In the Heart of Darkness

by Reinke, Sara

  * * *

  An hour later, Mason sat down hard against the floor beside Julien’s bed, and with a heavy sigh, snapped his surgical gloves off. “That’s going to have to do,” he said, his gaze traveling along the length of sturdy tubing that trailed from Julien’s side beneath his armpit to a plastic bucket on the floor. It wasn’t ideal, but it was the best they could come up with.

  They’d filled the bottom of the pail with enough water to keep the distal end of the tubing submerged, while allowing bloody drainage from around Julien’s lung to flow inside. Already, enough had come out to fill the bucket nearly a quarter full. Between it and the catheter Mason had placed in his upper chest, the pressure that had been crushing his viscera, choking him from the inside, had started to ease. He could already tell a difference in Julien’s breathing; each rise and fall came more easily now, less desperate and strained.

  He glanced over at Andrei, who was gathering his supplies together and stuffing them back into his bag. “Thank you,” Mason said. “Again.”

  Andrei cut him a look, and a crooked smile briefly tugged the corner of his mouth. “We make a good team, no?”

  “We all do, yeah,” Mason said, smiling at Sofiya. “Not too bad.”

  “You should get some sleep, Dr. Morin.” Andrei stood, shouldering the duffel bag.

  Mason shook his head. Drawing himself to his knees, he pretended to be absorbed in double-checking the sutures securing the chest tube in place—stitches he’d set himself, then checked and rechecked at least a thousand times in the fifteen minutes since. “I need to stay with him, keep an ear out on his lungs. Mind if I hang onto your stethoscope until the morning?”

  “I’ll stay with him,” Andrei said. His tone was friendly enough, but even without telepathy, Mason clued in on his unspoken inference. If Nikolić finds out I’m in here, he’ll be pissed.

  “No.” Mason shook his head again. One look at Julien, and all of the rage he’d managed to tamp down while he worked rose to the surface again. The hell with Nikolić. He’d done this to Julien—he would have died if Sofiya hadn’t come for Mason when she had.

  Placing the chest tube had saved Julien’s life, but it had hurt like a bitch; he’d come to, arching his back off the mattress and crying out as Mason had used a scalpel to split open the margins of his stab wound. Mason had used forceps and his fingertips to slowly, carefully cut a path through his musculature and underlying tissue, and by the time he’d finished pushing the tubing through this same tight sheath, Julien had been out of his head with pain.

  “What…the fuck…are you doing to me?” he’d rasped, his eyes glassy with delirium, his mind lapsing in and out of consciousness. He hadn’t recognized Mason; hell, he’d barely been lucid, cognizant only of the pain. “Let me go,” he’d seethed, tugging against his cuffs so hard, he’d chafed his wrists raw. “Goddamn it…stop…!”

  “This man is my friend,” Mason said softly, brushing Julien’s hair off his brow. Images flashed through his mind—memories of Julien smiling at him, or the way the dim glow of lamplight in the springhouse would infuse in his eyes. He remembered the warmth of Julien’s skin against his own, the sound of his laughter, and the way they’d spent too many nights to recall playing chess or cards, or simply talking together about anything and everything for hours on end. He remembered the first time Julien had told him that he loved him, and the last time, too—that final, heart-wrenching occasion that Mason had wished he could take back at least a million times.

  Please don’t do this. I’m sorry. I’ll do anything—please! Please don’t go—I love you!

  He felt the sting of tears as they welled in his eyes. “He’s my friend,” he whispered again. “My best friend, Andrei.” His brows narrowed, his mouth turning down in a frown. “I can’t leave him. He needs me.”

  He glanced over at Sofiya, wondering if she’d say anything about the kiss he and Julien had shared earlier. She was a hard one to gauge, but in that moment, as she met his eyes, her expression softened with something like sympathy, and she offered a sweet, hesitant smile.

