Bedlam: The Further Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë (31 page)

I felt a panic as strong as when we'd been trapped in the fire. “Where are you going?”

“Back to the laboratory,” Slade said, “to find Stieber. He wants me more than he wants you. I'll lure him and his men away from Tonbridge and deliver him to justice. You'll be safe.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Stay here,” Slade said. “I'll deal with Stieber. I'll exonerate us. You needn't worry about anything.”

It was so like him to try to take on the world single-handedly. I loved him for his valor. But he'd placed me on a pedestal because he thought I was too good for him, and I was finding it most uncomfortable. I chafed at sitting idle while he fought on my behalf, and the past had shown that we could accomplish more together than separately.

I sought an excuse to prevent Slade from leaving. “There's blood on your shirt. “You're injured.”

Slade glanced down at his shoulder. “It's only a scratch.”

I walked around him, inspected him, and gasped. “Your back is covered with blood!”

Indeed, his shirt looked as if it had been dyed crimson and ripped to shreds. He twisted around to see. “I must have been hit by debris from the explosion. I didn't even notice.”

“You had better see a physician,” I said.

“There's no time. I'll be all right.”

“At least let me examine the cuts.”

“Never mind.” Slade's expression repelled the very idea of my seeing him undressed, hurt, vulnerable, and weak.

“You can't go around bleeding like this,” I said. “The wounds may fester. Besides, you'll attract attention.”

Slade couldn't argue with that. He let me take him into the Rose and Crown. I was glad I'd registered under a false name, as a married woman. Anyone who saw us would assume Slade was my husband. They wouldn't suspect that the famous spinster author Currer Bell was up to no good. I sneaked Slade into my room, which was luxuriously furnished with a four-poster canopied bed. The impropriety of the situation embarrassed me; the intimacy excited me as well as disturbed me. But I could not have done otherwise; Slade needed help.

While he removed his shirt, I went in search of the house-keeper, from whom I obtained washcloths, bandages, and a bottle of alcohol. I told her my husband had been injured in a minor accident and his shirt ruined. She gave me a clean shirt left behind by another guest. When I returned, Slade was sitting in a chair, stripped to the waist. Even as I felt a shameful thrill at the sight of his nakedness, I winced because his back was a gory mess of cuts, blood, and embedded glass fragments. As I poured water from the jug on the washstand into the basin, neither of us spoke. We didn't look at each other. I carefully picked the glass out of his flesh. Luckily, I'd had some experience with nursing while caring for my sisters and brother, and the cuts weren't deep. As I cleaned them, I tried not to notice his lean, strong muscles or the heat from his skin, or to glance over his shoulders at his bare chest, but I couldn't help wanting to caress him; I couldn't stop the molten, heavy sensation that spread through my body. Dabbing the cuts with alcohol, I tried to think of myself as a nurse and Slade as my patient.

I failed miserably.

“The bleeding's stopped,” I said, bandaging the wounds. “You should heal just fine.”

He put on the clean shirt. His expression was cold, hard; he'd sealed himself off from me. He stood, ready to leave, and I knew it was unfair to keep him with me. I knew the agony of being in the presence of someone who had rejected me; I should let Slade go. But suddenly I was overpowered by emotion. His confession, Lord Eastbourne, the fire, Wilhelm Stieber, the death of Oliver Heald, and our own narrow escape—it was all too much, after Katerina's murder, my arrest, and my ordeal in Bedlam. I began to cry.

Slade acted as remote as if he were a million miles away. “You'll feel better when you're home with your family.”

“My family is gone,” I said between sobs. “While you were in Russia, Emily, Anne, and Branwell died of consumption.”

“My God.” Slade was shocked, mortified. “I'm sorry. I didn't know.”

He put his arms around me, but I cried harder because, even though Slade was still with me, I had lost him, too.

Slade spoke hesitantly: “You must be upset about Oliver Heald. Was he a close friend?”

I perceived that Slade wanted to know if I had been romantically involved with Mr. Heald. I wondered if Slade was jealous; but if so, what did it matter? I had enough other proof of his love, and I had rejected it. Once I might have been tempted to say I'd been in love with Mr. Heald to pay Slade back for his charade with Katerina, but that would have been disrespectful to Mr. Heald as well as untrue, and I hadn't the heart for petty games.

“No,” I said. “He was just an admirer of my work. I'd only met him a few times.” I gave an incoherent explanation of how Mr. Heald had followed me around. “But he was a good man. I was mean to him. I wish I could take it back, but I can't. He saved my life, and he died because of me.”

I wept, my face buried against Slade's chest. Slade was as rigid as if I were a bereaved stranger who'd thrown herself at him. My requited love for him was as hopeless as every unrequited love I'd ever experienced. But sometimes the body does not accept what the mind knows. My face involuntarily lifted to Slade's. Our eyes met. Mine streamed with tears. His were alarmed. I sensed him wishing to recoil—but he didn't. I felt a rush of the euphoria that one feels when one has survived a disaster. With it came an instinctive hunger to celebrate life. And I knew Slade felt the same. The rigidness of his body yielded. He bent his head. His mouth met mine with a force as cataclysmic as the explosion at the workhouse. He kissed me with a need and passion that equaled mine.

