Chapter 7
It took James roughly half an hour to destroy everything in his chamber.
The wardrobe went first, with a thousand oaths and curses regarding its failure to properly conceal his bottle from Edwina.
It had taken a lot of wrenching and tearing for him to finally get the door off it, and by the time he was finished, his leg felt as though it was being sawed through with the blade from a rusty old plow.
But once it was off, he used it to bash and batter the rest of the damned thing until it lay in splinters.
Then he turned his attentions to his writing desk, which had fallen out of use ever since his injury.
He hadn’t felt the need to write to anyone or read any letters that anyone had sent to him.
If anything, all he’d truly wanted was for the entire world to forget he’d ever existed and leave him the hell alone.
Well, so much for that, eh? Now that Edwina had descended upon his life like some dreadful vulture, picking it to shreds mercilessly with her sharp beak and sharper talons.
He raised the wardrobe door over his head and brought it down over and over, howling like some wild animal until the desk and chair were as smashed and useless as he felt.
The bed came last, and there was a bizarre moment when he hesitated, wondering if he could simply tie the sheets and blankets together into a rope and escape out the window that way, like some crafty damsel trapped in a fairy-tale tower.
He could run off, live whatever life he pleased, find some new source of laudanum and drink himself into nothingness at will.
He could adopt a new name and identity and spend the rest of his days in blissful anonymity, far away from the meddling of his brother.
But that plan had been swiftly dismissed as utterly idiotic. For starters, such a rope would not be nearly long enough to lower him all the way to the ground. He’d be trapped halfway down, and if he attempted to drop the rest of the way, he was liable to wound himself even more grievously.
Not only that, but it would look positively ludicrous, to say nothing of conspicuous.
How was he supposed to shimmy down the side of the tower without anyone noticing him?
(How was he supposed to shimmy down anything when one of his legs was ruined and no longer served him?) He would surely be apprehended and sent back to his room immediately.
Worst of all, even if all these parts of his plan had been somehow workable, none of them would have negated the fact that he would have no life to speak of outside of McDougal Keep.
How could he? He couldn’t travel easily or fend for himself.
A cripple such as him (especially one wearing the clothes of a nobleman) would certainly be preyed upon by brigands.
He probably wouldn’t last a day on his own without the shelter and protection of his family.
He’d have no money, no food, no bed to sleep in, no roof over his head.
He wouldn’t be able to work in any capacity to pay his own way.
He’d be as helpless as a baby.
Which was precisely what Edwina had compared him to. Which made him all the angrier.
So he demolished his bed last, angry at it for failing him in this last plan he’d come up with, for not giving him the answers he needed to be free of all this pain and degradation.
Edwina had spoken of curing him, of returning him to some semblance of the life he’d previously enjoyed.
But surely that was all balderdash, he decided.
She was speaking of matters she did not understand.
Yes, perhaps she had some cursory knowledge of matters involving opium and its effects, but that was the extent of it.
She couldn’t possibly understand the depths of his pain and misery.
No one could, except for him. He was utterly alone in that regard, and perhaps that was his most significant reason for taking the laudanum—to take away the anguish of feeling far beyond the touch or understanding of the world, of knowing that he would never find the kind of love his brother had.
The best he could possibly hope for was pity, and the idea of that disgusted him.
No, it would be useless to put any stock in her promises, he decided. The only thing he could do for himself at this point was to have more laudanum delivered to him and to try to tough it out until it arrived.
Which, of course, meant soliciting the services of Alvin.
James yanked hard on the cord attached to the servants’ bell, then waited. A few minutes later, there was a tentative knock on the door.
“Sir? You summoned me?”
“Aye, Alvin, I did,” James replied, relieved. “I don’t suppose they have given you a key to unlock my door, have they?”
“No, sir, I’m afraid they have not,” Alvin’s voice replied. He sounded nervous, but then, Alvin frequently seemed anxious whether he had reason to be or not, so James did not give it much thought.
“Very well,” he said. “We shall leave that problem aside for a moment. Alvin, listen to me: I need you to run another errand for me.”
There was an uncomfortable pause. “What…what sort of errand, sir?”
James gritted his teeth. “The same errand I sent you on last time, Alvin.”
“Would that be…to go to the wine cellar and fetch you a bottle, sir? As I did two days ago?”
“What?” James frowned and shook his head, confused. “No, damn you! You know bloody well what sort of errand I am referring to, just as you know full well why I cannot loudly trumpet it to you in as many words! For goodness’ sake, man, what has happened to your reliable discretion?!”
The next sound made James’s blood run cold.
It was Edwina’s voice.
