Tight Laced (13 page)

A sign was posted outside the unlocked gate:

Warning! The residents within are fragile. Do not engage with any ladies who might be strolling on the grounds.

There were no ladies. Strolling or otherwise. The so-called grounds were devoid of flowers or benches upon which to sit. Not a blade of grass, nor a shade tree. The lawn, if one might think to call it that, was a vast expanse of crushed rock bordered by a spikey grove of hemlock. It hurt his heart to think of his lover consigned to such a place.

Darlington knocked the brass knocker on the asylum’s main door. No one came. There were no lights near the entry, so peering was not an option. Darlington tried the knob. The door was unyielding.

Damn it!
he seethed.
What sort of operation is this?
Then, he heard the faint sound of female alarm. Screams – blood curdling had he been in closer range, he was certain.

He ran down the front steps, and followed a narrow path round to the back of the asylum, which was perilously close to a sharp drop off.

There were five small windows cut into the stone foundation. Too small for a man – or most women – to squeeze through. As he neared them, the screaming grew louder. Several women in distress.

Hysteria?

Perhaps, but his childhood home, infused with three sisters, had sounded similar at times.

And then, he heard a familiar shadow of a voice. He couldn’t make it out completely, but the words
pleasure
and
satisfied
hovered in the air. Lady Lacilia was inside of this horrible place!

Darlington crouched beneath the windows and inched his way along the narrow ledge that overlooked an impossibly deep chasm. One slip, and he was a gonner.

“Stop!” he heard from inside. Lacy’s voice, no doubt about it.

A stiff gust of wind tickled his back. He smashed himself closer to the building’s façade, feeling his way along the stones as if blind. He reached for the sill of the first small window, and rotted, splintery wood bits came off in his hand.

Turning his head, he looked to the steep gorge below. Ravens circled, their attention on something recently dead way down there. His heartbeat reverberated in his ears. He licked his lips.

Lacy’s voice was growing weaker now; her cries for help muffled. Darlington levered himself to a squat, his toes on the ledge, his hands grabbing the stones on either side of the window, and he raised himself up ever slowly, so only his brow and the tops of his eyes could be viewed from inside.

It was dark in there. Murky, almost, as if he were glimpsing the ocean floor. He could barely make out two figures hunched over a body – a surgery patient, it seemed. The first was possibly a nurse, dressed in a long, white gown, her ample behind wagging to and fro as she adjusted a mask-like object over the patient’s face.

The other figure was hunched down at the end of a gurney. He seemed to be tending to a part of the patient that was covered by a sheet.

Darlington, secure in the notion that their concentration was elsewhere, came to a full stand, and as he did so, some earth gave way beneath his feet, causing a small avalanche of gravel. He hugged the building.

“Think, you dumb sot,” he said aloud.

Just then, he heard the unmistakable sound of glass breaking, and a man’s angry voice, “That’s the third time this week!”

Inside the dank room the nurse was bent over, picking up pieces of something that had shattered. “Ouch!” came a wail, and then the nurse was holding her hand, evidently stemming the blood from a cut.

With the nurse out of the way, Darlington had a clear view of the honey-hued locks that cascaded on either side of the patient’s masked face. A glimpse of slender arm.

What to do?

There was only one thing
to
do, and time was of the essence. With the doctor and the nurse scrambling to clean up shattered glass, he had to act now. Alas, the window was incredibly small. Could he fit? He unbuttoned his coat with one hand, keeping ahold of the rough stones that anchored him to safety with the other. He cinched his belt, and wiggled free of his coat. Using the woolen overcoat as buffer against jagged glass, Darlington punched his fist through the window with all of his might. Glass exploded everywhere.

Both doctor and nurse swung round. The doctor’s voice loudest as he bellowed, “What in heaven’s—”

Darlington has half inside, swimming his arms to gain the needed leverage to squeeze the last bit of the way into the operating gallery.

The nurse held a shiv-sized shard of glass in front of her. “Whoever you are, stop, or prepare to meet your maker!” she crowed.

Darlington stood up straight and brushed the slivers and chunks of glass from his clothing. He ignored the shard-wielding woman, and addressed the scalpel-holding man. “You must cease this activity immediately, under in the name of the queen’s command!”

The crotchety doctor was not impressed. “Queen’s command? What? Who are you?”

“The Duke of Blantyre Highmeadow. I am here to correct a grievous error on the part of the Countess of Highcastle.”

The nurse remained stationed between Darlington and the patient, crouched as though being approached by a wild beast, her legs apart, the jagged glass in her hand. “Ha! A likely tale,” she cried.

“Miss, you’d be well to step aside. This is, indeed, the Lady Lacilia Bloomsbury you have on the gurney behind you.”

“And what if it is? What’s she to you?”

Darlington shifted to the side, craning his neck for a peek behind the stalwart nurse. “She is my … never mind. Only know that some new information has come to light, and if you touch one hair upon her head, you might be spending your remaining years in the gallows.”

