Her skull was searing agony as she continued to kick, slap and shove, her movements rending even more hair from her head.
The man flung her up against the wall, and caught her around the throat again before she fell.
She was able to scream, "No, oh God, no. Help!"
If she could just hang on until help arrived....
Where WAS her cousin Antony? On another ward tending to an emergency?
She looked around at the sheer chaos and knew she was on her own. No, not on her own. Her sister needed her. And she certainly didn't want to die in a place like this...
Ignoring the pain in her scalp, she doubled her fists together and hit the lunatic on the side of the head, swinging as though holding a cricket bat. The blow landed squarely on his ear, causing him to let go to clutch it in agony and double over, shaking his head as if in a daze.
It was enough for Gabrielle to get her feet back on the ground and start to make a run for it. But his other hand was still tangled in her long tresses, which had been yanked out of her neat and efficient bun and were tumbling down over her shoulders in thick auburn waves.
"No you don't, bitch. I'm going to snap your neck like a goose!" the madman snarled, yanking her backwards and wrapping both hands around her neck now, clearly determined to make good on his threat.
A few moments floundering for breath under the heavy weight of the man's body, clawing, flailing and pounding him around the head with every ounce of strength she could muster, was an eternal agony, though she knew it could only have been less than a minute.
But the lack of air was making her weaker and weaker, and despite her panic over her sister, she could feel herself relinquishing the unequal struggle. She was falling into the darkness, the swirling black void of oblivion rushing up to meet her.
Then the weight was lifted, and Gabrielle could breathe again at last. A warm hand reached out to take hers gently. A deep voice came through the darkness, warm, soft, as loving as a caress.
"I've got you, Gabrielle. I've got you, love. You'll be safe with me," she heard, as her strength gave away at last.
Chapter One
"I'm not mad. I'm not mad. I know all my sums, I know the days of the week, if only someone could give me a calendar. I'm not mad. It was Brumaire when they brought me here. But no. The revolution is over and even the Emperor is no more. Gone to St. Helena. Thank God. Thought he was Julius Caesar, revising the months of the year on the calendar. But he failed. Just like Caesar was assassinated, his own generals turned upon him in the end.
"You see, I'm not mad. Won't you help me, please? I can hear you. I know you're a good kind loving soul. You can't possibly want me to stay here when I'm not mad. When I've done nothing wrong. I admit I'm not always very well, but I'm not mad. Please help me, darling. I know it's you. I can smell you, hear your voice. Please help me, Gabrielle."
Gabrielle wanted to scream at the man to stop trying to get around her with his insidious whispering, his words coming out as sense in madness, madness in sense. But still he pressed on.
"I can hear you moving around the room through the wall. Please, you have to help me. Look, I've made the hole bigger so I can see your lovely face if you come over here. You don't have to touch me if you don't wish to, but please talk to me, at least."
She listened for the tenth time that day to the soliloquy coming from the other side of the wall. The harsh rasp would cease for a short time, only to be renewed a few moments later.
It had been thus every day for the past week, ever since her sister had finally been given a private chamber of her own.
Ever since that fateful day when Lucinda had been attacked...
She knew what she had been told about the inmate known only as Simon by her cousin and employer Dr. Antony Herriot. The trouble was, she simply couldn't believe it.
Yet to do otherwise was sheer madness, not to be contemplated.
Except that Gabrielle had contemplated it. More and more. And come up with the most incredible plan...
She shook her head to try to dispel the audacious thoughts racing through her mind. She wrung out the cloth with which she was mopping her sister's brow. No, she was not going to think about it now. Not when her sister needed her.
Yet she could scarcely think about anything else as she went about her daily round of chores. It almost seemed as if a clock were ticking in her head. Events had been set in motion, and now she had to see them to the end, come what may. And that end felt as though it were coming sooner than she wished...
As Gabrielle did every day, she had risen early to come to the infamous St. Mary of Bethlehem Hospital, otherwise known as Bedlam, to tend to her poor sister.
Now in the sixth month of her pregnancy, Lucinda was for the most part lost to all reason, scarcely able to feed, wash or dress herself after her terrible marriage and then the sudden attack upon her. .
Before that fateful day, she had been seriously deranged, completely immersed in a bizarre world she had created for herself, peopled by all sort of faeries, goblins and sprites. She was plagued by ghosts coming back to haunt her because she had not helped them, or so she had said the few occasions she had ever made a sound in the time that Gabrielle had seen her.
Lucinda's husband Geoffrey Bassett, the Earl of Oxnard, had demanded she come to Dorset to witness her sister's dreadful state for herself and choose a course of action. As if Gabrielle had ever had any choice....
She shivered at the recollection, and once more feebly tried to do something, anything, to make her sister more comfortable.
