“No, Dr. Bell, I’ve not seen her since . . . yesterday,” he lied, “when we were all together.”
“You must eat at least a portion of Cook’s hearty porridge; you are yet skin and bones, sir, and she prepared it specially for you.”
Gaelan shrugged. “To speak true, I’ve little appetite—” He scowled as he pushed away the steaming bowl Bell had placed before him.
“You do seem, however, much improved since you left . . . rather, come to stay with me. And I wonder if you might be up to venturing out today? To the place you mentioned, where you stashed your library?”
Gaelan held up his hand in protest. He regretted telling Bell about the slim possibility that his books, including the ouroboros book, were yet in London. “You must understand, Dr. Bell, it has been nearly five years, and I very much doubt—”
“It is, at the least, worth a try, do you not think? And if it should not be there, we shall scour the whole of Britain—the world if need be. Money is no object, and I’ve solicitors aplenty to make inquiries!”
Gaelan had little desire to return to Smithfield. Dead, Tremayne may well be, but Gaelan had little doubt that his gang yet operated unabated all about the place. “Look, Dr. Bell, perhaps it would do better if you went yourself. There is a woman, Sally Mills, she is called, and I will write for you a letter of introduction. If anyone might have knowledge of my belongings, she would.”
“Why would you not go yourself?”
Gaelan considered how much to reveal of his plans for the future. “My intention is to slip away to America as I had planned—before my arrest. I’ve little desire to be seen in Smithfield. To the good people of Smithfield Market, I am dead—murdered at Newgate Prison. And I am quite happy to leave it thus.”
“So this Mrs. Mills has your books?”
“Most of my library, I left in an underground room beneath my shop. I doubt there is anything left of it.” Gaelan drew a map. “The book in question was in my possession when I was arrested; I gave it to my assistant, but I’ve no idea what he might have done with it. If it is anywhere to be found around London, Sally would know. That is, if she is yet living.”
“Perhaps it might be better to locate your assistant?”
“Obviously, though where he is I do not even venture a guess. I have already written to his father and await a reply. But now excuse me whilst I jot a note to Mrs. Mills.”
Half an hour later and Bell had his introduction and was on his way out of Bell’s hair—at least for a time.
As the sound of Bell’s carriage grew distant, Gaelan mounted the stairs to his room. Great sobs pealing through Eleanor’s bedroom door and through to the corridor stopped him short of his destination. She seemed barely able to catch her breath. He knocked softly, and her wailing slowed into hiccoughs. “Lady Braithwaite, are you all right?”
“Go away. I am fine.”
Clearly she was not. “I thought perhaps . . . your brother has gone out and . . . we . . . we might continue our . . . our conversation of last—” The door opened abruptly, and he nearly lost his balance.
“What do you want of me?”
He had no answer, for he truly did not know what had drawn him impulsively to her door, and not to his own. Her pain, her weeping had nothing to do with him. Yet . . . A long moment passed before he replied. “To speak true, Lady Braithwaite, I see you are yet distressed in the extreme. I would only offer my ear to you, as I did last night. Perhaps now that it is day, might you stroll with me through the gardens? The sunlight might do us both some good.”
“Very well.” She took Gaelan’s offered arm.
The late-morning sky was the sort of deep blue that seemed only possible on a cloudless day at the height of summer. Gaelan led them to a low iron bench beneath a heather tree.
“Forgive me, Lady Braithwaite, for my forthrightness, but there is little time whilst your brother is out and we might speak alone. Is it your husband that so torments you? I only ask because evidence suggests . . . And knowing . . . if I may be so bold . . . knowing what sort of man he is—”
Eleanor froze, and her hands curled into tight fists, which she pounded against the bench. Anxiety poured off her in waves.
“Forgive me if I have spoken out of turn, Lady Braithwaite.” Gaelan rose, bowing slightly as he moved off, creating distance between them.
“Please, sir, do not call me by that name. By his name. I detest the very sound of it for what he has done!”
This, Gaelan was not expecting. Was such powerful anger on his account—for what had been done to him? Or had Braithwaite truly turned his violent nature upon his own wife as he imagined? “What do you mean?” He turned to watch her face crumple as tears once again threatened.
