The Rakehell Regency Romance Series Boxed Set 6

by Sorcha MacMurrough

  "I know. Just do your best."

  Then she returned to Simon and held his head while he was violently ill, and began to rave anew. Chapter Seventeen

  Thus a pattern was set, with Simon's more lucid moments alternating with periods of great illness and total torpor. But he seemed to be ever conscious of Gabrielle's presence, even when he was asleep, clinging to her hand or arm as if he were terrified to let her go for fear she would vanish forever.

  If she sat in the corner to try to widened the hole into her sister's cell, he would awaken and search for her frantically. When he was able to sit up he helped with the chore, and soon it was large enough for her to wriggle through if she didn't care about her clothes too much. But it would have to be a great deal larger to fit Simon through, and he shook his head when she suggested he try.

  "They'll notice. And if they move my cell we're done for."

  "It's all right. We just have to move the cot in front of it, and we'll dig downwards, not upwards, so it doesn't rise any higher on the wall. And with Clarissa taking the debris out in her baskets and dumping it near the back wall, no one will suspect you had any help even if they did. Then I'll find you again and..."

  "It will be too late, my love. They're coming for me."

  This time the words had an edge to them she hadn't heard before. She nodded. "You've said that every day since I came. But Angela and the other women are keeping your guards busy as best they can, night and day, and they obviously haven't reported to your masters yet for fear of losing their privileges.

  "After all, it's not exactly an arduous job handing you food twice a day and looking in your cell to make sure you're still alive. So far as your minders are concerned, you haven't tried to escape, and you're docile. Why would either of them care if you came into money and did manage to get the cell looking nicer and they spotted a whore in here?"

  "How would you say you got in if they're the only ones with the keys?" he pointed out.

  "I can say they weren't at my post and my big burly pimp is a great picker of locks and insists on his customers all being satisfied. That should stop them asking any more questions. And Oliver can come to play the part with a few girls still in the trade if need be to support the story."

  He gritted his teeth. "I should be grateful for you being so resourceful, my love, but I hate to think how the fates have tainted your life since we last saw one another in Dorset. You were such a bright, pure little thing."

  "And I'm not now?" she demanded, pulling away from his grip.

  He sighed heavily. "I didn't mean in that way, darling, and you know it. I just mean I'm so sorry that your life has taken this turn, that our paths should cross again here, of all places, rather than some respectable drawing room in London or Lyme Regis."

  Somewhat mollified, she sat back down and sighed. "The only thing I regret is all my brother Chauncey did for the sake of lust and greed. Greed above all. I mean, I could see if he had done it all for love of a good woman like Isolde, or even because he wanted to give me and Lucinda a better life.

  "But the fact was Chauncey burned through his patrimony at the rate of knots, and when he couldn't touch what little money we had been left thanks to the watertight clauses in the will by my father's clever lawyers, well, he tried to kill my cousin Randall, and destroyed his father.

  "He also tried ruin my other cousin Isolde's father and brother to get their estate as the next male heir. And tried to ruin her reputation, the better to get her into his clutches and treat her as his whore, while he married an unsuspecting 16-year old for her fortune."

  Simon's eyes rounded further with each shocking revelation. At length he said, "How monstrous. I know he was your brother, but he sounds more deranged that I ever could have been."

  "Exactly," she said with a nod. "Which is why I never again want you to say that you're mad, do you hear me?"

  He gave her a grateful smile. "Aye, love, whatever you wish. And after all that happened, when you were orphaned and left without a male protector, you came to what, work in London to support yourselves and live with family?"

  She took up a small chisel Clarissa had managed to smuggle in, and began to stab at the plaster. "Not at first. It was mainly to help my sister once she was committed. Everyone in the Rakehell set has been very kind to me, especially my other cousin Antony, the doctor, you remember."

  "Yes, I remember."

  "He's taught me a great deal, and I feel ashamed of myself for having led such a privileged and comfortable life when there are so many people in the world who literally have no idea where their next meal is coming from. So no, I don't feel ruined at all, Simon. Yes, I was a bright happy girl. I think I'm still a bright, happy person, but I'm a woman now."

  His eyes lit. "In every sense."

  "In all the ones that count, anyway," she said with a loving smile.

  "Indeed, kind, loving, compassionate. And dare I say it," he added, stroking down her back with one long, sweeping caress, "the most fabulously exciting woman I could ever hope to meet."

  She tilted her head to rest it on his shoulder for a moment, basking in his loving warmth before resuming their digging. "Thank you, darling, I feel the same about you. So please, don't ever think you ruined me in any sense, or have any regrets about my present life as compared with my past.

  "I may not be innocent any longer, in the sense that I do know the way the world works now, but that's all to the better so far as I'm concerned. Now I can protect myself, and those I love. Lucinda was innocent, naïve, and married a man with three previous wives, all dead before age twenty-five. I felt sure that if I didn't commit her, she would have ended up like them. Even Bedlam is preferable to a cold grave."

