“Very good, madam.” Whittaker held the door and watched her walk across the marble foyer past the cast-iron statuette of Cupid ready to shoot the first arrow. The elderly butler saw her to the carriage, then went back into the house. His aged feet carried him across the same marble foyer, past Cupid, and paused at the open entrance to the library.
“She’s in the blue traveling outfit, sir, surely off to Brooklyn. I’ve taken the liberty of readying your carriage.”
With a grim set to his face, Trevor picked up his blackthorn and departed for Brooklyn.
“She’s not doing well, Mrs. Sheridan. I urge you to return to Manhattan. We’ll send a note when she is more amenable to company.” Nurse Steine tightened those thin lips and peered down her nose at Alana.
“What’s happened?” Alana asked, clutching her small beaded purse in fear.
“She’s deluded herself into thinking she’s remembered the night your parents were killed. She’s had to be sedated. We’ve given her morphine. Now is not the time for a visit.”
“I must see her! She needs me now,” Alana cried, beside herself that Christabel was going through such hell. “Where is she?”
“Mrs. Sheridan, I urge you to calm down and reconsider,” the nurse commanded.
Alana began to cry. With tears streaming down her cheeks, she said, “Does she believe she killed them, then? Is that why you don’t want me to see her?”
“It’s worse than that. She’s delusional. If you go in there, she’ll probably accuse you of killing them. Now I strongly suggest you return to your carriage and spare both her and you a dreadful experience.”
“No,” Alana stated flatly. “I want to see her. She needs me.”
“We’ll have to have the physician’s approval. And he’s not here right now. It may take all day for him to return.” Nurse Steine’s lips disappeared altogether.
“Then I’ll wait.” Alana removed a linen handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed her eyes. Her chin took a defiant set.
Nurse Steine looked at her, her lips pursed in disapproval. “Very well—”
A scream cut off the rest of her words. Startled, Alana looked down the corridor. A transom was open over a closed door, and she could hear a woman struggling with two attendants. “That’s my sister,” Alana snapped. “The doctor be damned, I’m going in there!”
“You cannot!” Nurse Steine shouted as Alana ran to the room and threw open the door.
What she saw nearly destroyed her. Christal was a ghost of her former self, rail-thin and wild-eyed. She fought to rise from her bed as two blue-and-white-gowned female attendants held her down. Next to her on the night table morphine salts and a used syringe revealed that she had just been drugged.
The morphine was already taking effect. Christal’s will to fight soon gave way to apathy. The attendants were able to tighten the bed straps to her arms and legs. Finally Christal just lay there, a dull, glazed sheen on eyes that had once sparkled with life and happiness.
“Oh God!” Alana choked out, going to her. She touched Christal’s matted blond hair and wept.
“You see, this isn’t helping her,” said Nurse Steine.
“Why is this necessary?” Alana grew furious. “She’s never needed treatment like this before.”
“We warned you this was coming, should she ever remember.”
“But she didn’t remember. You said she was delusional.”
Nurse Steine faltered, but she quickly composed herself. “Yes, but she believes what she remembers is true, and because of that, there’s no rationalizing with her. To her, everything she thinks is as real as you or I.”
“What does she remember?”
“I’ve already told you, it’s nonsensical. She accuses everyone.”
Alana had the distinct impression Nurse Steine was lying, but she believed it was because the woman was trying to justify her sister’s treatment. “I want her out of this institution immediately. In fact, pack her things. I’m taking her today.”
“You cannot do that, Mrs. Sheridan. The superintendent of police allowed her to be put in here. Only he can withdraw her to another institution.”
“I will get his permission. Until then, prepare her to come with me.”
Nurse Steine turned cold and hard, and to Alana’s shock, she looked at Alana as if she hated her. “When you have a signed letter from the superintendent of police that Christabel Van Alen is to be released into your custody, she will go with you. Until then, I’ve a duty to your uncle and the people of New York to see that she is here where she was intended to be.”
