Sweet Madness: A Veiled Seduction Novel

by Heather Snow

“You were saying?” she prodded.

  They walked along the green in silence for a few moments, until Penelope began to wonder if he planned to answer her at all.

  Then he cleared his throat. “Mary, ah, accompanied my regiment for the better part of two years.”

  The maid had been a camp follower?

  Penelope glanced up at him and saw that a spot of color dotted his cheek. Was he embarrassed? He shouldn’t be. She’d known the moment his lips had taken hers yesterday that Gabriel was a man of strong appetites. She would hardly expect him not to have taken his ease where he could during his years away from England.

  Not that his celibacy or lack thereof was any of her business, of course.

  “Mary was a game girl. Always willing to work hard and do her part in camp with a cheerful attitude. During the six months or so before Waterloo, she and one of my lieutenants developed a more exclusive arrangement.”

  They tipped their heads to a shopkeeper who was sweeping his entrance.

  “I have no way of knowing what Lieutenant Baker’s intentions toward Mary were after the war, nor will I ever. He died at Waterloo.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, wondering where this was leading. He could have stopped his explanation at “camp follower,” but she sensed there was more to the story.

  “Did you know that when our armies departed Belgium and France, scores of women and children were left on the bloody battlefields to fend for themselves, without the protection of a man?” he went on.

  Penelope felt herself blanch. “Alone?”

  “Yes.” Gabriel’s voice had gone gruff with emotion. “And not just widows and camp followers whose men had fallen. The army only took responsibility for officers’ wives and four to six officially sanctioned wives per hundred enlisted men. They were the only women allowed on the transport back to England. The rest of the men’s wives and children were stranded with no provisions and no way home. It is one of the uglier realities of war.”

  “How awful,” she whispered, her heart squeezing. She’d felt stranded without Michael. Adrift, without mooring. But even as badly as things had ended, at least she’d been safe in England, with a home and an income and the support of her family. Tears pricked her eyes. Those poor women and children.

  And then she just knew. “You found Mary and brought her home with you, didn’t you?”

  By this time, they had reached the large rectangular gazebo anchored at the rear of the green. Gabriel assisted her up the two steps and through the middle arch of the entrance. He led her to one of the stone benches in the center and released her arm then, stepping back from her.

  “I did. And when we arrived in England, I helped her find stable employment and a place to live. That is all.”

  “That is all? Gabriel, that was”—that was more than even their own country had done; it was kind and noble and—“heroic.”

  He flinched at the word. What an odd reaction. There were yet more revelations roiling under the surface; she was sure of it.

  Then she remembered something else Mary had said, something about real widows.

  “You helped more than just Mary, didn’t you?”

  He tipped his head dismissively. “Yes.”

  After a moment, she realized he meant not to say anything more. Well, she wasn’t going to let him get away with that. Whatever he wasn’t saying had to be an important clue as to why he suffered so. “Why?” she challenged.

  A great heaving breath left his lungs as he scrubbed his hands over his face, and she knew she’d been right to push him. He pivoted away from her, walking a few steps to drop onto one of the ornately carved benches nearby. After a moment’s contemplation, he said, “It was the only decent thing I could do, since it was my fault their husbands were dead.”

  Penelope caught her breath. “I’m sure that’s not true,” she murmured as she followed him to the bench and sat beside him.

  “Oh, it is.” He lifted his head just a little, turning his face to her. His eyebrow was raised with a cocksure tilt, and he huffed. “I suppose this is one of those moments when you will say that I must talk it out for my own good.” His lips turned up in a half smile that was both boyish and wounded, and that tugged at her heart.

  She simply lifted an eyebrow in answer.

  “I knew you were going to say that,” he grumbled lightly. Gabriel straightened in his seat, leaning back now with his hands clasped over his stomach. He didn’t look at her but fixed his gaze out over the green. “It was late in the afternoon and the battle had been raging for nearly seven hours . . .”

  Penelope sat in silence, listening as Gabriel told her a story of messages between Wellington and a Prussian general, of skirmishes that threatened a planned rendezvous point, of a dangerous mission across enemy lines for which he’d handpicked men who had all gone to their deaths. He spoke haltingly, and though she longed to reach over and soothe him, she did not wish to stop the flow of words.

  Her heart sped up a bit when he spoke of a week’s memory loss. Something significant lay there also. However, that was not the matter at hand, so she tucked that information away without interrupting him.

  “I learned that all of my men were lost while in hospital, and naturally, I immediately thought of their widows. One was sanctioned, so I knew she would at least make it home. But I couldn’t live with the idea of the others being left alone because of a choice I made.”

  She thought to argue with him about that, but instead she asked, “How many were stranded?”

  “Three, including Mary. One of the women had two children, as well.”

  Penelope winced at the thought of how terrified they must have been. Even though they had just lived through a war, the prospect of being alone in a strange land must have been even more frightening.

  “So you found them and brought them home, too,” she said softly.

  He nodded. “I could never make up for the loss of their husbands, of course, but I got them home safely and helped them find situations. As I was able, I tracked down each of the dead men’s wives here in England, as well . . . seven in all . . . just to make certain they were getting along all right and offering what help I could.”

