The Apothecary's Curse (30 page)

He blinked, vision slowly clearing into the dull ochre glow of a single candle. Eleanor Braithwaite sat upon the edge of the mattress, her cool hands upon his forearms.

“Mr. Erceldoune, you were howling something awful as if you were being ripped apart, and I could not bear it to hear anyone in such agony. Forgive me for entering your room, but—”

“No, please do not . . .” He sat up too swiftly, and his head began to throb in time with his racing heart, the now-familiar aftermath of these nightly episodes. He was unable to still the shuddering waves coursing through him. Beads of cold sweat prickled his arms and back, soaking through the cotton of his nightshirt.

The nightmare dissipated slowly as he came to full wakefulness, embarrassed at having woken Eleanor. “Do not apologize; it is I who should . . . I am sorry to have awakened you; the walls must indeed be paper-thin and— A bad dream's all. Please do not trouble yourself—”

“Do you recall any of it?”

“No,” he lied. Quite to the contrary, he remembered every vivid detail. And even now the images hovered, shadows in the candlelight. “'Twas a nightmare, which has already faded from memory. I am sorry to have brought you from your warm bed.” His heart still pounded, his head echoing each pulse.

“You have nothing to apologize for. You were more than kind to me this morning—”

The candle flame was too bright. “The light . . . would you mind?”

Eleanor extinguished the candle, but did not move.

“I am quite recovered now, in any event. Please, I beg you, return to your room. I have no wish for you to lose a moment's more rest on my account.” In truth, he had little desire for her to witness him cowering in fear of shadowy demons that lived only in his mind.

He sensed her drawing closer, the mattress giving way ever so slightly above the down of the comforter. “My lady, what are you—”

“Mr. Erceldoune, please let me help. Something I learned . . . something that Richard . . .”

Gaelan tensed at the name, but then her small hands slipped through the fine strands of his hair to settle between his neck and shoulders. Gentle kneading and small circular motions released the knots that strung from the base of his head through to his shoulder blades. Such ministrations he had not experienced in so many years. Perhaps never at all. Relaxing into her touch, he knew full well his grave error of judgment. She should go, and now. Should Bell come round to the guest wing . . . The bounds of consciousness loosened, and he began to drift. “Thank you, Lady Braithwaite. You
have
helped. . . . Now you should go,” he cautioned firmly, halfway to sleep.

“I fear that, should I leave, you shall once again find yourself in a state. I shall stay, if only a while, until I am convinced you are quite asleep.” She slipped farther into the bed, adjusting the coverings so she was atop them. Her hands continued the steady kneading of muscle and tendon, so innocent, so very relaxing. The thin leaf of separation between them was unseemly, yet he did not really wish for her to stop. She was soft and warm and inviting, lying so close by him, and when she wrapped him into an embrace, all tension fled; he was in heaven itself.

A single kiss, soft and chaste, her lips against his temple. Sighing, he savored the sweetness of her as she breathed life into his withered and weary soul. He desired with all his heart to draw her nearer, yet propriety halted him, his senses returning. He ripped himself from her touch, once again fully awake.

“Oh my God, Mr. Erceldoune. I . . . I am so sorry. I don't know what . . . The lateness of the hour must have robbed me of my good sense. I—”

“I should have insisted you return to your room the moment I regained my equanimity. It is not . . . I . . . I am so very sorry, Lady Braithwaite,” he said, adding the distance of her formal name. “I thank you for waking me from what has come to be a very frequent nightmare, but you should go.”

“Would it be all right, do you think, if I stayed here, like this? It's silly, but given . . . I feel a kinship with you. It does help me to be near someone—”

Alarm bells pealed in his head. “Yes, we are indeed both victims of your husband, but I cannot allow you . . . Surely you must know that it is not right. . . . You must return to your room. You cannot be seen here when morning comes.”

“Respectability has little to demand of me these days.”