“But you’ve a greater duty to be humane! Can’t you see?” She began to cry again. “Christal’s only sixteen! She can’t be treated like this!”
“She’s a danger to herself and to others.” Nurse Steine pierced her with her icy gaze. “So I suggest you leave now, Mrs. Sheridan. And until you have that letter in hand, I pray you will have the sense not to return.”
Alana stared at the woman as tears streamed down her cheeks. Christabel, now peaceful, moved only her lips in silent protest. Swamped with impotent rage and frustration, Alana ached to free her, but when she looked back at Nurse Steine, she knew the only way to save her sister would be to get the letter—an impossible task.
“Good day, Mrs. Sheridan,” the nurse prompted, showing her the door.
Furious, Alana kissed Christabel on the cheek and ran from the room, her hysteria building to a fever pitch. She thought the cool air would calm her down, allow her to think, and she burst out the main door, gasping for breath between sobs. If her last day on earth had to be spent petitioning the superintendent to allow her custody of her sister, she would do just that. But in the meantime the idea of Christabel enduring this treatment was enough to drive her mad. All these years Park View Asylum, the most modern and expensive sanitarium in New York, had pretended to offer her sister humane care, but now when Christal was most fragile and vulnerable, they did nothing but tie her and silence her, a throwback to the Dark Ages.
Feeling betrayed, Alana burned for retribution. But when she looked at the drive for her carriage, the threadbare strings that held her senses together suddenly snapped. For there, not five yards away, stood her husband, arms crossed over his massive chest, leaning indolently against his black-lacquered landau, the only clue to his emotions a rather grim twist to his lips as he met her gaze.
She’d been betrayed twice.
Nothing moved for an entire second. Even the birds ceased their twittering in the elms that lined the drive.
“I asked an attendant. She told me that there is a patient here named Christabel Van Alen.” His voice became as gentle as a whisper. “She’s your sister, isn’t she?”
Alana stared at him, despising everything about him at that moment—his handsome Irish face, his blackthorn walking stick, his vulgar foreign mannerisms. “You lied to me. You promised never to follow me here. You’re a liar. Liar!” she rasped, pelting him again and again with that word.
He walked to her, his expression hard, as if he’d expected her rantings.
She wanted to beat him away. All her defenses were shattered, all her secrets revealed. She didn’t know how she would make things right again, or how she would protect herself and her sister now that Trevor Sheridan knew every vulnerability. She said venomously, “You’re despicable. We had a bargain. You promised never to follow me. You promised—”
“Alana!” He harshly cut her off. “I had to know. I couldn’t let you trot off another day without knowing. It was something I had to do.”
“You’re a liar,” she repeated as if the word could wound him.
His features hardened to stone. “Yes, I lied. But I couldn’t stop myself from coming here.”
“What are you going to do with this information now that you have it? How are you going to hurt me with it?”
“I didn’t come here to hurt you.”
Panic swelled in her. “Don’t hurt my sister,” she said quietly. “Don’t
hurt Christal. I’ll do anything to protect her—I’ll give you anything to protect her—you can have—anything—just don’t hurt her!” Her thin emotional armor clattered to the paving stones. All the horrible ideas of what he could do now to her played through her mind. Her life was falling apart. Everything seemed beyond her ability to repair. She buried her face in her hands and began to weep again.
She barely felt his hesitant touch. As her crying continued, he took her into his arms, his cane against her back as he held her. But she was hardly aware of any of this. The agony of Christabel’s situation overwhelmed her, and defeat loomed like an insurmountable fortress on all sides. There weren’t tears enough for her sorrow, frustration, and hopelessness, and for one moment she was forced to succumb to her pain so that she might find the strength to continue.
