by Nhys Glover
He shook his head and looked at her more closely, as one filthy hand reached out toward her.
Charlie fought the urge to draw away. She knew he was just trying to establish her reality. He meant her no harm.
His chained arm came close and his long fingers tentatively touched her gloved hand where it lay on her knee. He drew back as if burned.
‘You should not be here!’ he hissed, his accent even more noticeable. ‘If they load up other inmates, I cannot protect you. This is madness.’
‘I do not think there will be any others. This is not a prison wagon. It is a hospital ambulance and you are the only prisoner destined for an asylum.’
He seemed to think about her words for several long moments. When the wagon began to move forward with a jolt, he relaxed a little.
‘You are right, it would seem. You are safe then, for now. But this is no place for a young lady. I am no fit companion for a young lady. Your reputation …’
Charlie couldn’t help laughing. Of all the things she thought to hear from this man who had stolen her heart, concern over her reputation was not one of them.
‘Who are you? What is your name? I know you did not kill that man. Why did you not tell the constables who arrested you what happened?’
He groaned and rested his head back against the wall of the rocking wagon.
‘You cannot know that. I do not even know that. I am insane, I have to be. What I saw… It was not possible. It could only have been… madness.’
‘What did you see? What happened? Tell me!’ Charlie leaned in to place a gloved hand on his arm. She felt how thin he was, and how his body trembled.
‘I saw a monster attack that sailor. Something that exists only in nightmares.’
Chapter Two
‘A monster? ’ she repeated in horror.
‘Yes. I saw a monstrous beast attack the sailor in that laneway.’
Charlie tried to get her mind around what she was hearing. He believed he’d seen something terrible in that lane, and maybe the shock of that made him imagine he saw a beast. It couldn’t have been a monstrous beast. Such things didn’t exist in London. This was not the jungles of darkest Africa. Wild animals didn’t roam the streets.
‘Tell me what you saw. Exactly.’
His ragged head, which had been resting against the rocking side of the wagon, came upright as he speared her with his gaze. ‘You are starting to believe them now, are you not? You are starting to believe I am insane.’
Charlie drew back as if he’d slapped her. ‘No, of course not. You saw something. You were shocked. You had witnessed a bloody murder, after all. The mind can play tricks…’
‘It was no trick. I saw what I saw. I was cutting down the lane, heading for my accommodation, when the sailor staggered out of the back door of a tavern. He was drunk, I think, I smelled the fumes on him, even from a distance.’ He stopped for a moment, as if remembering the nightmare in all its horrifying detail. ‘Then the thing… the creature… charged out of the darkness and attacked. It was like a dog, or a wolf, but much larger. And the sound that it made as its huge teeth clamped onto that poor man’s throat was horrible.
‘I ran to help. I grabbed the beast by the scruff of the neck and tried to drag it off the man. It turned and snapped at me, its eyes red like a demon’s. I lost my balance on the slippery cobblestones. They were slippery from blood, so much blood. I must have hit my head as I fell back, because the next thing I knew, people were screaming and a policeman’s whistle was blowing. I passed out again.’
Charlie sat silently thinking. His description was vivid and horrifying. It didn’t sound like the ravings of a lunatic. But surely a huge wolfhound couldn’t tear a man’s throat out so easily. Could it?
‘There are dogs, wolf-hounds, which are bred to be as large as small ponies. It could have been one of them,’ she ventured at last.
‘I have seen such dogs. It was much heavier and more muscular than that. Nor was the snout as long as a wolf-hound’s. And the teeth were huge.’
‘Had you been drinking, Mr… I am sorry, how remiss of me. I have not introduced myself.’ The absurdity of formal introductions in such conditions was not lost on her. ‘I am Miss Charlotte Hughson, the daughter of your counsel.’
She could see his perfect white teeth as he smiled. Then he reached across the space between them and took her gloved hand in his, bringing it to his lips.
