Addicted

by Charlotte Featherstone

  He barely knew where to start. How would he begin researching the myriad of afflictions the human soul could succumb to? How would he know if his research was leading him down the right path, and furthermore, did he really want to know what it was she was keeping from him?

  “Bloody damn cold, wouldn’t you say?”

  Lindsay looked up from a diagram of a cross section of the female body, only to see his father slide into the chair opposite him. “Makes my bones ache, this weather,” his father grumbled as he reached for the wool plaid that was draped over the back of the chair.

  “It is indeed rather chilly,” he replied, watching his father arrange the blanket over his legs and wondering when it was the Marquis of Weatherby had turned into an old man.

  “What is it?” his father grunted as he poured himself a cup of tea. “Why do you look at me like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a doddering old fool,” his father thundered in a throaty snarl.

  Returning his gaze back to the diagram, Lindsay mumbled, “Forgive me. I did not mean to make you feel as though you were an invalid.”

  “Hmph. The only invalid in this house is that pain in the arse lounging about upstairs. It’s high time he started getting on the mend. I’m bloody sick and tired of having so many people around all the time. It interferes with a man’s routine.”

  Despite his own foul mood, Lindsay found himself grinning. Just last night his father had proclaimed to everyone who would listen in the assembly rooms that he had never had more enjoyment than the past sennight when his home was overflowing with guests and evening entertainments. But then, he’d been three sheets to the wind when he had said it.

  “What do you have there?” his father asked. “Not some drivel written by Scott or Keats, I hope. You should be brushing up on your equine knowledge if you’ve a mind to breed that beauty you brought back with you from Turkey.”

  Lindsay had all but forgotten the fact he had returned home with the intention of starting an Arabian breeding program at Eden Park. Returning home to find Anais was going to be his houseguest for an extended period of time had done little to motivate him to begin. Hell, he’d been far too occupied with making plans to get Anais back, that he hadn’t given a fleeting thought for his breeding program. Hell, it had hardly even registered in his brain it was the Christmas season.

  “Well, what is it?” his father grumbled. “A tome on breeding practices?”

  “Actually, it is a medical text.”

  His father’s eyelids narrowed and something flickered across his yellowed orbs before he looked away and peered into the flames. His father remained quiet—almost pensive as he watched the flames flicker in the hearth. Lindsay was about to excuse himself, when his father’s eyes swung to his. “Always liked the fire a good log produces over coal. Used to sit here for hours during the night watching the flames.”

  “And what did you see in them?”

  “Ghosts. Many of them.”

  Lindsay swallowed hard, wanting to break the intimacy of their locked gazes, but he could not. He had never seen his father in such a state. He had been a young boy the last time he witnessed his father this sober and somber.

  “You’re on a dangerous path, boy. I know. I’ve traveled it before.” Lindsay looked away and pretended interest in his teacup, but his father kept talking. “You’re gaunt. You’ve circles under your eyes like you haven’t slept in weeks.”

  “It’s nothing—”

  “Don’t lie to me,” his father spat. “You’ve never had the kindness of heart to lie to me before, so don’t start now. You’ve never spared my feelings and I shall return the favor in kind. You’re killing yourself over this girl and it pains me to see it. I know that you’ve been deadening yer pain with opium.”

  Lindsay looked at his father in horror. “Just what the devil do you think, that I’ve gotten myself into a…a dependency? I have dabbled in opium, nothing more. I don’t need to have it.”

  “That’s what I told myself, too, in the beginning. And it was true, I didn’t have to have it, but before I knew it, I’d given my body up to the alcohol. I thought I didn’t need it, but my body disagreed with my mind.”

  “I am not dependent upon it. I am not you!”

  “It was your greatest wish in life, wasn’t it, to not become like me. I knew it all along—all those years you were a small boy, I felt it—your disgust, your disapproval—your fear.”