  “I can’t let you stay with him alone,” Andrei said, sounding uncertain. “The šef... Nikolić…he’ll have my ass if I…”

  “There’s a chair in the corner.” Mason nodded at it, any hint of camaraderie gone in his voice. “Have a seat, then, and shut the fuck up.” The cleft between his brows deepened as he locked gazes with the medic. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  He was so exhausted, so absolutely stretched thin emotionally that it physically ached him to keep his eyes open, but he knew he had no choice. There’d be no leaving Julien’s side.

  Not tonight, he thought. Not ever again—not if I can help it.

  CHAPTER TEN

  October, 1795

  “Can you believe that woman?” Mason muttered to Edith, leaning close enough to speak near her ear.

  Edith drew her fan discreetly up to shield her face. “Who?”

  Mason sipped from his brandy, then nodded once across the dance floor. “Collette Giscard,” he said.

  “Don’t you mean Collette Davenant?” Edith said with coy but pointed emphasis on the surname. “It’s been three months now, hasn’t it? Since she was wed to Lamar’s son…Jean Luc, I think?”

  “Julien,” Mason murmured, watching as out on the dance floor, Julien and his lovely young wife clasped hands lightly and danced in a swift circle, both of them laughing as they stepped in time to the reel. “And it’s been two months, not three. And she shouldn’t bloody well be acting like such a fool, not in her state.”

  They stood together among the crowd of guests in the Giscard clan’s home, where Collette’s father, Antoine, the Elder Giscard, hosted a party in honor of his daughter’s recent discovery that she was pregnant. Babies were always a cause for celebration among the Brethren—and of caution. As with human children of the time, Brethren infants frequently died in childbirth, or shortly thereafter, and many never made it past five years of age. While no particular disease or morbidity was specifically to blame, these offspring were often frail from the start. Mason’s father was fond to espouse—especially if he’d been into the brandy—that this was the result of centuries of intra-clan breeding. Even the matter of Arnaud’s public flogging in front of the entire Brethren Council three years earlier for having fathered a child with a human slave—an abomination by Brethren law, and a ruination of their otherwise unimpugnable and superior bloodlines—hadn’t dissuaded Michel from this insistence.

  The Elders took great pains to prevent direct bloodlines from intermarrying, but Michel still vehemently argued that their breeding pool was too constricted, and that physiological defects were but one of many signs that this restriction weakened them as a species.

  Although there was no way to know whether or not Julien and Collette’s child would survive to term, never mind adulthood, Antoine Giscard had spared no expense celebrating even the slimmest of possibilities, with a fine dinner served only hours earlier, and now dancing on the main floor to the accompaniment of a trio of musicians—a flutist, cellist, and violinist, all brought in from Lexington on commission for the event. In the middle of the room, more than a dozen couples clasped hands and twirled, alternating between fleet-footed country jigs and more primly elaborate minuets as the music styles waxed and waned.

  “Julien must be pretty virile,” Edith remarked, giggling as she took a sip of her rum and cider punch. “Either that, or they’ve been going at it like rabbits for her to be with child so soon.”

  Mason’s scowled deepened at this. Tilting his head back, he drained his glass dry in a single swallow.

  “Anyway, what do you mean, acting like a fool?” Edith asked. “She’s enjoying herself. It’s only a little dancing.”

  “That’s not dancing—it’s practically indecent,” Mason said. When Edith shot him a glance, he raised his brows in tandem. “It’s true. Watch them. She hasn’t been able to keep her hands off of him all night.”

  “I thi
nk you’re exaggerating,” Edith said. The song came to an end, and as the dancers all bowed and curtsied to one another, she lifted her hands and joined in the applause. As Collette straightened from her curtsy, she caught Julien by the hands and bounded against him, kissing him on the lips.

  At this, Mason inclined his head toward her, as if to say, You see?

  Edith laughed. “So she’s a bit…demonstrative,” she said, as Julien offered Collette the crook of his elbow and led her from the floor.

  “A bit?” Mason arched his brow and gave a derisive snort.

  “He’s a handsome young man. And her husband. She’s carrying his child, for pity’s sake! Besides, when on earth did you become such a Puritan?” Edith slapped him with her fan. “If I didn’t know any better, Mason, I’d swear you were jealous.”