‘Senorita Hughson, I am charmed. I am Juan Hernando Alvarez. I wish we had met in other circumstances.’ His haggard face lost its smile. ‘And no, I had not been drinking. I only wish that I had. It would better explain what I saw.’
‘This is a mystery, Mr Alvarez, which we cannot solve at the moment. What we have to contend with now is your imminent incarceration in a lunatic asylum.’ To her own ear, she sounded confident and matter-of-fact, certainly more self-assured than she actually felt.
‘I do not think I have ever met anyone quite like you, Senorita Hughson. I sit here before you, chained, foul and disreputable, declared murderously insane by your own courts, a stranger to you, a foreigner, claiming to have seen a monster… and you behave as if we are discussing poor weather that might disrupt an outing.’
Charlie blushed. His summary of the situation was accurate and she was even more mortified by her own outlandish behaviour. But it wasn’t his words that embarrassed her most; it was the note of pleased puzzlement in his voice. In the oddest way, he had meant his words as a compliment.
‘All you say is true, sir. And I wish I could be as other ladies. But I cannot. My father has given up on me. I follow my conscience. I follow my instincts. A great wrong has been done here today, and I cannot stand by and let an innocent man be condemned to … that kind of existence.’
He leaned over and took up her hand again, covering it with his own. ‘I thank you from the bottom of my heart, Senorita, but there is nothing to be done. My life has been a downhill journey to Hell for some years now. I have finally reached my destination.’
Charlie felt her heart flutter at the gentleness of his touch. He was no villain; she knew it in her soul. Whatever had set him on this path to Damnation was not any fault of his own.
‘I can talk to my father. I can get him to reopen the case,’ she said desperately.
He squeezed her fingers between his own. ‘There is nothing to be done. I am near starved, and three weeks in that prison cell has sapped away the last of my will to live. I can no longer fight my lot, even if I wanted to.
‘You are the most beautiful creature I have ever seen. If I still believed in God, I would call you an Angel. I am more grateful than you can possibly know for your actions today, and they will warm my heart during my final days. But you have done enough. You must go when the wagon stops. You must leave me to my fate.’
She felt an aching pain in the centre of her chest. Rubbing at it absently with her free hand she tried to think of some argument to raise his spirits. This was not who he was. On some deep, intuitive level she knew him. He was not a man who gave up. He was a fighter, like her.
‘What happened to you?’ she whispered.
He drew his hands away and leaned back against the rocking wagon. With distracted fingers he combed his greasy hair back from his face.
‘Simply put, I lost my faith. After that … there was nothing of worth to live for.’ That glorious voice dipped lower and stroked at her senses until she felt light-headed with need.
‘In God you mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘I have not been raised to be a strong believer, I have to admit. My father turned his back on his faith when my mother died. She was taken by pleurisy before my first birthday. Life, I have found, can be very rewarding without faith. It is only a matter of refocusing on your own goodness, rather than projecting that goodness onto a deity.’
‘I wish I could see it so simply. There is more to it than that…’
The wagon came to an abrupt halt and they could hear someone jumping
down from the seat and coming around to the back. They exchanged anxious looks.
‘Thank you for your kindness and courage. I am glad to have had the opportunity to meet you,’ Juan said resignedly.
The door opened and they were blinded by the light for several seconds.
‘Will you step out of the wagon now, sir,’ a polite Scottish voice said.
Before Juan could react, Charlie moved toward the door and offered her hand to the guard outside. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she saw the dangerous looking man take a step back in surprise.
‘Who?’
‘I am Senora Alvarez. I accompanied my husband from the courthouse,’ Charlie improvised, leaving her hand out so the man was forced to take it to help her down from the wagon.
‘Alvarez? Your husband? How did you get in the wagon?’ The Scottish accent became broader as the man’s exasperation and confusion intensified. He drew his hand from hers as soon as she was on the ground and looked into the wagon, as if to see whether she had somehow magically transformed herself from his filthy male prisoner.