“You cannot believe that. You bear no blame for his vile actions.” His resolve was slipping; he would miss her warmth the moment she set a foot on the floor. “Lady Braithwaite, I've an affection for you that I can neither explain nor deny, so strong it wrenches me beyond all reason. It bewilders me, I confess, and I fear with all my heart . . . that you offer . . . that
I
misconstrue your kindness and your closeness. And even if I did not thus misapprehend you . . . I could not take advantage of . . . Please, go now. . . .”

Eleanor nodded tightly and touched his cheek, her long, loose hair tickling his neck. She needed to leave before his last reserves of will fled. She stood.

Gaelan sat up, drawing the bedcovers close around him. “Wait.” He had to ask. “Have you yet spoken with your brother? Told him?”

“I have not yet had the courage—”

“You
must
tell him.” Gaelan closed his hand over hers, gripping it tightly. “If you cannot tell him, then free me so I may—”

“You promised!” She was trembling, sniffing back tears.

Running his thumb along the hollow beneath her eye—first one and then the other—he wiped back the wetness caught there, before cupping her cheek with his uninjured hand.

“
Listen
to me!” he whispered harshly. “This man must be stopped! Who knows what Lord Braithwaite will do to you if you return to him? He must by now know that I am in residence with your brother, who is already in a tenuous position because of it. Your husband is a powerful man, as well you know, and can destroy both Drs. Bell—James and your brother—with but a single word. He must be made aware, even only for his own sake.”

“I am in terror of what Simon might do should he find out what Richard did . . . did to me. I entreat you—do not . . .” She was near hysterical now as she beseeched him again and again. Gaelan sighed, resigned, as he pulled Eleanor toward him, allowing her head to sink into his chest.

“Richard Braithwaite must be stopped,” he growled softly into her hair.

“Please, Mr. Erceldoune. Might we just rest together here tonight? Do not send me back to my room. I confess that I sleep no more peaceably than you. It has been days since I've slept more than two or three hours. The terror of that night disquiets my rest and invades my dreams. Please just hold me?”

Eleanor planted her head in the crook of his neck, settling herself there, her long auburn hair a pillow to his cheek as he looped his arm about her. She whispered in his ear the simplest of tunes, and he was undone.

CHAPTER 37

There was now little point in waiting for Erceldoune's book to turn up. It might never. Simon turned to his own library for clues to his unfathomable situation. Erceldoune's could not be the sole work of its kind. Indeed, given the Bell family's illustrious history in the sciences, there must be something of use within his own vast collection. He only just needed to locate it.

He pulled a volume from a low shelf, a yellowed handwritten journal, and sat at his uncle's ancient desk.
On the Lapis Philosophorum: A Sceptical Perspective
. It was as good a place to start as any. But Uncle Samuel's notes were pages and pages debunking the very idea of any sort of Elixir of Life. “The alchemists have debased themselves in their primitive quest, irrelevant in the face of what we know of chemistry and medicine today. It is little wonder they have all but disappeared in shame.”

Simon pinched the bridge of his nose.

“You'll not find what you seek in the books of rationalists like your uncle, my love,”
Sophie cooed into his ear.

“Ah, my darling. Where then might you suggest—”

“Dr. Bell! Dr. Bell!” Mrs. McRory ran panting into Simon's upstairs library without knocking, her face ashen.

“Good Lord! What is it, Mrs. McRory? Is it Eleanor? What's happened?” He jumped from the chair, slamming shut his book.

“It is Lord Braithwaite come to call, sir, and he is in a fit of rage. Did you not hear the shouts? For surely they split the very foundation stones of your house!”

Damnation!
“Tell him to await me in the drawing room, and I will be there presently.” Breathing deeply, Simon steeled himself for the inevitable confrontation.

Eleanor had been damnably frustrating since she'd arrived. He'd never known her to be skittish, but she was being restive as a hummingbird. But reticent—she'd barely spoken to him over the past three days, and when she did, it went round in endless circles. . . .

“I will not go back to him,” she'd insisted when he'd at last confronted her about it. “And if I cannot stay here with you, I shall find another more welcoming abode.”