  * * *

  “Here you are,” Julien said with a laugh as several hours later, he came upon Mason in the trees behind the house, taking a piss. “I’ve been trying to catch up to you all night long.”

  “Must’ve been hard,” Mason remarked. “Considering you’ve hardly left the dance floor.”

  Julien was winded, his face sweat-glossed, his hair damp with perspiration. As he unfettered his trousers and turned to face a tree, urinating, he laughed again. “I know, right? Collette—God Above, the woman won’t let me catch my breath!”

  “So I’ve seen,” Mason muttered, shoving himself back into his pants and cinching the drawstrings sharply.

  “Why haven’t you come out to join us, you and Edith?”

  “I’ve told you before. I don’t dance.”

  “Don’t? Or can’t?” Julien asked, grinning. Mason scowled, tromping back toward the yard, and Julien jerked up his breeches, hurrying to match his stride. “I could teach you,” he offered, and as Mason shook his head, opening his mouth to speak, he cut him short. “What? It would only be fair. You taught me to read. And dancing’s not that hard.”

  He caught Mason by the arm, bringing him to a halt. He stepped closer, reaching down to drape his hands against Mason’s hips. With a wry upturn to the corner of his mouth, he said, “I know you have good rhythm. Fantastic, in fact.”

  “Julien, don’t.” Mason caught his hands, pushing them away from him.

  Julien’s smile faltered. “Are you angry with me?”

  “No,” Mason growled, because he wasn’t. Not really. After all, he’d come to enjoy Edith’s company. There was still nothing more between them than friendship, but at the same time, he had fun with her, and knew he had no logical reason or right in the world to deny Julien the same with Collette. But that didn’t make it any less hard to keep his imagination from running wild, from tormenting him with thoughts and ideas of what they might be doing together, what he knew they had been doing in order for Collette to become pregnant. It didn’t make it any less hurtful for him to see them together. “I just…I need to get back inside. Edith’s waiting for me.”

  “Mason, please,” Julien said in a small voice when Mason turned to walk away again. “Please don’t be angry.”

  He didn’t want to look back at Julien because if he did, he knew he’d have to admit just how ridiculous and unfair he was being; how childish and petulant. He wanted more time to lick his wounds, because goddamn it, he’d only just now settled in to the idea of sharing Julien with another person, and now he had to try and wrap his head around sharing him with two—and one of them a baby, at that.

  “I…I told you,” Mason said at length, keeping his eyes pinned to his toes. “I’m not.”

  “I couldn’t bear it,” Julien pleaded. “Not from you. Please, I love you.”

  How the hell was Mason supposed to have any defense against that? When Julien caught him by the hand again, it was fairly well over. If there had been a white flag anywhere at hand to indicate his emotional surrender, Mason would have waved it.

  “I’m not angry with you,” he said with a heavy sigh. “I just…I don’t know what to think about all of this…or how to feel.” Turning to look over his shoulder at Julien, he added, “You’re going to be a father, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I know.” Julien nodded, all round and forlorn eyes. “And I need you to teach me how.”

  Mason managed a harsh bark of laughter. “Seems you’ve figured out the mechanics of that well enough on your own.”

  Julien flinched as if he’d been struck and Mason felt immediately ashamed of himself. “Shit,” he muttered. “I’m sorry. I’m being an ass.”

  Hooking his fingers against the side of Julien’s neck, he drew him into an embrace.

  “I’m afraid, Mason,” Julien whispered. “I don’t know how to be a father. You’ll be a good one someday, just like Michel is for you. But as for me…?” He pressed his cheek against Mason’s chest and clutched at the lapel of his coat. “I don’t ever want to be like Lamar.”

  “You won’t.” Moved momentarily beyond words, Mason tilted his head down, his lips lighting against Julien’s mouth.

  “How can you be certain?” Julien closed his eyes, his forehead touching Mason’s.

  “Because I know you.” Mason pressed his other hand to Julien’s cheek, cradling his face. He kissed him again, long, slow, and deep. “And I love you. There’s nothing of your father in you, Julien, I promise you. There never will be.”

  * * *

  Three months later, Mason awoke from a sound sleep as his father said his name, his hand falling heavily against his shoulder.

