by Julia Bennet
She looked at his face and plummeted into his warm gaze. Gray always seemed like a cold color, reminiscent of ice and threatening rain, but when she looked into Will’s eyes, she thought of smoke rising from a bonfire, the hazy, ephemeral sign of the conflagration beneath.
“Helen…” he said, his voice soft with… Oh! Please let that be yearning.
Then the blasted dog careened into them and almost knocked them over.
Dr. Carter laughed as he steadied her again, but Hector had well and truly spoilt the moment. Even worse, she could see from the serious look on Will’s face and the drift of their conversation so far that he was on the cusp of asking her about who’d sent her to Blackwell in the first place. And she was going to have to tell him the truth.
“Helen, whatever we decide to do next, it would help if I knew who was responsible for putting you here.”
And there it was: the question everyone asked eventually.
“Why don’t you ask Dr. Sterling?” She kept her tone light, but inside her stomach knotted.
“I did. He won’t tell me.”
They walked on toward the rose garden. The barren bushes looked ugly in their nakedness, gnarled and colorless. It was hard to believe they’d ever flower again. Dead foliage turned to mulch under their feet. Even the patches of grass were leached of green. The delicate pink of the clematis on the back wall provided the only bright spot in this dreary brown and gray landscape.
“I can see this is difficult for you,” he said, “but—”
“It was my father,” she said to shut him up. To get it out and over with.
“I’d suspected as much. But I need to know—”
“His name. Yes, I understand that,” she snapped, “but that leaves us in a tricky situation because I don’t know what it is.”
Gently, he took her arm and pulled her into a patch of weak winter light. “Is that true?”
After all the half-truths and outright lies she’d told him, she didn’t blame him for questioning her honesty. “It’s true. For all I know, he’s the Prince of Wales, dear old Bertie himself. Or he might be a wealthy brewer. I don’t know, but this hellhole isn’t cheap, so he isn’t poor.”
Dr. Carter released her and took a step back. “I’m sorry. Of course, I believe you, but how…”
“I never lived with him. For a few short weeks after my mother died, he installed me in a small house on the outskirts of London. When he visited, he always brought a plain carriage. No crest.”
“What did you call him? What did the servants call him?”
“We called him ‘sir.’” Not “Papa” or even “Father.” The admission didn’t come easily, and Will’s sympathetic look made her feel worse. “He used an alias: Mr. Alexander.”
She needed to start at the beginning. “A lawyer came after Mama died. She’d sent a letter in her final days, asking my father to come and claim me. Her particular friend, Mr. Higgins, kicked up a terrible fuss when he found out. He was always very jealous of Mama’s affections, but she was adamant that Mr. Alexander come and do his duty by me. I was so grief-stricken I didn’t care what happened to me.” A mistake she regretted bitterly.
“Did your mother know Mr. Alexander’s true name?”
“I don’t know. If she did, she never told anyone. I think he must have sworn her to secrecy. I think that’s why he wants me imprisoned here. Whoever he is, he doesn’t want anyone to know I exist.”
“I take it he never visited the theatre in person?”
“Never, but the lawyer had Mama’s letter. There was nothing anyone could do.”
Mama’s illness had been sudden. It had never occurred to Helen that she wouldn’t recover, so her death after a few short weeks had come as a terrible shock. Afterward, the lawyer had taken her to a small rented house in a respectable part of London. Mr. Alexander had visited twice a week for a month. In all those visits, she never saw him smile.
Her loving if ramshackle existence had ended overnight, and she’d found herself isolated and alone when she most needed love and care. After Mama’s bright affection, Mr. Alexander’s coldness had hurt. She’d sunk into a fathomless depression from which she’d been unable to rise. That was why her so-called father had packed her off to Blackwell, or at least she’d believed so at the time.
“I don’t know when he decided to send me here. I haven’t seen him since. Not once in more than ten years.”