Minutes ticked by, and her tears abated. Reality came back to her in small doses until she realized he was holding her, his walking stick pressed uncomfortably into her spine, his hand stiffly stroking her shoulder. For a moment his arms seemed so strong and so safe, she almost believed he wanted to help her, but her sanity returned. She knew that his embrace could lie.
“I didn’t come here to hurt your sister,” he whispered. “I want to help if I can.”
She started to cry again, and unwilling to let him see her fall apart again, she turned away.
But as before, he proved quick and agile. He took hold of her, pulling her to him by the waist. “Tell me how to help her,” he whispered.
Sobbing, she didn’t answer right away. Finally she surrendered. “She’s ill. They’re mistreating her. I’ve got to get her out of there … they’ll kill her, kill her.…” She broke down in sobs again, and before she could stop him, he pulled her against his chest, letting her tears fall unchecked onto his silk paisley vest.
“Who do you need to see to get her out?” he prodded gently while she cried.
“Th-the superintendent of police.” She wept.
“All right. I’ll get her out. I can get her out.”
“H-how?” Breathless, she looked up at him in shock and expectation.
He almost smiled. “Think about it, á mhúirnín. There are more Irishmen than Knickerbockers among the police.”
She stared up at him. “That’s true,” she said slowly.
“Then let me take care of your sister. I’ll even enjoy it.” He gave her a bitter smile. “This may be the only area where I have more influence than you.”
“You’re really willing to help us?” she whispered, clinging to this salvation but afraid he might snatch it away at any moment. He nodded, so she asked, “But why?”
“Because I like it when you need me.”
Her gaze riveted to his, and a strange charge of excitement went down her spine. In his own austere way he might have just told her that he was beginning to feel something for her. Then too, his words hinted at something darker, revealing the side of him that she’d seen too much of, the side that must dominate and win at all costs.
“I do need you,” she whispered, conceding anything to get her sister out of the hell that surrounded her, and ironically confessing what was deepest in her heart.
“Good,” he answered simply, a mysterious satisfaction gleaming in those dark Celtic eyes.
When the Sheridan carriage departed, Nurse Steine stepped away from the window where she’d been watching them. She went to her desk and quickly penned a note, addressing it to Mr. Baldwin Didier, Hotel Athena, Troy, New York.
“Take this and see that it goes first-class,” she told a male orderly who was just passing her office.
The orderly nodded and glanced at the letter.
“How is she?” the nurse asked.
“Sleeping,” the orderly answered.
“Go, then. Waste no time. Mr. Didier was adamant that he be contacted immediately should anything like this happen.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The orderly shrugged out of his white jacket and into his black serge one. Nurse Steine watched him go. Then she looked in on Christabel.
The girl’s lips were still moving, proof of her strength even under the influence of the morphine. Dispassionately Nurse Steine watched on while Christabel gave a muffled cry and writhed in frustration at the ties that held her down.
With nothing left to do for her patient, the nurse turned to go. Walking away, she didn’t hear her patient moan, “I saw you … I saw you … don’t … Don’t! Oh please, I beg of you, don’t, Uncle Baldwin!”
28
When they arrived back at the chateau, Alana was drained. Trevor had set off immediately for the superintendent’s office, so she went to her suite to rest and sort out her overwhelming emotions. Christal’s dangerous situation weighed on her mind, but so did Trevor’s words. Alana knew her husband well enough to realize he would extract some kind of payment for his good deed, and the tune to “Bridget O’Malley” kept playing in her head, its indecipherable words a warning and an invitation.
After a brief restless nap she rose and went to the bell pull to summon Margaret. She undressed with the maid’s help and was just about to order a bath when she changed her mind. Abruptly excusing Margaret, Alana wrapped herself in a pink satin dressing gown and went to the adjoining bathing room.
