Against the Tide (32 page)

Bane watched Lydia’s eyes widen in surprise when they went into the spacious library and she met Dr. Tilden. “You went to medical school?” she blurted out.

Bane knew a reaction like Lydia’s was typical when people first met Dr. Tilden, but he was confident Dr. Tilden was the best doctor to see Lydia through the difficult days ahead of her.

“I know, I look like I am about twelve years old, but I’m thirty-five, I swear it.” The man had a slight frame and light brown hair. “Here, I forgot to put on my glasses. I don’t need them, but they are supposed to make me look older.” He put the wire-frame spectacles on his face and looked at her hopefully. “Better?”

The glasses didn’t help, but Lydia played along anyway. “It’s as if I’m looking at my very own grandfather,” she said.

Dr. Tilden smiled, and his gap-toothed grin made him look even younger. “I like that you’ve still got your sense of humor. The next few weeks aren’t going to be any fun, so try to hold on to that.”

Lydia took a seat at the table, and Bane folded her trembling hand into his own as he sat beside her. He ached with the knowledge of what she was going to endure and would give his right arm to suffer the pain in her place.

“So what am I up against?” Lydia asked.

“It is going to take about two weeks for the poison to clear from your body, but the first week is going to be the worst. Expect massive insomnia. Headaches. You’ll also be skittish and overly sensitive about things, maybe even a little paranoid. Have those feelings already started?” he asked.

Lydia let go of Bane’s hand, pushed away from the table, and began pacing the room. “All of it.” She twisted her hands as she walked to the window and stared out at the bleak, overcast sky. “It hurts to sit still. It hurts to move. I feel like scraping my skin off so I can start over with a different body.”

“And paranoia?” the doctor asked.

“When I was in Vermont, I felt like the trees were spying on me.” She turned from the window and began pacing the room again, itching the skin on her arms. “Three times since I woke up this morning I have looked out the window and wondered how long it will take me to get to the nearest pharmacy to buy something I know will stop this pain the minute I swallow it.”

Bane shot to his feet and grasped her upper arms. “Lydia, I need to be able to trust you. I have to go to Vermont, and you know why. Promise me you won’t leave this house.”

The doctor looked concerned. “Now is not a good time for you to be away.”

Bane kept his gaze locked on Lydia’s face. “Promise me, Lydia.”

“I want to go with you,” she said. “It would keep my mind off things.”

Bane looked to the doctor. “Can she travel?”

Dr. Tilden shook his head. “A milk diet will ease the nausea, but it won’t cure it. She cannot travel.”

The thought of those blocks of ice, melting and smearing the ink on the irreplaceable documents, warred with the sight of Lydia’s wistful, pained eyes. “It will take me three days to do what needs to be done. I won’t go if it means risking your health.
Can I trust you, Lydia?
”

The damaged, trembling woman standing before him disappeared, and just for a moment Bane was looking into the face of a warrior. There was grim determination in Lydia’s eyes, and her iron jaw indicated that she was braced for any battle. “I want you to go, Bane. You can trust me.”

The doctor’s rules were strict, and Lydia stiffened in mortification as he outlined a plan to ensure she would never be left alone, even for a few minutes. Even worse, the doctor warned that her insomnia would make it impossible for her to sleep for several days, meaning she needed around-the-clock supervision.

She was ashamed to need a baby-sitter. She had had a big argument with Bane about it before he left, yelling that she didn’t need watchdogs and any man with an ounce of faith in her would know that. She was a shaking, twitching, nervous wreck, and she didn’t want an audience while she suffered through it. Bane calmly informed her he would not leave for Vermont if she did not agree to his plan.

That was the trump card. Bane made her promise to allow Dr. Tilden, Mrs. Fontaine, and the admiral to take shifts baby-sitting her. It made a miserable situation even worse. Instead of being allowed to hole up in the privacy of her room, she had to inconvenience these rich, well-bred people. She was out of place in this
house, where every square inch—the hand-painted wallpapers, the plush Oriental carpets, and the crystals dangling from the chandeliers—screamed luxury. She didn’t belong here.

It had been a full day since Bane had left. In the formal parlor, Mrs. Fontaine rattled on about her Puritan ancestors while Lydia walked another lap around the room. How many times had she circled this room in the past six hours? A thousand? Two thousand? She longed to escape outside for a good brisk walk, but it had been raining all day, a gusty wind spattering heavy drops against the windows. Was Bane traveling through this awful weather?

The door clicked open. “Mother, I’ll take over here,” the admiral said. “Perhaps you can help get the children into bed while I sit with Miss Pallas.”

This was the moment Lydia had dreaded. She had not been alone with the admiral since that awful day last December. Now here she was, trembling like an opium addict. She turned away and continued pacing so she would not have to look at him. She
was
an opium addict, and everyone in the house knew it.

Mrs. Fontaine sagged in relief. Apparently, six hours of talking about her family had been a strain even for her. “Excellent,” Mrs. Fontaine said as she excused herself from the room.

The admiral closed the hand-carved doors of the parlor. He looked as uncomfortable as she felt, standing with rigid posture and a hard jaw. This man could intimidate an angry mob just by glaring down his aquiline nose, but today he looked as uncomfortable as a sinner in a hair shirt. “And how are you feeling this evening, Miss Pallas?”