Slowly, she’d realized Sterling and Fletch weren’t there to help her recover; they were her jailers. She’d had no allies, no one who cared, until now. Until Will Carter.
He stared down at the ground, apparently lost in thought. She wanted him to come to her and push her back against a tree. Oh, to feel his weight and warmth pressing into her. Only then would she know deep in her soul that he was there, that she wasn’t alone anymore.
He would never do that, of course; he was too busy trying to rescue her.
Tears stung her throat, and she held her breath to keep them back. Don’t cry. Don’t you dare.
“He was tall and thin,” she said, determined to get it all out now, while she had the courage. “I suppose he may have gained weight since then. His hair was dark, but it may have turned gray or fallen out. He had whiskers, but I suppose he may have shaved in the last decade. He had brown eyes like mine. I thought he was old—sixty, perhaps?—but everyone looks old when you’re fifteen.”
Will looked up then and took her hand, his eyes soft with compassion. The gesture was nothing compared to what she wanted from him, but even so, the warmth and comfort of his skin against hers steadied her. A tiny piece of his immense strength and calm flowed into her through that small point of contact.
“Well, then,” he said finally. “I’ll have to find out some other way.”
…
After they left Hector at the stables, Helen expected Dr. Carter to escort her, via the main entrance, to the bottom of the attic stairs. Perhaps that had been his original intention, but instead he stopped at the little side door near his corner tower.
“Would you like to come in and sit by the fire?” he asked. “It’s still early, and you must tire of spending all your time in one room.”
By now his small kindnesses should come as no surprise, yet each fresh proof of his innate decency touched her as deeply as the first, perhaps more so. Against every habit and instinct, she trusted him.
“Thank you,” she said and let him lead her up the spiral staircase.
Naturally, he took her only as far as his office on the third floor. His bedchamber, directly above them, loomed large in her thoughts. As soon as Elsie had drifted off to sleep last night, Helen had run to this tower determined to seek…what? Comfort? To prove to herself that she wasn’t simply using Dr. Carter, that she could give him something in return, even if it were only her body?
His rejection had left her at a loss. Part of her respected him for the stance he’d taken, but if he wanted nothing in return for his help, then what little power she’d had was gone, and she begrudged the loss. Not that she blamed him. As always, he’d behaved admirably.
“Do sit down,” he said, and for the first time, he gestured not toward the desk but to one of two easy chairs by the fire.
A tiny dart of pleasure shot through her because he’d spoken as a gentleman playing host to a lady, rather than a doctor cajoling a patient.
The office seemed less dungeon-like than when he first came to Blackwell. With a fire smoldering in the grate and his possessions scattered about—a striped scarf hanging from the coat stand, a cup still half full of tea on the end table, a pair of slippers under the desk—the room looked almost homey.
“Would you like tea?” The dirty cup rattled in its saucer as he tidied it away.
“Yes, please.”
He poked and prodded the fire back to life, and when he had a reasonable blaze, he hung a tin kettle over the flames. Once he’d sat, there was nothing to do but wait for the water to boil. Something about the way he sta
red at the floor made her think that perhaps, like her, he couldn’t forget the room upstairs. The polite thing to do was to steer the conversation toward safer waters, but polite was not always synonymous with right.
“Dr. Carter, are we ever going to talk about last night?”
“Don’t you think we’ve said all there is to say?” he asked with a sad smile.
“I’m not propositioning you,” she hastened to assure him, and for once she meant it. “But something’s been bothering me.”
“Go on,” he said, and she heard caution in his tone.
“Last night, you seemed to think my feelings—with regard to you, I mean—weren’t real. That I didn’t really want to sleep with you. You see why that upsets me, I hope.”
“Of course,” he said, after a moment’s consideration. “I’m sorry for it. It was never my intention to upset you.”
“That’s…that’s not a denial. It wouldn’t be so bad if you thought I was playacting, but I don’t think it’s as simple as that. You think I’m imagining things, don’t you?”
