his bent head, resisting the urge to draw my fingers through the thick sable of his hair. “You are the lord of the manor, the master of this island. I can barely master myself,” I offered quietly, remembering the last few minutes I had spent alone.
He laughed, the sound harsh and abrupt. “And yet it is true.” He took my hand in his, absently examining it, and I shivered even from this casual touch. “Will you trust me for a little while? I promise you nothing I have done was with the intention of harming anyone. Will you give me a little more time to come to know me?”
I knelt before him. “To what end, Ger
ard? I must leave this place. I must,” I insisted as I saw him start to protest. “The children of the Benevolent Home I run have no one but me. I cannot abandon them. I must go back. Whatever hopes you are entertaining about—about my staying here,” at this I gently retrieved my fingers from his, “you must give them up. All of my ambitions are bent on this one goal. Nothing can dissuade me.”
“You have a strength of will the gods themselves must envy,” he murmured. “Perhaps that is why…” His gaze grew unfocused. “No, it is foolish of me even to hope.” He stood, forcing me to do so as well. “Hope is sometimes the cruelest emotion of all, don’t you think?”
I caught my breath at the anguish in his eyes. I thought of the boundless hope I had had in the future when I was young and newly married and carrying my baby in my womb. I did not know what hope had done to Gerard, but I knew what it had done to me.
“Yes,” I quietly agreed. “Hope can be cruel.”
“And yet we cannot smother it, no matter how hard we try.” His hand swept gently over my cheek and brushed back a loose lock of my hair, sliding the strands between his fingertips. “Just a little more time, Catherine.”
His steady gaze held mine, and I could not be the one to smother his hope. I weighed the possibility of my leaving the island any time soon against his need for me to trust him. Nothing would prevent me from leaving if the opportunity presented itself, but since I did not know when that might occur, what harm could it do to give him the time he asked for now?
“I will give you what I can.”
He stroked one finger across my cheek, slowly, and leaning forward, touched his mouth to mine.
“It will have to be enough,” he whispered against my lips.
“You mustn’t,” I choked out, turning my face away. I did not feel entitled to his attention. So much still stood between us, I had no right to encourage him, despite the attraction I felt for him in his moment of vulnerability.
“Would you refuse me even a small taste of you?” he murmured into my ear. “I think you might enjoy it.”
“It wouldn’t be proper,” I equivocated, brushing trembling hands down my skirt.
“I certainly hope not.”
I heard the laughter in his voice, and I glanced up at him. The gentle amusement in his eyes almost had me smiling back.
A loud pounding on the door made us jump. Gerard turned round, his face a mask of frustration. “Who dares—”
The door opened. A clearly agitated Mrs. Jones stood on the other side. “Begging yer pardon, Master, but there has been an accident. Ye must come at once.”
I frowned in concern. “An accident?”
Gerard flicked a glance at me before moving toward the door. “Wait here. I will send word when I can.”
“But I am a nurse. I can be of assistance.”
Gerard stopped and exchanged a meaningful look with Mrs. Jones. I noted a barely discernible shake of her head.
“I do not need your assistance, Catherine.”
“How do you know? You have no idea of the extent of the injuries involved, or even what has happened.”
He started to object again and I gave him a quick nudge forward. “Please. While we argue, someone is in pain. Let us go now and argue about it later.”
He ground his teeth in frustration, hesitating, but Mrs. Jones’s palpable distress seemed to make his decision for him.
“So be it. Lead on, Mrs. Jones.”
Chapter Seven
The victim of the accident, we soon discovered, was one of the Hall’s stable workers. We could hear his howls of pain from some distance away. Gerard carried a lamp and strode ahead of us through the gardens connecting the main house with the carriage house. He asked Mrs. Jones what had happened.
Despite her age, Mrs. Jones seemed to have no trouble keeping up with him. “I do not know the details, Master, but I believe he was helping to move one of the carriages out for maintenance and the axle broke loose. When the carriage fell, it landed on him. The men hitched one of the horses up to pull it off, but the damage was done.”
He scowled. “I’ll have the head groom’s hide.” He turned to me again. “Catherine, return to the house. A stable yard is no place for a lady.”
“And neither is a hospital ward in the middle of the Crimea, Gerard,” I said gently. He was worried about me, but I had dealt with many difficult situations in my career as a nurse. “I assure you, whatever awaits us, I will manage it.” I hastened my step. “Let your concern be for the poor soul who needs our assistance.”
Gerard’s mouth tightened, but he said nothing more.