“Perhaps later. It is still too painful to discuss—even, I might add,” she said with a melancholy smile, “with a kind stranger.”
Gaelan sat beside her again, allowing the aroma of lush English roses to envelop him. He waited, content to have his thoughts diverted from his own troubles. Bell should be round the White Owl by now. Was Sally already chatting his ear off, quizzing him for medical advice about her sciatica?
Eleanor’s gaze wandered from the rose garden to her hands to the large trellis across the gravel path—everywhere but toward Gaelan. She drew a long breath. “Please. I implore you: do not say any of what I tell to you to my brother. If he should learn . . . if he should know . . . he shall murder Lord Braithwaite without hesitation. Of this I am certain!”
“You have my word.” My solemn vow. He urged her on, suspecting the source of her turmoil.
“I feel somehow, Mr. Erceldoune, you, of all people, would understand me . . . this . . . in a way Simon cannot. But I cannot venture a guess as to why you would offer to be my confessor . . .”
Gaelan waited for her to go on; silence surrounded them, save for the distant calls of two bickering blackbirds. “I have, my lady, seen much suffering, heard tales of distress and mistreatment in my . . . in my apothecary that . . . your brother mightn’t have seen amongst his patients. Even ladies of your station might sooner come to . . . one like me . . . anonymously than to a physician amongst their own society if . . .” He politely declined to say it aloud. But he’d offered, he hoped, a tether.
She sighed, watching a bird as it fussed among the branches of a nearby tree. “My husband’s temperament . . . his interests, shall we say . . . extend beyond . . . beyond the . . . voyeuristic proclivities of which you might be personally aware.”
Gaelan felt the blood drain from his face. He was not sure he was ready to hear this lady’s confession, but he could not retreat.
“His tendencies, Mr. Erceldoune, did not become known to me until the several weeks just past. For the first many months of our marriage, he was the epitome of generosity. Our home life could not have been more to my liking. And despite the fact I was skeptical of the match, I was more content than I dreamed—”
“But something changed?”
“It did.” She rose to stand before a large bed of roses. She skirted her finger along the edge of a full-open bloom. “They are beautiful, the roses, are they not? My sister-in-law’s gentle touch,” she said. “These were her prize possession—her delight. Besides Simon, these gardens were all she lived for, especially after . . . She’d become quite ill several years ago, yet she would spend hours out here, admiring them, tending them. No gardener was allowed to touch them.”
Eleanor plucked a flower, coming back to sit beside Gaelan.
“I observe a rose and see petals, pistil, and stamen,” she said wistfully. “Thorns and pollen, the veins that redden the green leaf as if blood courses through it. I wonder what magnificent alchemy creates the scent and color: yellow distinct from red, distinct from white. Of course I appreciate the beauty of it, yet there is no beauty greater than comprehending the truly amazing parts to the whole.”
Fascinated, he could not help taking it a step further. “Have you ever observed a leaf through a microscope’s
lens, seeing within it the symmetry of cells, the chlorophyll, what makes it green?”
She brought the rose to her face, inhaling the fragrance. “No, I have not. Few men in our exalted little society, it seems, care for a wife who is their intellectual equal, if not better. And I refused to conceal my nature or my curiosity, and there you have it! I married Richard, Lord Braithwaite, and as I said, he seemed a good enough match. He shared my love of nature, of science, allowed me to pursue my own interests, at least for a time. But then he revealed himself to me for what he was—a brutal, angry man with much power and little restraint. I saw it in the way he treated our servants and in the boasting of his grand and vile experiments.”
Gaelan flinched.
“Forgive me, Mr. Erceldoune. I know this must grieve you, but you have asked, and now I fear I cannot conceal anything of it.”
He nodded. “Please go on; it is I who invited you to speak freely. Do not concern yourself with my sensitivities.” The conversation was verging toward a dangerous territory, but his curiosity was too profound. He wanted to hear all of it.
“He’d found, he said, the key to eternal anatomical regeneration—immortality. All that was required was a bit of experimentation before he would become world-famous for his ‘discovery.’”