“Not imagining, precisely,” he said in his careful, placating tone. “But it’s easy to mistake one type of feeling for another, wouldn’t you agree?”
She couldn’t immediately answer. A horrible shiver had passed over her. At first, she didn’t know what it meant, but then she recognized the embarrassment burning her cheeks. Countless years had passed since she’d last cringed with mortification, but she did so now.
“Oh, you are infuriating,” she said, covering her cheeks with her hands.
“Look at it from my point of view,” he said. “You’ve been here for ten years, almost entirely friendless. Mrs. Fletcher’s a tyrant. Dr. Sterling’s…at best, he’s incompetent. I arrive and offer to help—”
“And I’m so grateful, I convince myself it’s more than that? As if I’m some pathetic… As if what I feel for you must be pathological.”
“You’ve definitely spent too much time with only doctors for company if you’ve started using words like ‘pathological.’” The cynical smile that accompanied these words didn’t suit his usually honest and open countenance.
Alarmed by his look, she cried out, “Oh, don’t!” then covered her mouth. Dr. Bell’s room was just below. “Don’t make jokes,” she said in a more moderate tone. “I am not mad. I am not an object of pity.” Despite her best efforts, anger made her sound like an actress giving a monologue; she wasn’t shouting, but her voice would easily reach the cheap seats.
“I know that,” he said simply. By contrast, his voice was quiet and even—the voice of reason.
“Then please stop coddling me as if I were.”
“Kettle’s boiled,” he muttered.
He’d sounded like a disgruntled husband, and while he made the tea, Helen seethed silently like a dissatisfied wife. How dare he? How dare he presume to tell her what she felt wasn’t real? The least he could do was pay her the relative compliment of thinking she lied. At least that didn’t make a victim of her. Between those two roles—villainess and victim—she’d play the villainess every time.
“Patients often develop tender feelings for the doctors who treat them,” he said without looking up.
“Well, I never have!” The words escaped her before she’d had a chance to think how he might take them. “I mean, apart from your good self.”
But he was laughing at her, the bastard.
Laughter made him look about ten years younger. Her urge to snarl at him completely subsided when she saw his habitual solemnity melt away. Buried deep down, he had a playful streak. It was a side of him she longed to know better.
This wasn’t the first time she’d noticed that displays of temper had little impact on him. Blame the years he must have spent practicing professional detachment. Flirtation, on the other hand, worked wonders and had the added benefit of giving him pleasure. Whether he knew it or not, he enjoyed her teasing.
“You don’t believe me?” she said, allowing the warmth she felt to show on her face.
“It isn’t that.”
But she knew it was. Keeping her tone light, she said, “You seem confused. Sometimes you speak as though you think I’m honestly mistaken about my feelings, but then you imply that I’m lying.”
If she wasn’t very much mistaken, she knew who to blame. Sterling would have reveled in recounting every sordid detail of her past. “I think someone’s been telling tales about me.”
Leaning back in his chair—a relaxed pose she didn’t credit—he sipped his tea. “It doesn’t matter.”
“That’s not a denial, either.” She huddled in her coat despite the fire. “Of course it matters. What have you heard?”
He shook his head, determined not to be drawn in, but she had something she could bargain with: truth for truth. Somehow the thought of talking to him about her past no longer frightened her. She’d carried her secrets alone for too many years, and if she was going to share them with anyone, she wanted it to be Dr. Carter.
“Ask me anything,” she said, her gaze capturing his, “and I swear to tell you the truth.”
The light kindling in his eyes told her he was tempted.
“Go on,” she said. “Ask me.”
Instead, he gestured to her cup. “Aren’t you going to drink that?”
She took a sip, then shuddered. In the cold room, the tea had already grown tepid. Will shook his head, laughing at her again, and went to fetch the pot.
“When I first came here,” he said, pouring her a fresh cup, “I heard a rumor about a groom.”
As he passed her the tea, his expression was impassive, a perfect mask concealing whatever he felt. No clues there to help her, but perhaps that was for the best. Honesty was easier without his obvious reactions tempting her to tailor her story.