She had never used the room before, though it connected to her bedroom and was meant for the lady of the house to share with her husband. She had heard Trevor going through his daily ablutions in it, but she had always had a bath sent to her dressing room as she had done in Washington Square. After all, she was a Knickerbocker, schooled to turn up her nose at modern luxuries like indoor plumbing. But today she was willing to lower her standards. The temptation of all that hot water showering down on her sore, stiff muscles was more than she could resist. With Trevor gone, she saw no reason not to relax. She would need to rejuvenate for the Van Dam soiree that night and to face whatever news Trevor brought from the police.
The rainbath, as it was called, stood in the middle of a large marble room. Billowing curtains of oiled linen surrounded the perimeter of the marble tub to keep the water inside when it sprinkled down from the box on the ceiling. Operation was as simple as turning the gold-plated handles and adding cold water to adjust the temperature.
She dropped her satin robe, unplaited her hair, and stepped into the tub. Soon her only fear was that she would never want to come out. As the hot shower pounded her back and scalp, her problems seemed to drain down the tub like the water. A sense of optimism rushed through her, and she began to believe things might work out. Trevor would get Christal free. He was the master in situations like this. He could get anything he wanted; he’d proven that again and again.
And, she thought, her heart pounding with a strange excitement, wasn’t there at least a chance that his unsolicited help with Christal meant that he cared for her more than he showed? She closed her eyes as if in prayer, hoping that they might turn their marriage around. The nightmare of having to leave him, even if their marriage was properly annuled, was becoming unbearable. Trevor was not the wit that Anson was, nor was he the flirt Eagan was. But she was less lonely with him than she had been with anyone, even Christal. Something in his soul beckoned her. She had seen it that very first night, and it had bound her to him, a kindred spirit. It was what had made him move heaven and earth for his sister, and Alana had understood it, even in their worst moments, because of her love for Christal.
But it was tragic that his love for his family kept her on the outside, kept them from creating a family of their own. She didn’t want to relinquish her marriage without a fight, but she couldn’t surrender her pride and beg him to love her. She needed that pride of hers because that was what would hold her together in all the lonely years that loomed ahead should their annulment go through.
The water pounded on her like a drumbeat. Steam beaded on the oiled linen. She reached for the soap in the gold shell-shaped holder. It smelled like him, a faint herbal cologne milled into the bar. When she closed her eyes and inhal
ed, the picture of Trevor was so immediate, she felt as if she could reach out and touch him.
She quickly lathered the bar in her hands, unwilling to admit how disturbed she was by the idea of rubbing it over her naked body. Determined to be rational, she washed her arms, but as the scent permeated the shower, she was less and less able to forget Trevor. He was everywhere around her, in the scent, in the air. Secretly she might have reveled in it, but it frightened her too. It made her body react with an animal response, and she could feel herself melting, heating, aching for him in a way she didn’t want to admit.
Shaking herself, she concentrated on lathering a sponge. She ran the sponge down her breastbone and squeezed it, letting the white musky lather coat her bosom like a layer of icing. She rubbed, and suddenly she couldn’t take it anymore. What should have been a perfunctory task was turning to torture, made all the more painful by a desire that was destined to burn undoused.
Moaning, she pulled her head beneath the water, hoping it would wash away the scent and her excitement. She stayed there for almost a minute, eyes closed as if willing it all away. But it didn’t go away. Her nipples remained hard, her thoughts tantalizing. Her mind, body, and soul were wrapped around her husband, and deep down in her own private hell she knew that was exactly how she wanted it.
A noise intruded, a strange distant sound like rain beating on paper. Her eyes opened, and through the blurry rush of water she saw that the linen curtains had parted and a figure stood watching her, the rainbath pelting droplets onto his starched shirtfront.
With trembling hands she wiped the water from her eyes. Trevor watched her from the parted curtains, his expression a mixture of surprise and deep, hardened lust. Stunned, her fantasy by some strange magic made real, she was unable to snatch the curtain and hide her nudity. She couldn’t even think of the questions she knew she must ask about Christal. Before she could utter a sound, he took her by the back of the neck and pulled her mouth against his.
Lions and Lace Page 34