The Dark Lady: Mad Passions Book 1 (Mad Passions (Eternal Romance))

by Claremont, Maire

  Thomas cradled the two snifters, then crossed over to Ian. His dark blue suit drank in the darkness of the late afternoon, making it appear black. “Here.”

  Ian took the glass, fighting the desire to reach out and tug it away. “Thank you.” He tossed the contents of the drink back in one quick swallow, the taste of expensive brandy barely registering on his tongue. “Now, please tell me the whereabouts of Lady Carin. I wish to see her.”

  Thomas turned his back to him, facing the fire. “Seeing Lady Carin isn’t a possibility.”

  “Bullocks.” The coarse word gritted past his teeth before he could stop himself.

  Thomas’s shoulders tensed, his pale hair twitching against his perfectly starched collar. “No. It’s not.”

  The bastard didn’t even have the guts to face him.

  Ian gripped the glass in his hand, the intricate crystal design pressing deep into his skin. “Where the hell is she, Thomas?”

  Thomas whipped back to him, that damned ring winking in the winter’s gloom. “She’s not here. She’s—”

  Ian tensed as fear grabbed his guts. She’d never returned his letters, something entirely unlike the Eva he’d always known. Christ, he hated his sudden uncertainty. Even more, he hated the words he was about to utter. He had lost Eva to duty once; to lose her again would be beyond what he could bear. “Has she died?”

  Thomas shook his head. “No, though it would have been better if she had.”

  Ian slammed his glass down on Thomas’s desk. The crystal cracked, a nearly invisible line snaking the length of the snifter. “That is a damn despicable thing to say.”

  Jumping, Thomas edged away. “You say that now, but if you had seen—”

  Ian locked eyes with his cousin. “I haven’t traveled halfway around the world to play this out with you.”

  Thomas took a sip of his brandy; then his mouth worked as if the words in his throat tasted of poison. “Eva is in a madhouse.” He took another quick sip of brandy, his shoulders hunching. “Or rather, an asylum.”

  The air in his lungs flew out of his chest with more force than any rifle butt blow could induce. For a moment, Ian could have sworn that Thomas hadn’t spoken at all. The blackguard’s mouth still worked, twisting, then pressing into a tight line as if that refuse he’d just spewed truly displeased him. “Explain,” Ian bit out, barely able to contain the sudden rage pumping through him.

  Thomas took a long drink, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he gulped. He wiped his mouth with the back of his pale hand. “It happened after the boy. She simply went mad.”

  Ian took a step forward. “What happened to Adam?”

  “It was horrible. Absolutely horrible.” Thomas fiddled with his glass, then walked abruptly back to the silver liquor tray and poured himself another drink. As he dispensed another two fingers’ worth, he muffled, “Was her damn fault, you see.”

  Her fault?

  Ian dug his fingertips into his palms, tempted to go over and shake Thomas like the little rat he was. He’d imagined a thousand different outcomes to his homecoming. It had even struck him that Eva might throw him out of the house. “Thomas, I’m a military man. I need facts, not ramblings.”

  “The facts?” He nodded. “It was November. Eva insisted on taking her curricle to the village for heaven only knows what reason. The stable hands tried to convince her the roads were bad from the rain. Only she wouldn’t listen. I think she was distraught over Hamilton’s death. Even then she wasn’t behaving quite right.”

  How was a grieving widow supposed to behave? “Go on,” Ian said, breathing deeply to keep his voice even.

  “Somehow she lost control. The wheel came off, I think, and the curricle crashed.”

  Ian closed his eyes for a moment. It was almost easy to envision. The bodies flying in the air. The shriek of the crash and breaking metal and wood. “And Adam?”

  “He was in a basket beside her on the front seat. The boy was flung from the vehicle. They found him not even ten feet from Eva. Her leg was broken and she was screaming for him.” Thomas coughed slightly. “All she did was scream.”

  Opening his eyes, Ian swallowed back vomit. “Christ. But she was distraught. Her husband dead—her son, too.” Ian paused, barely able to believe the list of horrors unfolding before him. He’d thought nothing could shock him after his years in India. “Why is she in a madhouse?”