  I don’t want to be like him, Anais. I don’t want to hurt everyone I love and not care about anything but my own needs. He was sixteen when he had blurted that out. And she had reached for his hand and clasped it tightly in hers. You won’t Lindsay. You’re nothing like him. You’ll never be like him.

  “I know I was never the father to you that Broughton’s father was to him, or even the sort Darnby is to his chits. I know I wasn’t what your sensitive nature needed in a sire, but I swear to you, I never wanted this for you. I never wanted you to walk in my shoes. I may not have grown to love your mother, but I always loved you.”

  Never had his father admitted any affection for him. Lindsay found himself speechless, staring at the man he barely knew.

  “I was once like you, boy. I, too, loved and lost. I, too, have been consumed by demons. I turned to drink when the woman I loved betrayed me. It was the only thing that deadened the pain. It was the only thing that could stop me from thinking about her day and night, and week after week. You have discovered the same cure.”

  “That’s not why—”

  “Then why have you taken it up? Why can’t you put it down?”

  Lindsay looked away, ashamed of what he wanted to say, but knowing that there was no other truth. “Because all my life I’ve been weak. I feared your fate would befall me because I always felt the niggling of temptation nipping at my heels and I fought so hard to ignore it, and there were some days I thought I wouldn’t be successful because it was so damn hard to resist. I never wanted to be you, falling down drunk and groping women. I didn’t want to hear my wife crying in the middle of the night because she had caught me in bed with one of the maids or dallying with her friend.”

  Lindsay squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his fingers farther into his palm, attempting to control the sudden rage and emotion that threatened to spill from the pit of his gut. “I couldn’t bear the thought of Anais looking at me like she looked at you when you were stumbling drunk. I never wanted to see disgust in her eyes. I never, never,” he roared, pounding his fist on the arm of his chair, “wanted to turn her away from me the way you turned Mother from you.”

  His eyes flew open and he met his father’s hard stare. “So, I discovered the opium and I thought that if I wasn’t drinking like you, and I wasn’t chasing anything in a skirt like you, that I would be safe from my fate of becoming you. I truly believed that one day I would be worthy of her and I would outrun the craving for temptation. I thought of opium as a lark, something we all partook in to have some laughs and relaxation. I didn’t realize till too late that I used it to control what I really am—your son.”

  His father blinked once, then again, slowly, as if he was trying to stem the moisture Lindsay suddenly saw spring into his father’s eyes before looking away and back to the fire. “It will no doubt come as a shock to you, but I despise what you’ve had to see. I hate that the model for a gentleman you had in your life was me. But I can’t change any of that, can I?” he muttered as he lifted his teacup to his lips. “I can’t change my path in life. But I sure as hell can set you on the right way.” His father set his cup down on its saucer with a clang. “Let me tell you something about women like Anais. Women like her are a man’s dream. I know I’ve professed she’s a nothing little baggage, but the truth is, if I were your age and I had someone hanging on my every word and looking at me with those big, blue eyes as though I were a god, I’d be as smitten as you are. What man doesn’t want the demure little paragon that pants hot for us? What man doesn’t want the lady by
day and the temptress by night? I’m no different. I fell in love with a woman like Anais. I wanted her. I loved her and she told me she wanted me, too. She gave me everything, then she told her papa that I had forced her. She lied and she devastated me in the process when she turned something I had never experienced before, into something ugly and hateful. And she made her circumstances in life better when she married a duke and forgot all about me. But I didn’t forget her—I couldn’t. Every time I closed my eyes I saw her. I felt her touch, and damn me it was more than I could bear.” His father was breathing heavy and his big hand was fisted tight in his lap. “Your Anais is just like her, boy. She’ll tell you ‘no we shouldn’t’ even as she’s raising her skirt for you. And after the deed is done and the passion subsides and she’s left with the memories, she’ll cast you aside because you can’t be what she wants. You can’t be the man she has created in her mind. And she’ll torture you with the memories. I know your torture,” he grunted as he shook a finger at him. “She is making your life a living hell. Forget her!” he roared, smacking the arm of the chair. “Forget that night in the stables because it is obvious she has. You may have lost your heart to her that night, but she didn’t lose hers to you. I’ll tell you, life with that one will only make your days hell.”