“Alvin will no longer be fetching your laudanum for you, James. But thank you for summoning him so that I could be sure of where you were obtaining it from. Rest assured, no one will be allowing this servant to venture outside the keep unescorted for quite some time.”
James screamed, unleashing his full fury against the door. However, he was still sore and depleted from his earlier efforts, and so he ended up sinking to the floor in a heap. It took him several moments to realize that he was sobbing.
“Damn it, woman,” he wailed, “do you not understand that I am in pain?! I require something to treat it, or I shall go mad and throw myself from the window!”
“To your second point, no, James, I do not believe you will do such a thing,” she retorted.
“Your pain may seem unendurable, and there may be some part of you that wishes for death…has, in fact, wished for it for quite some time. But if you had been able to bring yourself to end it quickly, you would doubtless have done so by now. You have chosen instead a slow and miserable way to do it, in the secret hope that you might somehow be pulled back from the brink before you’ve let yourself go too far. ”
“You have no business telling me what I think and feel!” he roared, tears streaming down his cheeks. “Unless you claim to be some sort of witch or fiend from hell, in which case, you ought to be burned at the bloody stake!”
There was a pause, and he heard her sigh heavily.
“James, I represent the surest answer to that secret hope. I can deliver you from the darkness you currently find yourself trapped within. But in order for me to do that, you must release your hold on your anger, and you must find some way to trust me. Until you do, any words I have for you—any medicine I might offer you—would be wholly meaningless.”
“Please,” he begged. He had never felt more worthless and pitiable in his entire life, but there was nothing for it. In that moment, he would have gladly promised his soul to hell in exchange for but a single drop of the laudanum. “Please, you must let me have more of it.”
“More of what?” she challenged.
He choked on his own misery, feeling like a whipped dog. “You know. You know what I desire.”
“I would like to hear you say it aloud,” she answered. “I wish to hear you speak the word and admit to yourself what you are in the thrall of.”
“My laudanum,” he whispered hoarsely.
“I’m sorry, would you mind repeating that? I don’t believe I heard you.”
“My laudanum!” he shrieked. “I need it, do you hear?! I need it now! It is the only thing that helps me, and I need it!”
There was another long pause. Then Edwina said, “Thank you for naming it at last. How does that make you feel, James? Squealing and pleading and scratching at the door like a sick dog? Do you feel proud of yourself? Do you feel anything like the man you used to be?”
“That man is dead,” he mumbled through dry and cracked lips. There was a thin trickle of blood running down his chin, but he barely noticed it.
“No, that man only wishes he were dead,” she corrected him.
“But he can be made to live again. I meant what I said to you before, James. All those things you feel have been taken from you can be yours again. But not as long as you rely on that vile opiate. The more you continue to lean upon it, the less recognizable you will become to yourself and your family. Your brother loves you, James. Your nephew loves you. Would you really choose to let them down like this? Would you become a monster in their eyes and in your own?”
With no laudanum to dull his senses—only the starkness of the ruined room and her voice—there was nothing to pull him away from the cold truth of her words.
Yes, the opiate had changed him, and not for the better.
It had, in effect, destroyed nearly all vestiges of the man he used to be. He knew that.
But it was a path he’d committed himself to. One with an outcome he’d long since come to view as inevitable.
He’d imagined the day of his own death many times over.
He knew that his brother and nephew would weep for him, aye, and perhaps his sister-in-law would as well.
As far as he was concerned, though, their grief would be entirely temporary, and in time, perhaps, they would come to see that James had done the right thing in unburdening them.
James would be in a place where no pain could ever touch him again, and the others would be able to move on with their lives.
So why the hell was this blasted woman interfering? Why did she refuse to go back to where she’d come from and leave him to his self-destruction?
James didn’t know.
For the moment, however, it seemed she wasn’t inclined to go anywhere or to give up on him anytime soon.
“Very well,” he growled. “What would you have me do?”
“You will pass the night alone and think about what I have said to you. The agony will be worse than you can imagine, even now. Not just pain from your wound, but the added pain of being deprived of a thing you have grown a habit for. Allow yourself to truly feel that pain, James. Acknowledge it. Understand that though it will harm you, it cannot kill you unless you let it. Tomorrow, at first light, I will come to you anew, and we shall begin your treatment.”
He heard her start to leave and called out to her. “You…won’t punish Alvin, will you? He is only a servant and did as he was ordered. He is a good lad.”
Another pause. Then: “Alvin has nothing to fear. And the fact that you took that added moment to plead his case tells me that there is hope for you yet, James. We’ll come through this, you’ll see.”
He hoped she was right.
But as he limped to the remains of his bed and collapsed onto his mattress, he doubted it.