Once in Dorset, Gabrielle had remained for several days, seeing Lucinda becoming more and more weak and hysterical. Finally she had felt she had no other option but to bow to Oxnard's endless pressure. She had signed the papers certifying her sister. It was a decision she knew would haunt her for the rest of her life, but what else could she have done considering her position in the world?
Gabrielle damned herself for a fool for ever having put her name to the order without understanding all the implications of what committing her sister would mean. But she had been naïve, had led a sheltered life, and been at the mercy of the whims of her elder sister's husband once her brother had died, her sister had married, and their family home had been broken up.
She had her own small inheritance, of course. But it had not been enough to maintain the house and establishment she had been accustomed to once Oxnard had taken his share. He had claimed everything had to be sold in order to gain Lucinda's dowry and promised wedding portion.
To this day Gabrielle still wasn't sure of all she had had to sign. Her brother Chauncey's solicitor, the oily Mr. Sprat, had told her that she was after all a mere woman, and as such likely to be confused by such legal jargon. Everyone had been treated fairly, that was the main thing.
But now, as she mopped her sister's fevered brow, she was not so sure. Her brother-in-law had not been interested in fairness when he had consigned her poor sister to this living hell.
Even now Gabrielle wondered why, since Lucinda was now simply in stupor most of the time, she couldn't simply be taken care of in her own home?
She had not had any hallucinations for several days. It was true that she had been silent and withdrawn since the attack, but before that Gabrielle had been sure she'd been seeing signs of progress. The strange lurid visions had been dwindling in duration, severity and frequency ever since she had arrived in London.
It wasn't as if Lucinda were violent or dangerous. Nor as if she were being helped by most of the so-called doctors here. They were either earnest but interested only in their own experimentation, or quacks who bled and purged the patients until they were so weak that the least little infection could carry them off.
Nor could Gabrielle say that the improvement had been solely though her offices. She had learned a great deal working at her cousin Antony's clinic, but she knew there were no such things as miracle cures.
They had done the best they could for her, and Gabr
ielle was using all the skills she had acquired as a nurse to tend to Lucinda's needs. She came twice each day to make sure Lucinda ate, and was clean and tidy.
The rest of her spare time was spent in Bethnal Green looking after the many fallen women who were the lion's share of the patrons of Antony's clinic. Well, really Dr. Blake Sanderson's, she reminded herself as she began to tidy the bed, a growing clinic founded by their friends the Rakehells and run on charitable donations.
Antony had originally hired her to look after the paperwork required for the huge three-storey medical establishment which treated more patients in one night than most doctors did in a month. But she had been interested in learning more about the sick, most especially about childbirth once she had found out that her sister was not only married, but expecting.
Gabrielle sighed. It had been one trauma after another ever since her brother Chauncey had been arrested for murder. He had eventually escaped from prison and committed suicide, but his crimes had been great. She knew that they were so great that even if their desperate finances had not dictated her move, she would have left their little village of Oxnard anyway. In the circumstances she would never have been able to hold her head up in decent society ever again.
She was just starting to resign herself to the fact that given all that had happened, she would probably end up a poor obscure spinster. Though she was lovely, no one would want to ally themselves with such a tainted family. Then disaster had struck. Lucinda's panicked reaction to the scandal had been to elope with Oxnard. He had pestered her with attentions, and she had decided that being a wife was far preferable to being an old maid.
But now Lucinda was, as Gabrielle had feared, completely dependent on him for every penny. She was little better than a piece of chattel to be disposed of at will.
Gabrielle had not despaired. There were worse things in life than being an old maid. Lucinda's marriage had proven that, even if she had had her doubts.
But Gabrielle had always felt she could take her destiny into her own hands. That women were more than capable of managing their own affairs if only they were allowed.
There had been a period of trial and error as she had found her feet, but she had learned a moderate amount about money and bookkeeping, and invested her small fortune with the help of her cousin Randall, the Earl of Hazelmere. Then she had gone to London to start her new life and find some decent work.
She felt sorry for a time that she had been so vociferous in her denunciations of her sister's marriage when she should perhaps have been more supportive. But the Earl of Oxnard had not been a man who inspired trust as a husband, not least because he had had already had three wives buried in the churchyard and was still under thirty. Perhaps if she had been more sisterly, forced Lucinda to confide in her, none of this would have happened...
She sighed and finished changing her sister's chemise and drawers. Of course she felt guilty, but her married sister had had a house full of servants down in Dorset. Surely someone should have contacted her? Told her how bad things had become?
It had only been by chance that she had heard she was unwell from her cousin and his wife when they had paid her a visit. Randall had had business down in Dorset, and Isolde had been trying to let Lucinda know that bygones could be bygones. That they forgave her for all that their brother Chauncey had tried to do to their family and still wanted to be friends. Randall had insisted he would not interfere, that it would be Gabrielle's decision alone as to Lucinda's fate now that she was so ill.