Juan scrambled out of the wagon, the weight of the chains dragging him down. The Scottish guard made quick work of removing the manacles from his arms and legs.
‘I’m sorry, Senor Alvarez, is it? I couldn’t remove these until we were well away from the centre of the city.’ The guard looked closely at his prisoner and frowned. ‘Will you and your wife follow me, please?’
Juan straightened up and rubbed his wrists, utterly dumbstruck. When he looked across at Charlie, she wasn’t sure if the cause of his surprise was her part in this abrupt turn of events or the unexpected politeness of the guard.
To Charlie, he looked like a man who had found himself in some insane dream where nothing made sense; monsters that killed men; being starved almost to death in a hell hole; strange women passing themselves off as his wife; and finally, guards who had previously imprisoned him, now speaking to him like he was someone of importance. In his place, she would have felt just as bemused.
She turned around and took in her surroundings. They were in a well-to-do outer suburb of London, and the hospital wagon had pulled up in the circular driveway of a large gothic mansion. The garden all around them was a riot of colour, and its scent seemed to reach out to her like a comforting hand, covering even Juan’s hellish odour. A liveried doorman stood at attention at the top of the stairs, and he, like the house and its gardens, obviously didn’t fit the description of any lunatic asylum Charlie had ever heard of.
‘Come Juan, let us go inside,’ she said, taking his arm, and trying not to cringe at the blood and filth on his sleeve.
‘I will show you to your room,’ the Scottish guard said, leading the way up the stone stairs to the open doorway. He was a tall, fit man in his last thirties, with greying hair and broken nose. But for all his rough appearance, there was something appealing about him, Charlie discovered, once she’d moved past his air of danger.
He seemed to have recovered from his own surprise at seeing her and was busy adjusting his plans accordingly. ‘A bath has been prepared and clean clothes have been set aside for you, sir. I think they should fit. When you’re ready, if you and… your wife… would come down to the dining room, we will have an early luncheon. I imagine three weeks of little to no food has left you ravenous.’
‘Where are we, sir,’ she asked, trying to keep up the image of concerned wife. Juan leaned heavily against her, barely strong enough to put one resolute foot in front of another. ‘This place does not look like an asylum.’
‘You are perfectly correct, Senora, it is not. This is the residence of one of our patrons. We will explain later. If you will just accompany your husband to your room, all will be revealed soon.’
‘What are you doing?’ Juan exclaimed as the door closed them into the large, well-appointed bedroom they’d been assigned on the first floor. ‘You are compromising yourself further by coming to this room as my wife. What possessed you to say such a thing?’
Charlie slumped into an ornately gilded chair by the door and sighed deeply. ‘I did not think. I just said the first thing that came into my head. I wanted to make sure you were looked after properly. A wife seemed…’ she petered out, realizing that her explanation was absurd, even to her own ears. It felt as if the whole morning was one bizarre event after another, most of which stemmed directly from her own outrageous behaviour.
‘Stay here. I desperately need to avail myself of the bath and clean clothes. I will try not to be long. Do not wander. Until we know what this place is, your safety is my first concern.’
Charlie smiled. His continental gallantry was so wonderfully extravagant, even when it was clear that, in this moment, he could barely do more than stand upright, no less protect her from harm. But his concern warmed her, and her outrageous actions were becoming more justified the longer she knew him. He well deserved her stolen heart, she was coming to realise.
How he managed to make it out the door and to the bathroom she didn’t know. But she waited as patiently as possible until he finally returned.
Her heart did a double take the moment he walked back through the door about an hour later. Where he had left the room an aged, filthy ruffian, he had returned a breath-takingly handsome gentleman, for all his gaunt thinness.
Broad shoulder’s filled out the tailored jacket he wore. His trimmed hair: washed, combed and already starting to dry into wild curls, was as black and shiny a raven’s wing. Previously disguised by the straggling beard grown in during his incarceration, his finely chiselled face was now revealed to be smooth and young. Could he possibly be as young as his mid to late twenties? Even the bruises seemed less painfully obvious now.