  “Oh, Ian,” Thomas said softly. “You should have seen her. She walked the halls of the house nights on end. She screamed in starts. Sudden, violent fits. She insisted that someone else had killed Adam.”

  Lord, he couldn’t even imagine. The little boy dead, thrown from a vehicle before the mother’s eyes. “Why would she do that?”

  Thomas shrugged. “Guilt, no doubt. She couldn’t bear that if she had just listened, her boy would still be alive. After a few upsetting occurrences, I refused to be responsible for her. I could no longer guarantee her safety.”

  “What in the hell does that mean?” Ian snapped.

  “The gardeners found Eva walking into the lake. You know as well as I that Eva does not swim.”

  “She tried to destroy herself—”

  “Shh. To say such a thing . . .” Thomas took several steps forward and his shoulders tensed. “Most of the servants don’t know. The gardeners were paid and dismissed.” Thomas grimaced. “You may think I did wrong. But I had no wish to come across Eva hanging from a chandelier or sprawled at the bottom of the stair. Where she is now she can be protected.”

  Ian lowered his gaze to the thick rug, woven no doubt in the land where he had just spent so many years. In the end, he’d betrayed both of his best friends, then. Hamilton and Eva. He closed his eyes for a moment, pain shooting through his skull. Ian crossed the room in a few short strides, towering over Thomas. “I want to see her.”

  “Impossible.”

  Ian grabbed Thomas’s lapel, his body so tense he thought it just might shatter. “You’re going to tell me where she is.” He shook Thomas hard enough that the man’s head snapped back. “And you’re going to tell me now.”

  Chapter 2

  The room tilted in never-ending ups and downs. So much brown. Brown above. Brown below. Brown on her skin. Brown ceilings, walls, and floors. Brown clothes. She knew that once even her hair had been brown. No. Not brown. Black. Her hair had been black.

  It might be still.

  She hadn’t seen it in over a year.

  Eva swallowed, her mouth certainly drier than the vast deserts Hamilton had described in his letters so long ago. She’d gotten used to the awful taste. The bitter taste. But the taste meant that forgetfulness would soon offer itself up to her, wiping her mind clean of a little body, lifeless in the mud.

  The bed itched and gnawed at her. It always did. Little enemies running about. Even when she slipped away from the present, she couldn’t quite rid herself of the disgusting tickle of a thousand little legs running up and down her skin.

  She knew this room so well. Even without a jot of light, for there were no windows or bars. Why would one need bars with endless walls?

  In the silence, Eva could hear Mary breathing. It wasn’t the peaceful breath of dreaming. Mary breathed in starts. Gasps. Many of the girls did, herself included.

  Mary rolled over toward her, her cot creaking. “Eva?”

  “Mmm?”

  “Tell me about the sea.”

  “You’ve been to the sea,” Eva murmured, waiting for her medicine to roll her into the deepness of a different sea. A sea free of memory.

  “Please. I want to hear it.”

  Eva blew out a breath. “If you wish it, Mary.” She opened her eyes to the darkness, trying to sharpen her dull mind. “When you go down to the sea, the first thing you will notice is the scent. The air is heavy with salt and the wind whips against your skin, clean and crisp.”

  “Not like here,” Mary interrupted.

  “No. Not like here.” They had this conversation at least twice a week and it was alm
ost always the same every time. It was comforting. Once, she’d loved the sea above any place on earth. “Then you hear it. Before you even see it, you hear the waves crashing and roaring to the shore, making you feel as if you are a part of its wildness.”

  Mary let out a contented sigh. “We’ll go to Brighton, won’t we? We’ll walk along the promenade?”

  Eva half nodded in the darkness. “We’ll buy ices and eat just a bite before we toss them away.”

  “Because we can.”

  “Exactly.” But they never would. Neither of them would ever leave this place.

  Footsteps thudded down the hallway, drawing close. Lone footsteps. Boot steps. Eva froze, her voice dying swiftly. It was important to know what shoes made what sound. If one knew what shoes, then one knew who was coming.

  Mary tensed, her sheet rustling. “Do you hear that?” she whispered.

  “Yes.”

  “God, not tonight,” Mary whimpered. “Not tonight.”