So she had gone to Dorset and been doubly shocked at the neglect Lucinda had been suffering even though pregnant. Was Oxnard so lost to decency that he didn't even care about the possibility that Lucinda was carrying his son and heir? It had made no sense. He had been married several times before, but still not begotten any progeny. Most men in their society wanted sons to carry on the line. His attitude simply made no sense.
In the end, she had been so outraged that she had threatened him. She had told him she would publicly expose him as a scandalously callous husband. This had eventually secured her sister the consideration of a private chamber. Well, that and the appalling events the day she had been attacked...
Gabrielle looked around, determined not to think about that now. She sighed. The room wasn't much, a cell just large enough to hold a cot and chamberpot, and little more. There was one tiny barred window just out of arm's reach even if she stood on the wrought iron bedstead with its thin mattress. But it was certainly better than being in the common wards, which she had to pass coming up and down the stairs every day.
She shuddered at the mere thought of the place. Every single depravity known to mankind occurred there. Her sister still bore the scars of the beating she had taken within her first three days of being immured within, and had been thrust into this total torpor by the assault she had had to endure three days later. Had had to endure until one of the other inmates, shuffling through the corridor for his monthly bath, had unexpectedly saved her. Saved them both. Simon....
Gabrielle could still feel the catch in her breath where her ribs had been battered as the assailant had lashed out at her, and then tried to turn his foul attentions upon her own tender person.
She had tried to shield her poor sister and her own virtue as well. It had been an unequal struggle with a man in the throes of such mania. Only the huge, dark-haired man, his lank, greasy hair obscuring his shadowy eyes, had come to their rescue.
Gabrielle had blacked out for a moment, but then the pressure had eased from her throat, allowing her to drag a breath in past the inmate's thick fingers. She had seen a man glaring over the would-be killer's shoulder.
Then he had lifted the giant off his feet and threw him flat on his face in a second, stomping him down with one foot planted in the middle of his spine.
She had gasped as he'd torn off his shirt, exposing a huge chest and shoulders rippling with solid muscle. She'd steeled herself against ravishment once more.
The man had rent the garment in two with a single effortless tug. Using one piece of shirt he had tied the madman's flailing hands behind him tightly. With his knee nestled firmly in the small of the man's back, her helper had then fastened the degenerate's ankles.
Gabrielle had gaped in astonishment as her rescuer had lifted the savage man off the floor by the ankles with a single hand and hung him upside-down from one of the wrought-iron candle brackets nearly seven feet up the wall. With the man thus suspended, he had then come over to help her.
"Are you all right, Madame? Did he harm you and your sister very cruelly?"
He had taken her hand, sending a shiver of pure terror through her limp body. Terror, or something more?
For despite his bedraggled appearance and emaciation, she had never seen a more handsome man. She had blinked, trying to think who he reminded her of. For one look, one touch, and she was sure that she had met him before...
His other hand had stroked down her side from just under her breast to the swell of her hips with a curiously impersonal gesture. She had shrunk away from him with a sucked-in breath and cry. Then the guards who were supposed to have been escorting him, or maintaining some sort of order in that hell hole, had moved to beat him to the ground.
"No, he didn't hurt me. It's my ribs!" she had shouted. Then she realized that her voice was little more than a hoarse croak after so nearly being strangled.
She raised her hands and inserted herself between the man and the guard with a raised truncheon. "No! Don't hurt him! He was trying to help."
She could see the weapon descending inexorably, and shoved the man's barrel chest as hard as she could, while stepping back hard to ram her hapless rescuer out of the way. She trod heavily on his foot, and her buttocks came into contact with a rigid wall of flesh and bone.
One huge hand came up to steady her as she lost her balance. He staggered backwards slightly, taking her with him as he fell against the wall and hit it with a solid thump.
Her whole body jarred and ju
ddered against him. She gasped again, this time in shock mingling with a sudden rush of wildfire desire. For some of his flesh was now even more solid than it had been a moment before.
Gabrielle was no fool: she had been poked, prodded and pressed enough in crowds and at balls and assemblies to know what this change in his body signified. How strange, that this man of all people could make her feel so. But it mattered not now, for they were going to bludgeon the man to beetroot if she didn't stop them.
She took hold of his hand, pulling it from around her waist with her right hand and getting up to step forward to shield him. She kept hold of him with her left hand, forcing him to remain behind her.
"That's enough! He didn't do anything wrong. If he so much as gets a splinter from that baton I'm going to write a letter to The Times about everything that happened here today. How I can't even come to visit my sister without being attacked and nearly killed. And how she herself was accosted and would have been violated by that odious creature had I and this man not intervened."
The Rakehell Regency Romance Collection 6 Page 2