And he smelled like cologne and clean male. She sighed in satisfaction.
‘You are here. I had thought that I might have dreamed you.’ Juan came toward her and took both of her hands in his, so he could kiss them as he stared down at her. She wasn’t a small woman, but he was tall enough to make her long, slim body feel almost petite.
His eyes were the only familiar element that remained of the prisoner who had stolen her heart. They were still the same intelligent warm-brown, fringed with sooty lashes. But as she looked deeply into them she found she couldn’t read the emotions written there anymore.
‘If I wake up in my cell, I will not be disappointed, because I will have experienced the most beautiful dream of my life,’ he said as he drew her into his arms, lifting her chin with his warm fingertips.
Too stunned to react, Charlie watched his face come closer. He was going to kiss her. She felt a giddy excitement rise up at the same moment as her life-long training set off alarm bells inside her head.
She couldn’t let this man kiss her. He was a stranger. It was totally inappropriate.
But as his gentle lips moved over hers, Charlie couldn’t fight the feelings he aroused in her. Nothing about what had happened this morning was appropriate. What was one more wild and unsuitable action?
His lips deepened the kiss, savouring her lips. Tentatively, Charlie returned the kiss, enjoying the taste and the clean scent of him. The smooth, sleek feel of his lips coaxed from her a yearning that was totally unfamiliar. The few hasty kisses she’d shared with gentlemen who had courted her in the past were nothing compared to this.
He drew back too soon, smiling down at her sadly. ‘Now I know I am dreaming.’
‘If you are, then we share the same dream.’ She lifted her lips toward his, a wordless request for more.
He dropped his mouth to hers again, this time with a wildness that had previously been constrained. With a desperate passion he claimed her mouth, holding her tightly in his arms, urging her to open for him. Overwhelmed, Charlie allowed her lips to open and felt his tongue seek entrance. She pulled back hastily, shocked by the intensity of the kiss, and the strange arousal she felt at the intrusion of his tongue.
‘Sir, that was not a gentleman’s kiss,’ she stammered.
He looke
d at her from beneath the fall of his dark hair. He breathed unevenly, seemingly as shocked as she was by what he’d done.
‘My apologies, Senorita. Even in a dream one must obey the laws of propriety.’
He took her arm and led her to the door. ‘I think I need to eat. If everything this dream presents is as delicious as you, then I look forward to a feast.’
‘It is not a dream, Senor. This is real. I think.’
‘As my wife, you will call me Juan, and I will call you Charlotte.’
‘Charlie, please call me Charlie. I am only called Charlotte when I have done something wrong.’
The handsome Spaniard chuckled. ‘Then it must be Charlie, as you have definitely done nothing wrong.’
His behaviour was bizarre. It really was as if he thought he was dreaming and expected to awaken at any moment. It was like he was living each moment to the full, freely, recklessly, and in a way he would never consider doing anywhere but in a dream.
They entered the family dining room to be greeted by the most mouth-watering smells imaginable. Even Charlie heard her stomach growl, and she had only eaten a few hours earlier. She could only imagine what that smell was doing to the starving man at her side.
The Scottish guard sat at the table with another gentleman, deep in discussion. On catching sight of them, he and his companion rose to greet them.
‘Come in, Senor and Senora Alvarez. Please, serve yourselves and join us. It is a very informal affair.’ The Scot indicated the sideboard loaded down with food.
Juan led her to the buffet and took up a plate. Moving along the table, he began placing delicacies on the plate for Charlie, checking with her as to her preferences. When her plate of overflowing, Juan took it to the table and held out a chair for her.
Only then did he return to the sideboard to slowly pick a selection of meats, bread and cooked vegetables for himself. Watching him, no one would ever have guessed he hadn’t eaten a decent meal for three weeks. His manners were impeccable.