  “Shh.” Eva’s fingers clutched her raspy sheet. If they just lay still enough, quiet enough, he would pass.

  “I hate him. I hate, hate, hate—”

  “Mary!” she hissed, reaching across the short space between their cots and grabbing the girl’s hand. Their fingers intertwined for a moment.

  The boot steps paused before their narrow cell and the ghoulish light of a lantern drifted in through the small cracks lining their door.

  Eva’s heart thudded painfully. Even her medicine couldn’t dull the sudden fear that crawled along her neck. Fear for herself . . . but even more fear for Mary, who endured the keeper’s advances.

  Keys chinked together and the keeper Matthew coughed. It was a loud, wet cough full of phlegm. The light swayed, doubtless as he looked for the key he wanted.

  Mary’s fingers tightened around hers, and Eva willed her to be silent. If they were quiet, he would not pick them. He wouldn’t. She had to believe that.

  The squeal of long-neglected hinges drifted through their door. They could hear his boots as he entered the room next to theirs. The girls on the other side of the thin wall scrambled on their cots.

  A shriek followed, then the smack of human flesh to human flesh.

  The girl’s continuous cries filtered down the halls, mixed with Matthew’s grunts. Every girl would hear it, Eva knew. She’d stayed in many of the rooms. She had heard many a cry. And tonight she was just thankful the cry was not hers. Or Mary’s. She’d cried enough, her body beaten and bruised. But such were the punishments of fighting off the keepers. ’Twas perverse the way the keepers had their favorites, and though Matthew beat her regularly he did not care for her body, bearing as it did the traces of childbirth. So she had never been touched in such a way at the asylum. Matthew and his fellows preferred a slight, young body like Mary’s, unmarred by anything but their corruption.

  And so she and Mary clung to each other. Listening. Listening to the sounds that would be their own some other night. For the battle they would have to fight to retain whatever was left of themselves.

  Eva stared into the blackness, thoughts of the sea fading away with all the other memories that had died in this place of punishment.

  No one would come to free her. And after what she had done, no one should.

  The burning scent of lye assaulted Ian’s nose, stinging his eyes. He wiped at the water abruptly lining his lids and looked up at the house. If it could be called a house. Blackened brick walls stood in austere determination against the muddy, grave-strewn yard. There were no windows, except for a few on the first floor. Smoke curled like devil’s forks from a series of chimneys lining the crown of the slate roof. Even the snow piling up against the sides of the building could not purify the misery leaking through the mortar.

  Ian marched up the worn, uneven stone steps and slammed his gloved fist against the wood paneling. Moans filtered from the other side of the door, and then high-pitched laughter cackled from above. The kind of wild laughter that came with minds lost and broken.

  A shiver twisted down his spine. He’d been to madhouses before, brought poor chaps whose brains had just shattered after battle, but those places had been different. They’d been unpleasant, filled with chained-up men scratching at themselves, but there had been a cleanliness and air of concern.

  This place? Out in the middle of the Yorkshire moors?

  Ian fingered the burgeoning sack of gold guineas tucked in his coat and then slipped his fingers to the pistol secured at the back of his trousers. This place was meant to suck the hope out of a soul. To render a person silent and lost.

  And there was no way in hell he’d let that happen to Eva.

  Metal clattered and chinked on the other side of the door. At last it swung open. The man before him was a good six feet tall and his chest was as broad as a bull’s. A dark brown coat covered his shoulders, swinging open to reveal a dirt-streaked shirt. Lank brown hair slicked the sides of his pockmarked face. The stink of grease and slop buckets rolled off him. His piglike eyes roved up and down Ian. He rolled black iron keys in his sausage grip, contemplating what appeared to be exceptionally rare: a visitor. His thick lips worked for a moment before spitting out, “Whot?”

  Ian stood his ground, knowing his nobility would at least see him inside. “I’ve come to see the head of this establishment.”

  The man blinked vacantly as if he had never seen an outsider, then squared a belligerent chin. “You have an appointment?” he challenged. “If not, shuffle on.”