  “Mason,” Michel urged, his voice low and raspy. “Wake up, fiston.”

  “Quoi…?” What? Blinking dazedly, his mind still half-in, half-out of a deep, dreamless sleep, Mason sat up in bed. Beside him, Edith stirred with a small groan. He’d been lying behind her, curled against her back, but she rolled over now to look up at him, her face scrunched with sleepy bewilderment.

  “What’s wrong?” she croaked.

  “I need you to get up, get dressed,” Michel said to Mason, flapping his hand in beckon. He stood, a looming silhouette against the backdrop of golden illumination that came from an oil lamp Mason’s brother Phillip held as he waited in the doorway.

  The clan had grown large enough for the great house to no longer comfortably accommodate everyone. Smaller one-room cottages had been built around the home over the years to house the overflow, along with servants and slaves. Mason and Edith now occupied one such cabin, its modest interior only big enough to fit their bed, a wash stand, and a highboy bureau that they shared.

  “What’s going on?” Mason asked, forking his fingers through his thick, disheveled hair, shoving it back from his face. He stumbled to his feet, leaning down to grab his breeches from the floor.

  “Lisette Davenant is here. She said Agathe is at Lamar’s farm and sent for us,” Michel said, referring to his sister, one of Mason’s aunts. Like Michel, Mason, and many historically among their clan, Agathe was trained as a healer; specifically, as a midwife. “Collette Davenant is laboring.”

  Edith sat up, her hair bound in a loose braid at the nape of her neck to prevent tangling. Her eyes were round, any vestiges of bleariness gone. “Oh, no,” she whispered. “She’s not nearly far enough along.”

  Michel nodded gravely. “Oui. And she’s bleeding.” With a glance at Mason—who would best understand the grim implications—he added, “Heavily.”

  They rode out together by horse-drawn buckboard, with Mason riding on the front bench with Lisette and his father as Michel whipped the team to a frenzied pace. Gone was the bright-eyed, sunny-smiled girl Mason had met at the pond on a midsummer’s afternoon; Lisette looked pale and gaunt with worry, her blue eyes dusky and shadow-rimmed, her lips pressed together in a solemn line. Mason had reached for her, taking her by the hand, and she’d returned his grasp with a surprising and unexpected strength.

  In the back of the carriage, Phillip and Edith rode together; Edith had insisted on coming as well, and the look on her face had clearly imparted to all men involved that she wasn’t about to take
no for an answer.

  “I don’t know what to expect by way of greeting when Lamar’s involved,” Michel had told Mason to explain his and Phillip’s presence—and the fact that he’d insisted all three of them bear arms. “Given the history between us, I’m astonished he let even Agathe near his kin to attend to her.”

  “He doesn’t know,” Lisette admitted after a momentary hesitation. Shame-faced, she looked at Michel. “Julien sent for me, and I sent for Agathe. My father’s locked away in his study, likely passed out by this hour from drinking.”

  It was a clear, moonlit night, and Mason cut a glance in the direction of the springhouse when they raced past that dense section of foothills and woods. He’d met with Julien there only hours earlier before stealing home again. To his surprise, when he’d slipped into bed beside Edith, fully expecting her to be as soundly asleep as always, she’d spoken.

  “Tell me who she is, Mason.”

  He’d frozen, wide-eyed and stricken, at the sound of her low, quiet voice, his body stiffening like a timber crossbeam beneath the tangle of quilts covering them.

  “I know you’ve been with someone,” Edith said, her back to him. She didn’t move, not as much as a quiver. “I know you’ve been with her every night these past months…and more besides, from the day we married.”

  “I…” His voice had come out in a feeble croak. “I don’t…”

  “I’m not angry,” Edith told him. “I’m not even hurt…not really. It would be different if you’d courted me…made me promises…given me expectations of your love, but you haven’t. I’ve always known your heart lies with another, not me.”

  She’d rolled over to face him, and her face had been a porcelain-smooth mask of impassivity, her eyes pinning him. “I want to know the truth. If you’re in love with another woman, I think I deserve to know.”