  They sat in silence for a moment. Then Penelope remembered something. “That woman in Vickering Place—the widow of your lieutenant. Was she one of these seven?”

  Gabriel looked over at her then. “Yes. When I found Mrs. Boyd, she was in the direst of straits. She’d gone mad in the months after the news of her husband’s death reached her.” He shuddered. “Her sister said it was as if her mind had just broken under the grief and the strain of trying to raise her children alone. Miss Creevey, the sister, had given up her own position in town and was struggling to care for them all herself, but the burden was too much.

  “So, I paid for the children to be taken in by a nice family and made sure the sister found a new position. Then I began searching for a sanatorium for Mrs. Boyd. Ironically enough,” he said with a twist of his lips, “that is how I first discovered Vickering Place.” His hollow laugh rang off of the gazebo’s stone ceiling. “Little did I know I’d soon be joining her there.”

  Penelope blinked. “You have been paying for an impoverished widow to live in Vickering Place all of this time?” Private sanatoriums were not inexpensive by any stretch of the imagination. She couldn’t think of another person who would go to such lengths for a stranger, and a mad one at that, no matter how much guilt they felt.

  “Of course,” he said, as if it had never occurred to him to do otherwise.

  “Gabriel . . .” Penelope reached out and placed her hand over his clasped ones. She couldn’t help herself. She’d always known he was a good man, but she’d never realized how incredibly kind and decent he was.

  She should have guessed it, though. Something she’d noticed while treating battle fatigue was that the majority of men who suffered from it were sensitive souls. She theorized that one of the reasons it plagued them—and not other men who’d live
d through the same trauma—had to do with how deeply they felt the awful things that had happened to them.

  Some people seemed better able to shield themselves from those negative fears and painful experiences than others. It was almost as if they could put them in a box and hide them away, even from themselves. Whereas some harbored them.

  “You do realize those men’s deaths were not your fault, don’t you?” she asked quietly.

  Lines bracketed his mouth, and he exhaled a breath through his nose. “Rationally, yes. I understand war is dangerous. I understand that the mission had to be undertaken. I even understand that it was not I who took their lives, but the enemy. What I don’t understand”—Penelope watched his throat move as he swallowed—“is why I survived when they did not.”

  Penelope wondered if Gabriel’s illness might be exacerbated by the guilt he carried. The more she tried to unravel what was causing his battle fatigue, the more twisted the knot became. She would have to be patient as she plucked at it and pray it wasn’t hopelessly tangled. Because the more she came to know him, the more desperately she wanted him to be well. He had so much to offer the world.

  She squeezed his hands tightly. “Some things can’t be understood,” she said. “We have no control over them. All we can control is how we live in the aftermath. How we make our lives count for something.”

  Gabriel nodded thoughtfully. “I’ve been thinking much the same. Seeing Mary so well settled today was good for my soul,” he said. “And learning all that Stratford is doing for our ex-soldiers has intrigued me. I’d like to do something similar, but for their widows and children.”

  A curious warmth glowed in Penelope’s chest. “I think that is an excellent notion, Gabriel,” she said approvingly. “I’ve long been appalled by Geoffrey’s stories of the poverty and living conditions amongst ex-soldiers and how little the government has done for them. I can only imagine military widows have fared much worse. They could do with a champion.”

  And a whole Gabriel could be a powerful champion indeed. She liked the idea more and more. A man with something to strive for was a man more likely to get well.

  “Perhaps,” he allowed, determination glinting in his brown eyes. “But I won’t be able to help anyone if I end up back in Vickering Place.”

  She piled her other hand atop where theirs were joined, as if making a pact. “Then we’ll do everything in our power to make certain that doesn’t happen.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “I know that I said I was willing to do anything you suggested, but how exactly is this supposed to help?” Gabriel asked, eyeing Penelope skeptically.

  It was midafternoon the following day and the two of them were alone in Somerton Park’s long gallery. The massive high-ceilinged room was dotted with comfortable-looking tufted benches, chaise longues, a walnut pianoforte and the occasional overstuffed chair. A fire crackled in the massive hearth, centered along the interior wall. The other side of the room boasted tall windows separated by scarcely a yard between them, and every available patch of wall space was covered with colorful portraits and landscapes in gilt frames of varying shapes and sizes.

  But the only canvas that interested him at the moment was the blank one on the easel in front of him.

  Penelope grinned at him as she removed the lid from a cylindrical earthenware container about the size of a large pumpkin.

  “When I first started visiting the soldiers at the hospital, I really had no idea how to reach them.” Dipping her hand into the pot, she withdrew a walnut-sized pouch and shook droplets of water from it until it stopped dripping. “Oftentimes we would just talk about our lives and interests. When they discovered I was an artist,” she said, taking a pin and piercing the pouch, “they asked to see some of my work.”

  Red paint oozed out of the tiny hole she’d made, and the crisp tang of linseed oil reached his nose. Pen squeezed a dollop onto a wooden palette and then plugged the hole with a tack before placing the bladder of paint back into her container.