The air was suddenly too close, even as a breeze rifled the leaves above their heads. “And that discovery was . . . me.”
“You.” The compassion in her eyes was almost too much to bear.
“How did you know . . . ? That it was me . . . I mean to say.” He’d meant to deny it, to deflect suspicion away from himself, but the words emerged almost of their own volition. As if he’d had no choice in the matter to reveal himself to . . . this stranger. The wife of his tormenter. This fragile young woman.
“Richard flaunted a daguerreotype one night upon his return from London. He went often to attend the House of Lords, and returned home telling his tales, most of which I assumed were drunken exaggerations. But this daguerreotype, he told me, would prove his veracity to me. The image was of you . . . his ‘discovery.’ That is how I recognized you from the first, although you are barely the same man as in the photograph. He was furious that you had been snatched from . . . them, just as he was to prove his point.” She shrugged. “It had been a flutter. He wagered you would regenerate the fingers severed; others did not believe it and wagered against. He blamed Simon for . . . ruining it. I was not certain until I saw your bandaged hand. I am so very sorry, Mr. Erceldoune, for my husband’s terrible . . .”
She was sobbing now.
“Well, apparently . . . Richard . . . was wrong. As you see, my fingers are far from regenerated. But hush now. Please do go on.” Gaelan knew this was not to be the end of it.
“Richard was terrified of discovery, especially now that Simon and James had intervened in the matter on your behalf. And he regretted showing me the daguerreotype. Two nights ago, he threatened me in a drunken frenzy.
“He had a dagger, you see, a horrid, jagged blade. He warned me that if I said a word to anyone, and most especially my brother or my cousin James, I too would find myself with a severed limb, and not a mere finger. Then he . . . Oh my God, I’ve said too much. . . . What if he . . . ?”
She skirted the edge of hysteria. Gaelan ventured to place a reassuring hand on her arm, which trembled beneath his fingers. “Please know that I have no reason to speak of this, and certainly not to Braithwaite. Your confidence could not be safer.”
She nodded and opened the high neck of her blouse, revealing a long scabbed-over cut near her ear. “My God, Lady Braithwaite—”
“He forced me . . . He held that dagger to my . . . I . . .” She was shaking so violently by now, Gaelan thought she would take ill, perhaps swoon, at any moment.
Unsure of what else might be done to calm her, Gaelan carefully placed his arm around her shoulder. “Hush now; you needn’t say another word—”
“Please,” she pleaded through her sobs, tears flowing down her face and onto her dress, “you mustn’t tell any of this to Simon. You have promised me to keep still about it.”
This promise he could not keep. It was too much, too monstrous for Braithwaite to walk away from it unscathed. Bell should know what his sister had suffered and why. “How can I not? Please do not hold me to an impossible vow—”
“You promised!”
“Aye, I did, but—”
Still shaking, she wept into his chest, her tears soaking through the soft cloth of his shirt. Encircling his other arm about her, Gaelan held her close, lightly stroking her hair.
He could only imagine the indignities she had suffered at Braithwaite’s hands. “Lady Braithwaite,” he ventured, gently as he could manage. “I noticed that first afternoon when you arrived, you walked . . . I . . . Forgive my . . . Your gait seemed . . . I have seen before . . . in women when—”
He had not the words to broach the subject with the required delicacy. Would anyone? “My lady, when a man performs certain . . . I mean to say . . .” He stopped, bewildered, unable to ask what he must. She was not, by far, the first woman with whom he had spoken of such things, but they always had come to him, seeking his help. With her . . . now . . . he was abashed and awkward. The question was irrelevant; he knew the answer without her saying a word.
“It is important that you tell . . . someone of this . . . violation. And I do not mean the scratch on your neck. If not your brother . . . any practitioner who might examine you. Do you understand me?”
She nodded uncertainly.
“There are . . . diseases that might take hold and—”
“I believe I am unharmed . . . in the way you mean,” she said, taking his good hand, her voice steadier. “It is painful to be sure, to sit, especially. But I’ve not noticed bleeding nor evidence of serious injury. Is that what you mean to ask?” Her cheeks flushed, but she seemed calmer, almost dispassionate speaking of it.