  Simon nodded. "Aye, indeed, especially now that I have so much to live for."

  She blushed guiltily, realising she had touched a raw nerve, and brought the conversation back to where they had started lest he dwell on the night they had met, and he had begged her to let him kill himself.

  He worked silently for a time with his own tools, until he said quietly, "They will come, Gabrielle. They need what's in my head. I'm bait. As soon as they all get what they want, it will be over."

  She stared at him. "If you're so valuable, why would they just kill you? After all this time, it doesn't make sense."

  Simon shrugged one shoulder. "They never imagined I would be here so long. Obviously the men have taken a great deal longer to organise their plans than they expected. But the Atlantic is a large ocean, though not nearly as big as the Pacific...."

  He was off again on one of his tangents, and again he never ceased to amaze her with the remarkable facts he knew.

  He started mentioning islands which she guessed to be in the Pacific, then mentioned Corsica, Gibraltar Sardinia, Elba and St. Helena.

  "No, Simon, they're not in the Pacific."

  "They're not that far away, no."

  He began to shake and tremble, and she swung his legs up onto the cot upon which he had been sitting, and laid him down flat on the cot. She bathed his brow with camphor, and spoke to him soothingly of her childhood and pony.

  He began to complain about seeing visions, an old ruined castle, the Undercliff at Dorset, him riding along it with his brothers.

  She listened as intently as she could to his recollections, sure that he was trying to give her clues as to his identity. She tried to remember as much as she could to pass along to Oliver.

  Then in the midst of the flow of words, he suddenly fell silent, and gripped her hand hard. In a brusque tone he ordered, "No matter what you do, I don't want you to start digging into my past. It is best left buried. I'm a dead man, do you understand? From the moment the French captured me, tortured me."

  "How did you get back to England, then?" she dared to ask.

  He shut his eyes against the pain and gritted out, "Prisoner exchange. The war was over. The two Foreign Offices wanted to show peace and goodwill, so they cleared everyone out after Waterloo and peace was declar
ed at last. But my real battle for survival had only just begun."

  "Surely the torture was a battle..."

  "It was," he sighed. "I never told them. I was prepared to take the secret to my grave. Very nearly did a few times. They stopped short of killing me. But I never told them."

  "So why are you..."

  "It's in me. Do you understand?" He rolled up his sleeve and showed her one of his small blue tattoos.

  "Ess, a, dee," she read aloud. "Sad. You're talking about some sort of code?"

  His teeth began to chatter terribly. "Yes. If I c-c-couldn't g-g-give it to them, they w-w-would m-m-make me use it for them. They kept me awake, repeated the same things over and over again until I couldn't even remember my own name. The pain..."

  She kissed him hard to quell his words and trembling, for she could see he was propelling himself into another dreadful fit by recalling as much as he had.

  He writhed in agony under her, but she soothed him with both hands on his face, in his hair, and at length he began to kiss her back.

  He fell asleep a short time later, exhausted from the struggle. She heaved a sigh of relief that he seemed free of pain, and then set about her business with renewed vigor, widening the hole a bit more, then slipping off her skirt and all her warm underthings, and donning one of the clinic's simple homespun skirts Clarissa had brought to wear when she was cleaning.

  She wriggled like a worm into the other cell to check on her sister, and found her with her eyes open looking at her.

  Gabrielle saw the first light of recognition in her gaze, and smiled encouragingly. She tidied her and cleaned around the small cell, talking softly to her sister, and poking her head through the hole every so often to see if Simon was awake. Fortunately, he slumbered on, and she was happy to think that true, deep, carefree sleep might be the best medicine to heal his body and mind.

  Clarissa came at six, and to Gabrielle's surprise she had a tiny little bundle of fur with her which she drew out of her pocket.

  "Found ‘im on the way ‘ere, freezin', poor mite. Thought it might be good for Lucy. Some folk say animals are good for people. They love you for no reason. And they give us something to love."

  She put the matted black kitten on Lucinda's lap, and the lovely blond woman with deep blue eyes shadowed by pain and fear sat up, startled but fascinated.

  The tiny scrap immediately stuck out a pink tongue and began to rasp at its fur intently. When it had finished, it was sleek and glossy, and the women all wondered at the transformation.

  "Pretty," Lucinda said. "Keep?"

  "Yes, you can keep it," Gabrielle said, smiling in sheer relief at her sister actually reacting to the world again, and uttering two coherent words.

  She looked at Clarissa. "Thank you. Boy or girl?"

  She thought for a moment. "Boy, I think. A bit early to tell, but it looks like a boy."

  "Lucinda, you need to give it a name. It's a boy."

  "I know. But he won't be here for weeks."

  The two women looked at each other in confusion.

