Chapter 3
When James came out of his most recent haze—to experience daggers of anguish digging into his leg and the base of his skull—he discovered two things.
The first was that he had somehow managed to fall out of bed, and he was currently on the floor looking up.
The second was that his brother was standing over him, peering down with a stormy expression on his face.
“Has the time come for another lecture, eh?” James slurred.
“How I need to pull myself up and learn to live with the pain? How I can still make something of my life? How I owe it to you, to the clan, to God and all his choir of angels, and to anyone else you happen to feel like dragging into this bloody argument for the thousandth time?”
“You could overcome your wound,” Fergus said darkly. “You have chosen not to.”
“Easy enough words for you to utter, eh, Brother?” James growled impatiently.
He wanted more than anything to reach for the bottle up on the nightstand, but he feared that if he did, Fergus might knock it out of his hand and shatter it, and it was hard enough to procure without any of it going to waste.
“After all, you are not wounded, are you?”
“We have both been getting wounded our entire lives,” Fergus shot back, “since long before you went on that unfortunate ride. The way our father treated us twisted and maimed us from the start. You are simply using this as an excuse to finally succumb to the heinous injury you have always been nursing.”
“You still speak of our father?” James sneered. “Then you speak nonsense. He has been gone for years, and either he has long since perished, or he wanders distant lands mumbling nonsense to himself. He is no longer a concern.”
“You think his absence means he’s really gone, Brother?”
There was anguish and desperation in Fergus’s voice, but James did his best to disregard it. So what if his brother was disappointed in him? That was certainly nothing new, was it? He’d long since learned to live with it.
Or so he told himself, anyway. And when that lie began to ring false, well, there was always laudanum to make it seem more convincing for a while.
“What kind of riddles are you babbling?” James snarled, rubbing his bleary eyes. “Gone is gone.”
“His cruelty remains within our heads and hearts,” Fergus said gently. “Darina has helped me come to see that.”
“Ah, Darina has helped you with that. I see,” James mocked. “How lovely that you have an adoring bride by your side. I might by now as well if I had not been ruined and left to rot in defense of this damned clan.”
“You were harmed, not ruined. And I say again, it has been your choice to rot.” Fergus crouched down next to him. “Our father made us feel as though we were worthless and weak. He beat us and humiliated us and told us time and again that we were unworthy of him.”
“You think the echoes in the corridors of this keep are so formidable that I can still hear him, is that it?” James challenged disdainfully.
“As a matter of fact, yes, I do. I think that every time you girded sword and shield and rode to inflict violence upon others, you did so because you were able to pretend every enemy was him. And I think now that this has been taken from you, you have no one to attach his face to and hate except yourself.” He paused, then added, “And, perhaps, me.”
James scoffed, “You are not our father, Fergus. No amount of wine will make me think that you are.”
Fergus raised an eyebrow. “Do you really expect me to believe that you have contented yourself with wine? And yes, James, I think you do see me as our father. I think that whenever I have tried to express my concern for you—to get you to stop harming yourself—you have heard his voice, telling you that you are not enough, that you cannot do as you wish, that he is ashamed of you.”
“You do not know my mind better than I do,” James said through gritted teeth. “Do not presume to think otherwise. In fact, do not presume to remain in my chambers at all. Leave me.”
“You are capable of more than this,” Fergus insisted. “You can stand and walk and ride and fight again if only you would allow yourself to.”
“Aye, and then mayhap I shall sprout a pair of glorious wings!” James laughed humorlessly.
“Mayhap I shall be imbued with the divine wrath of the Lord and smite entire legions with a sword of righteous flame! Mayhap I shall command an army of archangels while we’re comparing silly daydreams, eh?
The healers have pronounced my fate, you dullard!
I will never be what I was! No pretty words from you will magically heal me, so get out of my chamber and allow me to go to hell as I wish to! ”
Fergus stood, his expression hardening again. “I may take my leave of you for the moment, James, but hear me well: I shall never abandon you.”
“Imagine my delight,” James groaned.
“Darina has summoned her sister Edwina to minister to you.”
“‘Darina,’ ‘Edwina’... Who on earth gave these girls such idiotic names?”
“Their father did,” Fergus answered stonily, “and no matter how poor your condition and how much sympathy I harbor for you, I would urge you not to disrespect my wife.”
For a moment, James considered doing that very thing on the off chance that it would provoke Fergus into finally leaving.
However, one look in Fergus’s eyes told him that if he did so, his brother might just decide to give him a beating worthy of their father before he took his leave.