“This man must be stopped! And your brother is one of only a few with the power to do it.”
“And he’ll do what? Richard is my husband, and as such I am his property to do with as he pleases. And who would believe ill of Lord Richard Braithwaite, good friend of the prince consort? I wish to speak of this not a moment longer.”
She was adamant, and to be silent was against his better judgment. “As you wish, madam; I shall be still on the matter.”
Gaelan regretted his promise as they sat quietly, knowing she would say not a word to Bell. She continued to rest against him, yet she seemed better, and the shaking had stopped. Eleanor brushed her fingers against the damp patch on Gaelan’s shirt where her tears had fallen. It was the most intimate gesture he had experienced in years.
“We should go in,” he said reluctantly. “I . . . do not think . . . I mean to say . . . Dr. Bell should be back at home presently and—”
Eleanor nodded. “Thank you, Mr. Erceldoune, for your ear, for your shoulder to sob upon.”
“It’s of no matter.” Her face was too close; Gaelan stood, knowing he must break this moment before it escalated into something that might lead to disaster beyond imagination. She was vulnerable, and she saw in him a kindred spirit . . . a willing ear, and that was all. Her wounded spirit reached out to his. “Perhaps we should return to the house. . . .”
She took his right hand in both of hers, lacing their fingers together. He broke the contact, wresting his hand away as if burned. “I think, my lady, I hear your brother’s carriage. We’d best go in.”
“I believe I shall first take a walk; the air shall do me much good.”
CHAPTER 36
“Did you find Sally Mills well?”
Bell nodded absently, coming into the drawing room where Gaelan sat alone, awaiting his return.
“Where is Eleanor?”
“She is in the garden having a stroll. And what of Mrs. Mills?” Gaelan rose from the chair and paced, more impatient for news than he might have thought.
“She is a fine, grand old la
dy, I must say. Clever, and a bit old for you, perhaps. But talk of you made her blush.” Bell laughed.
“More mum than lover.”
“Hardly. You are what? Two centuries her senior?”
Gaelan was surprised Bell had returned in such high spirits. Was it possible he had recovered the book?
“Well, in any event, quite a eulogy she gave you. I’d no idea you’d been such a popular figure in Smithfield Market.”
“And . . . ?” Gaelan fidgeted with a letter opener.
Bell’s voice darkened. “She does not trust me at all; she will only speak with you directly, if, as she said, ‘He is in fact still living!’ She was quite adamant about it. She understands that you’ve no wish to be seen round the market, and proposes you stop there late, after the pub quiets down for the night.”
Gaelan nodded. It was as he’d expected, if not hoped for. “That is quite Sally, I’m afraid. Empiricist to the core. She’d never believe that I was alive, much less exonerated, unless she saw it with her own eyes. I only thought that a letter written by mine own hand would suffice. I’m sorry to have sent you on a fool’s errand.”
He’d have to risk a venture to Smithfield himself. “I shall go see her this night. I can promise nothing, and do not take her reluctance to speak with you as evidence that she has my belongings.
“I’ve not yet received a response from my apprentice’s father, and I hold out little hope that he will be of any help in any event; it is unlikely that the lad yet resides on this side of the sea. He’d often spoken to me of America.”
“Then all is lost?” Bell drew up close to Gaelan, pointing an accusing finger in his face. “I find it impossible to believe that with your vast experience and great knowledge there is nothing you might concoct to reverse this curse you’ve put me under.”
Gaelan retreated to a corner of the room, ignoring the accusation. “I’ve revealed what little I know, and, I confess, I recall very little of that book but its splendid images. To speak true, I spent much effort these past four and a half years to quash as much knowledge of it as I was able. I well understood Handley’s aim, and the very thought of him extracting from me, under such extreme duress, anything that might assist . . .” It was too soon, the wounds too raw. He could not yet speak of Handley or Bedlam without releasing the demons that pursued him like a shadow. He blinked in vain effort to forestall the vivid images that even now lurked in the periphery of his vision, and sent him staggering to the settee. “Might I trouble you, Dr. Bell, for a drink?”
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