“The gallows?” said the doctor.

“Prison, sir. For your methods are highly suspect, and I intend on having this very suspicious operation shuttered.”

The doctor’s scalpel hand lowered, slightly, “On whose authority?”

“My sister Mathilde is married to the Marquess of Blackshire, but before that she was betrothed to Prince Leopold before Helena snatched him away. You may have heard of our heraldry? The dragon crest? She’s in a position to make great trouble for you should any harm come to me or … her.”

“Liar!” screeched the nurse, whose eyes were now bulging with the desire to shove that glass into his very loin.

“Nurse! Put that down. Duke, if you are indeed a duke, show me your papers.”

“No time for that, old chap. Now, with what sort of potion have you doused our dear girl?”

“She is in the twilight world of the chloroform, and thus she will remain until I have finished my surgical duty.”

Darlington sighed – he hadn’t arrived too late, then. He rushed to Lacy’s side, knocking the glass out of the nurse’s hand as he brushed by her. “Lacilia,” he whispered, pulling the mask from her face. She had a swath of cotton wetted down with anesthetic pasted to her lips, and Darlington tossed it away.

“Step back, Sir,” instructed the doctor, his scalpel poised from his station at the foot of the gurney.

“Lacy, Lacy, wake up!” the duke bade, tapping her cheeks.

“I said step back. I will do my duty as planned, and you Sir, are making it more likely that she will suffer if my hand is not steady.”

Darlington glanced up to see the scalpel, its bright gleam flashing where the sun’s rays attacked it from the newly broken window. He threw his gaze back at Lacilia’s peaceful face. Her closed eyes. So innocent.

The doctor lowered his instrument for a moment, and that is when the duke seized his opportunity.

It all happened so quickly and so deftly that, once he had time to reflect upon it, Darlington was certain that the earl had a hand in the execution from his position in the heavens. In one instant, the duke grabbed the scalpel and slashed the air between himself and the doctor while the nurse stood by with her jaw dropped to her collar.

Darlington swept Lacy up in his arms and tossed her over his shoulder, and then slowly backed out of the room through the only door in it. As he left he offered a parting blow. “You’ve lost this battle, you monster, and I will make sure you lose the war!”

The words of the doctor echoed off the dank hall walls and followed Darlington as he made his way to safety. “You are a foolish man, duke whoever-you-are, and you are making a grave error.”

The first thing Lady Lacilia saw when she awoke was the ebony mane of a galloping horse. And then, she caught the scent of the man who held her astride on the saddle in front of him.

The earth, the sweat, the forest. Her dragon duke. Her savior. “Darlington,” she gasped. She picked her head up (though it pounded so), and she turned round to confirm it. “Where in the world have we gone?”

“My dear, we’ve gone nowhere but we will soon arrive at the truth.”

He’d wrapped a saddle blanket round her thinly cloaked shoulders, and he held her tightly round the waist. “How long have we been on the road?”

“It matters not, my darling. For we are bound for your inheritance and the return of your livelihood.”

Lacy’s ears rang with pain, her mouth was parched, and under the sweet scent of the duke she still smelled the awful chloroform. But she could tell, immediately, that she was still perfectly intact. He hadn’t cut her. He hadn’t done a thing, really.

The duke had come through.

Lacy felt the wave of a gallop beneath her. Beneath them. They were riding, she was certain, into the next phase of her life. Darlington’s arms tightened their hold on her. She closed her eyes, then opened them, and ahead she saw the clouds clear, and the sun break through in sharp rays. Fingers of love, her father used to call them, those sun streaks.

“Fingers of love,” she said aloud.

One month later.

I
N THE END,
Lacy had shown more mercy than the Countess had a right to expect. She was allowed to continue to reside at Highcastle, keep her title, and a small pension with which she could afford a modest house of servants.

As for Sarah Jane, the annulment was granted immediately, as the marriage had been conducted illegally and under duress. And Sarah Jane was just fine with it all, for as it turned out, she had quite fallen in love with Roland, and Roland with her. It mattered not her title, and she cared not one whit for the pomp of the life of a duchess. Indeed, she rather fancied the stable house as it provided her with access to a collection of critters she kept as pets, as well as the installation of Roland’s parents – an accomplished cook and a doting father – who was now confined to a mobile chair and liked nothing more than teaching Sarah Jane card games she’d never been allowed to play at Highcastle.

As for Lacilia, she found herself fully absorbed with matters of the Blantyre Mine. With her sizeable inheritance, she set up trusts for the two-hundred-and-fifty fatherless children and their mothers. Much to Darlington’s dismay, however, she refused his proposal.

His twin sister seemed most vexed. “But you will you ever consider marriage, Lady Lacilia?” Delphinium queried.

“I will not rule it out,” is all she would say on the subject.