And somehow, he doubted that a split lip, a swollen eye, or a bruised midsection would add to his overall quality of life at that moment.
So he kept his mouth shut.
“As I say, her sister is here,” Fergus went on.
“Oh? And what is she going to do for me? I do not need you to procure women to lie with me and make me feel better, Fergus. It’s insulting and humiliating.”
“She is not here for any such thing,” his brother snapped.
“Rather, she is going to see to it that you stop feeling sorry for yourself. No matter what it takes. And mark me well, James: She is to be treated with the utmost respect. You may say any foul thing you like to me, but you’d do well to keep a civil tongue in your head with my wife’s sister. ”
“Or what?” James snickered. “You’ll hit me? Kick me, despite my malady? Prove yourself to be no better than our father was?!”
Fergus gave him a pitying look, then took his leave.
James made a half-hearted attempt at hauling himself off the floor, then flopped back down hard, hitting his bottom so sharply that he was sure it would be bruised.
No matter. He would simply add that hurt to his private collection, his own personal museum of pain, which he’d cultivated over the course of a year.
The pain of being stabbed.
The pain of having the fragment of blade carved out of him, of having the meat of his leg chopped away and tossed, like offal from a butcher’s shop.
The pain of infection made his skin feel as though it had been doused in oil and lit aflame, making his brain feel as though it was being suffocated slowly.
The pain of living every day with a limb that was less than it should be, making him less than he should be, making him a cripple who was unfit to lead men into battle.
There had been so many times when he had been convinced that life was nothing but a scale that weighed pain. New pain was compared against the pain that had already been endured and then filed away for future measurements.
All of which, of course, were weighed against the most original pain of all—being beaten horribly by their father whenever he had displeased the old man.
Which had been often.
It hadn’t just been the physical violence.
That had been terrible enough, naturally, but there had been the constant mental attacks and manipulations as well.
Their father, Laird Oliver, had frequently pitted them against each other and used each to make the other feel inadequate or insecure.
It was easy enough to dismiss all of that by claiming to be adults now, to pretend they’d put all of that behind them as Fergus had made James the realm’s most honored champion.
But beneath all of that, James couldn’t help but feel that the old resentments were still there. That Fergus had “generously” awarded James the role of most venerated warrior so he could control him more effectively and take credit for James’s victories.
Not that there would be any victories for him to take credit for now.
And then, of course, there was Darina.
It wasn’t that James desired Darina specifically. She was a comely lass to be sure, and there was much to admire about her mind and spirit (no matter how derisively or dismissively James tended to speak of her), but James did not covet her as such.
It was simply that it had all worked out so well for Fergus, hadn’t it?
Fergus and James had both been abused by Laird Oliver their entire lives.
When the time came to defy the old man, had Fergus done so?
Oh, yes, eventually, perhaps. First, though, he had committed the unpardonable crime of kidnapping the daughter of an enemy laird, just as their father had commanded.
What had happened next? Darina fell in love with him. Married him, even.
So Fergus had gotten a perfect wife to help soothe the wounds he’d incurred from their father. He got to be happy. He got the promise of never being alone again.
What had James gotten?
A dagger in the leg, and the promise of a living death.
He made a second attempt, and this time, he was actually able to lift himself off the floor and onto the bed. Ah, yes, now the bottle of laudanum was in sight…and better still, within reach. He groped for it, craving the sweet release it promised.
What had Fergus said? That Darina’s sister was visiting? That she intended to intervene somehow?
Well, what the hell did she have to do with anything?
James took hold of the bottle with a trembling hand and plucked the stopper from it, preparing to deposit several drops on his tongue.
Nothing made sense, but when the laudanum bewitched him, the lack of sense didn’t bother him much.
If anything, it comforted him. If nothing made sense, then he didn’t need to make sense either, and he could simply drowse himself into oblivion.
He moved the stopper toward his mouth, but his hand suddenly suffered a sharp spasm, and he dropped it onto the floor.
James moaned pitiably. He’d exerted so much effort to lift himself onto the bed, and now this?
He rolled over onto his side and dangled his limp arm until the glass stopper brushed his fingertips.
He briefly contemplated how much dust might be clinging to it if he managed to raise it to his lips, then decided he didn’t much care.
His tongue felt dusty all the time now anyway, and at least this way, he’d be too insensate to notice.
He closed his fingers around it and found he had just enough strength to lift it. The process was achingly slow, but he’d just managed to bring it within an inch or so of his tongue…
…before the door slammed open sharply, making him drop it again.