  “My life is hell without her.”

  “Have you not heard a damned word that I’ve said? She was never yours. You only thought you could have her, but you can’t. Let her go before she kills you.”

  “You’re overwrought, Father. This outburst cannot be good for you.”

  “Goddamn you! Must you make me say it? Very well,” he huffed. “Broughton and the Darnby chit are keeping secrets from you!”

  Lindsay felt as though he’d taken a blow to his middle as he stared at his father. The longer he looked at his father, the more wild and rampant his thoughts were, and they flooded his brain like water rushing through a dam.

  “I’m sorry,” his father grumbled, rising from the chair. “I know what she means to you, I’ve known since I found you in the stable doing your best to make me think that you were not there with her. You wore your heart on your sleeve, but when I turned and saw her, I knew, knew she didn’t love you as you loved her.”

  “That’s a damned lie!”

  “Her affections come with conditions, boy! That isn’t love. You’ve never seen her faults, you’ve always been blinded to her imperfections because you always wanted to worship the ground she walked on. Damn me, I cannot stand by and watch you kill yourself over someone who is so undeserving of the sacrifice. She is not the woman you think she is and it is time you learned the truth of it.”

  His father took an unsteady step toward him. “People think I’m a drunkard, and I am, but I tell you, I have eyes, and I see things that people don’t think I do. Ask her about her secrets, and remember, Lindsay, that you’ve always been a gentleman with her.”

  The door of the study closed with a bang and Lindsay was left with the gruff words of his father reverberating around his head. What secrets could he mean? What had he seen? No, the old man was not in his right mind. Alcohol had poisoned his thoughts—he couldn’t be trusted. There was only one thing in life he could count on, and that was Anais’s goodness and her unfailing ability to tell the truth.

  And yet he had purchased the medical text in order to discover what her condition was—the condition she wished to hide from him. The secret, he was certain, that could be answered if he would only believe in his instincts.

  With an oath, he hefted the book from the table and flipped through it for what felt like hours. Page after page he read the words until they blurred into a black string of ink. Finally, he came to a chapter that read, Disorders of the Blood; A Comprehensive Study. He skimmed the paragraphs and found something that struck a chord with him.

  Anaemia: the deficiency of blood and its life forces in the body. Symptoms include frank bleeding, occult bleeding, inability to catch one’s breath—pallor, malaise, and if left uncorrected, irreparable damage to the heart and subsequent death. Treatment is with meats—eaten rare…

  He looked up from the page and felt slightly ill. She had all the symptoms, including the heart damage. How many times had she looked unnaturally white, like she had no blood at all flowing through her veins? How many times had she sounded winded? Suddenly, the image of Anais choking down kidneys and rare pieces of beef swimming in juices came to him and he read on, needing to know how a person became so anaemic that their heart was damaged from lack of blood.

  The malady is most commonly found amongst women of childbearing years. Excessive flow of the monthly fluxes as well as the result of miscarriage and birth. Confinement is the main causative reason for women who were normally well prior to conception.

  Broughton and the Darnby chit have been keeping secrets from you…. His insides curled as if a hand had reached into his belly and was twisting his guts. A wave of nausea washed over him, threatening to spill the contents of his lunch up when he thought of Anais’s softly rounded belly. Confinement is the main causative reason…

  The words tortured him. What was he to think? He wasn’t even certain he was up to the task of thinking with any clarity.

  “My lord,” Worthing, their butler, said discreetly. “Lady Anais has requested that one of the footmen take a message to Lord Broughton. I’ve come to inform you that the lady has asked that a mount be saddled within the hour. I, er…” the butler said awkwardly, color painting his cheeks an unbecoming scarlet, “I thought you would want to know.”

  “Thank you, Worthing,” he said automatically, feeling like an automaton grinding forward without any purpose or feeling. “I do, indeed.”