Like there were termites crawling over every inch of her skin and she needed to jump out a window to escape them. “Fine.”

Skepticism tinged his grave face as he glanced around the room. “It looks as though you’ve worn quite a groove into that carpet.”

Lydia’s gaze flew to the silk rug. Sure enough, the short silk strands were matted down in the path where she had been walking all day. Her mouth went dry, and her jumpiness got worse. She couldn’t do anything right, and now she was destroying the admiral’s fancy house with her carelessness. “Oh, my heavens,” she said. “I’ll pay for the carpet. I have money saved back in Boston.”

“Stop talking nonsense. The next time the servants take it outside to beat it clean, the matted areas will straighten right out,” he said dismissively.

Her brow wrinkled with skepticism. Was it really that easy to correct the damage? She didn’t know the first thing about fancy carpets, and maybe he was just saying that to make her feel better. “Should we check to be sure? If the path won’t come out—”

He cut her off. “Do you honestly think I would consider charging you for a stupid scrap of carpet when you risked your life to save my son?” He sounded almost angry. “Do you?”

She turned around and started pacing again, careful to avoid the matted path of crushed silk strands. She hated being in the same room with him. In the past the admiral had been her employer, a man she admired and was proud to work for. Now he was acting like he was beholden to her, and she didn’t know how to behave. She weaved in and out of the furniture in the center of the room as she paced in a smaller circle. “I’m sorry if that sounded offensive. I’ve never been in a fancy house like this before, and I don’t know what my manners should be.”

The grooves along the side of his mouth deepened as he scowled. “Lydia, your manners are fine. What is more important is the fact that you have the bravery of an entire regiment of marines. I was wrong about you. I put obedience to the rules over the courage it takes to do the right thing, and for that, I am deeply ashamed.”

She would rather be dropped into the Black Hole of Calcutta
than continue this conversation. Even thinking about that awful day when she was fired from the Navy Yard caused the lump in her throat to grow. Until yesterday she had not cried in fifteen years, and now she was weepy over the stupidest things, like when Bane laced up her shoes because her hands were too jittery, or when Dr. Tilden told her about his pet mice that died last year. Mice! She was in no shape to discuss anything relating to the Navy Yard.

She beat down her emotions and drew a deep breath. “Admiral Fontaine—”

“Please call me Eric.”

She cleared her throat and tried again. “Admiral Fontaine, I would prefer to avoid this discussion, if it is all the same to you.”

He looked confused. “But I owe you an apology. I was wrong to be so intolerant, and I should have considered your circumstances before charging ahead and firing you. I can’t pretend that it never happened, and I need—”

She cut him off. “Admiral Fontaine, the day you fired me is at the very top of things I want scrubbed out of my memory for as long as I live. Are you
really
going to make me revisit it right now?”

The look of shock on his face made her feel guilty, which was so ridiculous she whirled around so she wouldn’t have to face him. Her leg bumped an end table, and a porcelain vase went flying.

Admiral Fontaine caught it a second before it crashed to the floor. He righted the end table and replaced the vase where it belonged. “Let’s get you out of this room before you start climbing the walls. Have you ever played billiards?”

Lydia didn’t know how to play billiards, but she appreciated how smoothly the admiral changed the topic. Physical activity sounded much better to her than the apology he seemed determined to deliver but that she was not ready to hear.

The game room was on the third floor of the sprawling house.
She didn’t realize rich people had entire rooms dedicated to nothing but gaming, but here it was. There was a card table in the corner and a dartboard on the wall, but a billiard table almost as big as the boat Lydia had lived on in the Mediterranean dominated the room. The admiral showed her how to rack the balls and hold the cue, but her trembling hands were clumsy and it took her a while to land a solid strike on the cue ball. After showing her the basics, the admiral racked up the balls and prepared to start a game.

He rubbed a little chalk on the tip of his cue stick and looked at her with caution. “Perhaps you can help me with a problem I’m having at the research wing at the Navy Yard?”

That caught her by surprise. In the four years she had worked at the research wing, everything had functioned like a well-oiled clock. “What sort of problem?”

The admiral leaned over the table and took careful aim, striking the cue ball and sending the rest of the balls scattering across the surface of the table. “Ever since you left, Jacob has been humming ‘Oh My Darling, Clementine.’ He knows I hate that song. I told him the first week he worked there I hated it and never wanted to hear it again. I never did until the week I fired you. Now he hums it daily.”

Lydia blinked. “Jacob always tortured us with his humming. That is nothing new.”

The admiral acted as though he hadn’t heard her as he fired off another strike at the cue ball. “Once that tune is in my brain, it takes root and repeats itself endlessly. Now, every time I walk through the office doors, Jacob stops whatever he is doing and starts humming that blasted song. He’s doing it on purpose. And Willis dumps an unholy amount of sugar into the teapot each morning. He used to only sweeten his own cup of tea because he knows I do not take it sweet. Now I can’t even get a decent cup of tea at work.
It is only a matter of time before Karl thinks up a way to make my life a misery, because he is the angriest of them all.”

Her lip quivered. She missed her former office mates so badly, and the sweet way they banded together on her behalf made her want to cry.
Again.
She turned away and scratched at her forearms, wondering if plunging into the frigid ocean might ease the nonstop itching. “I’m afraid I can’t help you with Jacob’s humming. Or the tea Willis brews.”