  "The kitty, my dear," Gabrielle tried again. "You need to give it a name."

  "Like the baby. Christopher. And the cat can be Kit."

  Gabrielle tried to keep calm, but it was worrying seeing her sister finally talking but making no sense.

  "A good name, Kit," she said heartily. "I hope you have something we can feed it, Clarissa."

  "Never you fear, there's milk and meat in the basket an' all."

  They took turns feeding it, then Lucinda laid back down on the bed, curled up with the little puss next to her cheek on the pillow, and went back to sleep.

  "At least she's talking," Clarissa observed quietly as she began to unpack the rest of her provisions.

  "Hmm, a good sign, I suppose. It didn't all make sense, but it wasn't about ghosts and goblins, anyway. And for once in as long as I can recall, she appears happy. So it looks like both my patients are improving."

  "I have to give you credit," the dark haired woman confessed with a candid look at her young companion. "I didn't think you would stick it. Any of it."

  Gabrielle winked. "Just like I have to give you credit. I couldn't have done all this without you. You have a good heart. And you're not the rough and ready former prostitute your pretend to be."

  "I owe you all everything. It's the least I can do. I blame myself for..." Then she stopped, biting her lip to keep from saying more.

  Gabrielle frowned. "Blame yourself? Why?"

  Clarissa shook her head. "I can't say. I swore to Dr. Sanderson and your cousins I would never tell."

  Gabrielle stared. "You know my cousins?"

  She nodded. "And their wives. All the Rakehells were very kind to me after I lost my mind."

  She stared at her in surprise. "You mean you..."

  Clarissa saw her eyes wandering around the room and shook her head. "No, I was never here. They saw to that. I got help from their friend Eswara, the nice lady from India, and then came back to work for Dr. Herriot at the clinic. He knows I was ill, but only three people know what I did."

  Gabrielle shivered. "And who are those three people?"

  "Randall, Isolde and Michael Avenel."

  "I see. And you want to tell me now because..." Gabrielle prompted.

  "Because if it hadn't been for your brother being dead, none of this would have happened."

  She sighed. "No, I would say it might have been even worse. He was a killer and a degenerate. Poor Simon has been branded these things and he's innocent, I'm sure of it."

  "And yet I am, and I get to walk in and out of here freely," she said with a shake of her head.

  Gabrielle insisted, "But you've reformed your life. You're not a prostitute any longer. You've learned to read, write, do sums, become a great healer. Even if you think that being a prostitute harms anyone other than yourself, you've changed. Look at all the people you've helped at the clinic, the sick, and the girls who want to reform too."

  "I've done it all with bloodstained hands."

  Gabrielle shook her head. "Michael thought that as well, so he kept himself away..." Her eyes widened as a thought struck her. She grabbed her companion's arm. "Is that why..."

  Clarissa nodded. "I work and keep myself to myself. Oliver tells everyone what a fallen man he was. He tries to atone for it every day. But as bad as everything you know about me is, I can never tell what I did. But you and your sister deserve the truth."

  "All right, if you really want to tell me, I promise to listen and not judge."

  Clarissa took a deep, ragged breath. "Yes, your brother died at Cheddar Gorge. But it wasn't a suicide. It was because I blew his head off with a musket."

  Gabrielle gasped and felt as though she were about to faint. She sat down on the edge of the cot, and pressed her hands together as if in prayer.

  "I don't understand. How? Why?" she forced out from between her clamped teeth as she tried not to vomit. She clutched the metal bedstead and stared at the pretty but hard face of the older woman staring before her, a face that had suddenly changed beyond all recognition.

  "He was a monster preying upon women. Killed a friend of mine, Molly, who was young, a virgin. She sold herself into a boarding school for the highest price she could get to help her young family. Brothers and sisters. I look after them now. They had no one else. Your brother tortured her before she died.

  "My God."

  "And Oxnard is no better," Clarissa pressed on, determined to make her confession. "I can only guess what he's done to Lucinda. I don't know him personally, but I've heard of him. He's a beast and she's better off in here than with him. But she never would have married him if I hadn't killed your brother and left the two of you without a male protector."

  "Why are you telling me all this now?" Gabrielle asked, near tears.

  Clarissa's mouth was a thin line. "So that you never think for a minute I'm a kind or decent person. Every time you thank me for my help, I want to kill myself. And now to see you here
in this place with that man... well, it's too much. You deserve so much better. All this is my fault."

  Gabrielle shook her head. "If Chauncey were alive, he would have found a way to use me just as he used Lucinda, to lure people into doing his bidding. He would have squandered any money he had and ours too, I have no doubt. The lawyers would only have been able to hold him off until I came of age. Then he would have wrung it out of us both bit by bit.

  "I know what you did was terrible, but perhaps I always knew he would come to a bad end. I suspected a great deal was amiss, and found out the most horrible facts after he died.