“Of course you will always find a home with me, should you desire it! But how might I help you with your troubles, sister, if you will not confide in me? I am aware—more than aware, I might add—that you made a poor choice for a husband, and I aver he is more fit for prison than his hilltop estate. Leave him if you must, stay with me a lifetime, but you cannot hide from him forever.”

“Simon, you do not understand!” she shouted, stomping across the floor to the other side of the room. “You cannot understand!”

“Enlighten me; I entreat you. Has he hurt you? If he has done something so horrible as to lay one finger . . . do me the justice, at least, of confiding it in me, so I may understand you and act upon it as any brother must.”

And on it would go—Eleanor with her opaque expression and unyielding stance day after night after day. Simon had wearied of the entire business. Barbarous though Braithwaite had been to Erceldoune, he could not imagine what that had to do with her. Simon froze, contemplating a terrifying possibility. Might Braithwaite be persecuting Eleanor for his own intervention on Erceldoune's behalf?
Dear God!
He'd never considered it. No. Braithwaite was too cunning; he'd never dare reveal his disgraceful appetites to his own wife, for it could mean his ruination. But if Eleanor did not wish to return to her husband, he would do everything in his power to help her.

Stopping at the entry to the drawing room, Simon composed himself, checking his cravat, straightening his waistcoat—another second to ready himself for the imminent confrontation. “Lord Braithwaite.” Simon forced himself to smile and extended his hand.

Braithwaite examined the proffered hand, declining it before pacing the room like a nervous bridegroom. “I shall get right to the point, Dr. Bell. My wife is to accompany me from this place and to our home where she belongs. If you fetch her, I'll not take up any more of your time. She has been days now from me, and to speak frankly, it is an embarrassment. I had to make my excuses for her whilst at court last night to dine with the prince and Her Majesty the queen, who were keen on meeting my new bride, of whom I have spoken so glowingly over the past many months. Perhaps she feels stifled in the country, so far from you and society. But I am willing . . . Tell her, if you would, I am even willing to open the London house permanently so that she might more easily come visit here as often—and for as long—as she wishes. It will take but a day or two to arrange it. However, I must see her first. Talk with her. Alone.”

Simon did not much care for Braithwaite's condescending tone, resolving in the instant not to give up his sister unless it was her own choice. “My sister is her own woman, always has been. I've no idea what has transpired between the two of you, but she is always welcome here. If she has no desire to return to your home, whether in town or up north, I am not inclined to force her into something she has no wish to do.”

“I am aware, sir, that you also harbor a murderer in your house—as a guest!” The insinuation concealed a sinister threat.

“If you are, my dear sir, aware of this, I certainly am not. Of whom might you speak?”

“One Gaelan Erceldoune, lately of Bethlem Royal Hospital and under the care of Dr. Handley, mad doctor and quite an expert in the treatment of criminally violent lunatics. However you managed to extract him from Bedlam is beyond me, and certainly none of my affair, but—”

“Mr. Erceldoune was acquitted of the charges, as you well know, and yes, he is resident in my home. What of it? He was wrongly imprisoned for an act he did not commit and was subjected to cruel punishment at the hands of your so-called
mad
doctor!”

Braithwaite fumed and sputtered unintelligible curses, turning his back to Simon for a moment. When he spoke again, his manner had shifted to a genteel calm, an actor swapping masks. Head in hands he sat—suddenly sorrowful, a husband beside himself with worry. “Look here, my dear brother-in-law, I have not come into your abode to argue about Erceldoune. Have at him, if it is what you desire; it is of no matter to me. Now if you please, sir, my wife. Where might I find her? I do sore miss her gentle presence and would endeavor to have her return with me to our home forthwith.”

As Braithwaite pleaded his case, remorse forced itself across his features. “We had an awful spat—my fault, entirely, a misunderstanding of affection when I arrived home late one night last week. I'd had perhaps one too many whiskies at the club, and I disturbed her sleep. She fled 'ere I rose the next morning. The servants said she ran from the house with naught but the clothes on her back, and I was worried in the extreme for her safety, of course. Realizing her agitation, I did not know what she might do. Nor how I might make it right by her.”