I have always scorned novels in which the heroine sees stars or hears music when she and the hero kiss, but now I understood the truth in the cliché. Stars and music there were none, but flashes like lightning seared my closed eyes. Thundering sensation rocked us both. Longing vanquished my modesty and sense of propriety. I drank Slade like a woman dying of thirst gulps water; I tasted blood and smoke and fire. My body melted against him. The hardness at his loins pressed urgently against me. I then learned that when a man and a woman who are former lovers become lovers anew, they cannot start at the beginning, with chaste kisses on the hand or cheek. They plunge straight into the depth of engagement they once shared. I wanted more than what I'd done with Slade in the forest in Scotland three years ago. Shame and sin be damned—I wanted us to join in the ultimate fulfillment that I'd never experienced but always craved.

We moved toward the bed, until Slade suddenly wrenched away from me. Breathing hard, his face suffused with desire and horror, he said, “I shouldn't have done that.” Either he didn't realize that I'd instigated the kiss or he'd decided to take the blame himself. “I'm sorry.”

I was appalled at my rash behavior and frightened by the thought of the consequences that might have befallen me if Slade had been a weaker, less noble man. I stood there in an agony of helpless longing as he headed for the door.

“Please don't leave me!” I cried.

“I would have to go even if we hadn't almost—” Slade shook his head. “I have to deal with Stieber, then Niall Kavanagh. When I'm finished with them, I'm going after Lord Eastbourne.”

“You're not going without me.” I hurried to the door and stood with my back against it.

Impatient, and angered by frustrated desire, Slade said, “We agreed that going in the workhouse would be the last thing you did.”

“That was then. Things are different now.” I tried to forget my own desire, calm myself, and speak rationally. “I want revenge against Stieber, too. Not only did he torture me in Bedlam; he killed my most loyal admirer, a man who saved my life. I owe justice to Mr. Heald. Besides, I have my own quarrel with Lord Eastbourne. I have to make both of those villains pay.”

“And how, pray tell, are you going to do that?” Slade deployed scorn as his shield against me.

“I'll think of something. How are you going to find Niall Kavanagh?”

“I'll think of something.”

“I can save you the trouble.”

Suspicion narrowed Slade's eyes. “What are you talking about?”

“When Mr. Heald came to rescue us, you asked me if I had anything else to tell you. I didn't get a chance to answer.”

“What is it?”

“I know of a place Niall Kavanagh might have gone,” I said.

“Where?” Slade demanded.

I folded my arms. “I'm not telling you unless you take me with you.”

Slade groaned. “Blackmail again! Why am I not surprised? All right, tell me where you think Niall Kavanagh went. I'll go to my lodgings and retrieve my bag. We'll meet at the train station in an hour.”

I could imagine arriving at the station and finding him long gone. “No. I won't tell you where we're going until we're on our way.”

Slade's expression turned ominous, but he realized that I wouldn't back down. “Very well. But this will be our last venture together. And—” He paused, searched for words, then said, “About what happened in here: I promise it won't happen again.”

I half expected Slade not to show up at the train station, but he was waiting there, his valise in hand. “Now are you going to tell me where we're going?” he asked me at the ticket booth.

I told the clerk, “Two tickets to London.”

“Why?” Slade said. “Haven't we already searched it thoroughly enough to be sure that Niall Kavanagh isn't there?”

“London is only our first stop.”

“May I ask what our final destination is?”

If he knew, he might escape me along the way. “You may ask, but I'll tell you only this: be prepared for a long journey.”

Slade demonstrated his powers of deduction. “We're going to Ireland, aren't we? To hunt Dr. Kavanagh in his native territory.”

I finally admitted as much.

“We shouldn't just hope to run across him by wandering around blindly,” Slade said. “I suppose you have a notion of where to look?”

“I do.”

Upon arriving in London, we transferred to a northbound train and rode all night. I slept through the Snowdonia mountain range and awoke as the train rattled over the Britannia Bridge across the Menai Strait. The sunrise turned the water into shimmering gold. Soon we were in Anglesey, a large island off the Welsh coast. We glided past green cornfields to Holyhead, the port for travel across the Irish Sea. After we left the train and breakfasted in the refreshment room at the station, we walked to the jetty where the steam packets took on passengers. We'd hardly spoken during our journey, and we did not speak now. Neither of us was eager to address the concerns that we must address eventually. We purchased our tickets for passage on a steamer bound for Dublin. I paid for them out of the funds given me by Lord Palmerston; Slade had very little money left from a cache he'd hidden somewhere in England before he went to Russia and retrieved sometime after he'd returned.

The weather turned stormy while we were at sea. A journey that should have taken four hours extended to eight. I am prone to seasickness, and I could not bear to go below deck, where the ship's tossing was most strongly felt and other passengers ailed. Only by sitting still in a deck chair, in the rain, with my eyes closed, could I keep from being sick. To my relief, the sea calmed as we drew near land. I felt better as I stood at the railing and watched Ireland appear, its green hills obscured by mist.

Here was a place comprised of two different worlds. One was the land of myth and imagination, of haunting airs played on fiddles, harps, and pipes; of leprechauns, changelings and magic spells; of Celtic warriors, roving bards, and strong whiskey. The other world was my own family's homeland. Papa had grown up on a modest farm in County Down, one of ten children. His brothers had stayed there, but Papa had left Ireland in 1802 to study at St. John's College, Cambridge. After he was ordained, he made a trip to Ireland to visit his relations. He never went back again.

I had never been to Ireland; I believed I was English to the core. But when the ship docked at Kingstown, I felt an affinity for Ireland, even though my first sight of it was less than pleasing. The afternoon was gray, the piers deserted, the amusement park drab in the rain. The only Irish I saw were laborers offloading cargo from ships. But their shouts rang with inflections that sounded like Papa, who'd never entirely lost his accent. When we reached the railway station and I negotiated for tickets to Dublin, Slade turned to me in surprise.