“I see.” Sterling had told him, then. The business with the groom—Joe, his name had been—was years ago, shortly after her arrival. No one but Sterling and Fletch knew. “Yes, that story’s true,” she admitted.
Joe had offered a little warmth and light at a dark time. She hadn’t loved him, but she had liked him a great deal. If they’d been left to themselves, who knew what feelings might have developed?
“We oughtn’t to have risked it,” she said. “He lost his position, poor boy. Is that all you’ve heard?”
If so, she’d still tell him the rest of the tale. Even if she hadn’t recognized the wisdom of heading Sterling off at the pass, so to speak, she wanted Will to know. Perhaps she should worry about what he would think of her afterward, but she trusted him. He wouldn’t condemn her.
Will shifted in his seat, his expression pained. Too late, she realized how Is that all you’ve heard? might be misconstrued. “My predecessor, Dr. Vaughn…”
“Goodness me,” she said. “You and Sterling must have had a rare old gossip.” Sterling had probably loved it, the filthy old goat. “So, he told you about me and Dr. Vaughn, and now you think I go about seducing all my doctors, is that right?”
In truth, Dr. Vaughn was the only man she’d ever seduced, unless she counted Will, who was a work in progress. There’d been another boy in the theatre—they’d lost their virginities together—but no one had seduced anyone. When Mama found out, she’d clucked her tongue and proceeded to lecture Helen on all the ways she might continue her first liaison without incurring unpleasant consequences.
Will leaned forward in his seat, betraying his impatience. “Dr. Sterling said he didn’t think you’d allowed Vaughn any significant liberties.”
His casual tone didn’t fool her for a moment. Though she’d been raised to view love and the sex act as two separate things that sometimes mingled, she understood this wasn’t what most people were taught.
“Before I tell you about that, may I ask you a question?”
He looked down at his hands, then back to her face. In his own way, he was as guarded with his secrets as she. “Go on.”
“Have you ever made love to anyone but your wife?”
“I see.” It wasn’t what she’d hoped to hear, though not because the disparity in their experience bothered her. “That will make my past difficult for you to understand, I think.”
“Helen, as your doctor—”
“I’m not talking to you as my doctor. I’d never tell any of this to a physician.” The very thought made her want to flee the room. “I’m talking to you as my friend. If you can’t listen to what I have to say in that spirit, I don’t think I can go on. I know Dr. Carter always behaves like a professional, but I’m not worried about him. I’m talking to Will.”
He took her hand, and like last time, his touch soothed her. “No matter what you tell me, I’m your friend. Esther is the only woman I ever…” He shook his head, unwilling to say the words. “But I understand what it’s like to want someone. I— Christ, if there’s anything I understand, it’s that. You don’t have to be afraid of me, Helen.”
The look in his eyes when he talked of wanting… Her whole body came alive in response. Want me, she urged silently.
“All right, I’ll tell you, but I hope you mean what you say, because Sterling is wrong.” She took a deep breath. “I did allow Vaughn significant liberties.”
He didn’t react to her words at all, unless absolute stillness was itself a reaction, and she hated not knowing what he was thinking. Somehow, she’d grown to depend on his openness.
“I wanted him to get me out,” she continued. “This was back when I thought—naively, as it turned out—that all I’d need was a doctor to certify that I was mentally competent. I didn’t know about lunacy inquisitions in those days. I thought I might be able to charm Vaughn and…” How to explain? “Let’s just say Dr. Vaughn didn’t share your scruples.”
At last, the inexpressive mask dissolved. “I daresay he didn’t, the bastard. He must have known his signature alone wouldn’t be enough to win your release.”
“He did. He was the one who enlightened me.”
Though she hadn’t meant her words as a defense of Vaughn, Will appeared to take them that way.
“I see.” Two precise, clipped syllables. “And how did he propose to remedy your situation?”