  “Shall I have the Arabian readied for you, my lord?”

  Lindsay tapped his fingertips against the book in his lap as he continued to stare into the fire. “Yes,” he murmured rising from his chair.

  Yes, it is time to discover your secrets, Anais.

  19

  “What is it?” Garrett asked as he brought Anais into his arms. “I’ve been worried sick ever since I received your summons. Have you begun bleeding again?”

  “It is nothing like that,” she murmured, sniffing into her handkerchief. “I think he knows. Oh, God, Garrett, I do believe Lindsay has somehow found out.”

  Relief flooded his face and he ran a soothing hand down her spine. “Impossible,” Garrett scoffed. “You’re worrying over nothing, Anais. Your emotions are fragile, that is all. My brother tells me that this is all very normal for a woman in your condition.”

  “You don’t understand. I don’t want to hurt him.”

  “I know,” he whispered. Anais heard the sadness in his voice.

  “I don’t want to hurt you, either,” she sobbed. “I swear it, Garrett, I never, ever wanted to hurt you or use you to lessen the pain of what Lindsay did to me.”

  “Shh, sweeting, you’re distraught. It isn’t good for you. Here, give me your hands.” Anais allowed Garrett to guide her farther into the cottage. “Now then, shall I make you a cup of tea? You could use a cup, your hands are cold. You look very pale. Have you not been sleeping?” Fresh tears leaked from her eyes and cascaded down her cheeks. Garrett’s expression softened and he reached for her. “Do not worry. Before you leave here this afternoon, we will have a plan in place. I swear to you, just as I swore to you months ago, I will stand by you and whatever decisions you make.”

  Saddle leather creaked in the cold as Lindsay swung his leg around and dismounted Sultan. The animal snorted and tossed his head high into the air. Reaching into his jacket, Lindsay removed three cubes of sugar and fitted them into his gloved palm. Sultan ran his muzzle along the leather, wetting it before taking the sugar. Now quiet, Lindsay left the horse and trudged silently through the snow.

  Stealth was the order of the day. He had come to spy on the woman he loved. As he followed her through the woods to this little cottage at the edge of Broughton’s estate, it had taken every ounce of self-control
not to charge Sultan ahead and overtake her, demanding to know what the hell she was doing meeting Broughton in such a secluded place. But he knew if he handled her in that manner he might never learn what secrets she was keeping from him.

  Reaching for the branches that hung low before him, he swung them up in the air then stooped beneath, letting them fall back into place. Two steps farther, he found himself before a frosted windowpane.

  His heart couldn’t seem to find a steady rhythm. He wasn’t ashamed to admit his weakness. He was terrified of what was going to greet him once he wiped his hand against the glass, removing the dirt and grime and seeing for himself what lay beyond the frost.

  He heard them before he could see them. Anais’s gentle voice suddenly rose above Broughton’s baritone rumble. She sounded as though she was weeping. Unable to stand it a second longer, Lindsay put his gloved fist to the window and swirled his hand in a circle. Slowly, as if by magic, the image of Anais greeted him.

  Seeing her here now, with Broughton, in Broughton’s cozy, secluded cottage made him shake. So many emotions, swirling like tempests, ate at him—anger, frustration, desire, love—violent emotions, every one of them. He had not lied to her last night when he told her he was consumed by her, for he was consumed. He was an empty shell of himself without her in his life.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Lindsay saw Broughton move toward her, his hands, ungloved, stretched out to her and he caught her easily about the shoulders. Just as easily, she stepped into his embrace and wrapped her pale hands around Broughton’s shoulders. Lindsay could not breathe as he watched her nestle her face against Broughton’s chest and close her eyes as if Garrett’s arms brought her the safest of harbors.

  This is how she used to come to him. But she had not allowed him to hold her in such a way since he’d returned. She had shared her body, her weakness for passion, but she had not shared her vulnerability or her fears. She gave those, as well as her trust, to Broughton.