Part 15 (2/2)

They only signaled back, glittering, remorseless: soon, very soon.

4.

”This is your doing,” Mr. Kneebones raged at Hoskins. ”I told you my patient's fragile health could not withstand any strain. I told you he must be insulated from all sources of nervous agitation. No newspapers. No visitors. You saw what the news about his family did to him: three attacks in one week. Yet you let strangers descend upon him at a time when he was most vulnerable And now-”

”A man become a peer of the realm, he ought to know about it,” Hoskins said. ”And attacks or no attacks, it was a relief to him to learn the old gentleman couldn't trouble him anymore. And as to letting in strangers, I reckon I can tell the difference between a friend and an enemy. Even if I couldn't, I'd like to see you shut the door in Lady Pembury's face-and her the grandmother of the only friend my master ever had. Maybe it wasn't my place to tell her what was wrong with him, but I judged it best to warn her beforehand that he wasn't as strong as he looked, and his nerves weren't what they used to be.”

”Which means they should not have been subjected to any source of agitation,” Kneebones snapped.

”With all due respect, sir, you never clapped eyes on him until a few weeks ago,” Hoskins said. ”You may be qualified to judge his medical condition, but you don't know his character or his wishes. I've had more than nine months to learn, and I promise you, the last thing he wishes is to be treated like a vaporish female.” He glanced at Gwendolyn. ”Meaning no offense, my lady.”

”None taken,” she said. ”I've never succ.u.mbed to vapors in my life.”

The middle-aged veteran smiled.

Kneebones glared at her.

He'd been glowering at her ever since she'd summoned him into the drawing room, after he'd visited his patient. They had not spoken together ten minutes before hostilities broke out. Hoskins, waiting outside in the hall, had hurried in and leapt to her defense, unware she didn't need defending.

Still, that had not been unproductive. The man servant's skirmish with the doctor had clarified several matters, and heaven knew Gwendolyn needed as much enlightenment as she could get.

Rawnsley seemed determined to keep her completely in the dark about his illness.

She had noticed something was wrong within minutes of their returning to the house, after the episode in the garden. During the following hours, while Gwendolyn was marshalling everyone into order, she had watched the earl change. By the time of the ceremony, his voice had settled into a monotone...while his movements became painfully slow and careful, as though he were made of gla.s.s and might shatter at any moment.

The fingers slipping the wedding ring onto hers had been deathly cold, the nails chalk white.

Only after it was done, though, and they had signed their names as husband and wife, had Rawnsley told her he had a headache and was going to bed.

She'd sent her relatives away, as he'd asked, saying the earl needed absolute quiet.

He had spent his wedding night in bed with his laudanum bottle. He had locked his bedroom door, refusing to let even Hoskins in.

This morning, Gwendolyn had taken up the earl's breakfast herself. When she tapped at the door and called softly to him, he told her to stop the infernal row and leave him alone.

Since the servants hadn't seemed unduly alarmed by his behavior, she'd waited patiently until late afternoon before sending for Kneebones.

After the doctor left the room, the patient's door had been locked again-and Kneebones refused to discuss his condition with her.

Gwendolyn regarded the physician composedly, ignoring his threatening expression. Medical men had been glowering and glaring and fuming at her for years. ”I should like to know what dosage of laudanum you have prescribed,” she said. ”I cannot get into my husband's room to determine for myself, and I am most uneasy. It is all too easy for a patient in extreme pain to lose track of how much he's taken and when he last took it. Laudanum intoxication rarely improves either calculating abilities or memory.”

”I'll thank you not to tell me my business, madam,” Kneebones said stiffly. ”I have discussed the benefits and risks with my patient-for all the good that does him now, after what he's been subjected to. One shock after another-capped by a hurry-up wedding to a female he doesn't know from Adam. It was as good as killing him outright. You might as well have taken a hammer to his skull.”

”I have discerned no symptoms of shock,” Gwendolyn said. ”What I have observed-”

”Ah, yes, during your lengthy acquaintance with His Lords.h.i.+p,” Kneebones said with a cold glance at Hoskins. ”My lady has known him all of what-thirty-six hours, if that?”

Gwendolyn suppressed a sigh. She would get nowhere with him. He was like virtually every other physician-with the blessed exception of Mr. Eversham-she'd ever encountered. How they resented being questioned! And how they loved to be mysterious and all-knowing. Very well. She could play that game, too.

”I noticed that the hallucinations were of very brief duration,” she said.

Kneebones started. He recovered in an instant, his expression wary.

She could have told him she'd been trained to observe, but she said nothing of her background or of the conclusions she'd drawn after noticing the way Rawnsley had angrily blinked, and brushed at the air near his face, as though trying to clear cobwebs. If Kneebones chose to keep her in the dark, he must expect the same treatment.

She gave him the faintest of smiles. ”Did His Lords.h.i.+p not tell you, sir? I am a witch. But I must not waste your valuable time. You have other sickbeds to attend, I know-and I must set my cauldron aboil...and look about for a fresh batch of eye of newt.”

Kneebones's mouth set in a grim line, and without another word, he stalked out.

Gwendolyn met Hoskins's quiet gaze.

”I don't know the dosage,” he said. ”All I know is what the bottle looks like-and there's more than one.”

Dorian awoke from a restless, nightmare-plagued sleep to nightmarish pain.

His head pounded relentlessly. His insides churned, raw with bile.

Slowly, carefully, he inched up to a sitting position and reached for the bottle on the nightstand. He put it to his lips.

Empty.

Already? he wondered dully. Had he finished it off in a single night? Or had several nights pa.s.sed in the oppressive haze of pain and opiates?

It didn't matter.

He had seen the silvery wraiths again. Today, they'd slowly closed in from the peripheries and s.h.i.+mmered everywhere he looked. He had watched the wedding preparations through sparkling ripples undulating in the air like waves in a ghostly sea.

Then, finally, the silver shards had vanished from his vision and sliced into his skull like white-hot blades.

Now he understood why his mother had claimed the ”ghosts” had vicious talons, and why she'd screamed and torn at her hair. She had been trying to rip the wicked claws away.

Even he had trouble reminding himself there were neither ghosts nor claws, that it was all a sick fancy.

He wondered how much longer he would be able to distinguish between sick fancy and reality, how long before he began confusing those about him with ghosts and demons-and attacked them in mindless rage.

But he would not, he told himself. Kneebones had promised that the laudanum would quiet him, quelling the delusions along with the pain.

Dorian edged closer to the nightstand and opened the door. He reached in and found the porcelain cylinder.

He took it onto his lap and pried off the lid.

The narrow bottle, nestled in a wooden cloth, lay within.

The elixir of peace...perhaps eternal.

<script>