  “After some great discussions of art, the men wanted a demonstration, so I did some painting for them.” She withdrew another bladder and pricked it, this time eliciting a bright green. “Then I encouraged them to try, and over a period of weeks, I discovered some interesting things.”

  Green was replaced by yellow. “I already knew, you see, that the very act of painting made me feel better. I’d been pouring out my emotions onto the canvas since I’d picked up my first paintbrush. Thankfully”—she flashed him an eye-rolling grin—“the melodramatic canvases of my youth have long since been destroyed.”

  Blue paint now joined the others on the wood. “Anyway, as the men created their own works, I started noticing symbolism in some. Others were able to externalize their emotions through their art, and once they were on the canvas, separate themselves from the feelings enough to talk about them.” Purple joined the mix. “And for some, painting simply improved their moods enough to make it through their day.”

  He crossed his arms and lowered his chin. “You expect me to . . . paint my feelings?”

  She smiled and added another color to the palette. “I have a theory that the mere act of creating puts us in a place of positive emotion. Sometimes we can gain insight simply by observing what we’ve created. And I believe that sometimes the artistic process can bring feelings to the forefront for us to see, even when it is not our intention. Once we can view those feelings objectively, we are free to abolish them as we see fit.” One last dollop, white this time, and she placed the lid back on her pot.

  Setting the palette on the table near the easel, she reached for brushes, fanning the sable hairs with her fingers. “Liliana wants me to prepare a paper on my findings, though if I did, I expect it would be laughed out of the Royal Society before they even read the title. Imagine me, trying to pretend that I’m brilliant.”

  He looked at her, gathering art supplies and speaking passionately about the ways she’d discovered to relieve others’ suffering—men like him. Didn’t she see that she was brilliant? But even more, she was compassionate and kind. All of the intelligence in the world would be fruitless without those higher qualities that Penelope had in abundance.

  But that seemed too deep for the moment, so he just repeated dryly, “You expect me to paint my feelings.”

  She pursed her lips, but the corners of her mouth tipped up in a smile despite her efforts to look stern. “It might do you good to try, you know.”

  He snorted, uncrossing his arms and stepping closer to the easel. “I haven’t an artistic bone in my body.”

  Pen slipped a smock over her dress. “Everyone has a spark of creativity within them,” she protested.

  “Not me. I am utterly unimaginative, I assure you.”

  She raised a blond brow as she tied her strings. “I’m certain we could find something to inspire you.”

  Gabriel’s breath caught in his throat. Pen had already turned her attention to readying her brushes and wasn’t looking at him at all. He knew she hadn’t meant her words to imply anything, but as he watched her graceful movements, he thought, You, Pen. You could inspire me to do whatever you wanted. He’d paint if she desired it. He’d burst into song. Hell, he’d build her a bloody temple with his bare hands if she wished it, chiseling every stone himself. With a spoon.

  “However, I am going to do the painting today,” she said, snapping his attention back to her. “And you are going to be my muse.”

  “What?”

  “Well, I’ve been thinking about your different symptoms. While they may be part of a whole, I’d like to attack them one by one, and the one I’d like to take on today is the vertigo you experience around ballrooms.”

  “I see,” he said, snagging a long-handled brush from the tabletop. “And we’re going to defeat it with art supplies,” he said, brandishing it in front of him like a sword. It was easier to tease than to acknowledge the knot already forming in his stomach.

  Pen laughed and snatched the br
ush back from him. “In a way. Remember when I told you that our minds make certain associations—sometimes unbeknownst to us—that can then take over our senses?”

  He nodded.

  “Well, I think that when you entered those ballrooms, your mind may have interpreted something perfectly innocuous as a threat and convinced your body that there was danger—even though you rationally knew that not to be true.”

  He frowned. As much as he desperately wished that Penelope’s strategies would help him, this sounded like so much mumbo jumbo. “How can that be?”

  “My guess would be that something you saw, heard or smelled recalled to your mind the danger you were once in, and your body reacted accordingly.”

  “It is an interesting theory.” And a frightening one. If this reaction was unbeknownst to him, what could he do about it? “Let us say you are correct. How would we stop my mind from heading down that path?”

  “Sometimes, it is as simple as dissecting the situation and figuring out what, exactly, your mind is erroneously associating with danger. Once your rational mind knows what sets it off, you can effectively break that association. So what I want you to do is close your eyes.”

  Rather than obey, Gabriel lifted a brow.

  “Just trust me,” Pen encouraged.

  “If you say so.” He dropped his lids, feeling foolish. “It can’t be any worse than blistering, I suppose.”

  “Very funny,” she said, but he could hear the smile in her voice. “Now, I want you to think back to that very first ball on the Peninsula and describe everything you see and feel in great detail. I am going to paint what I hear you say. When we are finished, I will stand you directly in front of the painting, and I want you to blurt out the first thing that comes to your mind when you see it. Hopefully, that will give us a clue into exactly what it is that frightens you.”

  He cracked one eye open and half stared at her dubiously.

  She lifted her paintbrush and her eyebrows and stared back.

  He sighed and closed his eye again.