  Ian lifted an imperious brow, calling upon the innate air that came with title, estates, and an education at one of the high-brow Thomas Aquinas philosophical institutions in Oxford. He may have been born to a second son, but fate had dictated his ascension to the title of viscount upon his uncle’s death. And as his uncle’s heir, he’d been raised to wield authority. A lackey was not going to stand in his way now. “I didn’t think an appointment was necessary. I am hardly checking myself in.”

  The man hesitated, shifting awkwardly from one lard-filled leg to the other. “Whot name?”

  “I am Lord Carin.” The lie slipped past his lips with ridiculous ease. One learned to lie swiftly in the army and with as much conviction as a Methodist protesting the evils of liquor.

  “Fine, then.” The servant edged back from the door, his body eclipsed by shadows. “Follow me.”

  Ian nodded and stepped into the asylum. Instantly, he was bathed in shadow. It took a moment for him to adjust to the gloom. And as his eyes adjusted, the scent assailed him. Lord, the smell of lye was far preferable to the wretched stench of unwashed human and raw fear permeating the stagnant indoor air.

  A chain slithered down the hall, its big, sooty links heavy upon the floor. Ian followed its length with his gaze and his heart slammed in his chest. A girl, no more than twenty, sat upon the floor, her blond head shaved but with errant tufts sticking in wiry brushes. Her ratty dress hung in stained scraps about her thin frame. A big, black metal cuff circled her ankle. And as any chain would do, it had cut sores into her delicate flesh. Unattended, blood slipped down to her foot. Absently, she picked at the loose splinters in the floor.

  “Why is she tied?” Ian whispered, his voice sticking in his throat.

  The servant laughed. “Well, they will try to run away, won’t they? There’re only five of us keepers, and there’s more than a baker’s dozen of them.” He walked over to the girl, who cringed and pulled back as far as she could to the wall. Patting her head, he crooned, “You’ve tried to run three times, haven’t you, pet? But Matthew caught you.”

  Ian had seen enough horror for one lifetime, enough innocents slaughtered, but this was an entirely different level of hell. Ian cleared his throat. “I’m by no means a patient man.”

  Matthew shrugged his hulking shoulders, then gave the girl a chuck under the chin. She didn’t jerk away and, after her earlier cringe, remained bizarrely still as if she’d slipped away to some unseen world. The keeper laughed softly, then straightened. “Come
along, my lord.”

  God, he needed to see Eva, to see that she was unharmed. But in reality, he knew he might see her terrorized like the poor creature on the floor.

  Perhaps . . . The thought hit him hard enough to make him sick. Perhaps Thomas, the true Lord Carin, was correct. It might have been better if she had died than be condemned to a place such as this.

  They headed down the dim, austere hall, scratching sounds coming through the walls. “Why are there no candles?” Ian finally inquired.

  “They’re more quiet in the dark.”

  Or more afraid in the dark.

  They remained silent as they wound down the halls to the back of the establishment.

  “Here we are.” The man knocked on the paneled door.

  A light voice called, “Yes? Do come in.”

  As the door swung open, Ian prayed that Thomas had never met the master of this interminable place. If he had, the ruse was up. But he had a strong feeling that Thomas wouldn’t want to have dirtied his hands with such a place or transaction.

  Surely, even Thomas, Eva’s legal guardian, had soul enough not to knowingly deposit her in this pit?

  As golden light slid over his boots and he crossed the threshold, he realized he had been mistaken: there was no master.

  A mature woman of about five and thirty sat behind a simple desk. Her large, wine-colored skirts flowed around her, and a snowy lace cap covered auburn blond hair. She stood with surprising grace, completely at ease in the office filled with paintings of pastoral scenes and little shepherdess statuettes. “Good afternoon.” Her voice was soft. Comforting. Like a deep flowing river.

  Ian forced himself to give a slight bow. “ Good afternoon. Mrs . . . . ?”

  “Mrs. Palmer, of course.” She gestured with a delicate yet capable hand to the chair before her desk. “Do sit down. And you are?”

  “Lord Carin,” Ian announced as he crossed to the plain wood seat, polished to a sleek finish. It positively gleamed. In fact, everything in the room was in exacting order. There was no clutter atop her pristine desk or ornament on the table before the window. Everything was in a perfect place, just like the folds of her gown and the strands of her contained coiffure.