We passed through the garden. The anticipation of tending to an injured man again heightened my senses. Even so, I barely noted the myriad of flowers blooming despite the lateness in the season, but I did think it odd. We approached the carriage house, which was made of huge stone blocks married with dark wood and quite large as befitted an estate of this size. The carriage in question stood in the open yard, a groom holding a nervous horse steady as a man’s cries of pain rose overhead.
As we rounded the corner, we came upon a horrific scene. The injured man had been carried on a litter by his mates into one of the open stalls and torches put up. He lay on a bed of hay that was already soaked with blood draining from an open wound on his lower leg and staining everything it touched. Someone had cut off the man’s breech leg, and his friends held him down so he could not thrash and further injure himself. Even without a close examination, I could see he had a compound fracture of the distal tibia. A jagged edge of bone protruded through the skin over his shin at a grotesque angle. If I had not seen much worse in my time as a nurse, the sight would indeed have sickened me. As it was, I felt galvanized.
Finally, a clear duty to perform.
I pulled Gerard aside. “This does not bode well,” I murmured to him. “In my experience, when a bone pierces the skin, the result is infection and severe blood loss. The leg will have to be amputated immediately if we have a hope of saving his life.”
I began snapping out orders. “You there,” I said to one of the men standing nearest, “we shall need two equal-sized planks of wood to use as a splint, yea long,” I measured about eighteen inches with my hands, “in order to immobilize the leg. Bring them with some clean rags to pad them and strips of leather or cloth. And something for him to bite down on while we stabilize the break. You other men, see you hold him steady.”
Although I had assisted at amputations before, I doubted I had the physical strength necessary to perform one myself should I be called upon to do so. I turned to the injured man’s companions, intending to choose the strongest of them to help me to do what must be done.
The men stared at me in stunned surprise, and almost as one swung their confused gazes to Gerard, who stood directly behind me. I felt his hand on my shoulder.
“I will handle this, Catherine,” he said quietly. “Stand aside.”
“But—”
“Trust me.” He squeezed my shoulder.
The quiet authority in his voice made me hesitate; some instinct told me to do as he asked. I stepped aside, deferring to him.
He set down his lamp and knelt beside the man, laying his hand ever so gently upon the injured leg, while the other men surrounding the victim made way. At Gerard’s touch, the man let out a hiss of relief and his writhing ceased almost instantly.
After shrugging out of his dinner coat, Gerard handed it off to another man and rolled up his snowy white sleeves. Never were the contrasts between his servants and him more apparent than at that moment. They were dressed in the rough clothing of their trades, their hands bearing the marks and soil of their work. Gerard’s hands were impeccably clean, and he was attired as a gentleman in fine black broadcloth, yet he knelt in the dust and straw before the injured man, dirtying his well-tailored breeches. He tugged at the skintight leggings to accommodate the width of his muscular thighs and carefully examined the victim’s injury.
“Lucas?” Gerard said
the man’s name.
“Y-yes?” he stuttered, gazing up at his master with awe.
“Lucas, I will not hurt you,” Gerard said and, closing his eyes, bent his head over the man almost as if he were praying.
Gerard’s solemn words evoked a hazy memory for me, and I saw him in my mind, bending over me, felt his hand warming my side…
Gerard tensed and his face contorted with pain, his hand lying gently on the bone protruding from Lucas’s shin. I started forward in surprise, prepared to go to him, but Mrs. Jones caught my arm.
“Wait,” she whispered.
As I watched, the most astonishing thing happened. The jagged tibia beneath Gerard’s fingers began slowly to recede into Lucas’s leg until it disappeared inside it with a squelching sound. This retreat might have been explainable if Gerard had pushed on the bone, but it was clear he applied no firm pressure at all—more a gentle direction with his fingertips. And even more astonishing, as I watched, the gaping hole of flesh above the bone knit itself together until it closed completely. All the while Gerard hung over Lucas, his eyes shut tight, sweat covering his brow, while the other man lay calm and barely moving. It was as though Lucas’s agony was transferred to Gerard, and he bore it even as the injured man’s flesh continued to close.
Finally, with a gasp, Gerard released Lucas and slumped down beside him, clearly exhausted. I ran to him, kneeling in the straw before him. “What is it, Gerard? What is wrong with you?”
He gestured to Lucas. “How—how is he?”
I turned to examine Lucas. He lay peaceful and sleeping, his face a serene mask. The leg, which had before been a bloody mess, now bore only a faint seam of white where the bone had protruded. It appeared, from the look of it, as though the leg was whole and the wound had been healing for weeks.
“It is…the leg is…” I stared around me at Lucas’s companions. They avoided my gaze. “But the wound was open. You all saw it. It cannot already be healed.”
