Chapter 8 #3
It had been a very, very long time since anything had surprised Damian, but he had to give Lady Cecilia credit—for the wink she returned quite robbed him of breath.
Hollywell House, Tunbridge Wells, Kent, 28th July 1816
Gideon faced the door to his mother’s room with silent stoicism, walking through it as if it cost him nothing, while his insides roiled.
For a moment, he did not recognise her, for though it had been over six months since he’d seen her last, she looked to have aged a decade in that time.
She had been a beauty once; he knew that much from the portrait that had been painted of her in the weeks following her marriage to his father.
That woman had been stunning with the perfection of youth and happiness, but Gideon still wondered if the artist hadn’t glimpsed something in her eyes, something not quite right, for he had always considered her bright gaze a touch febrile.
Perhaps, though, it was just hindsight and his imagination.
Damian had inherited her fair colouring, her high cheekbones and sculpted features, the thickly lashed, wide blue-grey eyes.
Gideon’s hair was a muddy brown, and whilst his eyes were a darker slate grey like their father’s, and they had not the brilliant quality that his brother and mother shared.
Perhaps that was a blessing, though, as he feared it was madness that made them sparkle so fiercely.
Now his mother’s hair was dull, streaked with white and tied in a loose plait down her back. She was birdlike, so fragile she looked as though she might snap, and he wondered how much damage she could still do. Surely, she was easy enough to overpower.
He fought to keep his voice soft, to keep any trace of pity or revulsion from his face.
“Do you know me?” he asked her gently. “It’s Gideon.”
For a moment she did not look at him, and then she lifted her face and his breath caught as he saw those brilliant grey eyes, burning with loathing. She shrieked and flew at him with shocking speed, striking out with her nails.
“Devil! Devil! Devil, you’ll not take me!”
For a moment, he was a child again, helpless before her incomprehensible rage and terror. His heart stuttered.
“Restrain her!” bellowed the doctor as Gideon raised his hands to fend her off.
He grasped her wrists before her nails could reach him, but her strength stole his breath.
She writhed furiously, but he dared not hold her too tightly, horribly aware of the fine bones beneath his hands, but he could not release her either, though touching her made him want to recoil.
He wanted to hate her in that moment, to leave her to rot, until he saw the terror in her eyes.
She truly believed he was here to carry her to hell.
Two male guards entered the room, taking hold of her and carrying her bodily to a chair fitted with leather restraints. He watched with a nauseating mixture of horror, relief and pity as they fastened the leather straps, restraining her legs and arms.
He wanted to look away, to deny it was happening, but if she must endure it, he could witness it.
Yet it made him want to vomit, to scream for another way, though he knew there was not one.
The doctor had given him his options starkly enough and had now illustrated the dreadful practicality of it all.
She might not strike him physically now, but she kept screaming, a torrent of abuse, much of it incomprehensible, but then she spewed out a familiar bible verse that struck him square in the solar plexus.
“What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God? I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not!”
The words were like a blow, striking his heart as a memory returned to him then, of the night his father had died. The night she had killed him.
He turned away. There was nothing he could do here, no comfort he could offer, no good he could do. All he could do was pay the bills, to keep her in the best conditions he could, even if it crippled him financially.
Her voice followed him, even as he left the room, echoing down the hallways, ringing in his ears. “What is thy name? What is thy name? And he said, Legion: because many devils were entered into him.”
He picked up his pace, panic clawing at mind as he ran for the door.
“Damian? Gideon… is that…Gideon?”
He pushed outside as she called his name, some glimmer of lucidity breaking through, but Gideon could not have gone back in for anything.
He stood gasping, breathing in great lungfuls of clean air, yet the stench of the place, the permanent stain of damp and despair and shame, had penetrated his very soul, and he’d never be free of it.
Making his way around to the stables, he hardly registered taking his horse and riding away, finding himself miles from the asylum with no memory of how he got there.
A shiver of terror slid down his spine as he wondered if that same illness infected his blood, and what poor devil would be there to visit him if he ended the same way. He’d not think of it.
Instead, he forced down the fear, the guilt, the rage, pushing it all out of his mind and locking it up tight in a dark place where he need not face it. Not today, at least. But one day.